Free AI web copilot to create summaries, insights and extended knowledge, download it at here

Abstract

sically beautiful or useful a thing is that matters. Instead, it’s all about gaining control over scarce resources that other people demand. That’s the whole game.</p><p id="e9fa">See, by knowing that Cohen paid $137.5 million for a de Kooning, that alone doesn’t actually tell us whether he himself even likes the piece or not. It might be his favorite thing to look at every day, or he might keep it locked away and never even bother to look at it. We don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter either way. You don’t directly need to believe that the value of a thing is$ 137.5 million to be willing to pay that much for it. You only need to believe that other people believe it is worth more.</p><p id="cd03">This is the nature of speculation. You’re not buying property for yourself. Instead you’re doing the same thing ticket scalpers do. You’re buying something because you believe someone else will pay more for it.</p><p id="255c">The wealthy are constantly speculating, and yes, it is a form of gambling. When they buy a $21 million mansion, it is at least in part because they think they can sell it to someone else for$ 30 million a few years later. And quite often they can. The house always wins. Let’s be real, their bets have much better odds than your scratch offs do.</p><p id="d0f1">Reputation, and its more permanent cousin Legacy, are among the scarcest and most coveted resources of all. This is why the contest to go to the moon is so fierce. The wealthy seek to do this and all the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. It’s about prestige. Status. Bragging rights. The scarce resource they most want under their control is your attention.</p><p id="0bcf">Elon has 58.3 million followers on Twitter. Safe to say he’s pretty good at this game. I admire the hell out of him. But let’s be honest, he’s far from the only player. Between tweets about Bitcoin, Doge, and now <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1410529698497630212">Baby Doge</a> (eek), what if Elon has lost his potency? What if his craving for the power of attention has left him like butter spread across too much bread, my precious? What if his support just isn’t as scarce or meaningful as it once was.</p><figure id="328f"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/0*Wq8E1I8D0le0iV7D"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><p id="ef60">Now, as far as gambles go, there’s no denying that Bitcoin’s success in the past 10 years has been unprecedented. The reason why is not a secret. How many times have you heard Bitcoin maximalists tell you like parrots “the scarce supply is currently 18 million but is limited to 21 million tokens”. Every critique about its valuation eventually circles back to the fact that no more than that can ever be mined, so at most only 21 million people will be able to say they have a Bitcoin.</p><h1 id="e708">Million Token (MM)</h1><p id="2f82">After all this spilled ink, we finally come to Million Token (MM). A new contender steps into the ring with a deceptively simple but self-evidently potent message: there will only ever be <b>one </b>million MM. Not 18 million. Not 21 million. Just one million.</p><p id="0cb5">Its value can never go to zero. Each MM token will always be worth at least one $1 USDC stablecoin, but could trade for more.</p><p id="f7e9">How much more? That’s what this social experiment intends to find out. It could be quite a lot, if there are even just a million people on Earth that each insist on owning a full coin. That’s true whether investors want the bragging rights for themselves, or whether they’re scalpers who are aware that demand might be high.</p><p id="eecd">Techlead, the Ex-Google, Ex-Facebook YouTuber who created Million Token, is a polarizing figure. The slogan of MM is “By Millionaires, For Millionaires”. That elitism and tongue-in-cheek narcissism is a feature, not a bug. He absolutely leans into the exclusivity of MM and the dry wit of his conceited persona. Like him or not, he’s very good at getting attention. Both for himself and for his project.</p> <figure id="5aed"> <div> <div> <img class="ratio" src="http://placehold.it/16x9"> <iframe class="" src="https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FSGO6IE4btSI%3Ffeature%3Doembed&display_name=YouTube&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DSGO6IE4btSI&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FSGO6IE4btSI%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" width="854">

Options

</div>
        </div>
    </figure></iframe></div></div></figure><p id="a023">Techlead is not nearly as famous as Elon Musk as you can see below in Google search volume, but if Million Token continues to virally pick up momentum, that could change.</p><figure id="76f6"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*7QYr6RqV80eJZVSOW2a0wg.png"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><p id="69af">We’re at the very early stages of Million Token, and so it could evaporate, or it could blast off. Techlead was clear that it isn’t an investment, again, it is a “social experiment”. What really shocks me is that this “experiment” has already been listed by Lbank and Gate.io.</p><p id="40c5">As the Content Lead for Hoge Finance, I know firsthand that it took our team and community about 4 months of serious effort to get listed on Gate.io, and we’re still working on Lbank.</p><p id="0cb9">By contrast to Hoge’s hard won victories, these exchanges listed Million Token without requiring any listing fees. Techlead didn’t even contact or apply to them. They did it for free when they saw MM’s transaction volume. Million Token has only been around for a few weeks but its trading pairs already occupy two of the top 10 spots on Uniswap (v3), which is the most popular decentralized finance marketplace. All of that is unprecedented, and fits into his mantra “be so good they can’t ignore you”.</p><figure id="8e9a"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*UjR0PCA_GYOI1EJaSFvChg.png"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><p id="849c">Unlike most successful projects that have ambitious roadmaps and work their tails off to demonstrate technological value and utility, Million Token is almost entirely concerned with marketing and brand positioning. MM aims to be the Rolex of crypto. That indifference to solving a technical problem may be surprising considering the technological prowess of a guy who calls himself “Techlead”. But based on the high market cap (around $90 million at time of writing, but as high as $220 million) it seems to be working. Couple that with the low holder count (only 12,000 wallets) and it seems that Techlead has succeeded in reaching his target demographic — the extremely wealthy.</p><p id="1833">Techlead understands how the wealthy think. He knows what they want.</p><p id="8f34">The problem he’s trying to solve isn’t a race-to-the-bottom efficiency puzzle. Nor is it a trivial feature like a <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/safemoon-beta-wallet-sign-ups-120049813.html">wallet that no one cares about</a> since we already have wallets.</p><p id="feda">In his video above, Techlead recalls a former manager who noticed he was spending a lot of his time fixing small little bugs and told him that “lions don’t hunt ants”. He needs to search for bigger prey and solve bigger problems.</p><p id="2220">The man seems to have learned the lesson well, because he’s trying to solve the biggest one of all: trust, leadership, and ultimately the creation of a store of value.</p><p id="adb3">Techlead, with his 1 million subscriber channel, is easily able to solve problems by influencing, training, and mobilizing those in his movement. He’s already done so by convincing fellow whales to profit by adding liquidity rather than selling off. That community liquidity is a big part of how the project managed to rank so highly on Uniswap. Given how lucrative Uniswap’s v3 is by allowing 1% fees, there is every reason to expect that the momentum won’t stop there.</p><p id="4aa2">Million Token isn’t the first of its kind to do anything, but Techlead has nevertheless managed to get viral traction with the project. Because it has such a popular spokesperson at the helm and such killer brand positioning as a scarce status symbol, MM really might gain momentum on Bitcoin and someday surpass it. That possibility can’t be ruled out. Especially not when you consider a very ancient principle.</p><figure id="a755"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*pwl2fopa5bq4mIswll04yQ.png"><figcaption>Image by Jesse J Rogers</figcaption></figure><p id="53f1">Will Techlead prove himself to be a lion that dethrones Bitcoin? We shall see.</p><p id="f635"><i>Note: since I put my money where my mouth is, I do not own Bitcoin but I do own some amount of the ERC-20 tokens Million (MM) and HOGE, as well as Ethereum itself in my portfolio. As a reminder, I am most definitely <a href="https://youtu.be/1LDE_3LdUXE">not qualified</a> to give financial advice, so by all means consider my arguments, but do not base any of your transaction decisions on my words alone.</i></p></article></body>

DECENTRALIZED FINANCE

Lions Don’t Hunt Ants

Million Token takes aim for the ultimate prize: displacing Bitcoin itself as a store of value. Can the lions take down such prey?

By Hogefather aka Jesse J Rogers

Not financial advice, do your own research. The opinions expressed herein are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect those of Million Token, Medium, Hoge Finance, or anyone else.

In order for the argument that Million Token could surpass Bitcoin to make any sense, we’ll have to begin this discussion (and it really is a discussion, I’ll gladly respond to your comments below) by asking a million-dollar question: how do wealthy people think, and what do they value most?

There’s recently been quite a lot of excitement and controversy regarding the so called “Billionaire Space Race” between Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson, Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos, and Space X’s Elon Musk, so that’s as good a place to start as any.

Many commentators have been quite vocal in wondering why these ultra-wealthy individuals are so focused on space travel when there are such serious and urgent terrestrial problems like starvation or climate change that these capable people could be devoting their passion and considerable resources towards instead.

But even when billionaires are working on trying to solve those vital kinds of humanitarian problems, why must they ride around in private jets to do it?

For that matter, why are gas guzzling Lambos so coveted? Is it their spacious comfort? Safety? What makes people feel so cool when they have one?

I’ll allow these questions to marinate, but we’ll table them for now.

Let’s next move to an observation of what kind of art the wealthy seem to appreciate.

Take the piece below. How much would you be willing to pay to proudly hang that masterpiece on your wall? How insistent would you be that your friends simply must come over to see your latest acquisition?

“You couldn’t pay me to put that hideous thing in my house,” many a reader might initially insist. And fair enough. In terms of the objective quality and the skill it took to produce it, one can scarcely tell if Woman III was produced by a master of the craft, or if it was salvaged from the trash heap at a local elementary school.

And yet billionaire hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen paid $137.5 million in 2006 to add this ridiculous monstrosity to his private collection.

Why?

Before I attempt an answer, there’s one last stop on our tour. Bitcoin (BTC). Why in the world is one Bitcoin worth $32,000 (or as much as $64,000, on a good day) when you can’t even do anything with it? How could something so utterly pointless ever have become so valuable, particularly when there are so many rival coins that have more functions and lower transaction costs?

Scarcity

The skeleton key which opens the psychological lock on the mindset of the wealthy is an understanding of scarcity. It isn’t how objectively or intrinsically beautiful or useful a thing is that matters. Instead, it’s all about gaining control over scarce resources that other people demand. That’s the whole game.

See, by knowing that Cohen paid $137.5 million for a de Kooning, that alone doesn’t actually tell us whether he himself even likes the piece or not. It might be his favorite thing to look at every day, or he might keep it locked away and never even bother to look at it. We don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter either way. You don’t directly need to believe that the value of a thing is $137.5 million to be willing to pay that much for it. You only need to believe that other people believe it is worth more.

This is the nature of speculation. You’re not buying property for yourself. Instead you’re doing the same thing ticket scalpers do. You’re buying something because you believe someone else will pay more for it.

The wealthy are constantly speculating, and yes, it is a form of gambling. When they buy a $21 million mansion, it is at least in part because they think they can sell it to someone else for $30 million a few years later. And quite often they can. The house always wins. Let’s be real, their bets have much better odds than your scratch offs do.

Reputation, and its more permanent cousin Legacy, are among the scarcest and most coveted resources of all. This is why the contest to go to the moon is so fierce. The wealthy seek to do this and all the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. It’s about prestige. Status. Bragging rights. The scarce resource they most want under their control is your attention.

Elon has 58.3 million followers on Twitter. Safe to say he’s pretty good at this game. I admire the hell out of him. But let’s be honest, he’s far from the only player. Between tweets about Bitcoin, Doge, and now Baby Doge (eek), what if Elon has lost his potency? What if his craving for the power of attention has left him like butter spread across too much bread, my precious? What if his support just isn’t as scarce or meaningful as it once was.

Now, as far as gambles go, there’s no denying that Bitcoin’s success in the past 10 years has been unprecedented. The reason why is not a secret. How many times have you heard Bitcoin maximalists tell you like parrots “the scarce supply is currently 18 million but is limited to 21 million tokens”. Every critique about its valuation eventually circles back to the fact that no more than that can ever be mined, so at most only 21 million people will be able to say they have a Bitcoin.

Million Token (MM)

After all this spilled ink, we finally come to Million Token (MM). A new contender steps into the ring with a deceptively simple but self-evidently potent message: there will only ever be one million MM. Not 18 million. Not 21 million. Just one million.

Its value can never go to zero. Each MM token will always be worth at least one $1 USDC stablecoin, but could trade for more.

How much more? That’s what this social experiment intends to find out. It could be quite a lot, if there are even just a million people on Earth that each insist on owning a full coin. That’s true whether investors want the bragging rights for themselves, or whether they’re scalpers who are aware that demand might be high.

Techlead, the Ex-Google, Ex-Facebook YouTuber who created Million Token, is a polarizing figure. The slogan of MM is “By Millionaires, For Millionaires”. That elitism and tongue-in-cheek narcissism is a feature, not a bug. He absolutely leans into the exclusivity of MM and the dry wit of his conceited persona. Like him or not, he’s very good at getting attention. Both for himself and for his project.

Techlead is not nearly as famous as Elon Musk as you can see below in Google search volume, but if Million Token continues to virally pick up momentum, that could change.

We’re at the very early stages of Million Token, and so it could evaporate, or it could blast off. Techlead was clear that it isn’t an investment, again, it is a “social experiment”. What really shocks me is that this “experiment” has already been listed by Lbank and Gate.io.

As the Content Lead for Hoge Finance, I know firsthand that it took our team and community about 4 months of serious effort to get listed on Gate.io, and we’re still working on Lbank.

By contrast to Hoge’s hard won victories, these exchanges listed Million Token without requiring any listing fees. Techlead didn’t even contact or apply to them. They did it for free when they saw MM’s transaction volume. Million Token has only been around for a few weeks but its trading pairs already occupy two of the top 10 spots on Uniswap (v3), which is the most popular decentralized finance marketplace. All of that is unprecedented, and fits into his mantra “be so good they can’t ignore you”.

Unlike most successful projects that have ambitious roadmaps and work their tails off to demonstrate technological value and utility, Million Token is almost entirely concerned with marketing and brand positioning. MM aims to be the Rolex of crypto. That indifference to solving a technical problem may be surprising considering the technological prowess of a guy who calls himself “Techlead”. But based on the high market cap (around $90 million at time of writing, but as high as $220 million) it seems to be working. Couple that with the low holder count (only 12,000 wallets) and it seems that Techlead has succeeded in reaching his target demographic — the extremely wealthy.

Techlead understands how the wealthy think. He knows what they want.

The problem he’s trying to solve isn’t a race-to-the-bottom efficiency puzzle. Nor is it a trivial feature like a wallet that no one cares about since we already have wallets.

In his video above, Techlead recalls a former manager who noticed he was spending a lot of his time fixing small little bugs and told him that “lions don’t hunt ants”. He needs to search for bigger prey and solve bigger problems.

The man seems to have learned the lesson well, because he’s trying to solve the biggest one of all: trust, leadership, and ultimately the creation of a store of value.

Techlead, with his 1 million subscriber channel, is easily able to solve problems by influencing, training, and mobilizing those in his movement. He’s already done so by convincing fellow whales to profit by adding liquidity rather than selling off. That community liquidity is a big part of how the project managed to rank so highly on Uniswap. Given how lucrative Uniswap’s v3 is by allowing 1% fees, there is every reason to expect that the momentum won’t stop there.

Million Token isn’t the first of its kind to do anything, but Techlead has nevertheless managed to get viral traction with the project. Because it has such a popular spokesperson at the helm and such killer brand positioning as a scarce status symbol, MM really might gain momentum on Bitcoin and someday surpass it. That possibility can’t be ruled out. Especially not when you consider a very ancient principle.

Will Techlead prove himself to be a lion that dethrones Bitcoin? We shall see.

Note: since I put my money where my mouth is, I do not own Bitcoin but I do own some amount of the ERC-20 tokens Million (MM) and HOGE, as well as Ethereum itself in my portfolio. As a reminder, I am most definitely not qualified to give financial advice, so by all means consider my arguments, but do not base any of your transaction decisions on my words alone.