Hey there Reader,

I don't know about you, but it has been a wonderful couple of weeks for me (sorry I missed last week), mostly personal stuff behind-the-scenes, but still, I am riding high today (Wednesday evening when I write these). I hope you're doing well too!

This week, I have a more substantial journey update for you, including a recap on June for my business. But before we get to that, let's dive into a little crypto shenanigans.

Drip: The Best-Advertised Ponzi in Crypto

If you aren't actively involved in crypto Twitter or crypto Medium, you may not have heard of Drip before, a "community investing platform" that promises 1%/day returns on your investment. Already, that should be ringing the alarm bells as that's simply too good to be true.

But I've been seeing people shilling this project all over Medium, so I decided to do a little dive into the project and see how it supposedly works.

It's a Ponzi, Not an Outright Scam

The first thing to realize about Drip is that it's not an outright scam. This isn't one of those websites that tries to get your wallet seed phrase or run a malicious smart contract that will drain your wallet without your consent. No this is a good 'ole fashioned Ponzi.

You see, you can easily buy DRIP, but when you want to sell, they charge a 10% fee on selling which is given back to the ones who are staking. This is the basis for the 1%/day returns promised. But there's a caveat: if the sales tax rewards are not enough to cover the 1%/day returns, then new DRIP will get minted (in turn diluting supply and price) to make up the gap.

I don't have specific data on what the circulating supply of DRIP has been over time, but right now there is a little shy of 1.3M DRIP in existence, and considering the self-reported supply on CoinMarketCap is 100,000, we can assume there's been some printing going on lately. In fact, I would be shocked if the transaction fees were *ever* enough to cover the 1%/day yield.

MLM-Style Marketing and Tactics

The other huge red flag behind Drip is the way they use MLM-style marketing tactics. They actually directly use MLM-language like downlines in their whitepaper even!

I believe this is why they managed to get so many people (even some bigger, more reputable names) to shill DRIP on Medium and Twitter. It's just like an MLM: the more people you sign up, the more you earn rewards from their signups, recursively applied.

The Take-Away

What's the point of this? Obviously don't "invest" in DRIP. But also, do some due diligence when someone tells you about a crypto project. Listen to your gut if something doesn't feel right. Don't be afraid to say: "This is too good to be true."

You probably already knew that, but it's worthwhile to repeat sometimes.

And obviously, just because something has good branding or a strong marketing campaign doesn't mean it's a legit project. And sometimes, the very crypto influencers you follow to stay on top of the market can be the ones paid to shill projects like Drip. Rule of thumb: if anyone is trying to sell you on something, at least be extra careful. Good influencers, even crypto influencers, don't sell, they simply give information (like I do) and allow you to do what you want with it.

Crypto Exchanges Folding (Including Voyager)

I found an interesting little nugget today: https://finbold.com/bear-market-wipes-25-cryptocurrency-exchanges-in-30-days/​

Apparently, at least 25 exchanges (that were previously tracked on CoinMarketCap) have disappeared from CMC and presumably gone bankrupt.

The latest bigger name in that list is Voyager. I had mentioned a couple weeks ago that FTX and Sam Bankman Fried (billionaire founder of FTX) had bailed out a few crypto companies, and Voyager was actually one of them. Turns out that line of credit that SBF extended to them wasn't enough.

​https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/06/crypto-firm-voyager-digital-files-for-chapter-11-bankruptcy-protection.html​

^ Voyager is officially filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy, having sustained heavy losses from the collapse of 3 Arrows Capital (which I talked about in a past issue). The news is not great for users of Voyager, as it sounds like depositors will get a mix of crypto assets, money recovered from 3AC's bankruptcy process, shares in the newly-reorganized Voyager company, and Voyager tokens. The silver(ish) lining is that users who held USD on the platform should get their USD back once Voyager's partner bank finishes up some regulatory compliance stuff (that was my impression from the article).

Voyager is not alone in this though.

More Troubles for BlockFi

FTX had also bailed out BlockFi a couple weeks ago, and now it seems the company has entered into a deal giving FTX the option to purchase BlockFi outright for just $240M, a (very) small fraction of their most recent $4.8B valuation from their last funding round!

This news is bad for BlockFi investors and employees (who likely have significant stock options in the beleaguered company), but it doesn't give us any insight into what's happening with user funds. So far, BlockFi doesn't seem to have frozen withdrawals like Celsius did or otherwise impacted user activity, but given the extreme nature of this deal (companies don't lose 95% of their valuation over nothing), it's not hard to imagine that some not-so-fun things are on the horizon for BlockFi customers.

Therefore, if you are a BlockFi customer, I'd recommend you withdraw your funds and get out if you can. This deal gives me a real bad feeling, and I just don't know what's going to happen.

Journey Update

Progress on my site and writing slowed down this week and it looks like might be slower next week as well, but I am continuing onward. I re-opened my job search to find the right next job for my career which has taken considerable time away from my business as well as spending more time on my personal life.

I also mentioned a special announcement...

Becoming a Full-Time Traveler

After my trip to Israel, something clicked in me, and I made a decision once I got home: I want to explore the world and work and live around the world. In other words, I want to become a Digital Nomad for the next season of my life.

This is a fantasy I've had for years, and something about this trip unlocked it for me. After making friends in Israel and getting to see another side of the world, I realized that this is the time to go for it.

As for details, I don't have much yet. I need to figure out what to do with my kitty, Jas, and get things in Phoenix wrapped up before I leave. As I figure these things out, I'll let you know.

June Business Update

Like in May, Medium is still my only revenue source, and I had set a goal in June to simply surpass May given that I was going to be out of town for half the month. And I did it. Went from $21.21 in May to $24.16 in June. Still not much money, but again, it's my best month on Medium yet and given I didn't even publish a single new story in June, I'm actually quite happy with the results.

Expenses-wise, this month returned a lot closer to normal. I had a couple irregular expenses: ConvertKit 1 year subscription (how I send these emails to you) and a photography session. In total, expenses for June was ~$700.

I'm really happy with the photography session too, so it was well worth it!

Overall, it was a decent month, though I definitely didn't get as much done in June as I was hoping. But that's okay, there's always next month, right.

July Goals

For July, I'm setting a goal to publish three stories on Medium, and I'm hoping to hit $35 for July in earnings on Medium. I already have two stories basically ready to go (one is just in need of a publisher and I'm trying one last place before just throwing it up on my own).

And a quick note on email subscribers: we reached 37 subscribers here in June. I'm hoping to get to 45 by the end of July.

That's all for this week's issue. Thanks for reading, and you'll see me in your inbox again next week!

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