Happy Wednesday, Wise Owl Nation!

We are halfway through March and it feels (to me) like 2022 is starting to pickup steam.

Some fun updates from the last week in my life:

• I ordered gym equipment for my garage gym project, and the large and intimidating packages started arriving a few days ago!
• I started playing a video game for the first time in YEARS. Elden Ring is a great game to get back into casual gaming with.
• This week I am in Houston spending time with family for my Grandma's 90th birthday!

As far as the newsletter goes, we are business as usual, and will be sticking with the Crypto theme again this week for two important reasons.

1. The Biden Administration released an Executive Order related to Crypto
2. The ETH Merge is coming in Q2 of this year, and it really feels like everyone outside of the hardcore crypto community is sleeping on this STILL.

So of course we need to talk about it.

Many of you have made a lot of money from Ethereum due to my crypto ramblings, and I hope that continues. This information is pretty important, and I feel is worth a standalone newsletter.

Next week I will start to move back towards wisdom or health related topics.

Let's get into it.

You can find all past issues (including this one) here. 

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🦉 Wealthy Owl Thought(s) of The Week: Executive Order and the Eth Merge

The Biden Administration issued an Executive Order on crypto last week, and I am honestly surprised how welcoming it is.

The Executive Order has six policy objectives in its approach to regulating digital assets;

1. Consumer Protection
2. Financial stability
3. U.S. Competitiveness
4. Crypto use for illicit crimes
5. Financial inclusion
6. Responsible innovation

In short, the executive branch is wanting Web3 companies to innovate in this space, with caution.

Why is this all a good thing? Actually it is a great thing, in my opinion.

Biden's administration just acknowledged the innovative potential for crypto in the US and its worry the US will fall behind in the space.

The primary worry around this executive order was that it might force rushed rulemaking or impose new/thoughtless restrictions. That didn't happen. As far as executive orders could go, this one was as positive as possible, I think.

You can read the executive order here.

The Merge is coming and the price of ETH does not show it, yet.

Now we transition over to a bit juicier of a topic; the Ethereum merge and how the value of this merge is not priced in to the current ETH value.

In previous issues I wrote that the proposed timing for the merge was expected to be around April.

I was a few months off the mark. As of this writing it is looking more and more likely that the merge will be happening in June. It is also unlikely the merge date will be moved again.

There is a publicly viewable "Merge Readiness" checklist that has been getting closer and closer to completion. You can find it here.

June. That is 3 months away, folks.

This is the most significant blockchain network upgrade ever.

For context, once the merge happens, the amount of new ETH that gets produced drops by 90%.

Currently staking ETH yields around 4.5%.

In the months after the merge the yield should rise from 4.5% to 10-15%.

It won't stay at that rate since more and more people will stake their ETH to take advantage of that insane return, but it will still likely settle above 5%.

How will this effect the price of ETH?

In the short or mid-term, I have no idea. I have no idea because the current state of the world is a weird one.

Due to the war in Ukraine, there will be all sorts of economic ripple effects which are already causing the markets to be all over the place. To me, this means that the merge is not priced in to the value of ETH right now.

In the long term however, the basic economics of the Ethereum protocol will push the price up.

• There will no longer be miners selling their ETH every week to pay for electricity costs
• 90% reduction in new ETH
• ETH is still being burned in small amounts in every transaction on the Ethereum blockchain
• Locking up your ETH in staking will be more lucrative than ever

When supply drops and demand stays the same, the price goes up.

When supply drops and demand goes up, the price goes up, a lot.

The general consensus I am seeing is guesstimating that a price point of $10,000 per ETH is now considered pessimistic.

Seriously. Exciting times ahead.

You can read more about the Merge from Ethereum.org here

Quote/Meme of the week:

Have a great week!

This concludes our issue this week, I hope it gave you some perspective or injected a little motivation into your life!

If it helped, let me know! I read every newsletter response I receive, and I absolutely love hearing from all of you. This newsletter is for you, so I need your help to make it as great as possible.

If you'd like to show me some love for writing all this free stuff, you can always buy me a coffee.

More Resources

I will be adding to this section over time as we find resources that will help you all.

• Check out the Wise Owl Store
• All Wise Healthy Wealthy Articles on Medium
• Start your own Sendfox Newsletter
• Free products to help you level up

Crypto Resources

The Bankless Podcast: This is a link to the bankless podcast on Spotify. Start from the very beginning and learn why I am so positive about the power of Crypto and Ethereum in particular. You can find the podcast easily on the internet, but I am linking to episode 1 on Spotify for your convenience.

Buy your first ETH or BTC:

• On Coinbase - this is the easiest starting place for the newest beginners
• On Gemini - Another great option founded by the Winklevoss brothers. They are based out of New York.
• On Kraken - Kraken has a bit of a harder user interface, but they already have ETH staking enabled with the push of a single button.

Earn interest on your crypto

• BlockFi - Currently, you can earn 4% interest on BTC, 5% interest on ETH, and a whopping 8.5% on stable coins like USDC. Use the referral code b09f24fd to support the newsletter. BlockFi is currently not accepting new customers from the USA for its Crypto Savings Account. International customers are still welcome!

Other tools:

• Argent Wallet - This is the best mobile wallet for Ethereum, Defi, and all things on the Ethereum network, including staking. They even have plans to implement Layer 2 to remove network fees.
• Ethhub - this is a weekly newsletter that lists out all the interesting news, articles, and tweets that have happened in Crypto that week. It's free and awesome.
• Ethdashboard - A simple dashboard to look at various metrics in the ethereum space. I mainly use this as a quick tool to check ETH gas fees.
• Cointracker - this is one of the better tools for tracking all of your various crypto across all of the various wallets, exchanges, etc. You can also use them to do your crypto taxes each year.
• Metamask - this is a crypto wallet that you can access from your browser and allows you to easily interact with blockchain apps online.