The Winter Solstice Effect let up around ten minutes to midnight. The townsfolk began to slowly shake away the haziness and return to their senses, and the mist had all but disappeared. I quickly ran back to the stage and placed the guitar back in the band member’s arms, then dashed around to get the rope down. Now, more than ever I wished humans didn’t kill each other for no reason. I mean sure, it brought our side more souls, made the boss happy, bonuses all around, yada yada yada, but I was at a loss here. I was the first being in history to witness a Solstice survivor. Or rather, Solstice survivors. I didn’t know what to do. All I could do was wait and see.
Consciousness began to return to their eyes and I could see them looking around, wondering what happened. I expected them to break out into a hysterical frenzy as they tried to remember what they were doing and where they were, but they all just went back to singing and dancing and chatting.
The town’s grandfather clock, our own version of the Big Ben, chimed midnight and everyone cheered and toasted. Alex Simmons, a retired veteran who spends his days at the docks with his platoon, dragged me to toast with them. I always liked that man and his platoon being affected was the least surprising. War doesn’t generally create memories powerful enough for the Solstice, but I figured it could do the trick.
I allowed myself to be led to the group, still confused by how normal everyone was acting. They hadn’t realised they’d spent the last couple of hours as zombies instead of partying. I toasted with the town and laughed along merrily, but my mind was elsewhere. Oh, I just had to get into their minds.
After the toast, everyone shuffled back home murmuring things like “Well, got work in the morning”, “Damn, I wish the night didn’t have to end”, and “Time to hit the hay”. Rather predictably, I also caught word of an afterparty some nineteen-year-old home for the holidays was throwing. I went back to my place and waited patiently for dawn. Of course, I would much rather get on with my investigation right away, but the mind is more receptive to outside entries when it’s well-rested.
In the morning, I headed down to James McCoy’s. I was going to use his body anyway, so figured he was a natural start point. James is a rather old man who lives alone. He’s easily well past retirement age, but retirement doesn’t sit well with him. Needs something to keep him busy, he does.
His daughter is a bigshot consultant at some firm in New York – James can’t stop talking about her; he loves her to death – and she visits for the holidays from time to time. Other than that, it’s just him and his shop. Oddly enough, he never talks about his wife. All we know is that she died a long time ago, when Saddie was just a child.
A CLOSED sign hung at the entrance to the shop – probably taking the day off after the Solstice – so I went round the back and rapped on his front door. He took his time answering the door – human old age will do that to you – but I could hear him coming so I knew he was at home.
“Ah, Ferox! What a nice surprise.” Yeah, I picked Ferox as my fake name.
“Hey James. Have a nice time last night?”
“Oh yes, it was lovely. Saddie would have loved it. I told her about it this morning and she said so herself.” “Oh please, please, come in,” he said realising we’d been standing outside the entire time.
“Oh thanks, yeah. Yeah, I’m sure she would have. I mean who wouldn’t?” I said, laughing.
“Quite right, quite right.”
James led me into his living room and asked me to take a seat. “Want something to drink?”
“I’ll never turn down coffee, if you have it. Want me to get it?”
“Oh yes, thank you. There should be enough for two glasses left over in the pot I made this morning. I like to make extra in case I’m in the mood later on.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I get that. Be right back.”
I went into the kitchen and made sure I was out of view for this next part. My eyes rolled backwards until you couldn’t see them any longer; when they came back, the browns had been replaced by sparkling purples. Of course, I couldn’t actually see my eyes with no mirror around, but I knew it had happened. It does every time I switch from human-passing to demon.
See, contrary to popular belief, demons aren’t winged humanoids with horns and our bodies aren’t drenched in red. In fact, the easiest way to spot a human-passing demon is our eyes – most of us just forget to switch that little detail. As a result, you’ve got people walking around with pink eyes, red eyes, orange eyes, purple eyes – all manner of colours, really.
But I digress – back to the transformation. After the eyes, my body folded in on itself at the same time as my pupils grew. Then, altogether, everything dissipated into a mist of my own unique tinge of purple. Used properly, the demonic mist form can wreck mass havoc. But then again, used properly, it can also just be harmless fog; that is how I manifested in James’ kitchen.
I floated out into the living room – humans can’t see the mist – and levelled with his head. I took a deep breath (or whatever you take when you’re basically air) and pushed in, entering the mindscape once again.
I emerged into complete darkness, the only light in the area coming from my own mist. I morphed back into my humanoid form – I’m probably one of the only demons to prefer it over the mist – and a light flicked on across me.
My Benz. I smiled and sauntered across to it, eager to get behind the wheel again. There’s just something about the mindscape version that doesn’t quite translate into the one I have in the real world. This one had a better hum, it purred along the road more smoothly, and, well, it just felt more alive.
I got in and the door swung shut behind me. That’s another benefit of the mindscape Benz: it does the small things on its own. I twisted the key helpfully already in place and the engine hummed to life as I hit the button to roll the roof back. I actually like the smell of burning petrol (yeah, yeah, weird, I know), so I sat there for a couple more seconds, taking it in, then spurred the Benz on and began down the road, lights flickering on as I went.
Back in the real world, James hadn’t noticed I was missing. I could spend decades in his mind if I would so please, but no time would have actually lapsed in the real world: it’s as if everything I do takes but a second.
I drove past Screening, Seeding, and a few others, and turned right to Memories. The only exit beyond me was Controls, but I’d get to that later. The road led to an enormous vintage library; and when I say enormous, I mean gargantuan. That thing is huge. And well, rightly so. This library isn’t full of books and journals – it contains the memories of whoever I’ve inhabited.
The doors swung inwards on their own as I approached, and the lights blinked on instantly. Demon eyes don’t need time to adjust to lighting changes, so I continued forward unfazed. To the right of the entrance, there was a staircase leading up and another one right beside it leading down. The library ground floor contained neutral memories – neither happy nor sad. The upper level has happy memories and the lower level has sad ones. Most humans’ ground floors are the largest. By contrast, whales’, for example, upper floors are the largest. I don’t get why humans are always so unhappy. But hey, who am I to complain? It’s good business for me.
Anyway, what I was looking for wasn’t on any of these floors. And none of these staircases were going to help me. I crossed over the entire expanse of ground floor memories and opened a window on the other side. I climbed out into a garden almost as huge as the library itself and crossed it too. Juxtaposed with the library, the garden was startlingly plain. There were no flowers or trees, not even a squirrel skirting about. As you went further and further away from the library, the grass began to get more unruly. Weeds would start cropping up, maggots would cover the landscape, that sort of thing. But then that too stopped. Everything stopped.
At the very end of the garden, there was nothing but ash, everything enveloped in black carbon. It was here that I found what I sought. A small shed, painted an ugly shade of yellow, squatted at this end of the garden. Its door did not swing open for me and the lights didn’t turn on automatically. The door creaked and moaned after laying abandoned for all its life. The lights slowly heated up, emitting a low hum as they gradually came to life for the first time.
The library has a screening room where you can take a memory and view it on a cinema-level screen and surround sound system. I could have even heard James’ thoughts – they’d sort of echo all around me, all the speakers firing off simultaneously. Thank Satan I could use technology in here.
This shed had an old VCR and a cassette to go along with it. Yeah, that’s one thing I don’t miss from back in the day. There was no surround sound from what I could make out either. At least there was still a comfy armchair.
I slid the cassette in and settled into the chair, waving my arm to summon a notebook and pen to take notes for the retelling you’re reading right now and some nachos because, well, I like nachos.
Before I begin with the memory, let me explain how this works. I’ve already told you how to view a memory and how thoughts are heard, but there’s one important thing that I haven’t yet discussed – emotions. Perhaps the most uncomfortable part of the entire experience is understanding the emotions that are running through the memory. See, whoever designed this place didn’t want to leave anything ambiguous, so you share every one of the memory holder’s emotions. If you pick a happy memory, that’s great. Unfortunately for me though, these were Solstice memories, so I got ready for a world of pain.
Oh, and yes, I said whoever designed the place. It’s a well-known secret that the big guy didn’t actually make everything. Or even much. He just made one island in the middle of the sea – think they call it Singapore today – and outsourced the rest while he sipped fermented coconut water. Guess that’s another thing he created – alcohol. Go figure.
The last thing you need to know is that people’s names and their relation to the memory holder, while not explicitly stated, are somehow always known. Some kind of intrinsic knowledge system.
And that’s it! You’re all caught up. On to the memory.
The words ANNA, VERSION ONE flashed across the screen and I titled the page of my notebook. I’m assuming James has a memory called ANNA or ANNA, VERSION TWO, or something along those lines, but I didn’t bother investigating. It would just be a boring replacement memory anyway. Following that, the date February 16th, 1967 quickly flashed, and then made way for the memory to begin.
Four men faded into view. One of them I recognised as a younger James. They seemed to be in a meeting room of some sort, but the blinds were pulled down and as far as I could tell, the door was locked too. Jerry Cramer, a large man with a bright red moustache, was addressing them.
“Okay men, we have a problem,” he began. “The Swiss are backing out of the deal. Staying neutral as ever, those tricky bastards.”
“Of course they are,” Phil Digby chimed in. He was your run of the mill guy-in-a-suit and somehow managed to look annoying.
“God, what a kiss ass,” I heard James think. “Oh man, I so want to tell him he’s only here as a fall guy in case everything goes belly up.” I chuckled at the remark. Genius.
“Goes against who they are or some other crap probably,” Luke Kendrick barked through a cigarette. “Knew it was risky to go into business with them.”
“You’re not fooling anyone with that gangster façade. Still, at least you do your job,” thought James.
“Be that as it may,” Cramer said, regaining control of the room. “We’ve got to get this sorted out. James, I need you on the next flight to Switzerland. Talk to Meyer, get this sorted.”
“Fuck, you got me flying again?” James protested. “Kendrick. Kendrick will go, he’ll get it done. He knows the deal basically as well as I do. I am not getting on a plane again. I went when we started this thing. My flying is done.”
“Said it yourself, James – you started it. We need you to finish it. Basically as well isn’t the same as as well. Nothing’s going to happen to you. Just get there.”
“Fuck me, James sighed. “I’m flying first class and not paying for anything. The company’s paying for the entire trip.”
“Done,” Cramer said looking satisfied with himself.
A washout transition later, the screen slowly focused to a bedroom this time. James was angrily talking to his wife, Anna.
“Can’t believe I’ve got to go back. Damn Swiss need to learn how to finally pick a side.”
“Hey, hey, it won’t be that bad. Just get on the plane and try to go to sleep. You can’t be scared if you’re not awake,” Anna suggested.
“I don’t know.”
“Look, it’s not as if you’ve got much of a choice anyway. Best to just get it done and over with.”
James snorted but ultimately resigned to his fate.
“Good man. Call me when you land. And hey, remember to pack socks – you always forget to take them and end up with one pair for the entire trip.”
“Oh, good one. Thanks honey,” James said, breaking away from selecting a shirt to reach for his sock drawer.
“Oh, and take a few cigars from the bar – the good ones – for your meeting. You don’t want to show up to one of these things empty handed. They’ll chew you up and send you packing.”
James nodded, not stopping to question his wife’s advice for even a moment. I heard him trying to mentally reason out how Anna, someone without any sort of experience in the area other than his own retellings of his meetings, could give him advice that was always spot on. She was also a lot more confident and open than most women. She spoke her mind and she spoke frankly and didn’t give a damn about who knew.
“That’s why I love her,” James reminded himself, smiling silently.
He made a mental note to grab the cigars on his way out and headed into the bathroom to pack his toothbrush. I didn’t know why he wanted to pack a toothbrush, but hey, everyone has their eccentricities. He took it out of the cabinet and placed it in a small pouch, then cleared the rest of the cabinet out and took a step back. James took a deep breath, then quietly locked the door before turning back to face the cabinet once again, my heart pounding lightly in anticipation of what I was about to see.
Another deep breath later, he reached forward and carefully scaled the back of the cabinet, slowly covering every inch. A short moment later, he clicked his tongue in satisfaction and pulled down on a loose part of the back revealing a small compartment.
A passing thought of Anna and worry echoed quietly behind me. The kind of thought that you have when you’re talking to yourself but you’re not quite motivated enough to actually finish the thought. Nevertheless, I understood what he meant when I saw what he was hiding. Anna can never know. She would only worry.
James wiped the unconscious sweat starting to form on his temple, then reached for the 9mm. He checked to make sure the safety was on and that it wasn’t loaded, then placed it at the bottom of the pouch along with its clip. He replaced the false back and quickly restocked the cabinet, then sat down on the toilet seat.
James thought about why he took it with him every time he flew. Maybe it was because he wanted to go out on his own terms. If the plane was going down, he was damned if he was going to let the fire get him – he’d shoot himself and that would be the end of it. But then again, Anna always liked to point out that things are often more complicated than they seem; maybe there was some other reason he took it with him. Either way, the 9mm was James’ constant companion throughout his aerial adventures.
The screen cut to black and came up on a tarmac. James was dragging his suitcase behind him as he walked to the plane. I could hear the million alarms going off inside his head, but on the outside, he was doing a damn good job of giving off a don’t-fuck-with-me look.
He gingerly ascended the steps to the plane, pausing at the top and leaned against the frame, taking deep breathes to calm himself down.
An old man in line behind him tapped him on the shoulder, “Scared of flying?”
“Yep.”
“Me too. But my daughter’s getting married, so,” the man replied with a shrug.
“Congratulations,” came James’ warbled reply.
“Don’t worry, take your time. I get it.”
James gave the old man a smile from over his shoulder by way of reply. He took a few more deep breathes to steady himself, then entered the plane. He clambered over to his seat, helpfully in the front, and began furiously strapping himself in, tightening the seat belt as far as it would go. He clung nervously to both armrests, staring out of the window at the men loading the luggage into the cargo hold below.
He wondered what would happen to the poor soul who accidentally wound up stranded in the hold, perhaps adjusting a bag at the back or correcting the fastening on one he noticed on his way out, the others oblivious to his absence. The hold door would shut and he would scream and shout, trying to alert the others to the situation, but no one would hear him over the roar of the plane engines. Then the plane would take off and he would hold on to some strap, some bag, something, for a while, but his arms would eventually grow tired and he would succumb to his fate. He would be tossed around from side to side, smashing into the cargo as he went. When the plane finally lands, they’d find him dead in a pool of his own blood, his body and bones shattered beyond hope of creating even a semblance of the man before.
James shook his head clear; he mustn't think of such things. Especially when there was so much else that could much more easily go wrong. The plane could lose connection with ground control, their frequency could be hijacked, turbulence might toss them abou-
“No!” he cut himself off once more. I was glad he did because it was starting to get very uncomfortable for me in that chair. Discomfort or fright I could handle, but “afraid” didn’t even begin to describe James’ phobia of flying. My respect for the old man instantly doubled.
James decided to turn his attention to the other passengers and began making short mental notes on each of them. Naturally, first class was mostly solitary Swiss and Britons, most likely travelling for work. James could make out a banker by the way he was reading the business section of the newspaper and a lawyer who was working on the contents of a manilla file labelled HARVEY SAWYER VS KURT WAGNER. Other than that, it was anyone’s guess. There was one couple, but thankfully no child. James absolutely detested crying infants, and more so on planes. Their accents sounded like they were Polish, immigrants, probably. Oh, Poland – a tragedy if there ever was one. Bet no one saw that coming.
James caught himself drifting to death once again and decided there was nothing more he could do. He drained the small plastic bottle from the seat pocket in front of him and pulled his nightcap down. If things were going to go wrong, he'd rather he goes in his sleep, instead of having to face the danger head-on. With that in mind, he popped another one of Anna’s sleeping pills in, hoping he wouldn't hit the OD limit, and swallowed it dry.
I’d never stuck around to watch someone go to sleep, so this was an interesting first for me. The scene made way for TV static and I could vaguely discern clippings of sounds and voices drifting in and out of focus all around me.
Ten minutes later it didn’t seem like James was feeling any sleepier, for the screen gradually blinked back into focus. He reached for the Daily Mirror dutifully placed in front of him and glanced fleetingly at the date as if to confirm that he really was having to suffer through this nightmare.
“Yep, still real,” he sighed, flicking it open to read the front page.
Bad move.
The top story read "Eight Hours to Live" and was about the United States ice-skating team. Their plane crashed and exploded, killing all seventy-two passengers and crew. An uncomfortable sensation passed through me as James’ stomach tightened at the same time as the rest of his muscles loosened, almost as if his entire body was giving up in one fell swoop.
“They were just kids, none of them more than twenty years old,” he thought with a mixture of anger and fright. “Their entire lives ahead of them. But they had been snatched up by the brethren of the very thing I have entrusted my life to.”
When the sensation finally past and James’ body reverted back to normal, he got up to go to the bathroom, thinking a cold splash of water would help him. He picked out a small kit from his bag in the overhead compartment and made his way down the aisle.
He walked slowly, each step taken deliberately after due forethought. He was quivering with fright with half his body poised to jump right back into his seat at a moment’s notice the entire time.
James stood by the sink and gripped the edges with both hands, staring directly at his reflection. His eyes, while usually brown, were now a disorienting shade of red. The shock sent him back a few stumbled paces, knocking him into the toilet. He steadied himself with an outreached arm, leaning on the counter, once again staring at the red-eyed lookalike in front of him. I could see the veins popping out of his forehead, crossing over and under each other, pulsating dangerously hard, feeling like they were about to rip themselves out of his body. He shuddered, suddenly feeling very cold and wrapped his arms around his body tightly, trying to drown out the noise of the cabin and focus on his own breathing.
He doused his face with water and looked up again. His face seemed back to normal. No more red eyes. He took slow, deep breaths as he stood in the small, closet-like cabin in a contraption held together by nuts and bolts at a lethally scary height, desperately trying to forget the fact.
He opened his kit and pushed the toothbrush to the side, his hand curling around the 9mm. He sat on the toilet and stared at its pure black body gleaming in the drowsy yellow light of the cubicle.
“It would be so easy to just pull down on the little piece of metal and end this misery. I’d never have to fly again, never have to endure this twisted form of torture again,” he thought.
A faint mention of “family” faded away somewhere around me and James quickly shook his head clear and put the 9mm back.
The moment James returned to his seat, the seat belt sign lit up, and the captain's voice came crackling through the PA system, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We seem to be experiencing some mild turbulence. Nothing to be afraid of, but I'm going to have to ask you all to return to your seats and strap in, nevertheless.” Then, after a beep, “Cabin crew, please take your positions."
"Nothing to be afraid of..." James muttered under his breath. “I’ll decide that for myself, thank you very much.” He decided there was indeed something to be afraid of and tightened the seat belt until it was pressing into his stomach, set his seat upright, and pulled up the window shade all the way. His head lolled to the side, giving me a view of the sky; all sound was suddenly drawn out, replaced with a low incessant hum. Not too far flung from the kind I heard during the Effect, actually. His thoughts were now scattered all over the place and James did nothing to stop it, a brief mention of freedom crossing his mind.
For someone who carried himself with the seriousness that he did, James’ idle thoughts were quite amusing. He pictured purple bunnies and goo-green squirrels and boulder-sized lemons. He thought of birds relieving themselves on the kids who were mean to Saddie at the park and pondered the implications of deleting the number five from existence.
He was in the middle of wondering what would happen if a werewolf lived on the moon –super wolf or cruel experiment? – when the flash from a jolt of lightning snapped us both back to the present. He jerked his head towards the window and froze almost instantly. There was a man hanging onto the wing, clinging for his life. He swayed up and down and side to side, slamming into the wing over and over again. The man feverishly clawed his way forward, as if he saw the tiny window as some form of solace. His mouth opened and closed repeatedly but I couldn’t make out anything he was saying. Confusion layered the fright in James’ mind, telling me he couldn’t either.
James frantically called the air hostess over.
"Man...wing...lightning...window."
He had trouble forming full sentences, producing only fragments accompanied by frenzied arm movements. When the air hostess finally came to his side, the only thing there was to see outside the window were a few clouds, lazily drifting along the night sky. She looked at him with a mixture of concern and confusion and asked if James wanted anything.
"A gin and tonic,” he decided. “Four parts tonic."
Claudia brought it over promptly; James sipped it contently, calming down a smidge and finally allowing me to do the same. I uncurled a little in the shed’s armchair, but my respite was short lived. Lightning flashed outside again, and the figure had re-appeared. Only this time it wasn't the same person. He took a closer look at the figure in peril and paled when he realised who he was.
"Anna..." he breathed.
“No. No, it couldn’t be,” he fought. “Not my Anna.”
James inched closer to the window, hoping, praying, pleading it wasn't her. Oh, but it was.
“No, no it isn’t. It can’t be. She’s at home. At home with Saddie. She’s not here,” he reasoned. “It’s all just a figment of my imagination. Anna’s safe. Anna’s at home. I won’t call for help again. I won’t.”
James watched helplessly as Anna was tossed around like the man before her; he watched with desperation as she too tried to make her way forward. But the winds were not as merciful as last time; they did not allow her to make her way to the window as her predecessor had. The winds picked her up, bashed her against the body of the plane, and sent her downwards, barrelling towards the ground to grant her a fate much like the lost cargo man’s.
Desperately, James called for the air hostess again but didn't even try to offer an explanation this time. He just sat there, curled up in his seat, clinging to his sides. Claudia answered the call again and draped a blanket over him and brought him a warm cup of tea saying "It'll help with the nerves".
Needless to say, it didn't, but James fell asleep soon after that, his body finally buckling under the stress it had been handling.
Just under an hour later, Claudia gently woke James up from his pool of sweat and told him they were preparing for landing. He had made it, but felt like some part of him had died up there anyway.
James checked in at the reception and asked for his bag to be sent up to his room. He told the receptionist he was expecting someone by the name of Leon Meyer and to send him to the rooftop restaurant when he came, then headed there himself. On the way up he thought about these meetings-that-weren’t-really-meetings. He had been to loads of them, but never failed to enjoy one. He never really had a taste for boring board room meetings with drab presentations and subpar food. As soon as James hit the big leagues, he went exclusively to these ones at lavish restaurants with expensive champaign and caviar and clever segues into business deals.
“No clever segues this time,” he corrected himself. This meeting was purely about getting the Swiss back on board as soon as they could.
The lift dinged and opened right onto the restaurant, greeting James with the overwhelming scents of sausages, meatballs, pastas, and beers, which pleasantly made their way to my own nose too. It was a purposely small place, designed to look and feel ultra-exclusive, only five tables across. James was shown to the one he had reserved from back home, then began taking in his surroundings, repeating his exercise of making mental notes of who he was sharing a room with.
He decided to start at the far end of the restaurant and work his way towards himself, then beyond. At the very end, overlooking the city below, sat a man that looked like he belonged in a Roald Dahl book. A rather heavyset man, he was stirring a cup of tea with his left hand and riffling through a paper set on the table with the other. He boasted a thick moustache and gave his left hand the occasional break to twirl its end. James watched him for about five minutes but didn't once see him take a sip of the tea.
At the table next to him, sat a man of quite the opposite build. He was tall and wiry, as if the wind may carry him away at a moment's notice. He had a large pitcher next to him, but regarded it with a certain air of suspicion, as if he didn't trust the waiter that brought it to him. Instead, he focused his attention on the fish in front of him. James scowled at the appalling pairing.
The next table was him. He had arrived a bit earlier than their meeting time, but Meyer was now ten minutes late and he didn't particularly like his lack of professionalism. He noted this with some bitterness, then continued with his observations.
Next to him sat a couple on their honeymoon by the looks of it. I guessed either rich parents or incredible luck, or perhaps some combination of the two. James was personally a bit more cynical and veered towards the former. They ate out of each other’s plates and settled in an eternal embrace that they didn't seem to be coming out of any time soon.
Finally, with a view of the other end of the city, sat two men thoroughly engrossed in their conversation. They spoke in hushed tones and had barely touched the food in front of them; by the looks of it, weren't planning on at all.
James had just made this last observation when Leon Meyer finally walked in. Dressed in a crisp blue suit, he walked quickly, maintaining his air of bravado nonetheless. James saw him and waved him over.
"Sorry I'm late, James. There was a mess at the office I had to deal with."
James mentally rolled his eyes and called upon the ancient art of fake politesse. "No problem, Leon." Then, reaching into the inner pocket of his coat, "Gave these a little more time to mature," he said, placing a wooden cigar box engraved with his initials on the table.
Meyer gave James a look of appreciation and eagerly took one, chopping the end off with the cutter also from the box, and produced a lighter from his pocket for the two of them.
"Look, Leon," James began. "I respect you and your company enough to skip the usual formalities and just get right to it. What's the problem with the deal? We drafted it after weeks of meetings and made it beneficial to both companies. Yours actually stands to benefit more than ours." Most of what he said wasn't true, but James saw no harm in slipping the little details in. Anything to tip the scales.
"James, I like you. I do. But the boss changed his mind. Here," he said, opening his briefcase and pulling out a file. "We've drafted another deal." He pushed the folder across the table.
James took it and pulled a pen out from his coat, ready to amend the document. They went back and forth for a while, each cancelling out the other's changes until they reached a mutually agreeable middle ground.
I suppose the technical term for what conspired would be “price fixing”, but James presented it as simply allowing British products complete freedom in the British market. They celebrated their new agreement with expensive champaign and admittedly fantastic lobster.
“Thank God the company's paying for everything,” James thought.
The deal had been in the works for a few months now and James hadn't been sleeping all too well. It was all below the board so no one could know anything about their operations - he hadn't even told Anna; she just knew they were working on something big and that he couldn't talk about it. It didn't help that the stakes were as high as they were. If this deal had gone sideways, they could have lost the entire English market. Oh, and there was the small matter of going to jail if they were ever found out. But that night, with the deal finally closed, James slept soundly and without worry. Even the looming threat of yet another flight didn't dare disturb the serenity of his blissful unconsciousness.
In the morning, James checked out before breakfast, thinking he'll grab something to eat at the airport lounge. He had one leg in the taxi when something occurred to him and he doubled back to the reception.
"Hi, sorry. Do you have anything that could knock me unconscious?" he asked, not wanting to suffer through hell again. "Sleeping pill of some sort? Not too keen on flying, see."
The hotelier gave him the kind of smile that only hoteliers can, the kind they give you when you’ve asked for something they can’t do. It’s always the exact same smile too – it’s like they take a class or something. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. We’re not allowed to procure drugs without a prescription.”
“Oh right, of course,” James said, unfazed, expecting that response. “Let me just get that out for you.” He reached into his wallet and pulled out a fifty, then slid it discreetly across.
The hotelier stared at him for a moment, then looked now. “Ah yes, thank you, sir. This will do. Please take a seat and I’ll be with you soon.”
James nodded and went to the sitting area in the hotel’s landing. The hotelier tapped his shoulder a few moments later and handed him a small box. "This should do the trick within about five minutes or so, sir."
James took it and thanked her. He didn't bother asking what it was. He didn't really care as long as it would do the trick.
​
Part 1 | Part 2.2

I’m this guy https://m.imgur.com/a/ziss17e from progresspics. You can’t make text posts there, so I came here.
This is my original post.
People were awesome and wanted to know in detail what I did to lose all the weight. So here, in way too many words, is what I did. I hope you can find something to help you with your goals.
A year ago, things were bad. I was in an unhealthy relationship with my ex and more importantly, a toxic relationship with myself.
I knew I needed a change from everything. So what did I do?
I moved to Vietnam.
The first couple months there were rough. I was still trying to clear a lot of mental clutter. It also didn’t help that I got into a motorbike accident and shattered my kneecap. It seemed my big weight loss goals would once again be put on hold. I’m sure you know how that is. You’re eating healthy leading up to your vacation so you can eat all the bad food you want when you’re there. And then when you come back home you’re still eating all the bad food. Or you’re trying to lose weight and then something happens like an injury and you wonder why you’re even trying in the first place.
So I decided to take a look at that. Why was I trying to lose weight? Three other times I had lost over 100 pounds, only to gain it all back every time. Maybe I WAS the overweight guy. Was it time to embrace that?
(Yes — I’ve gained and lost over 100 pounds four times in the last ten years. This post only details the 112 pounds I lost in the last ten months, hopefully the last time I’ll do that to myself.)
Since Vietnam had all the snacks and delicious food, it was sure looking like I was embracing being the overweight guy. And in a very accepting country like Vietnam, I didn’t feel bad about that. People liked me. Yes, I know it was mostly because I’m a white American male, but it made me feel good. It gave me the smallest boost of confidence, which was entirely depleted at that time. I only highlight this because you never know the impact of your kindness on strangers.
So after I started realizing, “Hey, you know what? I’m not that bad!” and after I had tried every new snack at least once, the only thing left to do was eat healthy.
Or at least healthier. Which for such an overweight guy wasn’t that hard. In Los Angeles, part of my weight gain could be entirely contributed to eating a gallon of cookie dough ice cream EVERY night. In Vietnam, ice cream like that is super expensive. So when I’d want ice cream in Vietnam I’d have to go get a chocolate-dipped cone from KFC. Also delicious, but MUCH smaller and WAY LESS calories than a whole gallon of ice cream. Even when I’d go to KFC three times a day for these treats, I was still consuming less calories that I was in LA.
And when that happens — even small changes like that — you WILL lose weight. I did.
At first, what worked for me was the thought of just eating like a regular person.
Who was a regular person to me? Just a typical 200 pound dude. (I’m not trying to fat-shame or debate what it means to be a “regular” person. But I was clearly eating for three or four people, not one.)
Egg baguettes (banh mi trung op las) and tuna sandwiches with extra mayo and white bread and no tuna don’t seem like the healthiest food. But they were “real” food and they were a start. Because I was so heavy, you’re damn right I started losing weight like that.
For at least the first three months, my diet was relatively the same every day. Although, I’d experiment and try new Vietnamese food any chance I got. But even then, I don’t think anything was loaded with calories like it would be here in the US. Also, it’s what I considered “real” food. Not junk food like ice cream or chocolate. So at the end of the day even if I was making a choice between real food and junk food, I was winning. And I’d still be losing weight.
So right of the bat I lost a significant amount of weight without even managing my diet. I just started easy, eating a little better than I had before.
Somewhere along the way I got into nature’s energy bar, bananas. I’d pop a few of these a day when I wanted a snack. They even lost me my phone.
Saigon had a great banana shortage during their new year holiday called Tet and on my journey to find just one single banana somewhere in the city and going to well over fifty stores, I got my phone snatched by motorbike thieves.
I still love you bananas.
Then one day I heard white rice is good for you on a podcast. So I switched from bread to white rice and would have Tuna Onigiris. And I stopped eating egg baguettes, cutting out bready carbs. I just felt like my body didn’t need those anymore.
I still allowed myself to try whatever I wanted. But without realizing it, I was slowly changing my relationship with food entirely.
I also realized that I was, in fact, emotionally eating.
I’d known that I’d eat when I was happy (I deserve this snack!) or sad (this donut will make me feel better) — but I had an epiphany:
Boredom is an emotion.
How many times are you eating just because you’re bored? Before making the connection that boredom was an emotion, I didn’t think I was an emotional eater. But wow. Most every time I’m eating is connected to an emotion, and not because my body actually needed food.
So anytime I felt the urge to eat something, I questioned myself. Why do I want to eat right now?
Was it because I was actually hungry and my body needed fuel? Or was it because I was bored? Or sad? Or happy?
And if it was emotionally based, I wouldn’t let myself eat. I’d start chugging a soda water instead. The bubbles give me life. I would pretty much only drink soda water and Vietnamese iced coffees, with extra condensed milk.
But as you’re beginning to see, a lot of my gains came from inside my own mind.
What were my workouts like?
I started with walks and podcasts. Exercising while feeding my mind, not my stomach.
When the weight melted off I automatically felt strong and FELT like I wanted to lift some weights. It wasn’t a thing that I was being forced to do. It was something that naturally became something my body wanted to do.
Even for lifting at the gym, I tried to be as easy as possible. 5x5. Strong guy. Whatever that’s called. That was pretty easy to do, so I’d feel good about doing it. And then since I was already at the gym, I’d be more likely to do more. But usually my routine consisted of only thirty minute workouts.
Then around 215 I started playing basketball again. Which was something.
Here’s another wrinkle in my story —
I was coming off tearing my plantar fascia.
And then when I moved to Vietnam I got into a motorbike accident and broke my kneecap. So me being 215 and playing basketball filled me with so much gratitude. A year earlier I could barely walk and was overweight. And now I could run up and down the court, albeit slowly. And I sucked at basketball. I could only focus on offense or defense. One at a time per game. And usually defense, because nobody wants to play defense.
But it was fun.
And that kept me going.
If a tree falls in the woods and no one’s around to hear it, does it fall? If an intense workout is fun, is it still an intense workout?
Lightly lifting weights and playing basketball, combined with eating decently dropped me to 200.
I thought I was done. I felt great. I thought I looked great.
But I just kept going living this newly acquired healthy lifestyle.
I started intermittent fasting around 200 pounds.
I listen to podcasts voraciously, so I’ve been well-aware of fasting for quite some time. It seems all the most successful people on the planet participate in some sort of fast. But it wasn’t until I befriended a French traveler in Bangkok for Songkran that I decided to really give it a try. He was the first person I met in the wild who was actually fasting. Weight loss benefits aside, I asked him how it made him FEEL. He said great and that answer convinced me to give it a try.
Fasting had also been on my mind because I thought it’d be easy for me. I never had an appetite when I woke up in the morning, so waiting four hours to eat something was not a big deal. And something I often did anyway. Hell, sometimes I wouldn’t eat all day and then after my serving shift gorge on all the food. So basically I had been an OMAD faster without realizing it. And without realizing that 5000 calories was not the proper way to eat one meal a day. It took another month to really convince myself. I was afraid of getting headaches, mostly. So I decided to take it slow. I’d eat anything I’d want, during certain 4-8 windows. I was also going to be in Singapore. Have you ever had Indian paratha and chicken curry? The most delicious meal on the planet. But since I knew I was having bread, I decided to go one meal a day as I walked around Singapore. Around 6, I would feast on two parathas and a heaping bowl of chicken curry. By the time I got back to Vietnam I was a fasting pro.
I had started playing basketball at this time two or three times a week. We’d play from 8-10 at night so I had to plan my fasts around that. Playing basketball in Vietnam is like playing on a professional NBA length court if it were also in a sauna. After those two hours, you’d probably had guessed I jumped in a pool with all my clothes on, not just finished playing pickup basketball.
(They were very organized about their basketball games. Games up to 15 by 1s and 2s, or 12 minutes per game. In those two hours, we’d play 5 games. So exactly an hour of basketball workout. Combined with the sauna aspect, I’m sure I was burning loads of calories.)
There were some nights after basketball that I’d get Vietnamese McDonalds at midnight because it was open and I knew my body needed the calories. What a switch from knowing my body definitely did NOT need calories from another midnight McDonald’s run, but doing it anyway.
When I knew I’d be getting late-night McDonalds, I’d still be fasting. I wouldn’t have eaten until 4pm that day. And if I ended eating around midnight, that means I couldn’t eat until 4 the next day. But that next day would only be a 4 hour window so the NEXT day I could be back in a 12-8 fast. (In a span of three days: 16:8 - 20:4 - 16:8.)
So the beginning of May 2019 is when I started fasting. I was hovering around 200 pounds. Plateaued. Fasting helped me pretty quickly get down to 182.
Which I thought was great.
And from there I just kept on doing it because I felt great. Fasting had truly become a lifestyle.
Now? I’m 163 pounds and more importantly — maintaining.
What do my days look like now?
I’m back in Los Angeles.
I still walk at least thirty minutes a day. I don’t even force myself to do it. I enjoy it, and I genuinely look forward to it every day as a treat. And that’s a complete mindset shift.
I play basketball and boulder three times a week. These are high intensity workouts and guess what? I never feel like I’m working out, because they’re fun.
I lift weights once or twice a week, usually after a basketball or bouldering session. And the exercises I do are geared towards become a better climber.
I write a lot. Usually my walks are to Starbucks, where I indulge in a Trenta Berry Hibiscus, followed by a Trenta Cold Brew in which I put french vanilla creamer. And yes, I carry around vanilla creamer.
I go through ten cans of soda water a day. I LOVE soda water. The bubbles are so refreshing. I used to love Coke. And Sprite when I quit that. And then I discovered I got the same satisfaction from soda water because it was always about the bubbles. The more carbonation the better. Kroger brand Lemon-Lime for the win. (And I’ve tried them all.)
My lifestyle is about getting everything I really want and cutting everything else out. To get to this point I had to be really honest with what I really wanted. And I’m still figuring that out.
I still fast. Usually I eat from 12pm to 8pm.
I eat too many ThinkThin bars. Brownie crunch, to be exact. These taste like candy bars and have a low GI, so they help cravings. Although, I’m in the process of cutting these out for real food. I like the convenience of bars. I’m trying to substitute hard boiled eggs for these bars. I eat one or two bananas a day.
And then the rest of my diet is largely based around what’s on sale at Ralph’s. I’m a big sale guy. And a big convenience guy. So I often find snack packs of cheese, fruit, and nuts 50% off. I also find salad bags or sautéed veggie bags for 75% off. I get a lot of those and then add in some sort of meat, like tuna, chicken, or salmon depending on — you guessed it! — what’s on sale.
I don’t eat many processed carbs at all right now. But if I was given some bread I’d eat it. I just don’t crave it anymore.
More importantly, I promise you I eat whatever I want. But since my relationship with food has changed, so has my appetite and cravings. I got hummus the other week because it was on sale. But then I needed something to dip in the hummus. I was thinking I should go with a veggie because I love veggies now, and green beans happened to be on sale. So, for the next week my snack was dipping raw green beans in hummus and it was delicious. I’d actually crave it. Also, when your body is using food properly as fuel, a little bit of food goes a long way. I’ve never been into nuts, but now I love almonds and even a few of those give me such energy. It’s amazing.
I had free Pizza Hut last week because the Chargers made an interception. And you better believe I tried the new Cheese-It thing. But I also shared and didn’t eat the whole thing. I try to have an abundance mentality now. I don’t need to eat all of something right now. It’s not now or never. If I want more, I can always get it again.
This is what I ate for lunch today:
https://m.imgur.com/gallery/51CGUPo
Told you I eat what’s on sale haha.
Key takeaways and general thoughts:
80-20 principle.
Apply this to your life to figure out what you really want. And then to figure out what is holding you back. If you’re like me — and I bet a lot of you are — it’s our weight that holds us down. Literally. So if we dedicate complete focus to that and make it a priority, EVERYTHING else in our lives will get better. Our weight produces the most pain to our relationships with ourselves and others. I want to be a successful screenwriter. I think I’m a very good writer because I know I work at it and I write movies I’d love to see in theaters. But people wouldn’t know because I don’t put my work out there. I don’t put myself out there because I was ashamed of my weight.
Perfectionism.
Things are never going to be perfect. How many times have you said you were going to start dieting today and have the perfect plan in your head but one little thing goes off and then you tell yourself you’ll start tomorrow?
Me. Too.
But you know what? That doesn’t help. All your ducks don’t have to be in a row. Just start. And I GUARANTEE one day you’ll end up looking back and realizing holy quackamole, all my ducks are in a row!
Podcasts and walks!
Two of my favorite things right now. Walks are scientifically proven to do all sorts of things for your mind and depression. And podcasts help you learn and grow and just generally a good voice to have in your head, instead of the one you currently have that keeps you eating when you’re bored or happy or sad.
Patience is key.
Time is going to pass anyways. If you’re so lucky, you’ll be alive in six months anyway. Would you rather be right where you are or somewhere new, wether physically or mentally?
Somewhere along the way I learned to stop discouraging myself. I realized it was no longer helpful. For instance, when I returned from Vietnam I went back home to Boston. I made a list in my Notes app of everything I couldn’t wait to eat. And I was ok with it. I accepted it. So I ate it all. But I kept fasting while doing it. And when I got something like a pizza, instead of eating the whole thing like I wanted to, I shared it. Still tasted just as good and half a pizza makes you feel just as full as a whole pizza, without the added calories and sickness that accompanies it. By the time I got to Maine I was eating Whoopie Pies. Even those, I’d have half and share the rest with my sister. I genuinely just wanted to savor them. By practicing such a healthy lifestyle for so many months I had finally got rid of that pesky pest Gluttony. And it felt good.
Did I gain some weight? Of course I did. About ten pounds.
More importantly did it set me back? No. I got right back on the horse. And it felt great. Traditionally, this is where I messed up. Vacations were always about food. What delicious things could I overeat? Even if I had lost significant amounts of weight before a vacation, the act of eating such bad food on my trip would send the seesaw back the other way and when I got back from vacation I’d keep up my vacation eating habits. There was no balance. I was all in, whether it was eating well or eating poorly.
This time was different. I accepted that I chose to eat a bit poorly during my trip. And with that acceptance I knew I could get right back on the saddle.
And how did I know this?
Because I faced my fears. Which fear? The scale.
Before, anytime something like this would happen I’d never actually weight myself to see the damage. What I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me. This time, I wanted to know.
I gained ten pounds.
Wow. Not bad over three weeks. Could’ve been way worse.
But I also knew that wasn’t the direction I wanted to be heading, so immediately started eating right again. And since then and without much thought, I lost everything I had gained including an additional seven pounds.
I realized that before I was sabotaging myself, so now it’s something I am mindful of. Is this really something I want, or is this an act of self-sabotage?
And even now, I still sabotage myself. Remember my love of soda waters? I drink them right before bed. So instead of falling asleep peacefully, my bladder keeps me awake the next two hours. As someone who’s struggled with insomnia, that’s a bit of self-sabotage. But I don’t beat myself up about it, and that helps. All things considered, I’m doing pretty well.
I’m most proud of going back home for three weeks — and eating all my hometown food that I’ve craved for years — and not letting that pull me back the other way. Traditionally, vacations have been the death of my diets. I’m always good about losing twenty to forty pounds before a vacation. But then starting on vacation I gain 40-60 pounds. One step forward, two steps back.
But deal with one problem at a time. The biggest problem. Which was and still is my weight.
Make things easy for yourself to get started. If you want to be a 200 pound individual, eat like a 200 pound individual. It’s simple math. Calories in, calories out. I kept that in my head. If I eat like a 200 pound man, I will eventually BE a 200 pound man. I didn’t put a time limit on it. I just started being.
Get rid of distractions/Keep stuff out of your house.
I never made food in Vietnam because it was so cheap to eat out every meal. But not having snacks and food in my apartment really helped me.
I know I can’t keep a box of cookies in the house because if I do, I’ll eat the whole box. In like twenty minutes. So it’s best to not even have it in your house.
There have been times when I’ve craved something — I’m a sucker for Keebler Rainbow Chip Cookies — and even then, had a six or so cookies and threw the rest out. I know it’s extreme, but sometimes that’s what it takes to quit.
I can’t blame it on the alcohol.
If you’ve noticed, I haven’t talked about alcohol. That’s because I don’t drink. I never have. My vices have largely been Ben and Jerry’s. I suggest teetotalism for losing weight. I live a teetotal lifestyle and I share my stories over at my blog. Feel free to check it out. I won’t link here because I don’t want to promote anything, but it’s called Teetotally Awesome. It’s relative to weight loss because over there I show how you can still have fun and live an interesting life without drinking. And if drinking is holding up your weight and you couldn’t imagine giving it up, maybe my blog can show you another way. I don’t care if people drink or not. I think everyone should do them. But, if you’re thinking quitting drinking will help your weight loss goals and need some tips how to live a teetotal lifestyle, feel free to check out my blog.
More thoughts on fasting:
I wouldn’t have fasted if it wasn’t easy for me. I never have an appetite in the morning so not eating meant nothing to me.
Fasting was a great tool, but also only part of the solution to my weightless. I also started it at such an invaluable time. Probably the perfect time. I had tried Keto before during other weight loss attempts, but it felt really restrictive and would never stick.
Also, soda water deserves a special place in the IF hall of fame.
Find exercises that work for you:
My favorite exercises? Ones that aren’t exercises. Because they’re FUN.
When I play basketball, I work up the biggest of sweats. In Vietnam, it looked like I jumped in a pool with all my clothes on. But nope — I was just playing basketball.
The thing is — I love playing basketball so while I’m playing, I don’t ever THINK about how hard it is. I just do it. I’m present.
I’ve also discovered I love walks and podcasts. But I hate running. Is it a good exercise? Sure. Is it for me? Nope. The second I start running, I start asking myself “Why the hell am I doing this?!” And then I stop after a block. And since it’s not easy, and it’s not fun, I’m not going to do it the next night.
Maybe dancing is fun for you. Or swimming. You might have to give lots of things a try.
One thing’s certain — you will like exercise the more weight you lose. When I first started losing massive amounts of weight, I didn’t do much exercise. I started as low impact as possible, listening to podcasts while taking walks.
Then when I felt like I could start playing basketball, I did. Then when my body naturally wanted to get stronger, I started lifting weights. Now, most of my strength gains come from climbing. And any weightlifting exercises I do are targeted towards muscles that will help me become a better climber.
Don’t be afraid to try different things. It’s all about finding out what works for you, and it never hurts to try.
Make your weight loss a priority.
I didn’t have to worry about anything in Vietnam. The people there are amazing and everything is so cheap. I didn’t have to worry about anything, especially money. I could just be present in doing whatever it was I was doing. And the biggest thing I wanted to do was lose weight. Even if all I did in a day was eat healthy and a bit active, I knew I was making forward progress.
If you have a significant other, explain this to them. I know it’s tough, but it has to be a priority. You have to love yourself before you can love somebody else.
You can do it.
If I could do it this last time, then so can you. I had gained back over a hundred pounds three times, and here I was tasked with having to lose over 100 pounds AGAIN.
Maybe I had been wrong about myself. I kept telling myself I was supposed to weigh less, but I never stopped to ask if maybe I was SUPPOSED to be the big guy. If this was really me. Should I just embrace myself?
Now my story is I’m a guy who feels good about himself. And wants to spread love and help others.
If I could lose over one hundred pounds four times, you bet your ass you can do it once. We’re all capable of such remarkable things and lots of times you don’t even know it until you do it.
Just do it.
I almost wrote do it for you here. But in truth, that’s not necessary.
I’m doing it for me now, which is important. But when I started losing weight I’m not sure it was for me. And that’s ok. The important thing was I started.
Maybe you want to lose weight for a boy or for a girl. Let whatever motivates you to start to get you started.
You can be anyone and be overweight.
Weight doesn’t discriminate. Doesn’t matter if you’re tall or short or smart or slow. You can feel like you’re brimming with potential but no one will ever see it because you’re ashamed of your weight. You can be anyone.
How do I feel now?
I feel like myself again.
I feel in control and autonomous again.
I feel like I can do anything. Posting so vulnerable like this makes me super uncomfortable and is one of my worst fears, but I’m doing it. Losing such massive amounts of weight is one of the hardest struggles, as I’m sure you know. And instead of discouraging myself up for gaining all that weight in the first place, I’m changing my mindset and looking at the VICTORY of losing it all. Beating yourself up isn’t helpful. Loving yourself and others is.
What now?
I’d like to keep it off, and I’d like to help people in any way I can. Like I said, there’s much more to my story. This is the 4th time I’ve lost over 100 pounds, but I’m adamant it’ll be my last. It’s time to start learning from my mistakes. And the shame and guilt with being overweight can be paralyzing and painful. I don’t want to live in crippling fear anymore. We live once and we should all live the lives we want to live. I truly believe we’re all capable of change and being extraordinary.
Good luck and good eating, everybody!

平和主義なる故に必ずしも正義人道に叶ふに非ず 軍国主義なるが故に必ずしも正義人道に反するに非ず。
Hello and Welcome to the Twenty-Second Diary of The New Order. Today we’ll be covering the ever elusive Home Islands of Japan. For this diary, I, Morriña, your humble writer and team lead of Japan, and the members of the Sphere’s development team will be covering everything from the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937, up to 1968. I hope you enjoy the vast amount of content we’re attempting to bring to Japan as one of the three main superpowers in the world by 1962.
PART I: 1937-1947
If you start taking pleasure in nonsensical masculinity and make violence a goal in and of itself, the world will finally start to hate you and will look upon you like it would wild beasts. One ought to remember that.
--Meiji, Emperor of Japan to his soldiers, 4 I 1882
It was supposed to be only a border incident, soon to be resolved. Instead it turned out to be the beginning of total war for the Empire of Japan and the start to a full scale invasion of China. The Marco Polo bridge has become an infamous symbol of the bloodiest conflict in the history of Asia since the Taiping Rebellion.
Chiang’s Republic of China was severely disadvantaged. Even with a seemingly unending pool of manpower, a lack of commitment to the war effort and political infighting doomed the young republic to a slow and excruciating death. Japan’s vastly superior armed forces, armed with modern guns, sailing on battleships, and riding on soaring planes tore through division after division, surprising foreign observers with their unparalleled dominance. The Soviet Union was busy with its own internal conflicts and crises, while Joseph Kennedy was turning his nation to the beast it had fallen to a million times before; isolationism. The Kuomintang, once a home for idealistic revolutionaries and republicans, despaired. They just kept on losing land, no matter the sacrifices they made. The boys they sent out, never to return, the cities they burned, the people they conscripted into non-existence. In the opening year of the war alone, the ROC lost the vast majority of its cities, crucial to the continuation of the conflict. Not even a second United Front between the KMT and Mao’s CPC, deemed the last possible option, could halt the Japanese onslaught.
However, Japan did not emerge unscathed. No nation may emerge unscathed from the total transformation of its spirit towards total war. Old political, social, and economic structures were entirely replaced in favor of new, more efficient ways of life. The social fabric that had defined much of Japanese life was ripped apart. In its place, the Taisei Yokusankai was built from the ground up. The tattered remains of democracy, or at least the facade that remained, were finally put to rest. A new state emerged, one built for war, one not seen anytime before. A new word would arise to define these states - totalitarian. None of it would have been this way, if all had gone to plan. Chiang was to surrender and, in his place, Wang Jingwei’s Reorganized Government of China would have been founded in occupied Nanjing. Chiang Kai-Shek refused to surrender, even as his people floundered and his nation was dying. The armed forces sputtered meekly, and shortages began to plague the nation. The war settled into a grueling slog as both sides hunkered down for the long fight. Japan sat on the cusp of victory, within reach of the great chalice. And yet, they could not reach it. Prince Konoe, the head of the Taisei Yokusankai, struggled to continue to prove himself a capable leader in these times. His cabinet came to an end after public criticism by the fierce militant nationalist Yosuke Matsuoka. Even as Konoe sought to preserve recent precious gains in China while carefully balancing relations with the spectre across the ocean, America, Matsuoka believed war was inevitable. A third cabinet was formed by Konoe, in one final attempt to oust Matsuoka of his high diplomatic posts. In the end, the pressures of criticism, demands for resignation ended Konoe. The gears of history, unknowable in their ways, brought upon the world a conflict so horrific, so awful, that the word strikes a sense of dread into so many who were born in those years. War had arrived in the Pacific.
Many of Japan’s top military brass thought that an attack on the United States would spell an end to the empire. Yet, Matsuoka relented, and when the first torpedoes blasted into and sank the USS Enterprise, the world held its breath. Even such a devastating attack could not stop the overwhelming the American advantage in industry. It seemed, for the first time, that the tides of war might finally shift into the Allies’ favour. Instead, beginning from the complete shock of victory at Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Navy moved from victory to victory, including the surprising outcome of the Battle of Midway in 1942. Japanese offensives took the Philippines, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia, Singapore and some key Pacfic islands, all in the first months of war. Yet, even after victories that no weaker nation could survive, the US retained the industrial advantage it had held for years, with the untouched contiguous mainland still distant from the hell of fire and death happening across the sea to the west. US ships churned out of harbors continuously, faster and faster, until a ship could be made in a matter of months. The Japanese could not continue to win the numbers game, and for the first time in the brutal naval war, they were on the backfoot.
In the hope of forcing Japan out of the war, the United States adopted a strategy of leapfrogging in 1943, which put Japanese forces at a massive disadvantage. With each month and year, the United States was able to steadily increase its superiority over Pacific, while Japan’s leadership adopted a strategy of defense, attempting to retain the bulk of their naval force by avoiding any pitched battles until the conditions for it would almost guarantee absolute victory. This time had finally come during the battle of Iwo Jima in 1945, when Japanese military leadership decided that this was the decisive moment they were seeking. During the next 87 days a stubborn defense by general Tadamichi Kuribayashi forced the United States to overcommit their forces, which was subsequently exploited by Combined Fleet in a brilliant maneuver. The US fleet was decimated and all American Marines division on that damned island were either destroyed or forced to surrender. While Japanese casualties were enormous and would never be replaced, the battle stopped the United States from overrunning the Pacific theatre and prevented a possible invasion of the Home Islands.
Iwo Jima proved to be the largest naval battle in history, surpassing even the Battle of Jutland. The two maritime powerhouses of the modern world slugged it out on the high seas, and the result was thousands upon thousands of dead bodies, and a cemetery of metal, miles in length, buried under the ocean that would never quite disappear. Japan would never recover, not in full, but the United States had the sheer manpower and dockyards to do it. Most within the navy looked forward to an eventual Japanese surrender, regardless of how long it took. America would survive. America always survived.
Then, the bomb hit Pearl Harbor.
A wave of atomic terror reverberated through continental America, and the United States was forced to resign itself to a humiliating defeat, the first in its history. Finally, Japan could focus on crushing its final threat, and the final bastion of liberty in the world. China.
There was one strategy left to turn to, to gain the upper hand against China. It was uncertain, and not even guaranteed to work, but it was the only one left; attrition. Japan would attempt to starve the United Front and render them unable to resist further Japanese offensives. This strategy came to fruition once again with the Battle of Kohima. The Mad General Masanobu Tsuji finally deprived Chiang and Mao of the US air units and supply that was acting as a lifeline to the United Front, the final nail in a coffin that refused to die. With any possibility of supplying China by land or air essentially gone Joseph Stilwell made the decision to pull out of the region and stop supplying the Chinese. Famines across the remaining free Chinese territory and a lack of arms meant that there was little resistance put up against the Ichi Go Offensive of 1944. Despite China fighting with one foot in the grave of their proud nation, their fanatical defenses declared in the name of preserving China racked up further unsustainable casualty counts. Japan’s victory was inevitable, it was only a matter of time. Chiang Kai-Shek turned down pleas for peace, and the war continued. It took two years for the Japanese to finally reach Chongqing in a ruthless, cruel military operation that made Sherman’s March to the Sea look like a peace delegation. In the last battle of the Second World War Chongqing was turned into little more than a gargantuan pile of ashes and crushed stones. On the ruins of Baidi Fortress, the triumphant Japanese proclaimed “peace in Asia and peace in the world”. In their shadows stood their chosen puppet - Chen Gongbo, horrified at the carnage and destruction of the United Front’s last true stronghold. With no hope of any resistance he could only smile, while holding sorrowful tears in his eyes.
However, Japan’s political and economic system was now geared towards sustaining an ever expanding war machine; with the Taisei Yokusankai as its political body and Hideki Tojo as its prime minister the current government proved to be a burden. It survived ten years of total war, yet it could not survive the peace that followed.
PART II: 1947 - 1962
We have awoken the giant and through valiant effort we survived his onslaught. Let us hope that in future we will remain at peace, for we may not survive another victory like this one.
--Isoroku Yamamoto, 1947
While the war was with China over, peace was only the beginning of a series of new problems. The Japanese empire was now enormous. It stretched from cold Siberia to humid New Guinea, from the heart of China to distant Hawaii. With their new lands in hand, Japan set about reorganising these territories into a more manageable empire.
In some cases, local collaborators were given the most power. In others, Japanese military figures took control. The Co-Prosperity Sphere became a patchwork of directly ruled territories, military governorates and puppet states. Each one churning out their spoils to be harvested by Japan itself. Whether the Army, Navy or Diet got their hands on them was another matter - the resources would flow nevertheless.
Hideki Tojo had been Prime Minister for six years now, overseeing both Japan’s favourable peace treaty with the United States and the victory over the Chinese. However, as the conflict was coming to a close, it became clear that he was starting to slip. His supporters were fully aware that a fall from grace would be disastrous. To prevent this, the man who had recommended Tojo for his post had to act.
Kōichi Kido arranged to have himself made Prime Minister with Imperial permission, having served as the closest advisor to the Emperor for almost a decade. He then appointed a loyal privy council member to his old post as Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, ensuring his close connection to the Emperor. With Kido now Prime Minister, he quickly set about the task of managing the now enormous Japanese Empire, as well as trying to handle the various factions within Japanese politics.
He proved to be an ambitious prime minister, with grand designs for Japan. Kido was well aware of the faults of the Japanese government. Kido sought to make the ruling Yokusankai party into a tool for his reformist agenda. He attempted to transform it from a mere big tent for the bureaucracy into a powerful body against the army and navy factions. His fatal mistake, however, was the attempted strong-arming of the military as part of his plan to wrest power away from them. Having already become unpopular due to his reformist tendencies, this move against the armed forces proved to be the last straw. One Hiroya Ino replaced him.
In order to keep hold of power, Ino was forced to make a bargain. The new Prime Minister agreed to surrender control of Japan’s colonies to the army so that they could be used as strongholds and resource depots. In return, Ino gained some feeble scraps of power for the government. For his actions, the Prime Minister came across as incredibly weak, having made the deal even as the army was steadily losing influence, as had been the case ever since the war had ended. What could the Prime Minister have done? The army was still powerful enough to topple cabinets should it benefit them, something Ino was very much aware of. He had little choice but to comply, even if it would ultimately harm the party. When the elections rolled around, the Yokusankai suffered terribly from their capitulation to the army, with independent candidates (mostly Yokusankai rebels and expelled party members) gaining more power.
Under Ino’s tenure, the issue of corruption would become more prevalent and out of control. Bribery would become a de facto method of getting anything done, with seemingly every government official involved in some capacity. Ino’s inability to handle the ever growing corruption within his own cabinet was starting to cost him what little faith anyone still had in his capabilities. Whether he was simply failing to handle the issue properly or perhaps ignoring it, his strategy was utterly failing. Prime Minister Hiroya Ino had not built himself a great legacy to be remembered by. Instead, he had built up a house of cards, upon which he sat. Such a house can hold for a while if one is careful, but it is fated to fall apart eventually. Such a fate cannot be avoided, only delayed and never for long.
Interludium: Mechanics
Democratic institutions are quarantine mechanisms for that old pestilence, tyrannic lust. As such they are very useful and very boring. --Friedrich Nietzsche
Before we continue, we would like to offer some explanations behind the unique gameplay that Japan has to offer, centering on domestic policy. Screenshot of Japan GUI
Despite the power held by the military, the Empire of Japan is still legally a democracy as established by the Meiji Constitution, proclaimed in 1889. You are responsible for the civilian government. The Prime Minister of Japan is the closest character to “The Player”.
The Imperial diet, as the main parliamentary body, is completely democratic, but deeply overshadowed by the Second Great War. During the war, all political parties were merged into the Yokusankai (YSK) in order for Japan to function as a totalitarian, one party state. As mentioned, however, Ino’s capitulation to the Army was a great sign of weakness coming from the Yokusankai. Factions of “Independents” who had been rendered irrelevant in 1942 by the Yokusankai’s supermajority used the population’s growing disillusionment towards the ruling in order to swell the amount of seats in parliament outside the party’s control. The rising number of independent politicians was not the only problem for the Yokusankai; despite theoretically being a single party, it is in reality a de facto collection of cliques and factions that have rather different approaches to government and policies. This means that any potential Prime Minister may have a large problem with keeping a majority of support in the chamber. So how exactly does a Prime Minister keep their majority? Let’s examine it!
The Imperial Diet consists of seats distributed per territorial district. The Dai Nippon Teikoku (Empire of Great Japan) consists of the Nihon Rettō (Home Islands, or simply Japanese archipelago), the provinces of Chōsen (Korean peninsula), Taiwan and Karafuto (the island of Sakhalin). Those constitute an integral part of the Japanese state, and as such - elections are organized at the local level. Depending on the YSK’s popularity in a single province, the one party will receive an appropriate amount of deputies (if the popularity of the YSK in the province is 70%, it will receive 70% of seats from this area). As such, the YSK needs to maintain its popularity and power, to put an end to the loss of seats to independents.
But even if the Yokusankai is successful in upcoming elections, there is still a problem. Deputies of the YSK are divided between different cliques. In the example shown above, Prime Minister Ino is supported by his own clique in its entirety, by 5 deputies of Kido clique and by more than half of deputies from Kaya’s and Takagi’s factions respectively. With the Independents being completely unsupportive, it means that Ino in our example, despite the YSK holding 75% of total seats, barely holds on to a majority. The lesson we learn here is obvious - as a Prime Minister of Japan you need not only to win elections as the YSK, but also to have strong clique of your and have the support of other factions within the party itself.
Have you secured a super majority of deputies? I’m sorry, you are still not done. In the Japanese parliamentary system, the House of Peers has the ability to reject bills and initiatives. If the House of Peers does not support you, it will effectively create a deadlock and block all reforms, guaranteeing an end to the career of the current Prime Minister.
In general the absolute heart of parliamentary game in Japan is securing a majority, and the most important part of securing a majority is interacting with the four main cliques of the YSK, either by gaining their support or by reducing their power and popularity. You need to be very careful about implementing different policies. The Yokusankai remains a party that somehow manages to contain Reform Bureaucrats, Liberals, Kidoites and Conservatives in a single bloc. It may be too much to manage. If other factions find your cooperation or policies unsatisfactory, Party Unity may drop and deputies from other cliques may be even less inclined to support you. Such a scenario may spell doom for any Prime Minister.
You might think this is already too much, and that holding onto power in the Empire of Japan is a fool’s errand. To this we bring two pieces of bad news. The first one is that negotiating with the Diet and house of Peers is the only way to advance one’s political career. Second - there are still more ways to lose power as Prime Minister, as the overbearing influence of Japan’s armed forces starts to impact the political class’ games.
When it comes to Army (IJA) and Navy (IJN) Influence - one will find that understanding the military's politics is essential to grasping Japan’s internal situation. While interservice rivalry exists, it is not as much of a relevant factor as it was during the 30s and 40s. With peace and an ongoing focus on the stabilization of a vast empire, the IJA and IJN do not interfere much in the Home Islands’ political process. Both branches of the military forces have also developed a sense of restraint in foreign policy. Gone are the heady days where the Kwantung Army could invade China without notifying Tokyo. Instead, the IJA and IJN are mostly focused on keeping their monopolies and influence in their countries in the Sphere. They are no longer a force of change, pushing for more wars and acts of aggression - instead, with the establishment of the Co-Prosperity Sphere they are now a force of the Status Quo.
Army and Navy support does not represent “the entire army” and “the entire navy”. The IJA and IJN are as riddled with factions as the Diet is. The influence meters instead represent the higher echelons of powers, ministers, chief of staff, leading commanders, governors and the like. What does this actually mean? For a start, even with high support from Army, it may not guarantee complete compliance of the IJA in different countries in Sphere. Army divisions in Indonesia might not obey orders from a new government just because the officers in Tokyo have received a hefty amount of bribes. On the other hand, even small support from the IJA for your government, causing the War Ministry to wish to see your cabinet ousted will not necessarily affect IJA commanders in the Sphere, who might still actually follow the civilian government’s instruction in their particular sectors.
To reaffirm the point about a decline in interservice rivalry, IJA and IJN support are not contradictory to each other. Often times events or choices might lead to increasing support from both, or sometimes it may decrease support from both. The problem is, that the IJA and IJN influence is very peculiar in comparison to for example “House of Peers Opinion”. The reason for that is that both very low and very high influence of army branch will have negative consequences. Very low influence with the Army or Navy will force current Prime Minister to resign, as he was clearly not paying attention to demands from armed forces. Very high influence on the other hand will start firing rather peculiar events that will most likely greatly decrease standards of life in other countries of the Sphere, destabilizing it and damaging the position of the civilian government in Tokyo. This represents the army running roughshod over the Sphere, assuming they have a free hand from their buddies in the diet.
Now…Tension. What does this even mean? As you may already guess from previous paragraphs, it is not actually about interservice rivalry. As I mentioned previously, Army and Navy are mostly now forces of status quo, that achieved everything they ever desired in the Second World War and now they simply wish to retain their benefits, advantages and of course - their glorious colonial empire. Tension represents not friction between army branches, not even friction between armed forces and civilian government, but rather a subtle change of mind - that actually Japan is in a dire state, and it requires immediate, heroic actions to save it from traitors, subversion, foreign agents and conspirators. This is a reflection of Japanese culture - disobedience is justified by the great patriotism and pure, good nature of a servant that wishes to save their overlord, even if they themselves do not want it. In comparison to Army/Navy Influence, it does not reflect the view of elites, but of every single soldier, sailor and minor commander. As such it is absolutely possible to have great relations with Army and Navy, and still have massive Tension build-up, threatening the stability of the Empire of the Rising Sun. It is a slow, ticking bomb that requires care and tact to contain and defuse.
At the beginning of the game, due to massive prosperity, stability and power of Japanese Empire Tension starts at 0% in 1962. However it may slowly rise until reaching 100%. As to what happens when Tension reaches such high value and what events may have led to this… hmm… this will be a story for another time.
This concludes the unique gameplay designed for the Empire of Japan in TNO. With no further delay, let’s move on to 1962 - the very beginning of the game.
PART III: 1962-1963
I’m sorry to say this to you, Prime Minister, but Empires rise and Empires fall, and the vast, corrupt future that you once had is shedding away like cherry blossoms in the winter. With any luck, you’ll be out of here by next month.
How does a nation crumble? An assassin eating on a crowded thoroughfare sees his target ride in on a conveniently open car and takes his chance. A cavalry charge outside the gates of a besieged city breaks the high-tide of conquest. Some less graceful than others, but it’s all the same.
Or perhaps it can start with the finding of a body. Yes, let’s go with that. Because deaths don’t just end lives - they smother truths. Yet, the truth shines through. Truth has a manner of bubbling out into the world.
For now, it’s just another body, in an impossible place and under improbable circumstances. Another problem for the Police, but nothing the Metropolitan can’t handle - and with all the mysterious nonsense popping up in the murder scene it looks like their expertise will be needed. Thankfully our crack detective is on the case - and looking for evidence!
Whoops. Well, tragedy happens all the time in the Sphere, it was probably just a one off, let’s keep looking - oh. Oh dear. If the Japanese Army is involved, then all bets are off. We should warn our detective he’s in over his head - oh shit.
Well, the new team assigned to the case might not have any living witnesses, but every detective worth their salt knows how to investigate a case. There are a few angles that can be examined, aligned along the central axis of any investigation: look through the crime scene or examine the victim? After all, a man with’ silence’ carved into his chest probably has it there for a reason. But the fish plant doesn’t seem like a terribly convincing commercial operation either - and why on earth would the murder victim be allowed access to the grounds of the factory?
Then again, the labyrinth of Japanese bureaucracy will present challenges from the get go, and the man who killed the victim was in the Army, so perhaps focusing on this will let us push deeper into the facts of the case. (Full disclaimer: there are many paths available to be taken in this series of events, and I highly recommend you try different choices on each run-through.) A basic profile will help us, as will determining the victim’s connections. The Army records will surely help us find the truth - oh dear. Well, it’s time to pull out the Audit Gun to shoot at the Army so they’ll change their minds and wow it’s not working. The pit of snakes that is the Japanese Government has taken an interest, and oh boy it is angry.
So, to recap: a body, a grenade, a factory that shouldn’t be running, a killer who shouldn’t have been there and an army that isn’t letting on. What the hell is going on? Bureaucratic wrangling aside, we could always exploit the one unchangeable binary of Japanese politics, the Army-Navy rivalry, and - uh - what the hell? They’re working with each other? How can the whole of Japanese politics be upended for the sake of a single dead body?
...They’re all in on this, aren’t they?
Well, if the Navy insists on sticking its nose into affairs, that’s where we’ll continue searching. And it looks like it’s tied into everything that’s been going on, including a suspicious series of shipments and a preponderance of outdated military currency. All we have to do is hit them with in force with an audit they won’t see coming, and we’ll find out just how deep the rabbit hole goes -
Oh my god. Where does this end? We have to keep looking, maybe the trail will end in a tidy bunch of suspects we can arrest to make the problem go away. People like - uh -
The Army? The Government? It’s getting out of hand, already has in fact, but I’m certain if we just keep going we’ll stabilise the situation, so long as we don’t touch -
The banks, like Yasuda and Minezaka? The ones we found with mud on their faces and Army money in their pockets? Oh no. Oh no no no. How far will the heavens fall before Japan itself is tugged into the abyss with them all? And if a pillar of the Japanese Economy crumbles, what happens to the others?
Japan plummets, but perhaps in those long steep drops it will find its soul. For was it not written: falling is the essence of a flower?
Link to Section II
Link to Section III
Link to Section IV
Link to Section V
Link to Section VI
Link to Section VII

I am putting together my investment portfolio for 2018 and made a complete summary of the current Top 100. Interestingly, I noticed that all coins can be categorized into 12 markets. Which markets do you think will play the biggest role in the coming year?
Here is a complete overview of all coins in an excel sheet including name, market, TPS, risk profile, time since launch (negative numbers mean that they are launching that many months in the future) and market cap. You can also sort by all of these fields of course. Coins written in bold are the strongest contenders within their market either due to having the best technology or having a small market cap and still excellent technology and potential. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s8PHcNvvjuy848q18py_CGcu8elRGQAUIf86EYh4QZo/edit#gid=0
The 12 markets are

1. Currency 13 coins
2. Platform 25 coins
3. Ecosystem 9 coins
4. Privacy 10 coins
5. Currency Exchange Tool 8 coins
6. Gaming & Gambling 5 coins
7. Misc 15 coins
8. Social Network 4 coins
9. Fee Token 3 coins
10. Decentralized Data Storage 4 coins
11. Cloud Computing 3 coins
12. Stable Coin 2 coins

Before we look at the individual markets, we need to take a look of the overall market and its biggest issue scalability first:
Cryptocurrencies aim to be a decentralized currency that can be used worldwide. Its goal is to replace dollar, Euro, Yen, all FIAT currencies worldwide. The coin that will achieve that will be worth several trillion dollars.
Bitcoin can only process 7 transactions per second (TPS). In order to replace all FIAT, it would need to perform at at least VISA levels, which usually processes around 3,000 TPS, up to 25,000 TPS during peak times and a maximum of 64,000 TPS. That means that this cryptocurrency would need to be able to perform at least several thousand TPS. However, a ground breaking technology should not look at current technology to set a goal for its use, i.e. estimating the number of emails sent in 1990 based on the number of faxes sent wasn’t a good estimate.
For that reason, 10,000 TPS is the absolute baseline for a cryptocurrency that wants to replace FIAT. This brings me to IOTA, which wants to connect all 80 billion IoT devices that are expected to exist by 2025, which constantly communicate with each other, creating 80 billion or more transactions per second. This is the benchmark that cryptocurrencies should be aiming for. Currently, 8 billion devices are connected to the Internet.
With its Lightning network recently launched, Bitcoin is realistically looking at 50,000 possible soon. Other notable cryptocurrencies besides IOTA and Bitcoin are Nano with 7,000 TPS already tested, Dash with several billion TPS possible with Masternodes, Neo, LISK and RHOC with 100,000 TPS by 2020, Ripple with 50,000 TPS, Ethereum with 10,000 with Sharding.
However, it needs to be said that scalability usually goes at the cost of decentralization and security. So, it needs to be seen, which of these technologies can prove itself resilient and performant.
Without further ado, here are the coins of the first market

Market 1 - Currency:

1. Bitcoin: 1st generation blockchain with currently bad scalability currently, though the implementation of the Lightning Network looks promising and could alleviate most scalability concerns, scalability and high energy use.
2. Ripple: Centralized currency that might become very successful due to tight involvement with banks and cross-border payments for financial institutions; banks and companies like Western Union and Moneygram (who they are currently working with) as customers customers. However, it seems they are aiming for more decentralization now.https://ripple.com/dev-blog/decentralization-strategy-update/. Has high TPS due to Proof of Correctness algorithm.
3. Bitcoin Cash: Bitcoin fork with the difference of having an 8 times bigger block size, making it 8 times more scalable than Bitcoin currently. Further block size increases are planned. Only significant difference is bigger block size while big blocks lead to further problems that don't seem to do well beyond a few thousand TPS. Opponents to a block size argue that increasing the block size limit is unimaginative, offers only temporary relief, and damages decentralization by increasing costs of participation. In order to preserve decentralization, system requirements to participate should be kept low. To understand this, consider an extreme example: very big blocks (1GB+) would require data center level resources to validate the blockchain. This would preclude all but the wealthiest individuals from participating.Community seems more open than Bitcoin's though.
4. Litecoin : Little brother of Bitcoin. Bitcoin fork with different mining algorithm but not much else.Copies everything that Bitcoin does pretty much. Lack of real innovation.
5. Dash: Dash (Digital Cash) is a fork of Bitcoin and focuses on user ease. It has very fast transactions within seconds, low fees and uses Proof of Service from Masternodes for consensus. They are currently building a system called Evolution which will allow users to send money using usernames and merchants will find it easy to integrate Dash using the API. You could say Dash is trying to be a PayPal of cryptocurrencies. Currently, cryptocurrencies must choose between decentralization, speed, scalability and can pick only 2. With Masternodes, Dash picked speed and scalability at some cost of decentralization, since with Masternodes the voting power is shifted towards Masternodes, which are run by Dash users who own the most Dash.
6. IOTA: 3rd generation blockchain called Tangle, which has a high scalability, no fees and instant transactions. IOTA aims to be the connective layer between all 80 billion IOT devices that are expected to be connected to the Internet in 2025, possibly creating 80 billion transactions per second or 800 billion TPS, who knows. However, it needs to be seen if the Tangle can keep up with this scalability and iron out its security issues that have not yet been completely resolved.
7. Nano: 3rd generation blockchain called Block Lattice with high scalability, no fees and instant transactions. Unlike IOTA, Nano only wants to be a payment processor and nothing else, for now at least. With Nano, every user has their own blockchain and has to perform a small amount of computing for each transaction, which makes Nano perform at 300 TPS with no problems and 7,000 TPS have also been tested successfully. Very promising 3rd gen technology and strong focus on only being the fastest currency without trying to be everything.
8. Decred: As mining operations have grown, Bitcoin’s decision-making process has become more centralized, with the largest mining companies holding large amounts of power over the Bitcoin improvement process. Decred focuses heavily on decentralization with their PoW Pos hybrid governance system to become what Bitcoin was set out to be. They will soon implement the Lightning Network to scale up. While there do not seem to be more differences to Bitcoin besides the novel hybrid consensus algorithm, which Ethereum, Aeternity and Bitcoin Atom are also implementing, the welcoming and positive Decred community and professoinal team add another level of potential to the coin.
9. Aeternity: We’ve seen recently, that it’s difficult to scale the execution of smart contracts on the blockchain. Crypto Kitties is a great example. Something as simple as creating and trading unique assets on Ethereum bogged the network down when transaction volume soared. Ethereum and Zilliqa address this problem with Sharding. Aeternity focuses on increasing the scalability of smart contracts and dapps by moving smart contracts off-chain. Instead of running on the blockchain, smart contracts on Aeternity run in private state channels between the parties involved in the contracts. State channels are lines of communication between parties in a smart contract. They don’t touch the blockchain unless they need to for adjudication or transfer of value. Because they’re off-chain, state channel contracts can operate much more efficiently. They don’t need to pay the network for every time they compute and can also operate with greater privacy. An important aspect of smart contract and dapp development is access to outside data sources. This could mean checking the weather in London, score of a football game, or price of gold. Oracles provide access to data hosted outside the blockchain. In many blockchain projects, oracles represent a security risk and potential point of failure, since they tend to be singular, centralized data streams. Aeternity proposes decentralizing oracles with their oracle machine. Doing so would make outside data immutable and unchangeable once it reaches Aeternity’s blockchain. Of course, the data source could still be hacked, so Aeternity implements a prediction market where users can bet on the accuracy and honesty of incoming data from various oracles.It also uses prediction markets for various voting and verification purposes within the platform. Aeternity’s network runs on on a hybrid of proof of work and proof of stake. Founded by a long-time crypto-enthusiast and early colleague of Vitalik Buterin, Yanislav Malahov. Promising concept though not product yet
10. Bitcoin Atom: Atomic Swaps and hybrid consenus. This looks like the only Bitcoin clone that actually is looking to innovate next to Bitcoin Cash.
11. Dogecoin: Litecoin fork, fantastic community, though lagging behind a bit in technology.
12. Bitcoin Gold: A bit better security than bitcoin through ASIC resistant algorithm, but that's it. Not that interesting.
13. Digibyte: Digibyte's PoS blockchain is spread over a 100,000+ servers, phones, computers, and nodes across the globe, aiming for the ultimate level of decentralization. DigiByte rebalances the load between the five mining algorithms by adjusting the difficulty of each so one algorithm doesn’t become dominant. The algorithm's asymmetric difficulty has gained notoriety and been deployed in many other blockchains.DigiByte’s adoption over the past four years has been slow. It’s still a relatively obscure currency compared its competitors. The DigiByte website offers a lot of great marketing copy and buzzwords. However, there’s not much technical information about what they have planned for the future. You could say Digibyte is like Bitcoin, but with shorter blocktimes and a multi-algorithm. However, that's not really a difference big enough to truly set themselves apart from Bitcoin, since these technologies could be implemented by any blockchain without much difficulty. Their decentralization is probably their strongest asset, however, this also change quickly if the currency takes off and big miners decide to go into Digibyte.
14. Bitcoin Diamond Asic resistant Bitcoin and Copycat

Market 2 - Platform

Most of the cryptos here have smart contracts and allow dapps (Decentralized apps) to be build on their platform and to use their token as an exchange of value between dapp services.

1. Ethereum: 2nd generation blockchain that allows the use of smart contracts. Bad scalability currently, though this concern could be alleviated by the soon to be implemented Lightning Network aka Plasma and its Sharding concept.
2. EOS: Promising technology that wants to be able do everything, from smart contracts like Ethereum, scalability similar to Nano with 1000 tx/second + near instant transactions and zero fees, to also wanting to be a platform for dapps. However, EOS doesn't have a product yet and everything is just promises still. Highly overvalued right now. However, there are lots of red flags, have dumped $500 million Ether over the last 2 months and possibly bought back EOS to increase the size of their ICO, which has been going on for over a year and has raised several billion dollars. All in all, their market cap is way too high for that and not even having a product.
3. Cardano: Similar to Ethereum/EOS, however, only promises made with no delivery yet, highly overrated right now. Interesting concept though. Market cap way too high for not even having a product. Somewhat promising technology.
4. VeChain: Singapore-based project that’s building a business enterprise platform and inventory tracking system. Examples are verifying genuine luxury goods and food supply chains. Has one of the strongest communities in the crypto world. Most hyped token of all, with merit though.
5. Neo: Neo is a platform, similar to Eth, but more extensive, allowing dapps and smart contracts, but with a different smart contract gas system, consensus mechanism (PoS vs. dBfT), governance model, fixed vs unfixed supply, expensive contracts vs nearly free contracts, different ideologies for real world adoption. There are currently only 9 nodes, each of which are being run by a company/entity hand selected by the NEO council (most of which are located in china) and are under contract. This means that although the locations of the nodes may differ, ultimately the neo council can bring them down due to their legal contracts. In fact this has been done in the past when the neo council was moving 50 million neo that had been locked up. Also dbft (or neo's implmentation of it) has failed underload causing network outages during major icos. The first step in decentralization is that the NEO Counsel will select trusted nodes (Universities, business partners, etc.) and slowly become less centralized that way. The final step in decentralization will be allowing NEO holders to vote for new nodes, similar to a DPoS system (ARK/EOS/LISK). NEO has a regulation/government friendly ideology. Finally they are trying to work undewith the Chinese government in regards to regulations. If for some reason they wanted it shut down, they could just shut it down.
6. Stellar: PoS system, similar goals as Ripple, but more of a platform than only a currency. 80% of Stellar are owned by Stellar.org still, making the currency centralized.
7. Ethereum classic: Original Ethereum that decided not to fork after a hack. The Ethereum that we know is its fork. Uninteresing, because it has a lot of less resources than Ethereum now and a lot less community support.
8. Ziliqa: Zilliqa is building a new way of sharding. 2400 tpx already tested, 10,000 tps soon possible by being linearly scalable with the number of nodes. That means, the more nodes, the faster the network gets. They are looking at implementing privacy as well.
9. QTUM: Enables Smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain. Useful.
10. Icon: Korean ethereum. Decentralized application platform that's building communities in partnership with banks, insurance providers, hospitals, and universities. Focused on ID verification and payments. No big differentiators to the other 20 Ethereums, except that is has a product. That is a plus. Maybe cheap alternative to Ethereum.
11. LISK: Lisk's difference to other BaaS is that side chains are independent to the main chain and have to have their own nodes. Similar to neo whole allows dapps to deploy their blockchain to. However, Lisk is currently somewhat centralized with a small group of members owning more than 50% of the delegated positions. Lisk plans to change the consensus algorithm for that reason in the near future.
12. Rchain: Similar to Ethereum with smart contract, though much more scalable at an expected 40,000 TPS and possible 100,000 TPS. Not launched yet. No product launched yet, though promising technology. Not overvalued, probably at the right price right now.
13. ARDR: Similar to Lisk. Ardor is a public blockchain platform that will allow people to utilize the blockchain technology of Nxt through the use of child chains. A child chain, which is a ‘light’ blockchain that can be customized to a certain extent, is designed to allow easy self-deploy for your own blockchain. Nxt claims that users will "not need to worry" about security, as that part is now handled by the main chain (Ardor). This is the chief innovation of Ardor. Ardor was evolved from NXT by the same company. NEM started as a NXT clone.
14. Ontology: Similar to Neo. Interesting coin
15. Bytom: Bytom is an interactive protocol of multiple byte assets. Heterogeneous byte-assets (indigenous digital currency, digital assets) that operate in different forms on the Bytom Blockchain and atomic assets (warrants, securities, dividends, bonds, intelligence information, forecasting information and other information that exist in the physical world) can be registered, exchanged, gambled and engaged in other more complicated and contract-based interoperations via Bytom.
16. Nxt: Similar to Lisk
17. Stratis: Different to LISK, Stratis will allow businesses and organizations to create their own blockchain according to their own needs, but secured on the parent Stratis chain. Stratis’s simple interface will allow organizations to quickly and easily deploy and/or test blockchain functionality of the Ethereum, BitShares, BitCoin, Lisk and Stratis environements.
18. Status: Status provides access to all of Ethereum’s decentralized applications (dapps) through an app on your smartphone. It opens the door to mass adoption of Ethereum dapps by targeting the fastest growing computer segment in the world – smartphone users.16. Ark: Fork of Lisk that focuses on a smaller feature set. Ark wallets can only vote for one delegate at a time which forces delegates to compete against each other and makes cartel formations incredibly hard, if not impossible.
19. Neblio: Similar to Neo, but 30x smaller market cap.
20. NEM: Is similar to Neo No marketing team, very high market cap for little clarilty what they do.
21. Bancor: Bancor is a Decentralized Liquidity Network that allows you to hold any Ethereum token and convert it to any other token in the network, with no counter party, at an automatically calculated price, using a simple web wallet.
22. Dragonchain: The Purpose of DragonChain is to help companies quickly and easily incorporate blockchain into their business applications. Many companies might be interested in making this transition because of the benefits associated with serving clients over a blockchain – increased efficiency and security for transactions, a reduction of costs from eliminating potential fraud and scams, etc.
23. Skycoin: Transactions with zero fees that take apparently two seconds, unlimited transaction rate, no need for miners and block rewards, low power usage, all of the usual cryptocurrency technical vulnerabilities fixed, a consensus mechanism superior to anything that exists, resistant to all conceivable threats (government censorship, community infighting, cybenucleaconventional warfare, etc). Skycoin has their own consensus algorithm known as Obelisk written and published academically by an early developer of Ethereum. Obelisk is a non-energy intensive consensus algorithm based on a concept called ‘web of trust dynamics’ which is completely different to PoW, PoS, and their derivatives. Skywire, the flagship application of Skycoin, has the ambitious goal of decentralizing the internet at the hardware level and is about to begin the testnet in April. However, this is just one of the many facets of the Skycoin ecosystem. Skywire will not only provide decentralized bandwidth but also storage and computation, completing the holy trinity of commodities essential for the new internet. Skycion a smear campaign launched against it, though they seem legit and reliable. Thus, they are probably undervalued.

Market 3 - Ecosystem

The 3rd market with 11 coins is comprised of ecosystem coins, which aim to strengthen the ease of use within the crypto space through decentralized exchanges, open standards for apps and more

1. Nebulas: Similar to how Google indexes webpages Nebulas will index blockchain projects, smart contracts & data using the Nebulas rank algorithm that sifts & sorts the data. Developers rewarded NAS to develop & deploy on NAS chain. Nebulas calls this developer incentive protocol – basically rewards are issued based on how often dapp/contract etc. is used, the more the better the rewards and Proof of devotion. Works like DPoS except the best, most economically incentivised developers (Bookkeeppers) get the forging spots. Ensuring brains stay with the project (Cross between PoI & PoS). 2,400 TPS+, DAG used to solve the inter-transaction dependencies in the PEE (Parallel Execution Environment) feature, first crypto Wallet that supports the Lightening Network.
2. Waves: Decentralized exchange and crowdfunding platform. Let’s companies and projects to issue and manage their own digital coin tokens to raise money.
3. Salt: Leveraging blockchain assets to secure cash loands. Plans to offer cash loans in traditional currencies, backed by your cryptocurrency assets. Allows lenders worldwide to skip credit checks for easier access to affordable loans.
4. CHAINLINK: ChainLink is a decentralized oracle service, the first of its kind. Oracles are defined as an ‘agent’ that finds and verifies real-world occurrences and submits this information to a blockchain to be used in smart contracts.With ChainLink, smart contract users can use the network’s oracles to retrieve data from off-chain application program interfaces (APIs), data pools, and other resources and integrate them into the blockchain and smart contracts. Basically, ChainLink takes information that is external to blockchain applications and puts it on-chain. The difference to Aeternity is that Chainlink deploys the smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain while Aeternity has its own chain.
5. WTC: Combines blockchain with IoT to create a management system for supply chains Interesting
6. Ethos unifyies all cryptos. Ethos is building a multi-cryptocurrency phone wallet. The team is also building an investment diversification tool and a social network
7. Aion: Aion is the token that pays for services on the Aeternity platform.
8. USDT: is no cryptocurrency really, but a replacement for dollar for trading After months of asking for proof of dollar backing, still no response from Tether.

Market 4 - Privacy

The 4th market are privacy coins. As you might know, Bitcoin is not anonymous. If the IRS or any other party asks an exchange who is the identity behind a specific Bitcoin address, they know who you are and can track back almost all of the Bitcoin transactions you have ever made and all your account balances. Privacy coins aim to prevent exactly that through address fungability, which changes addresses constantly, IP obfuscation and more. There are 2 types of privacy coins, one with completely privacy and one with optional privacy. Optional Privacy coins like Dash and Nav have the advantage of more user friendliness over completely privacy coins such as Monero and Enigma.

1. Monero: Currently most popular privacy coin, though with a very high market cap. Since their privacy is all on chain, all prior transactions would be deanonymized if their protocol is ever cracked. This requires a quantum computing attack though. PIVX is better in that regard.
2. Zcash: A decentralized and open-source cryptocurrency that hide the sender, recipient, and value of transactions. Offers users the option to make transactions public later for auditing. Decent privacy coin, though no default privacy
3. Verge: Calls itself privacy coin without providing private transactions, multiple problems over the last weeks has a toxic community, and way too much hype for what they have.
4. Bytecoin: First privacy-focused cryptocurrency with anonymous transactions. Bytecoin’s code was later adapted to create Monero, the more well-known anonymous cryptocurrency. Has several scam accusations, 80% pre-mine, bad devs, bad tech
5. Bitcoin Private: A merge fork of Bitcoin and Zclassic with Zclassic being a fork of Zcash with the difference of a lack of a founders fee required to mine a valid block. This promotes a fair distribution, preventing centralized coin ownership and control. Bitcoin private offers the optional ability to keep the sender, receiver, and amount private in a given transaction. However, this is already offered by several good privacy coins (Monero, PIVX) and Bitcoin private doesn't offer much more beyond this.
6. Komodo: The Komodo blockchain platform uses Komodo’s open-source cryptocurrency for doing transparent, anonymous, private, and fungible transactions. They are then made ultra-secure using Bitcoin’s blockchain via a Delayed Proof of Work (dPoW) protocol and decentralized crowdfunding (ICO) platform to remove middlemen from project funding. Offers services for startups to create and manage their own Blockchains.
7. PIVX: As a fork of Dash, PIVX uses an advanced implementation of the Zerocoin protocol to provide it’s privacy. This is a form of zeroknowledge proofs, which allow users to spend ‘Zerocoins’ that have no link back to them. Unlike Zcash u have denominations in PIVX, so they can’t track users by their payment amount being equal to the amount of ‘minted’ coins, because everyone uses the same denominations. PIVX is also implementing Bulletproofs, just like Monero, and this will take care of arguably the biggest weakness of zeroknowledge protocols: the trusted setup.
8. Zcoin: PoW cryptocurrency. Private financial transactions, enabled by the Zerocoin Protocol. Zcoin is the first full implementation of the Zerocoin Protocol, which allows users to have complete privacy via Zero-Knowledge cryptographic proofs.
9. Enigma: Monero is to Bitcoin what enigma is to Ethereum. Enigma is for making the data used in smart contracts private. More of a platform for dapps than a currency like Monero. Very promising.
10. Navcoin: Like bitcoin but with added privacy and pos and 1,170 tps, but only because of very short 30 second block times. Though, privacy is optional, but aims to be more user friendly than Monero. However, doesn't really decide if it wants to be a privacy coin or not. Same as Zcash.Strong technology, non-shady team.
11. Tenx: Raised 80 million, offers cryptocurrency-linked credit cards that let you spend virtual money in real life. Developing a series of payment platforms to make spending cryptocurrency easier. However, the question is if full privacy coins will be hindered in growth through government regulations and optional privacy coins will become more successful through ease of use and no regulatory hindrance.

Market 5 - Currency Exchange Tool

Due to the sheer number of different cryptocurrencies, exchanging one currency for the other it still cumbersome. Further, merchants don’t want to deal with overcluttered options of accepting cryptocurrencies. This is where exchange tool like Req come in, which allow easy and simple exchange of currencies.

1. Cryptonex: Fiat and currency exchange between various blockchain services, similar to REQ.
2. QASH: Qash is used to fuel its liquid platform which will be an exchange that will distribute their liquidity pool. Its product, the Worldbook is a multi-exchange order book that matches crypto to crypto, and crypto to fiat and the reverse across all currencies. E.g., someone is selling Bitcoin is USD on exchange1 not owned by Quoine and someone is buying Bitcoin in EURO on exchange 2 not owned by Quoine. If the forex conversions and crypto conversions match then the trade will go through and the Worldbook will match it, it'll make the sale and the purchase on either exchange and each user will get what they wanted, which means exchanges with lower liquidity if they join the Worldbook will be able to fill orders and take trade fees they otherwise would miss out on.They turned it on to test it a few months ago for an hour or so and their exchange was the top exchange in the world by 4x volume for the day because all Worldbook trades ran through it. Binance wants BNB to be used on their one exchange. Qash wants their QASH token embedded in all of their partners. More info here https://www.reddit.com/CryptoCurrency/comments/8a8lnwhich_are_your_top_5_favourite_coins_out_of_the/dwyjcbb/?context=3
3. Kyber: network Exchange between cryptocurrencies, similar to REQ. Features automatic coin conversions for payments. Also offers payment tools for developers and a cryptocurrency wallet.
4. Achain: Building a boundless blockchain world like Req .
5. Req: Exchange between cryptocurrencies.
6. Bitshares: Exchange between cryptocurrencies. Noteworthy are the 1.5 second average block times and throughput potential of 100,000 transactions per second with currently 2,400 TPS having been proven. However, bitshares had several Scam accusations in the past.
7. Loopring: A protocol that will enable higher liquidity between exchanges and personal wallets.
8. ZRX: Open standard for dapps. Open, permissionless protocol allowing for ERC20 tokens to be traded on the Ethereum blockchain. In 0x protocol, orders are transported off-chain, massively reducing gas costs and eliminating blockchain bloat. Relayers help broadcast orders and collect a fee each time they facilitate a trade. Anyone can build a relayer.

Market 6 - Gaming

With an industry size of $108B worldwide, Gaming is one of the largest markets in the world. For sure, cryptocurrencies will want to have a share of that pie.

1. Storm: Mobile game currency on a platform with 9 million players.
2. Fun: A platform for casino operators to host trustless, provably-fair gambling through the use of smart contracts, as well as creating their own implementation of state channels for scalability.
3. Electroneum: Mobile game currency They have lots of technical problems, such as several 51% attacks
4. Wax: Marketplace to trade in-game items

Market 7 - Misc

There are various markets being tapped right now. They are all summed up under misc.

1. OMG: Omise is designed to enable financial services for people without bank accounts. It works worldwide and with both traditional money and cryptocurrencies.
2. Power ledger: Australian blockchain-based cryptocurrency and energy trading platform that allows for decentralized selling and buying of renewable energy. Unique market and rather untapped market in the crypto space.
3. Populous: A platform that connects business owners and invoice buyers without middlemen. Invoice sellers get cash flow to fund their business and invoice buyers earn interest. Similar to OMG, small market.
4. Monacoin: The first Japanese cryptocurrency. Focused on micro-transactions and based on a popular internet meme of a type-written cat. This makes it similar to Dogecoin. Very niche, tiny market.
5. Revain: Legitimizing reviews via the blockchain. Interesting concept, though market not as big.
6. Augur: Platform to forecast and make wagers on the outcome of real-world events (AKA decentralized predictions). Uses predictions for a “wisdom of the crowd” search engine. Not launched yet.
7. Substratum: Revolutionzing hosting industry via per request billing as a decentralized internet hosting system. Uses a global network of private computers to create the free and open internet of the future. Participants earn cryptocurrency. Interesting concept.
8. Veritaseum: Is supposed to be a peer to peer gateway, though it looks like very much like a scam.
9. TRON: Tronix is looking to capitalize on ownership of internet data to content creators. However, they plagiarized their white paper, which is a no go. They apologized, so it needs to be seen how they will conduct themselves in the future. Extremely high market cap for not having a product, nor proof of concept.
10. Syscoin: A cryptocurrency with a decentralized marketplace that lets people buy and sell products directly without third parties. Trying to remove middlemen like eBay and Amazon.
11. Hshare: Most likely scam because of no code changes, most likely pump and dump scheme, dead community.
12. BAT: An Ethereum-based token that can be exchanged between content creators, users, and advertisers. Decentralized ad-network that pays based on engagement and attention.
13. Dent: Decentralizeed exchange of mobile data, enabling mobile data to be marketed, purchased or distributed, so that users can quickly buy or sell data from any user to another one.
14. Ncash: End to end encrypted Identification system for retailers to better serve their customers .
15. Factom Secure record-keeping system that allows companies to store their data directly on the Blockchain. The goal is to make records more transparent and trustworthy .

Market 8 - Social network

Web 2.0 is still going strong and Web 3.0 is not going to ignore it. There are several gaming tokens already out there and a few with decent traction already, such as Steem, which is Reddit with voting through money is a very interesting one.

1. Mithril: As users create content via social media, they will be rewarded for their contribution, the better the contribution, the more they will earn
2. Steem: Like Reddit, but voting with money. Already launched product and Alexa rank 1,000 Thumbs up.
3. Rdd: Reddcoin makes the process of sending and receiving money fun and rewarding for everyone. Reddcoin is dedicated to one thing – tipping on social networks as a way to bring cryptocurrency awareness and experience to the general public.
4. Kin: Token for the platform Kik. Kik has a massive user base of 400 million people. Replacing paying with FIAT with paying with KIN might get this token to mass adoption very quickly.

Market 9 - Fee token

Popular exchanges realized that they can make a few billion dollars more by launching their own token. Owning these tokens gives you a reduction of trading fees. Very handy and BNB (Binance Coin) has been one of the most resilient tokens, which have withstood most market drops over the last weeks and was among the very few coins that could show growth.

1. BNB: Fee token for Binance
2. Gas: Not a Fee token for an exchange, but it is a dividend paid out on Neo and a currency that can be used to purchase services for dapps.
3. Kucoin: Fee token for Kucoin

Market 10 - Decentralized Data Storage

Currently, data storage happens with large companies or data centers that are prone to failure or losing data. Decentralized data storage makes loss of data almost impossible by distributing your files to numerous clients that hold tiny pieces of your data. Remember Torrents? Torrents use a peer-to-peer network. It is similar to that. Many users maintain copies of the same file, when someone wants a copy of that file, they send a request to the peer-to-peer network., users who have the file, known as seeds, send fragments of the file to the requester., he requester receives many fragments from many different seeds, and the torrent software recompiles these fragments to form the original file.

1. Gbyte: Byteball data is stored and ordered using directed acyclic graph (DAG) rather than blockchain. This allows all users to secure each other's data by referencing earlier data units created by other users, and also removes scalability limits common for blockchains, such as blocksize issue.
2. Siacoin: Siacoin is decentralized storage platform. Distributes encrypted files to thousands of private users who get paid for renting out their disk space. Anybody with siacoins can rent storage from hosts on Sia. This is accomplish via "smart" storage contracts stored on the Sia blockchain. The smart contract provides a payment to the host only after the host has kept the file for a given amount of time. If the host loses the file, the host does not get paid.
3. Maidsafecoin: MaidSafe stands for Massive Array of Internet Disks, Secure Access for Everyone.Instead of working with data centers and servers that are common today and are vulnerable to data theft and monitoring, SAFE’s network uses advanced P2P technology to bring together the spare computing capacity of all SAFE users and create a global network. You can think of SAFE as a crowd-sourced internet. All data and applications reside in this network. It’s an autonomous network that automatically sets prices and distributes data and rents out hard drive disk space with a Blockchain-based storage solutions.When you upload a file to the network, such as a photo, it will be broken into pieces, hashed, and encrypted. The data is then randomly distributed across the network. Redundant copies of the data are created as well so that if someone storing your file turns off their computer, you will still have access to your data. And don’t worry, even with pieces of your data on other people’s computers, they won’t be able to read them. You can earn MadeSafeCoins by participating in storing data pieces from the network on your computer and thus earning a Proof of Resource.
4. Storj: Storj aims to become a cloud storage platform that can’t be censored or monitored, or have downtime. Your files are encrypted, shredded into little pieces called 'shards', and stored in a decentralized network of computers around the globe. No one but you has a complete copy of your file, not even in an encrypted form.

Market 11 - Cloud computing

Obviously, renting computing power, one of the biggest emerging markets as of recent years, e.g. AWS and Digital Ocean, is also a service, which can be bought and managed via the blockchain.

1. Golem: Allows easy use of Supercomputer in exchange for tokens. People worldwide can rent out their computers to the network and get paid for that service with Golem tokens.
2. Elf: Allows easy use of Cloud computing in exchange for tokens.

Market 12 - Stablecoin

Last but not least, there are 2 stablecoins that have established themselves within the market. A stable coin is a coin that wants to be independent of the volatility of the crypto markets. This has worked out pretty well for Maker and DGD, accomplished through a carefully diversified currency fund and backing each token by 1g or real gold respectively. DO NOT CONFUSE DGD AND MAKER with their STABLE COINS DGX and DAI. DGD and MAKER are volatile, because they are the companies of DGX and DAI. DGX and DAI are the stable coins.

1. DGD: Platform of the Stablecoin DGX. Every DGX coin is backed by 1g of gold and make use proof of asset consensus.
2. Maker: Platform of the Stablecoin DAI that doesn't vary much in price through widespread and smart diversification of assets.

EDIT: Added a risk factor from 0 to 10. The baseline is 2 for any crypto. Significant scandals, mishaps, shady practices, questionable technology, increase the risk factor. Not having a product yet automatically means a risk factor of 6. Strong adoption and thus strong scrutiny or positive community lower the risk factor.
EDIT2: Added a subjective potential factor from 0 to 10, where its overall potential and a small or big market cap is factored in. Bitcoin with lots of potential only gets a 9, because of its massive market cap, because if Bitcoin goes 10x, smaller coins go 100x, PIVX gets a 10 for being as good as Monero while carrying a 10x smaller market cap, which would make PIVX go 100x if Monero goes 10x.

Airline Award Booking Basics

Feb 9 2019
There are tons of videos and trip reports out there, reporting how someone got a great award ticket in awesome FIRST CLASS! Everyday on this sub, we have people come in and say “Hey, I have xxxK UR points, Now what?”
This post is meant to be an Intro Guide to Award Booking, focusing on using Miles and Points to book awards outside of the various travel portals. The intent is not to show you how to book all awards, but understand the basic anatomy of an award booking so you can begin to know what questions you need to ask and answer.

The Basics

This section is important, as you need to understand the various parties involved in an award booking.

Frequent Flyer Program

This is the actual FF program, typically operated by a specific Airline. Most program tracks a FF balance using the term Miles. For example, a member of the program can have nnn Miles. Note that some programs name their Currency Points or other names, but for simplicity, we will refer to all of them as Miles. Some basic rules that applies to most FF Programs are: Miles are not transferable to other FF programs, so if you have AA Miles, they will always be AA miles. Miles can expire based on each program’s terms and conditions. Miles can only be used to redeem awards based on that program’s award chart and rules. You cannot join Miles from different FF programs to book an award.
Note, joining FF programs are usually, if not always, free. Just visit the Airline’s website and sign-up, providing your information and creating an account. Note, when signing up to a FF program, always use your full and accurate name as identified on your Passport. If you leave out your middle name, or use an abbreviation or alias, you may run into issue when you try to book and use award tickets.

Frequent Flyer Program Rules

Each Program has rules. The rules define the following:

• How many Miles you can accrue when you purchase a ticket.
• How can you earn Status in the program.
• Can Miles be freely shared between 2 program members. The answer is most oftenly No, but some programs such as BA Avios, ANA, and JetBlue offer family pooling features for free.
• What are the expiration rules surrounding the Miles. A key point to understand is that Most if not ALL programs believe they own the Miles. You are not the legal owner of any Miles. So the program has maximum freedom in defining how and if you can use them, or when you will lose them. Some programs will expire Miles so many months after earning them. Other programs will extend them based on certain conditions being met.
• How many Miles does it cost to redeem an award, most oftenly covered in an Award Chart. Certain programs such as JetBlue or Southwest roughly translates Miles to a fixed monetary value for redemption. Delta has decided that they will price award seats at whatever level they feel is right, so you won’t find an award chart for Delta.
• How much does it cost to redeem an award on partner airlines. Most oftenly covered in a Partner Award Chart. Some airlines such as Alaska has a separate award chart for each partner.
• Can you book one-way award flights, or are you required to book Round Trip?
• What are the fees associated with booking an award. For example, are there close in booking fees? Does the airline impose additional fees and surcharges on award bookings? Does the program pass along Fuel Surcharges from partner airlines?
• What are the rules surrounding stopovers, layovers, or open jaw. Basically, how you can take advantage of a ticket to visit the most cities possible.
• What are the rules and costs around changing or cancelling an award.
• Who can be a passenger. Certain airlines such as ANA and Korean Air only allow booking awards for direct relatives. Enforcement is specific to each airline with such rules, but don’t expect you can book an award for your BFF on any airline without reading up the rules.
• How far out you can book a ticket, and how long is the ticket good for. Almost all airlines limit award ticket travel to maximum of 1 year out.
• Can an award ticket contain segments of travel served by multiple partner airlines?

Airline Alliances

Airline Alliances are partnerships, created to provide a connected experiences for customers traveling outside the operational area of a particular airline. So when a customer purchases a ticket, the ticket may span flights operated by multiple airlines of an Alliance. The luggage may be through-checked through the final destination (foreign travels usually require luggage to be retrieved and examined at Port of entry), and your FF status is observed across the Alliance. For example, you may want to fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo, stop for a week, then fly to Hong Kong. You may find that on that ticket you bought from AA that the first segment, LAX-NRT, is on a flight operated by AA (Referred to as AA Metal). But the next segment, NRT-HKG, is on Cathay Pacific Metal, even though you are still on an AA ticket.
There are 3 major Alliances that many airlines belongs to: One World, Star Alliance, and Sky Team. There are some airlines such as Alaska that has direct partnership with a number of airlines, but does not belong to any of the 3 main alliances. Some of these unique alliances often create excellent value for award seekers.
When dealing with Award Tickets, the common misconception is that you can transfer Miles between Partners. Miles in a particular FF Program cannot be transferred to Miles in a different Program (with very specific exceptions, such as BA and Iberia,owned by the same parent company). However, through the use of Partner Award charts, you can use your miles to book flights operated by other Airlines. For example, your Korean SkyPass Miles cannot be transferred to Delta. However, you CAN book KE award tickets on Delta operated flights using your KE Miles. The cost would be based on KE’s partner award chart, and the availability will depend on whether Delta makes any award seats available to KE. Note that airlines often make more award seats available to their own FF members than partners.
A couple of terms here you need to be familiar are: Ticketing Airline is the airline that you redeemed an award. So if you used AA miles to redeem an award with AA, AA is the ticketing airline. Operating Airline is the airline that actually flies you from point A to B. Each award ticket has a Ticketing Airline, and one or more Operating Airline. Note that prior to day of travel, any issues or changes must be done though the Ticketing airline. On the day of travel, the Operating airline has control of the ticket, in order to deal with operational issues.
Since each program has different award charts and costs, this leads to the ability to arbitrage, provided you can earn enough Miles in a particular program. As a matter of fact, it maybe cheaper, relatively speaking, to book a flight not using the operating airline FF miles, but use a partner Miles since that award chart has a lower cost.

Transferable Points

A number of credit card companies, and one specific Hotel, allows you to transfer their points to Airline FF programs. This ability offers the freedom to hold points in a convertible currency, rather than in a specific FF program. These programs include the Chase Ultimate Rewards Points (UR), American Express Membership Rewards Points (MR), Citibank ThankYou Points (TYP), Capital One Venture Miles, and Marriott Bonvoy Points. Note that each of these program can only transfer to a limited selection airlines and hotel programs. For example, UR’s cannot be transferred to ANA, and only Marriott can transfer to AA. This information becomes important as if you want to save up Points for a redemption, you need to know if the points can transfer to your desired program.
I will be putting together separate articles on each of the transferable points, and their partners.

Class of Service

Let’s be honest, many people get into award tickets because the price of airline travel is a significant chunk of change. Furthermore, ever want to fly in those comfortable Business or First class seats?
If you ever try to book a premium class ticket, especially on international routes, you will find that a Business Class ticket can cost 5 to 10 times more than an Economy Class ticket. A first class Round trip to Japan is $20,000, but an Economy ticket can be easily under $1000. Where this gets interesting, is that if you look at an award chart, a First Class award ticket would only cost 2-3x more than a Economy award ticket. This is why a lot of people uses Miles to book premium awards.
Some common lingo on Class of Service:

• Y: Economy Class
• PE: Premium Economy
• J: Business
• F: First

Upgrading a paid ticket with Miles

People often ask whether they can upgrade a paid seat to a higher class of service. Programs such as United allows these types of upgrades. However, almost all such programs requires the original paid ticket to be the most un-restricted (i.e. Expensive) ticket of that class. For example, EVA allows you to upgrade from Y to J, but the Y ticket must be a full fare ticket. Often times, the full fare Y ticket is almost as expensive as buying a J ticket on sale, and most people don’t buy those tickets unless work is buying them last minute.
So yes, there is often a way to upgrade a Y ticket, but if you bought the Y ticket on the cheap, the upgrade would not be allowed. In addition, the operating airline must also make such upgrade award seats available.

Types of Award Ticket

In addition to Class of service, some airlines also offer different types of award tickets. While airlines may name them differently, the most common ones are “Savers” awards, and “Anytime” awards.
“Savers” are the cheapest award tickets in terms of points, and airlines will release only a certain number of these seats. Once these awards are gone, the airline is unlikely to release more. Usually, some or all of the Savers are released to partner airlines. So if you are hoping to use a partner program to book award seats, the operating airline must make Savers available first. Since not all Savers seat are bookable by partners as operating airline may reserve certain number of them for their own members, you may be forced to pay a higher cost and use an airline’s own Miles, rather than rely on a lower cost on a partner airline award cost.
“Anytime” are awards airlines make available to their own program members. Anytime awards are not dependent on award seats being made available, but can be redeemed anytime. As expected, these awards are usually much more expensive than Savers in terms of Miles, but offers the ability to get the last available seat on a flight. Anytime awards are not made available to partners, so when you are search partner awards, you need to make sure the availability you found are not Anytime awards.

Planning to Book an Award

After all that, I’m about to take you through the steps in booking an award ticket. Note that this is not on purposely confusing, but it is a reflection of booking awards is not easy.

Origination and Destination(s)

First of all, you need to be sure where you are flying from, and where you want to fly. This actually is not so straight forward.
If you live near a large city with a well served airport, then where you flying from could be straight forward. However, if you live near a smaller airport, you will have to deal with connections and layovers/transfers. When buying a ticket, you often just see the repositioning flight priced into the ticket.
When dealing with an award ticket, all bets are off. Let say you are in Reno, and you want to fly to Hong Kong on Cathay’s wonderful F product. You do your foot work, and find the award seat available on the date you want to travel. Unfortunately, you need to catch that CX flight in Los Angeles, and there are no Reno to LAX award seats available on AA or AS. You now have to choose: You can hope that CX F award seat remains available until AS/AA opens up a Savers award seat, or you can buy another ticket to reposition yourself to LAX in order to catch the CX flight.
There are certain awards, such as using Virgin Atlantic Miles to fly ANA F, that cannot have a repositioning flight. So unless you reside near an airport that ANA flies to directly, you are stuck with buying a repositioning flight.
As for Destination, it’s easy when you are visiting one place and then return. It’s more complicated if you want to visit 2 or more countries on that trip. You need to study up whether the FF program allows Stopovers, or Open JAW, or offer something like United’s excursion perk, in order for you to visit as many places as possible on one award ticket.

Dates

The dates you wish to travel is very important to award booking. Let’s explain something about award tickets. Airlines don’t like planes flying with empty seats. When you are already carrying 190 people, filling the last 10 seats on a 200 person capacity plane have very low incremental cost. If the airline thinks there are a bunch of seats that won’t be sold or generate any revenue, the airline will make those seats available as award seats. Conversely, when the airline knows that they will sell every seat, then they are unlikely to make any award seats available. Why would they settle for the incremental revenue from an award seat, while they can sell a ticket?
So basically, award seats are seats that the airlines don’t think they will sell. Some airlines have a practice to make n number of award seats available on each flight, and those airlines are well loved in this hobby for their predictability. Many airlines also wait until 1-2 weeks before travel date, and open up any still unsold seats for award travel.
So coming back to the dates and how airline practices impacts your award plans. If you are trying to book on a date when the airlines will sell every seat, you are unlikely to find award availability as the airlines are likely to reserve those for paying customers. For example, Spring Break and Summer Vacation in Hawaii, long weekends to anywhere, and Christmas in Australia are all difficult redemptions in terms of availability. Not impossible, but difficult. In addition, if you are booking on an airline that always releases seats 330 days in advance, you may have to book them 330 days i advance. Some people book them within minutes of those seats becoming available.
A typical scenario often asked by newcomers, is that I want a fantastic vacation 3 months from now, during summer. Or I finally got my points, and would like to visit Japan in 4 months. These types of requests are often during peak travel times, to very popular destinations. 3-4 months is just making your life harder as most awards are likely gone before then.
Another scenario is someone only has 5 week days of vacation, so they are trying to travel on a Saturday, and come back the net Sunday to max out their time not he ground. Well, hundreds of other people would love to travel those specific time, and the award seats will again be hard to come by. Specific travel dates, or even times, is rough when planning award travel. To maximize your chance of success, be flexible.
How flexible? First, can you fly out on a Tuesday or Wednesday? If you can avoid the peak travel dates for a particular route, you are more likely to find award seats. This applies to the return as well, as a matter of fact, can you stay a couple of days more or one day less, in order to find the award seats. How about flying to a different city? If you can’t find seats to Paris, what about flying into Frankfurt, and then take a train to Paris?
Also, plan plan plan. If you know that every year, you will be flying into SoCal for Christmas, can you book that award seat 330 days in advance? Don’t wait until 3-4 months out.

Get The Names RIGHT!

For the folks who haven’t travelled much, it is absolutely important that the name on the award ticket is exactly the same as the name on the passport. If the names do not match, you might not be able to fly. Or worse, you might fly out, but the foreign immigration agent may not let you on your return trip because you left out your middle name.
So before booking any award ticket, or indeed, signing up to a FF program, make sure the name you use for all passengers are exactly the same as the name on the passport. Sometimes, people ask about getting married during that time and a name change. If you can, leave your passport unchanged, same as the award ticket, until after the travel is done. Note that airlines can no longer just Change the Name on a ticket. For an award ticket, this may involve cancelling the award ticket, and hopefully you can book another under the new name, while paying the cancellation fees.
While we are here, let’s talk about Passport expiration when traveling to foreign countries. Many countries will not allow entrance unless your passport has an expiration date 3 months or 6 months in the future. Make sure you understand those rules are before doing foreign travel. While you are at it, make sure you understand whether the country you visit require a visitor Visa.

Search for Award Availability

Given that almost every airline has a website that allows you to book travel, it would seem like searching for award seats should be really straight forward. The fact is that searching for award travel is a huge pain. You also need to be prepared to call the airlines in question, and plan to talk to a real person, possibly not having English as a primary language.
In the most basic scenario, you are using Miles from the ticketing airline that is also the operating airline. In this case, booking is relatively straight forward. You login into the airline’s site, and use their flight search functionality. Usually, there is a checkbox that says something like “Use Miles”. Check that, and then search based on your destination and dates. If any award seats are available, the website will show those to you, along with the cost in Miles. Note that not all airlines would indicate whether an award is a Savers or Anytime award, so as you look at flights, you may see similar itinerary priced very differently. If you find what you need and acceptable, just book them through the website.
For a more complex scenario, you are trying to book a partner flight from an airline website. For this example, let’s say you have AA Miles, and trying to book a J award flight from ORD-HKG, operated by Cathay Pacific. You first go to the AA website, and enter the desired dates. When the list of available flights show up, no J awards, and no CX operated flights at all. You do have a bunch of AA Y awards with 2 transfers showing up. In this case, the issue isn’t that there are no award seats, but the fact that the AA website does not show all partner award seats. If you go to the Alaska Airlines website, and enter the same dates, you see that there is a J award on CX. What it comes down to is you need to know which airlines website to use to find the award seats for each partnership, and whether you actually have Miles in that airline’s program is irrelevant.
In general, if you are looking for an award seat for any airlines in OneWorld, you should search using British Airways or Qantas website. When dealing with Star Alliance, the United website is sometimes good (Except as of Feb 2019, SQ, Thai, and Turkish flights are NOT showing up on United), but ANA and Aeroplan are often more complete. For SkyTeam, the common recommendation is to use the Air France Flying Blue website. Once you think you found an award seat available, write down the dates, time, and flight numbers, and then CALL your FF program airline to try to book the ticket. Note that the award will cost what the ticketing airline want to charge, and not the airline you used to search for availability.

Phantom award seats

There are multiple types of Phantom awards, and you need to be mindful when searching award seats.
The first type is just wrong information. You may often find an award, but it actually does not exist. So let say you found that elusive pair of J tickets, and you call in AA to book them. After you give the CSR the flight information, the CSR says there are no award seats. Giving the CSR exact flight information and operating airline can help, but often times, what you are seeing is A) a system glitch or B) an inexperienced CSR. Your best bet in these situations is HUCA (Hang up and call again). If 3 different CSRs are telling you no award seats, then you can be pretty sure that you are seeing Phantom awards.
The second type of Phantom awards is Partner Availability. Since each airline may often reserve awards to their own FF, the award seat you found maybe only bookable by members of that FF. For example, if you find 3 J award seats on CX, your Alaska agent may only see 1 or 2 seats. The only way to determine if this is the case is to read a lot about other people’s experience when attempting the same awards.
The third type of Phantom awards is really just False Advertisement. Let say you are trying to book a nice F seat to Sydney, and woah, AA is showing 2 F seats available from LAS-LAX-SYD! If you look carefully, there is marking for “Mixed Class”, digging in deeper, you see that AA is offering you the LAS-LAX in F on a regional jet, and the LAX-SYD flight is in Y. Of course, AA website is pricing this as a F award ticket all the way. So before you start to despise your CSR because the person can’t find that F seat you found, be careful and make sure there is an actual F award on the long flights.
While we are here, let’s talk a bit about Married Segment. Airlines are in competition with other airlines, so they may price match a competitor on a certain itinerary. So if Airline A offers XXX-ZZZ at a good deal, Airline B would offer XXX-YYY-ZZZ at a good price as well. The same behavior happens in award availability. Some airlines may offer award seats if you book XXX-YYY-ZZZ, but there are no award seats if you just want to fly YYY-ZZZ.

Transfer the Points/Miles

This section probably requires one or more guides on it’s own, but I’ll try to cover the basic here. Let say you have a nice stash of convertible points, say UR, and you just found the ideal flights on United. Since UA is a transfer partner for UR, you go to the UR website, transfer the necessary points to your UA account, and book the ticket on the UA website. Piece of cake, right?
Well, this assumes a couple things have to go right: A) you are transferring to an allowed UA account, B) the transfer occurs instantaneous. For example, people often tries to transfer UR points to their SO or BFF accounts, and Chase imposes certain restrictions to prevent selling of points. Also, there have been reports of people initiating a transfer, and the points do not show up for days.
So here are some guidelines when transferring points you should follow:

• Understand how long a transfer SHOULD take by reading other people’s experiences. Also watch for current system status, as systems sometimes are problematic, and certain transfers are temporarily not allowed.
• Understand the rules on whose FF account you can transfer points to.
• Understand if there are velocity limits as to number of transfers allowed per time period. AmEx may block transfers if you try more than 1 transfer in a short period of time.
• Setup the linkage between your convertible points account and the FF account. One thing i do is do a test transfer of 1,000 points month before I need them, and make sure they arrive in the right FF account.
• Pray that when the points arrive, the award seat is still available.
• Have a backup plan if the points don’t get there on time. Remember, most if not all such transfers are non-reversible. The only cases where they may be reversed is if the Bank Really Screwed Up.

Some airlines allows limited Hold on an award ticket while the points are being transferred. Korean Airlines was really good, as you could hold an award for months. Sadly, UR can no longer be transferred to KE. But you may want to research the airline’s hold policy and use that to reduce your risk.

Booking the Award

OK, we are at the main event. For some of us, successfully booking an award may even be more exciting than the actual trip…

Prerequisite

• You have already written down the Dates, Time, Operating Airline, Flight Numbers. Through your searches, you already know how many F/J/Y seats are available on each of those flights.
• You have the Passport names for each of the passenger. Ideally, you have the FF number for each passenger as well for the ticketing airline.
• If you are planning for a paid reposition flight, you already searched and found seats on the desired flights. I will have a separate short guide on buying reposition flights.
• You have Miles already in the FF program. If each of passenger has Miles in their own account, make sure each account has sufficient Miles. Unless Airlines offer pooling option, you can’t just move a couple thousand Miles from one account to another.
• You’ve done the research, and understand the potential fees involved for the award ticket. You also understand the change/cancellation rules.

The Call

This section assumes the award ticket you need cannot be easily booked on the ticketing airline website.

• Call the FF Program airline, and ask for Award Reservations.
• Let the CSR have: Number of passengers, class of service (Y/PE/J/F), origination, destination, date, and operating airline information. Offer up that you have specific flight information, but don’t force that onto the CSR immediately. It will take time for a CSR to catch up to where you’ve spent weeks building up.
• If the CSR finds the availability, have them confirm the date, time, flight number, and award cost.
• Provide the passport names of each of the passenger, triple check this!
• Confirm the final cost in Miles as well as Fees need to be paid via CC.
• Provide CC information.
• Get the PNR or Passenger locator number. Note that if you are flying on a partner flight, make sure you get the PNR for the partner airline as well.
• Congrats! Once you have a PNR, your award is booked. You are not quite done though.

After the Call

Here are the things I do after booking an award. Depending on the airlines involved, you can usually complete these in the next 2-5 days.

• Make sure the award is properly tickets. For example, AA often has partner award tickets in the state “On Request”. I basically check each day and see if it has moved to “Ticketed”. In the past, I’ve called in 4 days after, and found that AA needed a bit more information, which is why the award was not ticketed.
• Make sure the operating airline knows about me and my award ticket. You can usually go to the operating airline’s website, and choose an option to Manage Trip/Reservations. By entering the operating airline’s PNR and passenger name, you can check if the airline has your information correctly (Double check each passenger name!), and if the ticket is issued properly.
• While at the operating airline website, I usually enter travel documentation information, such as passport number and expiration dates. When possible, I also use that to select seats. I also enter contact information in case the flight changes. When booking tickets 330 days in advance, you will often see schedule changes.

Watch the Award Ticket each month

Once you booked an award, you need to watch your award tickets regularly. Here are the reasons you need to do this:

• Airline schedule changes. Your flight may have moved up 2 hours, or moved back an hour. If you have a connecting flight, you need to make sure any scheduled changes don’t break the connecting flight. Airlines are supposed to catch these, but you need to do everything you can to prevent travel disruptions the day of.
• Equipment change. Let say you selected your ideal premium seat, and then the airline change the flight to be operated by a regional jet configuration. The airline isn’t going to change the equipment back for you, but you could select a different seat, or maybe be moved to a different flight.
• Flight cancellation. The flight that you have planned for months have been cancelled for that date. In the ideal case, the airline has another flight they can put you onto, but if no award seats are available, they may not be able to do so. In this case, having the ticketing airline being the operating airline is better. If Delta cancels a flight, it is more likely for Delta to open an award seat on another flight to get you where you want to go. If you booked your CX flight with AA miles, and CX cancels the flight, and no other CX flights that day have award seats, you may end up with a free refund of your AA miles. On certain routes, AA may try to route you on their own metal, but that is only if the ticketing airline offer flights on that route.

Ideally, the ticketing airline should contact you if any changes occur to your flight. In practicality, the communication is often lost or confusing. By checking in on your ticket regularly, you have more time to make adjustments to your trip.

What if you need to change/cancel the award ticket?

Understand the rules about award ticket changes for the ticketing airline before booking that award ticket! Each FF program is very different in this regards. For example, AA allows changing the dates, operating airlines, and routing of your award ticket, provided that the origin and destination remains the same. If you want to cancel, you will incur a fee of $150 per passenger per ticket. Singapore allows you to make a change to an award ticket, but you need to pay 3,000 SQ miles. British Airways allows you to cancel an award ticket, and all you need to pay is the taxes on the original ticket. Read the rules of each FF program you plan to use, so you can set your expectations accordingly.
Note that if the change is out of your control, such as a schedule change by the operating airline, you usually get a free shot to cancel a ticket with no cost. So if you are booking flights far in advance, and your plans changed, don’t be hasty in paying the cancellation fee. You might want to wait for an airline schedule change, and use that to cancel your ticket for free.

What is next?

There are tons of topics we did not cover in this Basics guide. How to transfer Points, how to actually search for rewards, how to determine which FF to use, etc. Let me know what topics you would like to see me cover in the future.