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Continuing from last week's post, in this week's blog, I want to talk about why I'm making Of Duchies and Polities and how the development has come along so far. If you didn't see the previous post, you can take a look at it here.

So without further ado, here's why I'm making this board game!

The Initial Inspiration

I've actually been working on this board game for nearly 6 years now. Of course, “working on” may be a bit misleading, since it was mostly “thinking” and “planning” and “procrastinating” with only a little bit of actual action.

The initial inspiration came from Sid Meier's famous video game “Civilization”. Up until around 2013, I had actually never played through any Civ game, since I was more into real-time strategy rather than 4X turn-based games. I was exposed to it a bit when I played through some of the earlier Total War series games, but it wasn't until Civilization V received its second expansion that I decided to dig in and explore this grand strategy title.

I quickly grew to love it. It was like a combination of Risk and Settlers of Catan, but stretched across the span of known human history. However, at the time, I didn't have the best computer to run it, and the waiting times in between turns seemed to stretch for hours as the game stalled to calculate the moves of the computer opponents. When all was said and done, while I invested lots of hours into the Civilization experience, I found myself starting games, but never finishing most of my campaigns.

This was partially due to the fact that, I was having less and less long-stretches of time with which to play any kind of games. I would only have a few hours a week of free time, and when I got back to my computer to play Civilization V, it was difficult to re-engage, since I often forgot what I was doing in a prior session.

The other much more major part, however, was the social aspect of gaming. Some of my fondest memories of playing strategy board games like Risk involved a lot of interaction and politicking. I remember times when my friends and I were locked in stalemate battles on a global scale, each trying make deals to help relieve one front while grappling with another player on the other side of the board.

It was rare to get such a game in Civilization. Since each match lasted so long, I could really only play single-player. Additionally, the mechanics of the games were so that it didn't really matter whether you interacted at all. You could blitz through the game just doing what you want, rather than needing to rely on diplomacy to having a fighting chance.

That was when I decided to make my own game. Since my programming skills are pretty rudimentary, I resolved instead to make a board game. I basically set out to bridge Risk and Settlers of Catan. There were 5 resources, cities and fortresses, and a variety of armies you could build to enhance your empire. There were even world wonders, weather effects, and barbarians!

I normally work through ideas and inspirations by writing a bunch of things down in some word processing or spreadsheet program. This allows me to organize my ideas quicker, and since I'm a decently quick typist, I can get out the ideas just as fast as they come to me. In this case, I was able to get the idea down in less than a few weeks, create and print out the token pieces when I needed to (I borrowed a lot of assets from my Risk and Lord of the Rings Monopoly games), and get them ready for my friends and I to try.

And....honestly, it was kind of fun! Along with four of my friends, we started to play this early inspiration (at that time called How to Build an Empire) and see where the holes and balance points were in the game.

But there was a single problem. While I had done away with “technology trees” and epochs and eras, the game pace was still incredibly slow. Much of the slowness was due to resource collection, and though each game could have theoretically snow-balled into all-out chaos and fun, as play group, we never got there. For the most part, there was so much to do in the beginning that we were sitting for hours durdling around while attempting to combat barbarians and collect meager resources simultaneously.

With no idea how to fix it, that iteration of the game was shelved. I ended up physically moving away (unrelated), and the whole game as a printed entity was scrapped.

But the idea kept nagging at me.

Inspiration, Part II

Fast forward a couple years. In the interim, I had revisited How to Build an Empire a few times, even at one point having a back and forth with my brother on producing actual assets and parts for it. But most of those plans fell by the wayside, as life and work required more and more of my attention.

After getting married, during my free time, I would sometimes try to play Civilization again. However, once again, I would be unable to really engage with the game, given now even less time to do so. On the contrary, I instead found myself playing old Total War games again. Specifically, I was playing Medieval 2: Total War. The grand strategy part of this game wasn't as complex, but the political element could be very intriguing.

For those who don't know, in Medieval 2: Total War, you can play as a Catholic-oriented faction in the Middle Ages. By playing as a Catholic faction, you gained access to the Pope, a religious figurehead by title, but a political figurehead by mechanics. By gaining favor with the Pope, you could guarantee more safety for your lands, fight better proxy wars in Western Europe, and even call for crusades when you needed to get rid of your enemies. It wasn't perfect, but good enough as a basic political game.

And so I was finally scratching that itch. But this time, it was more palatable. I could see some of the changes needed to make my old game work. And so, on a Sunday afternoon with my wife driving home, I took out my trusty laptop, and began a complete re-work of the game, eventually renamed to Of Duchies and Polities.

What a Weird Name

I decided this time to focus on a single area, rather than the whole world, and within a single timeframe: Medieval Europe. At first, in order to make map creation a little easier, I decided to go with France. The problem was that France doesn't have many obvious geological features (such as water) which helps to divide it and make strategy and tactics more interesting.

Thus, I shifted the game's locale to the British Isles, which has nearly everything to make a game more interesting. There are its difficult to conquer English mainland, its across-the-water rivalry with northern France, its geographic chokepoint to the north, and difficult to assail Emerald Isles to the west. However, the British Isles are confined enough that potential interactions between players are kept tight and frequent.

Once I decided the location, a time period was required. I really like the political drama of the War of the Roses, but I couldn't really find any good maps of territories for that period. After awhile, I decided to instead base this game's territories off of Crusader Kings II, another grand strategy video game. I screenshot and superimposed parts onto real maps, and then traced the territories. Some were altered in the process, but I kept most intact.

Originally, the game was called “Artifice”, referring to the ideal politicking that I wanted the game to be. But that name was also a bit generic. Since the game was now definitely based in medieval Britannia, I wanted the name to have some reference to the period. After working through many, many names, I settled on Of Duchies and Polities. Duchies, because it was a generic name for a territory under a duke or duchess. And Polities because I had just learned the word, and I liked it.

To Be Continued...

Wow, that was longer than I expected. I'll be talking about the other parts of development so far in the next post, going into the more recent happenings, where play-testing and balance have become the more pressing issues.

Hope you enjoyed!

So you want to take over the world? How about starting with Briton? These medieval knaves with their backstabbing skullduggery are ripe for being ruled by a true king! Are you the one? Or is it that wicked dame of York? The choice is yours!

I'm making a board game! And over the next few weeks, until I'm finished testing and refining it, I'll be blogging about its progress from start to finish alongside my usual posts here on Coil.

Introducing:

Of Duchies and Polities is a board game that is a mix between Risk and Monopoly where players attempt to gain control of a map of the British Isles and Northern France through power and prestige. This game is inspired by, and calls back to, the medieval period in this setting beginning around the 11th Century.

Like Risk, players will be tasked to take over a certain number of territories to win. However, controlling the majority of the regions on the board means winning the hearts of the people to your side, rather than military control of the territory.

Furthermore, like Monopoly, players may upgrade their various territories by building cities and castles to aid in their quest to defend and gain the favor of the people in those duchies and counties.

Thus, the game is more about politics and popular support rather than armies taking over the world. While you can certainly go the more authoritarian route if you wish, the game is being designed to be just as accommodating to the pacifist as the militarily inclined. Just as long as you can scheme and connive and deal-make your way to rule all of Britannia!

Brief Overview of How to Play

I'll be dedicating an entire post in how to actually play the game, but here is a general summary.

On a map of 11th century Briton and northern France, players begin with control of one territory. The game consists of rounds in which each player takes a turn. As the game goes on each player attempts to expand his or her control by raising money, gaining popularity, making deals, bribery, and even outright invasion.

Players primarily win the hearts of the population in a territory by using agents called Diplomats. These go from territory to territory, preaching the gospel of your leadership. Practically, it means that each diplomat has a chance (through dice rolls) to convert a population token each turn. Once 80% of the population in a territory believes in your cause, you gain control of the territory.

Players will also have a chance to curry favor by literally spending money on population in a territory, or building towns and castles in it. By obtaining favor in a population, players will have an easier time (higher chance) of converting the population to their side.

Once a territory is under a player's control, he or she can choose to raise armies from it. Unlike Risk, armies are raised per region, so there is a limit to the number of armies available. However, having an army occupying a territory, even if it isn't under your control, will still allow you to reap some of the benefits there, including collecting taxes and building towns in the region.

And so the game is set. Will you be an authoritarian dictator? Or a benevolent monarch? The choice is yours!

I hope you enjoyed that introduction to Of Duchies and Polities. Next time, I'll be writing more about the nitty gritty details of how I came to create this board game, and why.

Just earlier today, Coinbase announced on Medium that they are fully supporting the MakerDao's Multi-Collateral Dai stablecoin on the Coinbase Card. This is the first stablecoin supported on their debit-like card meant to make crypto more mainstream and consumer friendly.

While there are many stablecoins already out there, and certainly many with greater “market caps”, DAI is quickly gaining in popularity. Today, I want to explore what DAI is, why I think it's so great, and how it could be a picture of what an XRP collateralized stablecoin could look like.

What is DAI?

Like most other stablecoins, such as USDC and USDT, MakerDao's DAI aims to always be equal to a single dollar in US Dollars. Unlike these other stablecoins, however, DAI does not do this by requiring a banks or other organizations to back the cryptocurrency with a real US Dollar. Instead, DAI uses cryptocurrencies, collateralization, and some clever code to achieve this. In this way, DAI is “soft-pegged” to the US Dollar.

Prior to the November update, DAI solely relied on Ethereum to maintain its price. Today, DAI is multi-collateral (and thus abbreviated as MCD or Multi-Collateral DAI), with BAT as the first additional cryptocurrency to back it. This was an important step to create a more stable foundation for DAI to be pegged to the US dollar. Just as an investment portfolio needs to be diversified to maintain stability, it's important that DAI has different kinds of currencies that can back up its value.

In order to generate DAI, a user could buy Ethereum and BAT and open a CDP (Collateralized Debt Position). The ETH or BAT then becomes the collateral, and DAI is generated for the user based on a percentage of its worth. If the user wants his or her crypto back, then they pay back the DAI plus a “stability fee”. This stability fee is a sort of “interest rate” that is usually paid when borrowing from bankers for their money management troubles. In this case, it's most essential function is to help keep DAI pegged to the USD.

If DAI were to fall under $1, users can buy DAI on the cheap and begin paying back their CDP. If DAI were to go over $1, then they can use their CDP to generate more DAI. As more and more cryptocurrencies are added to support DAI, this system has the potential to become the most robust stablecoin that isn't dependent on physical assets that may not actually exist.

Why DAI is so Great

Thus, what has happened is the creation of a monetary a system that is both decentralized and stable. People no longer need to rely on banks and financial institutions to get their financial needs, whether through lending or earning interest. In fact, currently, anyone with DAI can connect a hardware Ledger Nano to the Compound.finance exchange and earn interest on their DAI. In effect, if that same person has BAT or ETH in a Maker CDP while using their DAI to earn interest, as ETH or BAT grows in price, they're essentially using their assets multiple times, which is an essential component of being your own bank.

With Coinbase adding support for DAI on their debit card, it means that many people can now spend stablecoin as they would with normal fiat currency. And since DAI is soft-pegged, they don't need to worry about volatility affecting their purchasing power.

As I've stated before, I personally don't believe that traditional banks and financial institutions are going away. But I do think the ability to freely decide how one uses his or her money is extremely important. Given that most big banks and financial institutions have displayed little ability to care for their masses of customers' money, it's important that we as individuals are able to make use of the value we create without needing to mind the banks. Perhaps I'm showing a bit of my moral side, but I believe financial institutions should be created to serve the individual's needs, rather than individuals being hosts to the parasitic greed of large corporations.

With the rise of DeFi (decentralized finance), and especially with MakerDao's DAI as well as services such as Coinbase's debit cards and Compound.finance's decentralized exchange, I really do believe we are beginning to walk into a future where individuals can once again take control of their personal and financial lives.

Recently, Youtube announced a change in its terms of service, which will take effect in December 10, 2019 (less than three weeks away). While most news sites claim that it was just simply making Youtube’s terms of service easier to read, one important change tells us that it can now delete a creator’s account if it’s not “commercially viable”.

Of course, previously, Youtube has always held the right to terminate accounts when they want to, and over the past few years have exercised that ability quite liberally (pun intended). But this noticeable update to their terms of service is a direct acknowledgement of the direction Youtube has and will be going toward in the future. Namely, that Youtube is shifting from being primarily a platform for new creatives and experimentation towards a platform for business-oriented media and entertainment companies.

The Problem

This isn’t an unexpected thing to happen. And it’s not necessarily evil or even bad. As companies grow, especially publicly owned ones, they tend to shift from the core audience of their early days to a more general audience that is better able to allow the company to profit. But because of the shift, most of the time, the little guys (or the original core audience) often get left out or even uncared for. This often allows for competing businesses to then come in and take disenfranchised customers.

In the case of Youtube, however, it’s important to realize that its sole customers are not viewers like you and me. Rather, Youtube’s customers are other businesses that want to advertise on its platform. In this way, it functions much more like a television network than a simple video hosting and sharing platform.

However, the problem is that Youtube has more than 70% of the market share of online video-sharing services. The next highest service is Vimeo, with less than 20%, and every other service has less than 2% of the marketshare. This means that vast the majority of online videos and video consumers are on Youtube, giving it an attractive advantage for companies that want to advertise to those consumers.

Escalation

If Youtube terminates an account, that creator has been blocked from 70% of their potential audience. Furthermore, Youtube has always held the right to stop the monetization of any channel. This basically means that, even if your account is not terminated, but is demonetized, you would lose out on the potential 70% of customers that may have wanted to support you. But since most creators online only have Youtube channels, rather than spreading their videos across all video services available, demonetization often means a 100% removal of online income.

The problem compounds when multiple companies are doing the same thing. The scandals from are pretty nuts these days. Google blacklists websites from their search. Facebook bans pages for political reasons, as does Twitter with its users. Patreon, a platform that claimed to want to allow all creators to have a chance to be supported by their audiences, terminates accounts which have not actually broken its terms of service. And perhaps strangest of all, Paypal, an online payments company, has prevented business and non-profit organization accounts from receiving payments and donations.

These terminations and bans are not just silencing people who haven't done any legal wrong, but destroying the livelihoods of those same people who depend on these platforms for their jobs and income.

The Solution

Coil, it seems, is poised to take advantage of the strange vacuum left open by these giant tech companies. It has one essential goal which is basically broken down into two parts: the monetization of the web through its own platform as well as external websites and channels which decide to integrate Coil’s code. Payments can be processed through a third-party online bank or cryptocurrency in the form of XRP through XRPtipbot.

This solves two problems. First, it allows creators to be paid no matter what, since they can receive XRP payments that don't need to go through any specific company. Second, it allows creators to either put content on an already existing platform, or make their own.

This is a great way to allow small-time creators to be able to support themselves without the worry of whether they’re making enough to be on a platform. In fact, this is one of the reasons I keep coming back to post on Coil. Given I have a job and do work elsewhere in life, it’s difficult to find time to consistently attend to my hobbies and passions. While I haven’t receive much from viewership, every little bit keeps me going, as I see my efforts in continuing the blog on Coil pay off. On the other hand, from my Youtube channel, I haven’t earned a single cent.

And that is why I believe Coil, and other platforms and services like it, are so important in the world of the Internet today.

A couple weeks ago, I was watching Joe Rogan's interview with Edward Snowden. It was a fascinating interview, and of course, reminded me of just how much every person and everything we do is being tracked one way or another, especially on the Internet.

In this day and age, I think it's important to understand that almost everything we have and everywhere we go, some kind of device is tracking what we do, what we say, and what we look like. Even tech giant leaders like Mark Zuckerberg are aware of this, and he masks his own computer's webcam with tape. And Apple has even updated its most recent operating system for their iPhones and iPads with features which allow customers to keep apps from tracking their usage and data through bluetooth.

But I recently found a few services that take that privacy protection even further. They have to do with our spending and browsing habits, which probably take up the majority of our modern lives today. So, without further ado, here are two apps that can help you protect your data and information online.

1. The Brave Browser (and Tor)

This is probably the most well-known one, as just this past week the Brave Browser released its “1.0” version, and has surpassed the Firefox browser on Apple's App store as one of the most downloaded utilities today.

The Brave Browser proposes to do two things: help users protect their privacy while also giving them the ability to profit from advertising. The second part it does by distributing a cryptocurrency token called BAT to users when they view browser-specific ads. The coins can then be collected in a wallet or distributed by users to their favorite creators online. It's a great way to help monetize the public's usage of the internet, and some of its functions I actually previously proposed Coil could adopt in an earlier post.

However, it's the privacy functions of Brave that I find particularly good. Brave is an offshoot of the Chromium open source project, which is the engine behind Google's Chrome and Chrome OS. This means that Brave is just as secure as Google's Chrome, can use any extension that Chrome can, and adds privacy features on top of it.

It has its own ad-blocker, blocks third-party cookies, upgrades all connections to HTTPS, and never downloads your data onto any servers to be sold to third party businesses or websites. Of course, these features exist in Google's Chrome as settings and extensions you can download. But Brave has it all in one neat package without any hassle. And because it blocks so many cookies and ads, it actually loads most webpages much faster.

If you need additional privacy, you can open a private browsing window in Brave with Tor. Tor is basically a VPN-type browser with additional privacy and security features. Instead of directly connecting to a website, you connect via proxy through other computers so that you're much more difficult to track online. Also, just like private browsing on Chrome, browsing in Brave with Tor won't keep track of websites or data you use while in that privacy mode. Of course, there are certainly ways for companies to get around these things if they really want to track you. If you want even more privacy and security, I would recommend just downloading the Tor browser.

Because the browser is generally the most ubiquitous service which all our internet-connected devices use, it's a good idea to have a browser which is secure. Brave is definitely this, with an added bonus of actually paying you for the time you spend on it.

2. Privacy

Yup, this one is literally called Privacy. It's an app that facilitates payments online by creating a new credit card for every purchase or merchant you designate. All I have to do is create a card, designate it as a single-use or merchant card, and set a limit to how much that card can spend.

For single-use cards, once I purchase the item I desire, that card is immediately locked down and cannot be used for literally anything else any more. So if, somehow, someone steals that credit card's information, they wouldn't be able to use it at all.

For merchant cards, once I purchase what I want, the card locks onto that merchant. For example, if I create a card and use it on Etsy, it is forever locked onto Etsy. If I try to use it for Amazon or another merchant, I won't be able to. Furthermore, for all cards, if I (or anyone for that matter) try to spend above the limit, it won't be accepted on the card.

This is especially useful for subscription-type services. I can create a card, lock it onto the subscription, limit it to what the subscription would charge every month, and that card can no longer be used for anything else. If I decide to cancel the subscription, all I have to do is delete the card, and I no longer have to worry about being charged ever again. I can even use this for those trial services which force me to put down a credit card to use. I just create a card, sign it onto the service, and then cancel the card. I'll never be charged, and if I want to continue the service by actually subscribing and paying, I can always create another card.

On top of all this, Privacy promises to never sell my data, charge interest, or have any annual fees for their cards. This means I don't have to worry about my spending data being tracked on any websites or credit card companies. It's an amazingly awesome way to make sure that my purchase and spending habits are private and secure, and remain always in my control.

The best part about both services mentioned above is that they are 100% FREE. In a world where security matters, it's pretty great that the average individual can, without needing to upfront any cost whatsoever, protect their own data and information. And I believe, as even big companies like Apple are beginning to be weary of government and third-party encroachment of data, valuable services such as these will only increase in the near future.

Before I begin, here's what I'm NOT saying: I'm NOT saying that XRP is not valuable. I'm NOT saying that XRP has no utility. I'm definitely NOT saying that Ripple (the company) has no intention or desire for the price of XRP to rise.

Brad Garlinghouse, in his recent interview with Anthony Pompliano said that “Ripple is to cross border payments as Amazon is to books”. This one phrase prompted me to think and realize that the current projects Ripple is focused on (cross-border payments via On-Demand Liquidity by using XRP) may not be the main reason XRP will increase in value, both now and in the near future.

Hear me out.

Basic Economic Principles

The most fundamental principle of economics is supply and demand. Supply is the amount and availability of a good or service in a market. Demand is the desire for that product or service by the general public. In general, when the demand is greater than the supply, the value of the product or service rises, because people are willing to pay more for a what they want. When supply is greater than demand, its value will most likely decrease.

XRP is forever capped at 100 Billion units. Because every transaction burns a bit of XRP, the number of XRP in existence will always decrease rather than increase. This makes XRP a deflationary asset that has an ever decreasing supply.

But that's not the whole story. The smallest, indivisible unit of XRP is referred to as a “drop”. A drop is 0.000001 of XRP. Or, to put it another way, there is a maximum of 100 Quadrillion drops of XRP that can exist at any time. Because there has already been XRP that has been burned through transactions, there is a bit less than that currently.

This may make it sound like the supply of XRP could never be exhausted. However, that is not really the case. Just as a comparison to internet storage, it is predicted that, by 2025, humanity will have used up at least 175 zettabytes of storage. In other words, after less than three decades of existence, the Internet will have compounded the sum of our data to more than 175 sextillion bytes, which is already more than a thousand times the number of XRP drops that will ever exist. These are incomprehensibly large numbers, but suffice to say, humanity can certainly use or use up the supply of XRP in the near future, if we so desire.

The Problem with Utility

One of the things Brad Garlinghouse also espouses is the idea that, as blockchain and cryptocurrency becomes more mainstream, the value of a crypto coin will be determined by its utility. I completely agree with this statement, but I don't believe it necessarily means that XRP will be valued highly in comparison to other cryptos, even those with lower levels of utility.

XRP is considered by many a currency—a medium we exchange to quantify value for goods or services. So let me use a real-world example to illustrate what I mean.

Let's compare gold and silver. Both these precious metals have, in the past, been used in one form of currency or another. Both metals are currently considered hedges against recessions and global market crashes by economists.

Gold was once considered the standard by which all government fiat was measured. You used to be able to literally turn in your cash for gold. It can never tarnish or rust, thus never losing its beauty or allure. It has many uses, from coinage to jewelry, to dentistry and even space (it's actually used by NASA!). And it is sufficiently rare enough that the demand for it will consistently (over the long term) far outstrip supply.

Silver is quite similar. As long as you do some upkeep on it, its tarnishing effect is often mitigated. It is also rare enough that demand for it often outstrips supply. However, silver's utility far outstrips gold's. Not only is it used for almost everything gold can be used for, but it can also be used to make daily items such as mirrors, photography-related products, medicinal anti-bacterial goods, and even solar panels.

Silver is rare, but not so rare that people would much rather hoard it than make use of it. And that, in addition to silver's more ready availability, is what makes silver worth less than gold. Currently, gold sits a little less than $1500 an ounce. Silver sits at around $18.

Now, I actually believe XRP is more like digital gold than Bitcoin (you can see my thoughts on that here). However, I think the above example can still be an analog for XRP.

While XRP has much more utility and is vastly more scalable than any cryptocurrency out there, this permeability of XRP doesn't necessarily equate to price. And so, while I don't believe that the abundant divisibility of XRP has much to do with its price, I also don't believe that high utility necessitates high value for XRP.

Instead, I think that the basic economic principles will always be in play. Demand for XRP needs to outstrip its availability (i.e. supply) for its price to heavily increase. Or, perhaps to say it another way, a desire to hold XRP rather than sell it needs to pervade so that those who want to use it would be required to pay a higher price for it.

Evaluating ODL

Ripple's ODL technology, previously categorized distinctly as xRapid and xCurrent, is trying to solve the problem of cross border payments by using XRP as a bridge between different currencies. To explain it simply, ODL uses exchanges in various locales or third party liquidity providers to facilitate the transfer of money between financial entities.

Now, since I'm not an employee at Ripple, I don't know the intricacies of how ODL works. But I speculate that it doesn't require that transactions be large in order for it to be a vast improvement over current ways of cross-border money transfer. In other words, if one bank needed to transfer a million dollars, ODL software may not require that one million dollars be transferred all at once. Instead, it's probable that the amount transferred can be divide up into smaller amounts, and transferred through Ripple's networks. This would allow ODL to be efficient, whether or not XRP's price is high or low.

Thus, in this scenario, the price of XRP doesn't actually need to rise to accommodate large transfers. Banks would just need to be slightly more patient, but still be able to get their transfers. And this will still allow ODL to be a far better solution for those institutions than any other system currently.

Critically, banks don't need to hold any XRP for the transactions to function. But if ODL can work as stated above, then no one really needs to hold XRP in reserve for ODL to work either. And since there's no real desire to hold, the demand for XRP in this case does not always outstrip supply.

Now, since the above is speculation, I don't know if any of it is really correct. However, I can't imagine a scenario where Ripple promises major banks and financial institutions a better solution for their problems, but only if XRP rises in price. I'd think that Ripple would rather build a system that works very well regardless of the price of XRP, but would be far more beneficial if the price of XRP were to rise.

An Ecosystem for Hodling

Because banks and financial institutions transfer money in volumes that eclipse all other use-cases, I believe that if a large enough number of them hop onboard, then the volume of XRP being used could sufficiently stabilize the price. But again, as given above, that doesn't necessitate a rise in price.

This is where I believe Garlinghouse's statement comparing Ripple to Amazon is key to understanding Ripple's vision and its view of XRP.

Amazon, by first selling books, was able to get its foot in the door of online shopping. It did it so well that most physical bookstores collapsed, and the current ones are basically fighting to stay alive. However, once it saw that its online bookstore experiment was doing well, it began to reach into other avenues of online shopping, and then online storage, and now in-home services connected to the various Amazon services.

Similarly, I think Ripple views ODL as simply a first step. If its systems using XRP were to topple the current financial world's way of transferring money, then XRP's utility and reputation will be proven. As ODL takes off (and there's a lot of indication that it already is), like Amazon, Ripple will be able to concentrate on other things that will flourish the XRP ecosystem beyond just cross-border payments.

And perhaps other companies will begin to jump onboard, buying up extraordinary volumes of XRP to get their own projects started that will change other systems in other places in society. This would inevitably decrease the available XRP supply, and thus, even if demand stays the same, the ratio between supply and demand would flip.

Thus moon.

When I first started writing on Coil, I began with a series on being your own bank. The premise of that series was to explore how an average individual today could take a few different products and services and use them to effectively become their own bank without the need to depend on traditional financial institutions.

However, in that series, I didn’t really write about any specific products or services, just generalizations and concepts. I kept it that way because I wanted the series to be more about the foundation of being your own bank, rather than localizing it to only what you can do presently.

But for today, I going to write about specific examples of how anyone can “unbank” themselves in 5 easy steps.

Step 1: Budget Finances

The first step is the easiest, and the best way to get started. Determining a budget for your income is the fastest way to systematize your financial life to make money management less stressful and more effortless.

Generally, it’s a good idea to start with a 10-20-70 style budget. This means that 10% of your income goes towards savings, 70% of it goes toward your required monthly expenses, and 20% of it goes toward monthly luxury spending. Determining your budget really allows you to get a good overview of what your income is, how many income streams you have, and get a mastery of your financial life.

Using this template, many people begin to gradually reduce their required monthly expenses (since 70% seems like a lot), and even their monthly luxury spending. This is because having a bigger savings for investing and passive income through interest rates and dividends will propel you to be able to spend more later down the line. And so, with that in mind, people sometimes go from the 10-20-70 (savings-luxury-expenses) budget to 20-20-60 to 30-20-50 to 40-10-50. Of course, all this depends on how you want to manage your own finances, but it's a great starting point.

Step 2: Divide Your Savings

After determining a budget, it’s time to look at the savings portion of our income. We need to divide our savings into what we are and aren’t willing to risk. The risky portion of our savings we’ll put towards investments into the stocks and speculation market. The non-risky portion will be put into more stable assets.

I’m personally really risk-averse. I have over 80% of my savings in non-risky assets, and I’m always looking to reduce that low risk I already have. This is because of a personal aversion to speculation, rather than any real moral or principle I believe in. But my suggestion is always to have more in non-risky assets than risky investments, since that will create a solid foundation that doesn’t get destroyed by market crashes or even slight recessions.

Step 3: Convert into Crypto

At first, this seems like the opposite of what I talked about above. After all, isn’t cryptocurrency risky? Isn’t crypto really volatile, with prices fluctuating and being manipulated past any sane person’s ability to manage?

Sort of. The kind of cryptocurrency I’m talking about isn’t the kind you hear about often on news sites. I’m not talking about Bitcoin, Ethereum, EOS, Litecoin, or even XRP (in this instance). Those are volatile assets (for the most part), and would be part of the risky investments I was talking about before.

Instead, I’m talking about stablecoins. There are many coins which exist on the Ethereum platform (called ERC20 tokens) that are pegged to specific currencies. Because of this, they will generally have (or attempt to have) a 1-to-1 relationship with whatever fiat currencies they represent. For example, USDC has a 1-to-1 corollary with the US Dollar.

If we convert our savings and luxury expenses into stablecoin crypto, we actually haven’t done anything except tokenize our income. And by doing so, we can have more control and ownership over it, without being exposed to much volatility.

Now, you don’t need to convert all of your income into crypto. In fact, if you’re planning on spending a portion of your money in stocks and bonds, that money shouldn’t be converted. Furthermore, many of our expenses (such as utility bills, rent or mortgage payments, car payments, etc.) cannot be paid yet through crypto. And so a large portion of our monthly expenses cannot be converted.

However, by converting the rest of our income into stablecoin, we are now much freer to determine what we want to do with our money. As a starting point, I recommend having your own personal wallet for crypto (whether hardware, paper, or app based), so that you can keep control of most of your money.

Step 4: Use “Unbanking” Services

When I say “Unbanking” services, I’m mainly referring to services which offer to store cryptocurrency and give you interest on it. Most of these offer much higher interest rates than any traditional bank would today. Even a crypto exchange like Coinbase now offers some interest on some of the cryptocurrencies you hold with them. However, here are some I would recommend.

Celsius Network is a service which currently offers decently high rates of interest for any of the 24 cryptocurrencies they support. Chances are, since we’ve converted into stablecoin, you’ll be able to earn interest off of them. Their rates have fluctuated between 3-10%, depending on general demand for the coin, as well as how much of their proprietary coin (called CEL) you hold. The only caveat is that their interest is Simple Interest rather than Compound Interest. There are a few ways around this, but suffice to say, if you care more about high interest rates than compound interest, this service is a really good choice.

Bitrue is a crypto exchange service which has also started offering interest for holding crypto with them. They allow interest on a number of coins, including XRP, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many stablecoins. Their interest rates are also based on the amount of their proprietary coin (called BTR) you’ve invested into their platform. They are also mainly focused on Simple Interest. So far, their interest rates have been higher than Celsius Network. Also, since they are an exchange, it is much more a one-stop shop for all things crypto. It must be said, though, that due to a recent hack, they lost a bit of public support, even though they seem to have returned all stolen assets to their customers.

Then there's Compound.Finance. This is an actual decentralized platform in which you have your own personal wallet, and so have the most control over what you have. You can even connect your Ledger hardware wallet to it, if you have a Ledger Nano S or X. Its rates aren’t the best, though, with around 4-6% for stablecoins, and much lower for others. Furthermore, the only two stablecoins it currently supports are USDC and DAI. If you’re very concerned about security, then this is the best platform. However, if you’re wanting higher interest rates, then Celsius and Bitrue are probably better ones.

There are other unbanking services as well. However, the above are the ones I’ve found to be the best or most stable, while still offering decent interest rates.

Step 5: Start Your Own Investing

For the rest of our savings which we want to use towards more risky investments, we can download apps or use online services. While there are many apps nowadays which will allow for this, there are generally two ways I will highlight for us to begin investing without needing too much capital.

First is to automate our investing through services like Acorns, Wealthfront, or Betterment. These services provide automated investing into the stocks (and sometimes bonds) market. The automation allows us to not really have to think much about what we’re investing into. Instead, we pick risk profiles and what areas of the market we want to invest into, and the bots do the rest for us.

Second, we can use manual investing services like Robinhood, Webull, or M1 Finance. These services allow investors to individually pick what stocks and companies they want to put money into, rather than having a bot do it for them. This gives customers more control, though with that control comes more risk, as money invested isn’t auto-balanced or de-risked by any sort of algorithm or advisor. With M1, you even have the option to loan money and use a debit card attached to your account (Robinhood will soon have this feature as well).

With that, we have set up a system by which we have torn our dependency on financial institutions and retained more control over our own value. We have also regained a proper return for our hard earned income through better interest rates and a customizable investment portfolio which we have the final say for!

A few months have passed since I’ve started blogging on Coil, and it’s been a great experience. It has motivated me to keep writing and posting, since, not only was it online, but also because Coil provided an avenue for revenue, regardless of any arbitrary number of followers. Furthermore, it was great to start on a platform that was also pretty new, and so be able to work out what I wanted my blog to be about without too much scrutiny.

From its About page, the stated goal of Coil is:

“Coil exists because content monetization doesn’t work for everyone, and we think it should. Our model offers an alternative to the status quo of paid advertisements and selling the public’s attention to the highest bidders – A solution that will serve the people who aren’t being served well today.”

That statement says that Coil provides a solution. As I thought about it more, however, I think Coil actually is attempting to provide two services. I’ll talk about this more at after my actual recommendations.

However, it would suffice to say that one of these functions is to provide a platform for people to be able to share their creations, while also receiving a bit of revenue from it. This seems to be the primary purpose of the actual Coil website. Currently, the only avenue through which people share on the website is blogging, though there may be other ways in the future.

To that end, I will be lending my time today to write about things which I believe will make this a better platform to create and blog on. And so, without further ado, here are 3 Ways to Improve Coil:

1. Add Topics and Subjects

I believe integrating and tagging articles with subjects and topics, as well as re-gearing the website’s navigation around them, will deeply improve the user experience on Coil. As a basis for this, I’m going to compare Coil to another platform: Medium. It’s not inappropriate to compare the two, as Coil was (first?) announced by Ripple’s former CTO on that platform.

Coil and Medium share many similarities as writing platforms. However, when I browse the medium website, not only am I given popular and recent articles to read up front, but in the top menu bar, I’m given a selection of topics of interest grouped by subject which I can browse and read from. Furthermore, when I first sign up for Medium, I’m presented with a choice of the kinds of subjects and topics I’m interested in reading about. After making my selection, I’m then given both popular and recent articles related to what I wanted. After I’ve read a few articles, I’m encouraged to participate (through “claps”) as well as follow the author of the article if I so desire. There is then a list of other recommended articles both by the author and those with similar subjects.

This kind of catering from Medium really helps it feel as if the platform is catered towards me as a consumer. Just as many would on Instagram, Facebook, or Youtube, I’ve spent a lot of time perusing Medium just reading article after article, without much thought spent on how much time has gone by.

I believe Coil can benefit from having this kind of interface and subscriber-based improvement. By having articles and blogs categorized by subject (as determined by the author), subscribers would be able to look at and browse for things which pertain to their interests, as well as the authors who write on those subjects. Letting subscribers choose their own content through signing onto topics they would want to read allows the readers to do the filtering for themselves, rather than having to rely on a universal search algorithm. And then, having recommended reading after finishing an article also helps to keep the flow of reading and engagement higher.

2. Adding a Comments Section for Articles

Currently, the only two ways creators can see engagement on Coil is through payment pointers and the “like” button. However, while these tools can be useful, they don’t really keep readers and authors actively engaged with each other on Coil’s website.

There were many times after writing my blogs that I wanted to end by encouraging readers to give me feedback. However, because Coil doesn’t currently allow this on the website, I couldn’t get that engagement. As a creator, one of the best ways to get feedback (even if critical) is through a comments bar or section. It’s a great way to learn to write better and participate in conversations through what we’ve made.

The biggest worry, especially in this day and age of the Internet, is trolls and bots overloading our comments sections with spam. And so, with this in mind, I suggest implementing a comments section the following ways:

First, allow authors to decide whether or not they would want people to comment on their blogs on a per article basis (and even as a default setting we can change). It would also be great to be able to allow authors to determine if only subscribers and/or followers could comment on their articles.

Second, allow authors and creators the ability to approve or block certain comments or subscribers (or even followers), to help keep out spam and trolls from our own feeds.

Third, to better keep out automated bots and trolls, it would be great to require some kind of CAPTCHA or similar input from readers to be able to comment.

Now, this implementation isn’t necessarily perfect, and since I’m not a software engineer or web developer, I don’t exactly know how difficult all of this would be to create. The only experience I’ve had is making my own website from Wordpress many years ago, and using plug-ins to keep out the riffraff as well as some minor html or javascript editing.

However, even if those specific ideas above aren’t the best way, I do believe adding a comments section through which authors and readers can interact would really bring the platform’s engagement up to a much better level.

3. Allow Tipping on Coil

In my opinion, one of the greatest things to happen in the XRP ecosystem in the past few years is the development of the XRP Tipbot. Using it, I can tip XRP to various other creators or people on Reddit, Twitter, and Discord platforms. It’s an amazing way to show my support to others, and receive support from people as well.

I believe this can be implemented in two simple ways as well. In addition to the “upvote” button, there could be a tip button which readers can use to tip creators directly from their Tipbot account (Coil or otherwise). In this way, subscribers can directly help the Coil authors they support, not just by sitting on a page to let Coil slowly pay for them.

The second way is to allow authors to tip commentators back. This helps to give authors the ability to give back to the “community” they are wanting to foster on the Coil platform. I would love not only to be able to talk to those who take the time to give me feedback on my blogs and articles, but also to tip the ones who have been especially helpful in this regard.

I think that this more active engagement will further allow authors to build an audience that is personal to them, rather than having Coil just be about subscribers who are feeding an overall web of monetization. I believe it will also (ultimately) help to build out Coil as a welcoming place for readership and creators alike.

Last week, David Schwartz, CTO of Ripple, made a video outlining a possible addition to the XRP Ledger⁠—namely, enabling the creation of stablecoin on the ledger that would be backed by XRP. As I watched the video, my curiosity turned into “THIS IS GENIUS”. And it spurred on the idea that I’m proposing in this post: that Bitcoin, despite the hubbub about it being digital gold, is actually not at all like gold in the digital world. Instead, I believe that XRP would be much more effective in that role, and I want to explain why.

To begin with, I want to talk about the history of money, and why gold plays such an important role in the real world economy, even today. This isn’t going to be very detailed, just a generalization about how currency and money has evolved over the millennia of human civilization. Then, I’ll compare gold to Bitcoin and XRP and their relative potential use-cases today.

A Brief History of Gold

When human beings first began to produce agriculture and trade goods, there came to be a realization very early on that there would need to be some kind of medium to trade. This is because different produce and goods have different value, and those different values are subjective to the seller and buyer.

For example, a farmer who produces corn has a different product compared to a carpenter who builds chairs. The farmer who spends most of his time on corn needs to have someone build him a chair so he can relax at home. Similarly, a carpenter who builds chairs needs someone to grow food for him, since he can’t spend much time on that. And so the two decide to conduct trade.

But how would you value each item? How much corn would equal one chair? What if the farmer wanted more than one chair? Also, chairs last a while longer than corn. So you need to factor in how crops expire in comparison to the longevity of furniture products.

Pretty soon, it was realized that it would be far easier to just have a medium which can be used to represent value, and let buyers and sellers decide on their own whether they thought the value was worth it. And so we come to deciding what kind of medium could be used to represent that value.

Historically, many different materials were tried. From tea bricks to cowry shells and even dolphin teeth, it seemed like everything under the sun was tried as a medium of exchange. As civilization evolved though, only one universal material was found that was rare, useful, and long lasting. That, of course, was gold. Gold is rare enough that you can’t easily obtain it (which means counterfeiting is difficult). It is useful for jewelry, decoration and aesthetics, and a multitude of other things. Additionally, it never rusts or tarnishes. A gold bar today will be the same gold bar in 1000 years, as it was 1000 years ago. And so, the civilized world came to recognize and eventually use gold as the standard for all currency.

Soon afterwards, IOU’s and receipts were used to transmit the ownership of gold back and forth between people. This was because it’s much harder to lug gold around than just sign off a piece of paper that said what belonged to whom. These IOU’s and receipts then began circulating, and eventually became the dollar currencies we have today. Originally, these fiat currencies were all backed by gold, but slowly, over the course of the 20th Century, most nations stopped using the gold standard.

An argument can be made that the lack of a gold standard has placed our current world economy in the precarious position it is in today. However, for the purposes of this post, it’s more important to realize that, even though gold was not the standard anymore, it is still considered extraordinarily valuable⁠—so much so that, outside of official government endorsement, many people still use it as collateral (and thus currency) for exchanges today. In fact, in the face of coming recessions, many people hedge and buy gold to stabilize their value, rather than rely on unstable stock markets or ever depreciating government bonds.

The Case of Bitcoin

There are many in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space who believe that Bitcoin is a virtual analog to real gold in the Internet space. To justify this, they point to several features of Bitcoin that seem to plausibly point to characteristics of gold. Due to the nature of the Internet, as long as it exists, Bitcoin will also exist, thus solving the longevity problem. Furthermore, it achieves a sort of rarity through a maximum cap on the total number of coins that can or will ever be in existence (21 million). And, to top it off, as an immutable virtual coin which (theoretically) cannot be double spent, it can be used to store or transfer value, giving it utility.

But, in my point of view, that’s where the analogy stops, especially if we dive deeper into what gold actually is and does in our world.

In terms of rarity, gold’s rarity is because there is no other metal like it. In the case of Bitcoin, there are many other coins that are just like Bitcoin, and some of them are better. For example, Litecoin, which was made purely just as a better Bitcoin with no other additional functionality, is far better as a transfer of value, since it is also much faster. And so, here, both the rarity and longevity argument is non-sequitur, since there are many others just like Bitcoin on its own terms.

And so we come to the question of utility. Gold’s utility is not just as a currency or even as a store of value. Rather, due to its allure and properties as a metal, it can be used for many other purposes as well. Since Bitcoin has no other utility than as a speculated store of value, it’s actually not like gold at all!

Additionally, gold’s three properties are valued because they relate to the physical world. In the physical world, simplicity and tangibility are the fundamental principles. However, those two aspects do not necessarily translate to the digital world. Instead, in the digital world, from my perspective, speed and security are the principle values. If something isn’t fast, then it’s not only frustrating to deal with, but I would rather just do something similar in the real world. If something isn’t secure, I definitely don’t want to touch it.

When it was first developed, Bitcoin was considered quite fast, taking little more than ten minutes to move coins from one wallet to another. However, due to increasing traffic in this space, it can now take from an hour to several days before a Bitcoin transaction is settled. That is no better than our current money systems.

In terms of security, a lot has been made of the fact that, since it takes so much power and money to just mine Bitcoin nowadays, an attack to make the Bitcoin network double spend (and thus make transactions fraudulent) is not likely to happen. This is not true. To learn more about this, I recommend checking out this blog from Galgitron that explains just how vulnerable Bitcoin is. But in summary, not only is Bitcoin susceptible to attack, that attack can currently happen at almost any time.

And so, since Bitcoin breaks both the speed and security principles of the Internet world, and it doesn’t truly fulfill the other values in the virtual space as an analog for gold, it seems quite clear that Bitcoin is not digital gold. It’s more like digital cowry shells. It may have been the first blockchain-based cryptocurrency, just as cowry shells were used in primitive cultures in the past before societies evolved, but it will probably become obsolete sooner or later.