Moving From the 'Little Pond' to the 'Deep, Blue Ocean'

Turning $7 into $1 million in four years... Moving from the 'little pond' to the 'deep, blue ocean'... Two important realizations guided me... The birth of a new technological force... Much more than a better digital currency... Why you haven't missed the boat... My FREE Masterclass...

A single investment I (Eric Wade) made in 1994 changed everything...

I was 27 years old, working as a full-time stockbroker. I had every license I could get – Series 3, 6, 7, 63, and 65. And I later earned a Certified Financial Manager designation, too.

Thanks to a large group of established clients, my wife and I lived in a big house in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We drove a Porsche and a Mercedes. At night, I dreamed of bigger houses and better cars.

Looking back, I believe I could've gone on to a long, successful career as a stockbroker. I could've spent decades trading stocks like Apple (AAPL), Walmart (WMT), and Home Depot (HD)... trying to outsmart hedge funds for a few percentage points of alpha.

But instead, a once-in-a-lifetime investment shifted the course of my life forever...

No, I didn't buy shares of technology companies Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL), or Cisco Systems (CSCO). Those would have been phenomenal investments in 1994, of course... Microsoft soared 1,800%, Oracle climbed 2,500%, and Cisco rose 6,000% through 2001.

The investment I made crushed those returns, though. It's in an entirely different category.

My business partner and I paid $7 to acquire the rights to wallstreet.com...

That was it. I didn't buy stocks, bonds, or any pieces of real estate... I just bought the rights to a domain name long before most people even knew what a domain name was.

Owning wallstreet.com meant I could use a cool e-mail address (eric@wallstreet.com). And I got an even cooler nickname. (Clients started half-jokingly calling me "Wall Street.")

But most important, for the cost of a cheap tie, I yielded a return so much bigger than any other asset class in the world that many people have trouble believing it...

In 1999, when I was 31 years old, my partner and I sold wallstreet.com for more than $1 million... We locked in 14,000,000% gains in a little more than four years on the same domain we had bought for $7.

The sale made international headlines. And as I said, my life changed forever. But as you'll see in today's Digest, it wasn't so much the money that changed me...

It was the way I viewed investments going forward.

You see, on that day in 1999, I lost interest in the "little pond" I was swimming in... the world of 20%, 40%, and possibly even 100% or higher gains in the stock market. Instead, I started casting out much further for what I like to call "deep, blue ocean" investments...

I gave up my briefcase and let all of my broker licenses expire. I didn't need the stock market anymore. I was looking for bigger returns... 10,000%, even 100,000% or more. And thanks to the wallstreet.com sale, I knew two important realizations could guide me...

Have you ever wondered why most local stockbrokers aren't multimillionaires?

It's not because they're dumb or don't make great investments. I'm sure most are highly qualified... They likely hold all the same licenses that I held back in the early 1990s.

But most local stockbrokers don't get rich because they need to spend almost all of their time dealing with their clients...

They're answering phone calls and e-mails. They're chasing down signatures or dealing with accountants. They're so busy, in fact, that they don't have enough time left to sit down and study quarterly earnings reports. So although they're qualified, most local stockbrokers end up just chucking clients' money into funds and recommendations that come from corporate higher-ups.

That's fine... Chances are, you'll still make money in the long run. And it's what I was doing for the most part. But when my partner and I sold wallstreet.com, I realized two things.

First, the domain-name sale had three crucial ingredients...

1. A barrier to entry (few people understood domain names in 1994),
2. A technology that connects people (the Internet), and
3. A rare and instantly recognizable name ("Wall Street").

Second, when I bought wallstreet.com in 1994, I had secret knowledge... You see, most people weren't even using the Internet yet. At the time, only about 10,000 websites existed. And the world had fewer than 0.0004 computers with Internet access per person.

The computers with Internet access mostly accessed it through phone lines that were maddeningly slow. Banner ads hadn't even been invented yet (that happened in October 1994).

But I had been obsessed with technology ever since my dad brought home a "computer" from some unknown part of the labs in Los Alamos when I was in my early teens. It used cassette tapes to save data.

I purchased access to the Internet as soon as I could. And instantly, I realized...

The Internet would change absolutely everything...

I couldn't even tell people how big it was going to be. I could talk about so much...

The Internet would revolutionize the way we thought about mail, newspapers, telephones, movies, gaming, gambling, shopping, politics, education... The list was endless.

But as soon as I started talking to people about the Internet and how it would change our lives, their eyes glazed over. They would get caught up on tiny, insignificant details... like the "baud rate" on a modem... their "download speeds"... or what ".com" stood for.

Put another way, they saw the trees. No, not even the trees... They saw the weeds between the trees. They couldn't see the forest. They likely suspected that the forest existed since they knew about the trees and the weeds, but they couldn't be bothered to learn more about it.

But the thing is... if these folks would have taken just an hour or two of their time to look deeper into the Internet in 1994, they could have made a fortune. Now, they might not have bought their own domain name... but they could have bought Microsoft or Cisco stock.

Instead, they sat on the sidelines. They watched one of the greatest bull markets in history go screaming past... just because they were operating on insufficient, outdated knowledge.

They were still using the post office, so they had no idea how powerful e-mail could be. They were reading about yesterday's events in the newspaper, so they had no idea about what had changed today. For them, nothing had changed. But the world moved ahead without them.

For a long time after selling wallstreet.com, I dabbled in tech startups and the music business...

I sold another domain for a 148,000%-plus profit in about eight years... on a word I completely made up. I even took some time off to write screenplays, one of which I sold to Adam Sandler. (He later shelved it, but I'm still hoping it'll see the big screen someday.)

Everything I did in my career involved technology, investing, or both. I explored, experimented, and tested... doing everything I could to find the next "1,000x" opportunity.

I knew it was rare to find even one 1,000x return in my lifetime – let alone two. But that never stopped me from continuing to hunt for my third... and maybe even more than that.

I had seen the types of catches you can make in the deep, blue ocean. I wasn't going to go back to the local pond. And then after more than a decade of searching, I hit pay dirt...

In 2009, a new technological force quietly hummed to life...

It brought a brand-new form of money into the world. I'm talking about bitcoin.

Now, if your eyes gloss over when I mention bitcoin, force yourself to stay with me...

Remember, those folks who were tuning out the Internet in 1994 missed out on a big opportunity. Don't forget my realization... Great investments are always about information. You must know and understand something that the rest of the world doesn't know yet.

Right now, we're in the period when paying a little bit of attention can yield astronomical rewards. But this period never lasts long. So you can't just sit on the sidelines and wait.

Drawing on my experience, I knew almost immediately that bitcoin had 'deep, blue ocean' potential...

I'm not talking simply about "Web 2.0" potential like Facebook (FB), which is worth $600 billion today. I'm talking about a deep, blue ocean as big as the Internet itself. It's an opportunity that can only be measured in the trillions... and possibly the quadrillions.

You see, bitcoin doesn't give us merely a better digital currency. It's much more than that... It also gives us a path toward revolutionizing the way the Internet itself works.

The cryptocurrency movement unleashed blockchain technology. It's an uncensorable database that is unlocking ways for us to protect our privacy online... to speak our minds without being restricted... and to "digitize" and make tradeable literally anything of value in the world. (It even includes virtual goods that don't actually exist in the real world.)

Just like the Internet in 1994, it's hard to put crypto's revolution into words. It touches on so many different things... all parts of your daily life that you likely don't even realize.

That's why I hardly slept when I first learned about bitcoin...

I set up mining machines... computers that run software to support the bitcoin network in exchange for a payout in bitcoin. I set up so many that I had to hire an electrician to rewire my house. I went from knowing nothing about bitcoin to big returns on willpower alone.

I read about the bitcoin technology 18 hours a day, trying to gain an edge. I met up with strangers in parking lots to buy computer hardware I needed. I traveled to obscure conferences and posted on message boards that maybe 20 people around the world visited.

And I couldn't shake the feeling that my winning formula – a barrier to entry, plus a technology that connects people, plus a rare and instantly recognizable value – was playing out again.

Cryptocurrencies required a ton of time just to use them in the early days. But blockchains are a transformative technology. And bitcoin, as a recognized form of value, has finally broken through the cultural zeitgeist... It's now talked about in movies, in books, and on CNBC.

That's why my conviction has grown stronger with each passing day...

Bitcoin and the crypto movement will either fail, or it will forever change the global economic order. It will ultimately be worth nothing, or it will be worth more than the entire S&P 500 Index combined. But I'm convinced more than ever that it will be the latter option.

Best of all, we're still in the early innings in the crypto space...

When I tell people I'm a crypto analyst, they almost always tell me a story about some friend of a friend of a friend who bought bitcoin a long time ago and paid off his house. And worse, they share the story with a somber, mournful tone... as if they missed the boat.

I have to keep myself from laughing and shaking my head...

Since joining Stansberry Research less than two years ago, I've guided my Crypto Capital subscribers to 600%, 900%, and 1,000% returns. My Top 10 trades are all up 100% or more. I've racked up 10-, 20-, and 30-baggers in the crypto asset class.

And still, I can say with the utmost confidence... The best is yet to come.

We will see another bull run in bitcoin and cryptos that will put even the dot-com bubble to shame. And it could happen soon... Thanks to a single metric alone – scarcity – I believe within eight years, bitcoin could be worth 100 times as much as it is today.

If you've followed the financial news at all, you've likely heard of the bitcoin 'halving'...

"Halving" refers to the payouts, or rewards, that bitcoin miners receive for securing the network. By cutting the rewards in half, bitcoin's "inflation rate" – the flow of new bitcoin entering the market – drops as well. This means bitcoin, as a currency, gets stronger over time as its inflation drops.

When bitcoin first launched more than a decade ago, a person received a reward of 50 bitcoin for successfully adding a new block to the blockchain. The process came to be called "mining" as a comparison to gold miners.

In 2012, the reward paid to miners was cut in half for the first time – from 50 bitcoin to 25. It was cut in half again in 2016... to 12.5 bitcoin. Although some miners used the reduced rewards as an excuse to stop mining bitcoin, others chose to invest in more efficient equipment to maximize their profits.

As a result, the network of computers securing bitcoin actually grew as the supply of new bitcoin fell. So miners began demanding a premium for their coins... This supply shock drove the price of bitcoin up thousands of percent.

Anticipation of the 2020 halving has dominated the crypto-related headlines for more than a year... That's because these halvings only happen every four years. When the latest halving happened on May 11, bitcoin's inflation rate fell to about the same as the U.S. dollar's (1.8%).

As I said, previous bitcoin halvings have roughly marked the starting point for huge run-ups in the crypto's price. After these events in the past, bitcoin has soared as much as 8,000%.

And we can expect the same situation this time...

One model, known as the "Stock to Flow" model ("S2F"), takes a look at bitcoin's scarcity by dividing its supply (its "stock") by its annual production or inflation (its "flow"). Since bitcoin's future supply is known, we can use that calculation to project future price ranges.

By that model, bitcoin could hit $100,000 sometime in the next four years and $1 million per token within the next eight years. You can see what we mean in the chart below...

Variations on the S2F model show the price of a single bitcoin rising as high as $288,000 within the next four years. Of course, all these models are based on what has happened in the past and what we know about the future. That means they're far from guaranteed.

But my own calculations are similar. And on a stage in front of hundreds of investors last October in Las Vegas, I predicted... "Bitcoin will go to $1 million in our lifetimes."

Here's the easiest way to explain the appeal of bitcoin today...

Fundamentally, it's as good of a currency as the Swiss franc or the Canadian dollar. Both currencies have trillion-dollar market caps and central banks that can print more whenever they want. Bitcoin is just as sound, but it's only about one-sixth the size of those currencies.

In other words... No one has missed the boat yet.

This is like the Internet in 1994. This is when the information isn't widely known. You aren't buying when there's blood in the streets... You're buying before folks even see the streets.

Lightning hardly ever strikes twice. But I've caught it twice. And this time, I'm not buying a couple domains and calling it a day. This time, I'm going deeper... I'm aiming for changing people's lives. I'm urging you to stop fixating on the weeds and start looking at the forest.

Bitcoin could be the base that helps us build a new global currency for the next 100 years. The worst possible place for you to be is sitting on the sidelines with a 0% allocation.

Now is the time for you to learn why bitcoin has been the best-performing asset of the past decade... and why it will be the best-performing asset of this decade, too.

And here's the thing...

Even though bitcoin is the oldest and most well-known cryptocurrency in the world, it's not the only fantastic investment opportunity in the space right now.

More than 8,000 cryptos change hands every day. And I spend my time looking for the ones that could potentially rise 10,000 times or more... "deep, blue ocean" opportunities.

These cryptos could upend the entire video-gaming industry. Or maybe they could combine all the world's stock-trading platforms – like the Nasdaq Composite Index, the Hang Seng Index, and the FTSE 100 Index – into one open, global market that trades 24 hours a day.

Since January of last year, I've closed 10 trades for 100% gains or better. One crypto soared 1,320%. And just last week, we locked in another 500%-plus winner.

Bitcoin's blockchain technology is making it all possible and more. So to even understand what I'm talking about, you must understand bitcoin.

That's why I've spent several months working on our first-ever crypto "Masterclass"...

Most folks have a laundry list of reasons not to invest in bitcoin and blockchain technology. But I want to make sure that's not you... I want to teach the basics about cryptos to everyone who wants to learn.

The last thing I want is for you to get left behind as cryptos soar higher in the years ahead. You don't get many 1,000x opportunities... so you want to be ready when they come.

First, though, you must get all your most pressing questions answered. And you need to see that most of the myths out there about cryptos simply aren't true.

So I encourage you to set aside some time this evening to watch my crypto Masterclass. It's absolutely FREE. And I believe you'll walk away with a new understanding of this emerging technology... and what the future could hold for your portfolio. Click here to get started.

New 52-week highs (as of 5/19/20): Sprott Physical Gold and Silver Trust (CEF), Cognex (CGNX), DocuSign (DOCU), SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), NetEase (NTES), Intellia Therapeutics (NTLA), Nvidia (NVDA), Pan American Silver (PAAS), Sprott Physical Gold Trust (PHYS), Sandstorm Gold (SAND), Spotify Technology (SPOT), and Wheaton Precious Metals (WPM).

In today's mailbag, the conversation continues about the COVID-19 response. What's on your mind today? As always, send your feedback to feedback@stansberryresearch.com.

"Regarding Bernard B's letter [from Tuesday's mailbag]...

We have politicians passing the leadership "buck" to scientists who have no expertise in the complexities and responsibility of leading a nation.

This serves two purposes for our politicians: 1) it absolves them of all accountability if they follow the experts' advice in matters outside of the disease itself (therapy, vaccination, self-protection) and 2) it gives them unimaginable power beyond which the Constitution or other laws have been given them by the people in our constitutional republic. Ultimately it is the "herd" immunity which ends epidemics/pandemics except in only relatively small outbreaks.

"Unfortunately, like the scientists, too many of these politicians also '... have no expertise in the complexities and responsibility of leading a nation.'" – Paid-up subscriber David W.

Good investing,

Eric Wade
Los Angeles, California
May 20, 2020