I have been trying to find a single thread that captures my excitement about @helium and haven’t managed so I figured I’d write it myself.

Here goes:
1/ today, if you want to connect a device to the internet wirelessly you have a few limited choices: cellular, wifi etc.

2) But cellular is expensive ($40/yr) and a big battery hog, and wifi requires configuration and is short distance.

It means that a lot of things that might be connected - bike trackers, pet collars, local weather sensors - end up ‘dumb’.

3) in my industry of Micromobility almost nothing sold natively connects to the internet, despite they being smart and having batteries etc.

4) Imagine if your bike cost 80% less to insure because it could be tracked easily in the event it was stolen, and if it diagnosed you had an issue, you got an email from you bike shop telling you they’d ordered your replacement part and to bring it in on Tuesday to be fixed.

5) but the tech to make that happen hasn’t been available to date. There hasn’t been a cheap, wireless network that is ubiquitous.

Till now.

As @wlazar puts so beautifully here, traditional IoT has struggled to scale. https://twitter.com/wlazar/status/1373655029299568644?s=20

6) those who have built the IOT networks to date are selling to clients who have super specific needs - mission critical, real time communications.

What this has meant is that the networks built are expensive and proprietary. No one who’s paid for it wants to open it up.

7) and so as a result, there’s massive fragmentation with different standards (LoRaWan, NB-IoT, WiSUN, even Apples Find My etc) and no solution has emerged with cheap, ubiquitous coverage.

As a result, no one wants to build products that offer connectivity.

8) enter @helium.

They picked a pretty boring, and in many ways, technically sub-par networking technology (LoRaWan) but innovated on the business model - rather than build their own network, they paid users to ‘claim’ coverage with crypto tokens.

9) the network has gone from 0->26k ‘hotspots’ covering 3k+ cities globally in less than 18 months. It’s already the worlds biggest LoRaWan network.

At this rate, I estimate that we’ll have ‘ubiquity’ of coverage (ie where 95% of people live) within a few years.

10) so there’ll be global coverage while still letting users who want to send data on the network have cheap costs.

Broadcasting a location every 10 seconds costs <$1/yr worth of data.

It’s so cheap that makers of products will just include free data in the cost of the thing.

11) why does this matter? Because finally makers of products will be able to cheaply integrate connectivity into their products knowing that there’ll be reception for the customer wherever they are.

12) I feel it most acutely with owned Micromobility. We have been looking for a solution like this - cheap BOM, data costs and reliable coverage.

It’ll take a little while to integrate into product roadmaps but I envisage it will become the standard everyone uses.

13) I expect every ebike or scooter sold in 3-5 years to be ‘connected with Helium’. But also every streetlight, water meter, air quality monitor and more.

It breaks the fragmentation problem with ubiquity.

The flywheel is spinning.

H/t @TusharJain_ https://multicoin.capital/2021/03/17/the-helium-flywheel/

14) what does this mean for you? If you’re excited about the project, consider getting a hotspot or look to buy some $HNT for exposure.

Talking to @wlazar the other day about how big we thought this network could get he said ‘I can’t see an upper bound’. That stuck with me.

15) the total value of the top 25 telcos is around $2.5T.

This will eat the market for IOT data transfers from the bottom up and at scale I could easily see it capturing 1+% of the telco market.

If valued like that, the network could easily be worth $50B+

16) It’s currently trading at a $1.3B Mcap.

@JMFayal did a great job explaining the somewhat binary nature of Helium future.

TL;DR: it’s either worth $0 or it’s worth $x000/HNT in the long term. https://twitter.com/JMFayal/status/1363273546991034368?s=20

17) all of which is to say that I’m incredibly excited about the project and the potential for ubiquitous, cheap connectivity for things everywhere.

It feels like crypto is finally delivering real world solutions beyond just degen casino trading.

18) i also want to give a shout-out to @amirhaleem and @fmong who just relentlessly ship. They’re super humble and focussed. It’s awesome to watch.

19) if you like this, you might also like my @MicromobilityCo podcast with @amirhaleem here https://micromobility.io/podcast/95-why-low-cost-low-bandwidth-data-will-unlock-micromobilitys-potential-with-amir-haleem-ceo-of-helium?format=amp

20) or the webinar I did with @fmong here:

Disclosure: I own $HNT.

21) oh and with the team looking to add other standards via the Dewi Alliance - if that happens and this becomes the new standard for everything telco then I’m fairly sure I’m totally undercooking where $HNT goes.