Last night we held the Boston Blockchain Holiday Party, which was pretty epic. Twelve blockchain groups and hundreds of blockchain professionals came together to celebrate our accomplishments this year.

In fact, the crowd was so loud that our sound system couldn’t be heard over the party guests. I was trying to share a heartfelt story, but the microphone kept shorting out. My talk alternated between distortion and silence, which I guess is a pretty good analogy for how people communicate about blockchain.

So here’s the story.

Before and after (Courtesy Google Street View)

Earlier this year we were headquartered at 100 High Street, in Boston’s Financial District. This is our Wall Street—it’s home to Fidelity, State Street, and the Boston Fed—with magnificent skyscrapers and monumental superstructures.

Across the street from my window, they had torn down a parking garage to make way for a new tower. The parking garage was my favorite—it’s where you could get the only reasonably-priced parking in Boston if you arrived at the crack of dawn—so I was sad to see it go.

But once it was gone, you could see directly into the square where my wife had her first financial job after college. That brought back fond memories.

For the longest time, they were demolishing the garage, so every day I stared out the window at this enormous pile of broken concrete and rebar. As they cleared away the rubble, I was amazed at the sheer size of the crater left behind. Whatever they were building next was going to be huge.

Day after day, I stared at a pit.

They hauled in all kinds of machinery—cranes, bulldozers, alien vehicles with treads and hydraulics—but I could not see any real progress. Lots of mud. Frequent banging. The pit seemed to get deeper, but it was hard to tell.

As the days dragged on, and our company went through the “Crypto Winter” that I described in my book, I began to identify with that pit. It felt like the pit somehow represented the new foundation we were laying with our company—and for the blockchain industry at large. It certainly felt like the pits.

This went on for an eternity, until we eventually moved offices. Part of me was thankful, because the pit was getting pretty depressing.

Months passed.

I recently had an important meeting in the Financial District (more on this in the new year), and I walked by the old place. Here’s what I saw:

BUT! (I like big buts and I cannot lie.) But it’s not just a pit. There are now the first steel beams for the skyscraper that will come. Do you see them? They’ve laid the foundation.

It was then that I realized that this lot reallyis the perfect analogy for blockchain.

For so long we’ve toiled to build the foundation of this new industry. Outsiders must surely think that no progress is being made at all, since they only see the empty pit. “Where is the building?”they ask. “Where is the skyscraper you promised?”

In fact, the largest superstructures—like Taipei 101 in Taiwan—feature an enormous pendulum within the building, to help the structure remain stable during high-speed winds. This is insane, but the pendulum acts as a “counterbalance” while the building sways. (Watch this video; it’s geeky but cool.)

Some people have a spirit animal; I have a spirit skyscraper. That skyscraper is going to become a reality in 2020—and so will the blockchain industry. We’re going to see real digital currencies from real governments, real digital assets from real financial institutions, and real projects from real companies.

Right across the street from the new construction is this sign.

P.S. We’ll be taking the next few weeks off for the holidays. See you first week of January—rested, refreshed, and ready to build.

Security is key to becoming your own bank. Bitcoin and other digital assets are secure from centralization, but they also need to be secured against hackers and other malicious actors. There are several layers of security that need to be considered. These not only include securing your coins against hackers, but also ensuring you have a backup of your wallet and that you've secured your private keys and login details. With that in mind, we were wondering - What is your biggest concern when it comes to securing your digital assets?

This week's survey.

Just as the blockchain investing market has evolved, so has our thinking. We are beginning to see several different investing strategies emerge in the digital asset markets. In this guide, you will discover a list of the most promising digital asset investment opportunities.

“I bought some bitcoin, then I fell down the rabbit hole.” Has that been your experience too? If I had a bitcoin for every time I’ve heard someone say that, I’d be as rich as Satoshi. The idea of a “rabbit hole” — a complex network of branching tunnels that take you ever deeper underground — is a recurring theme in blockchain. In this article, you will learn how to navigate the bitcoin rabbit hole so that you can make sense of the opportunities that blockchain technology has to offer.

The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece this week that was huge. We're about to make it yuge. Entitled We Sent a Man to the Moon. We Can Send the Dollar to Cyberspace, the piece was written by two leaders of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Christopher Giancarlo and Daniel Gorfine, where they make the case for a blockchain-based “digital dollar.”

Not so long ago, the technology behind Bitcoin was seen in Silicon Valley as the best hope for challenging the enormous, centralized power of companies like Twitter and Facebook. Now, in an unexpected twist, the internet giants think that technology could help them solve their many problems.

Bitcoin prices bounced back December 18, rising more than 10% in a matter of hours after declining to their lowest in more than seven months. The digital currency climbed to as much as $7,217.01 at roughly 3:30 EST on December 18, CoinDesk figures show. At this point, the cryptocurrency was up 12.3% from the seven-month low of $6,427.96 it reached early in the morning, additional CoinDesk data reveals.

The US stock market is at an all-time-high and Trump is happy to point that out. What he fails to mention is that the US national debt is also at an all-time high. The U.S. economy grew by 2.1 percent in the Q3 2019 as compared to an expected rate of 1.9 percent. But, behind the growth is a problem that no one is talking about: the rising national debt. Could Bitcoin pose as a solution?