Flame X Hall – Cointelegraph Magazine

Nick Carter, a self-proclaimed “crypto-intermediate,” says he was disappointed after discovering he wasn't the hardcore Bitcoin expert some members of the Bitcoin community thought he was.

“Many of the self-appointed high priests of Bitcoin saw this as an opportunity to try and increase their stature in the Bitcoin community by trying to undercut me,” he said.

Carter is a venture capitalist at Castle Island Ventures and a popular crypto analyst with his own army of 376,300 followers on X. He believes it's over the top, saying the whole Bitcoin Maxi scene is fading anyway.

“I think the pool of hardcore bitcoiners is fundamentally shrinking, and it seems to me that the moderates are winning. So I have no regrets,” he laughs.

The issue arose after some “hardcore Bitcoiners” admitted that Carter had moved from being only Bitcoin to exploring polyamorous relationships with other crypto tokens. However, the truth is that he never focused solely on Bitcoin in the first place.

“I think people really understand my point of view. I've always been modest, but previously I was very focused on Bitcoin,” he explains.

“The reality is I'm a venture capitalist and I invest in all kinds of things. But I've always been open to other things, as I was following Ethereum's launch closely in 2016.

Carter had no desire to view Bitcoin as a religion. As a religious person, he chooses to separate faith and property.

“I didn't like the religious aspects. I am angry about this. I am a Christian, I think religion is religion and money is money. I think they are separate, and I don't think we should conflate them,” he explains.

However, Bitcoin wasn't the first crypto Carter got into – that was actually Elon Musk's preferred shitcoin, Dogecoin (DOGE).

The 31-year-old started mining DOGE in 2013 during his college days.

In the year In 2021, when DOGE peaked at $0.74, it's quite sad to consider that the amount it mined was estimated to be “probably eight figures”, meaning at least $10 million.

The only issue is that it is the “lost hard drive” type that contains all the DOGE.

However, he doesn't seem too worried about losing a potential small fortune.

“This particular business was zero, as it turned out,” he laughs.

He believes he's learned some valuable lessons, which have helped him land a pretty sweet career in the industry, including co-founding blockchain data aggregator CoinMeasures and Fidelity's first crypto asset analyst.

“Nobody regrets it, because it led me down this path and it's really rewarding.

What made it such a huge following on X?

Carter has been mining and trading since the early days of crypto, but it wasn't until 2018 that he started gaining traction on social media. It wasn't around 2017.

His well-received articles, mostly focused on Bitcoin, have helped him slowly build a decent-sized following. That's where the false assumption that it's Bitcoin Maxi comes from.

His first article on Medium was “What Will It Take for Bitcoin to Become an Institutional Asset?” He remembers that it was titled

But in June 2022, Carter posted about investing in Dynamic.xyz, a company that solves complex wallet interactions on blockchain networks, including Solana, Algorand, and Cosmos.

Samson Mou, CEO of Bitcoin consultancy Jan3, responded to the announcement post with a polite comment saying, “It's nothing to be proud of.”

The post prompted a backlash from Bitcoin true believers, which saw Carter limit who could respond and lose some followers.

“I had to send my fans away and that was very painful. People who love you hate you, now that's terrifying.

What kind of content can people expect from you?

Carter is a straight guy, and it's lucky he knows how to raise millions in crypto because selling himself for X might not be his strongest suit anymore.

“My Twitter is basically trash these days,” he laughs.

In addition, his content is based on “what season” and explains what is hot at the time. Recently, he advocates for a stable coin.

“I decided to create a completely original piece of content on Stablecoins that I'm really proud of and the issue of Statcoins and why they matter from a US perspective. Especially why the United States should embrace them and not destroy them.

The claim that Stablecoin is the “killer app of crypto” has spread like wildfire.

“I did that and now I see my work everywhere, it's not bad, it's good. I'm glad it happened,” he said.

Fortunately for Carter, respected players in the industry believe the content is far from trashy.

What kind of content do you like?

When it comes to the crypto industry, Carter has a list of people whose opinions he trusts.

The first two he mentions are software engineer, crypto trader and Bitcoin Maxi Eric Wall recovery, along with Bitcoin developer Udi Wertheimer.

“I think Udi and Eric Wall have done a great job from a bitcoin perspective, opening it up in a hostile way at times.”

However, his last hero is the co-founder of the crypto exchange BitMEX, Arthur Hayes.

“He's an exceptional writer and thinker,” said Carter Hayes.

He was lucky enough to meet Hayes, and miraculously managed to hold back any tears.

“I just wanted to thank him for being an early advocate of Bitcoin, which he was one of the patients of ground zero for Bitcoin in Silicon Valley,” he explains.

Carter says he's not usually that star-crossed when he meets the man he's been looking for for years, but that particular moment definitely stuck with him.

“I don't interact much with people, but that was a special time for me,” he said.

Predictions

Wearing his venture capitalist hat, Carter is very good at layer-2 solutions, which looks at scaling solutions for layer-1 blockchains – think Polygon or Arbitrum scaling Ethereum, for example.

In particular, tons of money is predicted to flow into Layer 2s, especially Bitcoin.

“I think we're going to see a significant amount of funding for new L2 on Bitcoin,” he says.

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It also casts Zero Knowledge Collections as a potential hot commodity in the near future.

These can erase people's worries about Bitcoin's slow transaction speed by making transactions faster off-chain while recording the necessary information on the blockchain.

“People will try and build ZK-rollups on Bitcoin. I think that will be the next thing we talk about in the Bitcoin space,” he explains.

On top of that, Carter is optimistic about stablecoin adoption growing throughout 2024.

“I think it's going to be a positive year from a fixed-coin perspective,” he said.

As there are more dollars in the world than gold, I expect that the supply of stotocoin will eventually surpass the market value of BTC. Both are useful, with different guarantees and business results

— nic 🌠 Carter (@nic__carter) May 27, 2021

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Ciaran Lyon

Ciaran Lyons is an Australian crypto journalist. He is also a freelance comedian and has been a radio and TV presenter on Triple J, SBS and The Project.