If you ran a node with Launchnodes last year at the genesis of the beacon chain, as of writing you will have made approximately 2.66 ETH which at today’s price means you made on each node about $10,640 USD give or take a few dollars. Many of our customers have multiple nodes and so made even more money through staking as well as enjoying a 546.3% increase in the value of the Ethereum they initially staked. Well done to all our customers.
A different data point I reflected on today was from the UK’s children’s commission website which confirmed that child poverty rates are projected to increase to 5.2 million by 2022 in the UK.
I don’t mention this simply to put a downer on making loads of dough (English slang for money) or request that I/we/you do anything about this. It just simply made me ask myself the question on these two data points about which reality is more truthful.
Reality A
“You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money,” which extends to the idea that most poor people do not really aspire to end poverty; they merely aspire to escape it. It is in the best interest of the rich to preserve poverty and that there have always been poor people and there always will be.
Reality B
Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn’t commit and the parent of revolution and crime. You don’t get to see it in one human lifetime but we are fixing poverty just much more slowly than anyone would like. As evidenced by almost every metric of human well-being, the world is getting better—everything from war, violence, and poverty (all declining) to health, wealth, happiness, and equality (all increasing), as argued by Steven Pinker. Ergo, reality A is looking at the problem in the wrong time frame.
If you had to make a choice which one would you choose as the most accurate description?
I am all about “B” and always will be. It is not however a get out of jail card and means I think I don’t have to do anything to make things better. It just helps the tears dry quicker when I read that in the UK there are 600,000 more children living in relative poverty today than in 2012 and recharge to try and do something useful about it, knowing that things do get better.
Another reason for my optimism is that I am lucky enough to know some of my customers. One year ago their curiosity and bravery got them a ticket on the ETH 2.0 rocket ship. Unbridled optimism in knowing about their ability and desire to take opportunities to make the world a bit better, in circumstances and for people I will never know about using staking returns in ways I had not conceived is deeply inspiring.
So whilst reflecting on harrowing data on child poverty in the UK I realize that I sound like an arrogant crypto w@nker stating I have no desire to request you our customers to donate to any specific child-related cause. Rather than Christmas 2021, I request all my customers to stay as brave and curious as possible with the people, causes, and problems that are close to them.
On a slightly different note, Max Mittelstaedt collects super interesting data and makes a contrarian point that DeFi is not really decentralized at all.
Merry Christmas and Happy staking
Jaydeep and the Launchnodes team
CEO, Launchnodes
