There’s a New Motorway Being Built in the Sky. And it’s going to change everything…

But this road to the future has no signposts.

No road markings.?

No map.

Like a mist clearing in sunshine, only knowledge and understanding will reveal the way ahead.

Imagine yourself wearing a kaftan shirt and flares, on the bustling King’s Road in London…

It’s 1967. You are living the summer of love. Another type of world seems possible to you: one full of freedom, love, and peace.

In the summer of 1967, The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band. It would become the best-selling album of the year. It would become the best-selling album of the decade. A total of 32 million sales, peaking in the 1980s.

But the seeds of destruction of your beloved album had already been planted long before…

?In 1963, Phillips introduced the music cassette - trademarked ‘compact cassette’. It was more portable, you could rewind, fast forward and pause or stop at the touch of a button. It began to take off in the ’70s and was turbo-charged in the 1980s with the advent of the Sony Walkman.

But the seeds of destruction of the cassette tape had already been planted before the Walkman was even released…

In 1974 Phillips had already started developing the compact disc - CD’s.

CDs quickly rose to dominance and peaked in 2002 when sales accounted for 95.5% of all recorded music sales.

But the seeds of destruction of CDs had already been planted…

In the late ’90s, a digital audio format called MP3 came into existence. It was the precursor of streaming that we know today. It allowed you to take your CD’s and convert them into a digital file.

At the same time, websites like Napster and LimeWire popped up which allowed you to download music and illegally share music for free.

Unsurprisingly, the music industry was not a happy bunny.

They sued. And yes, they won...

But the cat was out of the bag, so to speak.

The ability to download music was much more efficient than going to the music store. Especially, on a rainy day. (The very same thing would happen to the video industry - Goodbye blockbuster. That story even became a Netflix documentary...)

By 2022, streamed music accounted for approximately 85% of all music sales.

Now if I told you back in 1967 that one day you would listen to your entire music collection on your phone without ever going to a record store, you would have understandably assumed that I had been smoking too many of those unbranded cigarettes….?

?Everything happens slowly at first, then all at once.

All these disruptive industry innovations seem obvious to us now as we look back in time.

But as we went through them in real-time, the signposts to the future were less obvious.

As entrepreneurs, and investors, our job is to get to the future before others.?

To do that, we must understand new technologies, and the change they will bring about.

That is why I’m writing to you today, to share with you a new technology that mainstream media has already dismissed. They have written its epitaph. And are dancing on its shallow grave…

The same mainstream that told us electric cars would never take off. That the internet was dead. And that Jeff Bezos would never make money.

It turns out, that mainstream media does not have a good track record at reading the signposts to the future. And if that is our only source, we will drive right past this new technology, and miss the opportunity it will bring us.

Why does mainstream media get it wrong?

It is not that journalists at these media companies are not super smart; they are. But if you look at the advertisers in their publications, they are for the most part, from the old incumbent industries. The knee-jerk reaction is to go on the offence, whenever there is a new kid on the block. And given that they are the paymaster, the media will dance to their tune.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair.

The technology I am talking about today is Blockchain.

It will change the very fabric of our monetary system, as well as art, finance, ticketing, supply chain, video games and indeed just about every other industry you can think of.

It will disrupt (fill in the blanks)

It will disrupt (fill in the blanks)

It will disrupt (fill in the blanks)

It will disrupt (fill in the blanks)

And yes, it will disrupt the music industry.

I am beta testing something on my phone that will play a part in that. And it works. Well.

Due to the sheer breadth of its impact on our lives, it would be more fitting to call it BLOCKCHANGE.?

?

Why does it need to exist?

Here’s a question:??

Why does a pint of beer that was once 15p in 1973, now costs around ￡5? A 3233% increase.

It's because we are all playing a monopoly game, in which a few select players can print themselves as much money as they want.

Doesn't seem very fair... but this is the world we live in today. Governments and banks have full control over the amount of money in existence and can print at will.

This is why Bitcoin was created. A digital decentralised debasement-proof money. Made possible by Blockchain.

Try these two thought experiments (answers can't include blockchain):

Try sending some money to a friend online without using a centralised middleman.

Send some digital art to a friend and prove that this is the exact one the artist created, i.e. that it isn’t just copied and pasted.

Any joy?

Nope? That’s because these were both impossible until BLOCKCHANGE.

Do you realise the potential energy that is unlocked when something impossible suddenly becomes possible…?

The invention of the internet led to the largest superstore in the world, that you’ve never even visited in person.?

The invention of the iPhone changed... well, everything.

We can't fully fathom what change this innovation will bring about.?But we do know one thing: The change is resisted the most by those with the most to lose. In this case, the middlewoman or man.

Keep that in mind when you talk to people who oppose it. Ask yourself, are they associated with the middleman? If the answer is yes, then their natural bias will be to keep things as they are.

“For every new fortune, an old fortune must die.” Porter Stansberry.

?

Faster. Harder. Smarter.

For a disruptive technology to disrupt, it needs to have at least two of these attributes. Preferably all three.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Let me give you an example. A while back I had to make a payment to someone in America. It cost me ￡1500 to send the money. Then the bank wanted to charge the recipient as well. (Proof, most bank robberies happen behind the till.)

It was not cheap. And it was slow. It took 2-3 days to arrive, and a whole bunch of paperwork. Plus a visit to the branch.

The new alternative:

To have sent a billion dollars in Bitcoin would have cost $7 and taken around 10-15 minutes. All done on my iPhone while waiting for the pasta to boil.

Bitcoin took 12 years to reach a trillion-dollar market cap.

Google took 21 years.

Amazon took 24 years.

Apple took 42 years.

Hmmm...

?

Hang out with Pirates?

At CowShed, you will surround yourself with a group of people who think very differently. Who see the world as it could be. Who knows the motorway in the sky is being built and they know the future is a thing called Blockchain?

What they don’t is exactly how.

This, we will come together to figure out.

The knowledge you will learn, the conversations you will have, and the insights that you will glean will allow you to better understand and engage with the future.

You will see the motorway in the sky.

That knowledge, if acted upon, will be life-changing.

?

Early Bird tickets released tomorrow at 3 pm.

There are only 2o tickets and 509 people signed up to buy.

It's first come first served, so set your alarms.

#blockchain

#founders

#web3