This week, we look at:
The Bitcoin money supply being worth as much as the M1 of several countries
The Visa/Plaid deal DOJ anti-trust filing and the PayPal integration of Bitcoin
Understanding Central Bank Digital Currencies in the context of card networks, payment processors, and digital economies
Chinese CBDC and how it could relate to stopping the $34B Ant Financial IPO
How a CBDC ecosystem is like an operating system, rather than a payment rail
In this conversation, we talk with Jamie Burke of Outlier Ventures. This is a fascinating and educational conversation that covers frontier technology companies and protocols in blockchain, IoT, and artificial intelligence, and the convergence of these themes in the future. Jamie walks us through the core investment thesis, as well as the commercial model behind shifting from incubation to acceleration of 30+ companies. We pick up on wisdom about marketing timing and fund structure along the way.
This week, we look at:
M&A in decentralized finance, focusing on the Yearn protocol and its targets Pickle, Cream, Akropolis
The motivations behind such M&A, and where economic value collects
The importance of community and security, creating increasing returns to scale
Sometimes more is more, and sometimes less is more.
In that spirit, we strongly urge you to check out Messari’s Crypto Theses for 2021. It is a mammoth work of 134 pages, covering each and every development in the ecosystem.
If you don’t want to fuss around with the email gate, the direct link is here.
We are going to pick out five things that are interesting to us substantively and provide a view below. By pick out, we mean screenshot and respond.
This week, we look at:
Proposed US regulation from FinCEN, legislation from the House of Representatives, and UK FCA registration requirements that would impact the crypto industry
The difference between competition for share within an established market, and competition between market paradigms (think MSFT vs. open source, finance vs. DeFi)
The crypto custodian moves from BBVA, Standard Charters, and Northern Trust
The bank license moves from Paxos and BitPay, as well as the planned launch of a new chain by Compound, in the context of the framework above
Permissionless finance is a paradigm breach. It pays no regard for the very nature of the incumbent financial market. Without banking, it creates its own banks. Without a sovereign, it bestows law on mathematics and consensus. Without broker/dealers, it creates decentralized robots. And so on. It tilts the world in such a way as to render the economic power of the incumbent financial market less important. Not powerless -- the allure of institutional capital is a constant glimmer of greedy, opportunistic hope. But the hierarchy of traditional finance does not extend to DeFi, and thus has to be re-battled for the incumbent. This is cost, and annoying.
This week, we look at:
The spectacular price increase in crypto assets, hitting new records for Bitcoin, as well as the comparable statistical situation around Covid cases
An explanation of the $1.5 trilion income effect in 2020, and how it has led to both capital acumulation and inequity (thanks NY Times!)
A discussion of all-time-highs and all-time-lows, why we need them, and their connections to the macro-economy, computer code, music, and the universe itself
One wonderful takeaway from Watts, which of course is not his, but beautifully plagiarized into the English language, is the duality of experience. The need for polar opposites, in a clock-like cycle. To have black, you must have white. To have the top of the wave, you need the bottom of the wave. To have a melody, you need equally the presence of the notes, and their absence in silence. To breathe in, you need to breath out. It is meaningless to have a data point without the context in which it exists.
This week, we look at:
How banks and financial advisors have failed to deliver on $1 trillion in capital appreciation for their clients over the last 12 years
The role of bank regulators in the United States, and the tensions between state and federal agencies
How the OCC is laying the groundwork for national banks to custody crypto assets, bank stablecoin reserves, run blockchain nodes, and use crypto payment networks
And instead of financial advisors or other CFAs guiding the retail market in good decision making, a newsfeed of *what’s popular* has driven Apple, Google, Tesla and the other John Galt hallucinations to the stratosphere. Don’t get us wrong. We love the robot as much as the next Fintech commentator. But it is clear to us that “the masses” are not being “advised”. And that the capital appreciation that matters — cementing the next trillion dollar networks for global future generations in work yet to emerge — is misunderstood and misrepresented by most financial professionals to their clients.
his week, we look at:
There are two very large revenue pools in the crypto asset class — (1) mining, and (2) trading. There are some large revenue pools in crypto-as-a-software, too, but those tend to be less sensational.
This analysis will establish a 2021 baseline for the most regulated of crypto exchanges, Coinbase, including a detailed financial model building a $100B+ valuation case
We then consider the valuations and multiples of capital markets protocols in Decentralized Finance of Ethereum, now making up over $60B in token value
Lastly, we look at Binance’s $1B in profits, its $35B BNB token, and the activities on Binance Smart Chain
In this conversation, we talk with Patrick Berarducci of ConsenSys, about the valuations and multiples of capital markets protocols in Decentralized Finance on Ethereum, now making up over $60B in token value. Additionally, we explore the nuances of scaling Ethereum and its solutions, such as Metamask and the emerging Layer 2 protocols.
We also discuss law and regulation, including a fascinating story about Bernie Madoff from when Pat was a practicing attorney. This leads into a conversation about the embedded compliance nature of blockchain and crypto technology, the early days of ConsenSys, the path of crypto brokerages like Coinbase, and Metamask exhibiting emerging qualities of a neobank.
