The Teenage Years Are Just Beginning

Mainstream bitcoin adoption keeps growing... The teenage years are just beginning... This is still just the start... A growing infrastructure beyond the headlines... Less than 16 hours until Eric Wade's 'Beyond Bitcoin' update...

If this isn't a sign of 'going mainstream,' we're not sure what is...

Credit-card giant Visa (V) and digital-payments company PayPal (PYPL) just kicked the bitcoin and cryptocurrency story into another gear...

Yesterday, Visa announced it would become the first major payments company to offer settling transactions in cryptocurrencies – specifically USD Coin ("USDC"), whose value is pegged one-to-one to the U.S. dollar.

As Stansberry NewsWire analyst Nick Koziol reported yesterday, this could be a huge catalyst for the growing adoption of cryptos as a payment method.

Visa, which is one of the "capital efficient" companies that we love here at Stansberry Research, has more than 3 billion cards in circulation... And more than $3 trillion in payments passed through its network during the 2020 fiscal year.

This move essentially cuts through "red tape" of a legacy payment system and uses the Ethereum blockchain instead. In other words, to make a transaction, you don't need to directly deal with U.S. dollars at all. As Nick explained...

While users could pay with cryptocurrency on [Visa's] network – through things like crypto debit and credit cards – the transactions were still settled in fiat currency. So once someone paid with crypto, it would then be exchanged for the U.S. dollar before the transaction settled. Now, transactions can be settled in cryptocurrency on one of the world's largest payment networks.

Visa has partnered with 'digital asset' bank Anchorage to make this massive change possible...

We wrote about Anchorage in the January 19 Digest... Back then, the South Dakota-based crypto custodian became the first to obtain federal regulatory approval as a nationwide "digital asset" bank working with cryptos and blockchain networks. As we said at the time...

On its own, this would seem like a relatively unimportant piece of news... until you hear that Anchorage currently works with institutional investors to transact in more than $100 billion in digital assets like bitcoin and Ethereum.

Without hyperbole, this has the potential to be one of the biggest cryptocurrency stories ever...

Now, two months later, Visa said it completed its first transaction this month with crypto exchange Crypto.com... It sent USDC to Visa's Ethereum address at Anchorage.

We've told you previously that, without much fanfare, the stage for all of this was set at the start of 2021... That's when the U.S. Department of Treasury gave the "green light" to banks to use cryptocurrencies if they wanted to.

In January, Crypto Capital editor Eric Wade told his subscribers about this news... discussed why it signaled changes afoot in the financial system... and detailed why, in general, it was good for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. As he said...

My take on this is it could play out to be one of the five or 10 largest news items surrounding cryptocurrencies and decentralized money systems of all time since 2009.

When you see major U.S. companies like Visa now offering up crypto settlements, this clearance from the Treasury is precisely why. The groundwork was set months – and really, years – ago. And now, in a world of payment giants today, Visa is an early adopter.

Plus, that's not the only big crypto news to report today...

PayPal continues to serve as a crypto-payments pioneer, too...

Regular Digest readers might remember back in October 2020, PayPal announced it would allow its users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies within their accounts... But at the time, PayPal users still couldn't make payments with bitcoin or cryptos.

Well, that's now changing...

Today, the payments giant announced the launch of its new "Checkout with Crypto" feature. It will allow people to pay with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin at millions of online businesses.

Here are more details, again from Nick in the NewsWire, on the scope of this development...

[CEO Dan Schulman] said the introduction of this new feature would help drive mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies. And given [PayPal's] scale, it's easy to see why...

[PayPal] has more than 375 million active accounts across the world. [It] alone accounts for 22% of all online transactions in the U.S., according to data from Statista.

Unlike yesterday's announcement from Visa, PayPal's "crypto buy" transactions will still be settled in fiat currency. So these payments will get exchanged for dollars (or British pounds or euros) at checkout, and the merchant will receive the payment in the fiat currency.

Still, as Nick notes, this piece of news also provides a big tailwind for the entire crypto space.

The bottom line is that the crypto industry is growing up fast...

These are the headlines today, but remember, bitcoin started as a kernel of an idea created by an anonymous developer 12 years ago... Cryptos are just now entering their teenage years, with bitcoin being the most popular kid in class.

The crypto world has come a long way... from its 10,000 bitcoin-for-two pizzas trade more than a decade ago... and even from just a few years ago, when you needed to hold paper IDs up to a camera to verify your identity to sign up for a crypto trading account.

But the thing is, it's still maturing to a place that not many people can even imagine yet... The way we see it, bitcoin and Ethereum could just be the start of revolutionizing the way much of "digital business" is done today.

A massive build-out of cryptocurrency infrastructure is happening beneath the surface... It's happening beyond bitcoin and the headlines you see in the mainstream media today. Eric has written about it in these pages before, like back in the August 3, 2020 Digest...

Think about it... I can send an e-mail from Los Angeles to Tokyo any time of the day for free. But sending money around the world can take as long as five days and costs me $50 or more in fees. Why is that?

For that matter, why does the stock market shut down on nights and weekends? I can tell you one big reason: because banks have to comply with so many regulations.

But what if we could automate those transactions entirely?

That's where cryptocurrencies come in.

As central banks around the world spin up their money printers, crypto will not just blow up the old model of banking... it's going to completely reset the entire financial system, starting with the dollar.

We edited that essay from Eric at the time... And frankly, we probably didn't even fully appreciate the details he was describing.

Back then, after all, the price of bitcoin was still below its 2017 mania peak of $20,000. Were we really supposed to believe a blockchain-based ecosystem was going to change the world? Yet Eric was convinced that it was only a matter of time, saying nine months ago...

Bitcoin is right on the cusp of going mainstream. It has forever changed money... just as fundamentally as the Internet changed the advertising business 20 years ago.

This is how the financial "reset" happens.

The investors who realize this are going to become fabulously wealthy in the process...

If they know where to look.

In hindsight, Eric was spot-on... Bitcoin is up more than 420% since then. It's trading at around $59,000 as we go to press. And all of the developments that have happened leading up to and in the wake of the first "bitcoin bubble" in recent years are bearing fruit today.

It's like 2002 all over again...

Way back when, the PayPal platform became popular because of its seamless connectivity to online auction site eBay (EBAY). And it happened during a time when most people didn't trust sending money to strangers over the Internet nearly as much as they do today.

And beyond Visa's announcement yesterday, we're also seeing credit-card companies developing ways to pay crypto rewards, much like the "cash back" or points features that exist today.

Again, this is just the start...

If I (Corey McLaughlin) have learned anything during my almost two years working at Stansberry Research, it's that trends in stocks, emerging technologies, and many other parts of the investing universe can go on longer than you might expect...

If you're considering if it's "too late" to get in on a powerful trend, there's a good chance that it's not. (Keep in mind... we're not talking about truly wild speculative manias like the GameStop hype, of course. That's a completely different situation from a powerful trend.)

In this case, over the past six months or so, we've watched in awe as the "mainstream" has caught on to the bitcoin story and the potential for cryptos.

More people are understanding the place for bitcoin in today's world... More folks are starting to "get" the power of blockchain technology... And frankly, more people are using it without really understanding it, too.

(For one data point, as I was literally about to e-mail today's Digest to our editor, a family member called me to essentially ask what Ethereum was. During our quick chat, he also lamented that he didn't buy bitcoin long ago.)

But again, if you think the biggest upside has already been realized in this brave new world of cryptos, we're here to tell you to think again... We don't think that's the case at all. Eric says we're still early in a big technology adoption lifecycle, even for bitcoin.

At the same time, we know many of you already own bitcoin, the world's most popular crypto. That's why Eric is going "beyond bitcoin" in his latest presentation, which will go live at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time tomorrow. We're less than 16 hours from the big event.

Eric will share details about where crypto believers should be looking next... and how he believes early investors in six little-known crypto opportunities could possibly make 10 times their money in 2021 alone. You just to have to know where to find these opportunities – and how to buy them, which isn't straightforward in some cases.

But therein lies the beauty of Eric's work, as his subscribers can attest...

Those folks who take the time to do the research – or follow a successful, trusted guide like Eric – can see massive gains for a relatively small amount of risk. If bitcoin was the "asymmetric bet" of 2020, these six bets that Eric is recommending today might be the same for 2021. Sign up for Eric's free event right now.

With Bitcoin Soaring Higher, What Can We Expect?

Yesterday, Eric joined our colleague Daniela Cambone for a special live broadcast to preview tomorrow morning's event. Watch or listen below to get a sneak peek on what to expect...

Click here to watch this video right now. For more free video content, subscribe to our Stansberry Research YouTube channel... and don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

New 52-week highs (as of 3/29/21): AutoZone (AZO), Crown Castle International (CCI), CVS Health (CVS), Expeditors International of Washington (EXPD), Huntington Ingalls (HII), Hershey (HSY), Markel (MKL), 3M (MMM), Waste Management (WM), and Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLP).

In today's mailbag, a "thank you" note from one of our Alliance Partners. Do you have a comment or question? As always, e-mail us at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.

"I was deleting some old files yesterday – I used to save a copy of every Stansberry newsletter I received until I became an Alliance member a few years ago – and came across the order confirmation for my first Stansberry product, which is dated exactly ten years ago. Wow! It's hard to believe that I've been depending on information from you for ten years. I've gone from subscribing to a single newsletter (SIA), to becoming a Flex Alliance member, and to finally becoming a 'partner' and being an Alliance member.

"Along the way, my investing knowledge and my investing success has skyrocketed! From an investing perspective, spending $49.50 back in March of 2011 was the best decision I've ever made.

"I wanted to say thank you to Porter, Steve, Doc, Dan, Austin, Eric, Thomas, and other analysts for the information provided over the last ten years.

"Cheers to another ten years!" – Alliance Partner Jeff G.

All the best,

Corey McLaughlin
Baltimore, Maryland
March 30, 2021