Beliefs shape reality. The Crypto Narrative Index tracks the stories shaping the crypto discourse, in order that they can inform without provoking tactical over-correction and volatility. Here’s a thread summing up the first index. /1👇 tokeneconomy.co/market-narrati…
2/ The core idea animating this is that market narratives are marketing or, at least, that anyone sharing a narrative has an upside - be it financial or in terms of social status. Narratives are attempts at self-fulfilling prophecy.
3/ The context for this first narrative was the big down swing that happened at the beginning of last week. Unlike many recent movements, the slide was notable for how much worse it was for ETH and alts than for BTC.
4/ The first category of narratives I’m looking at are “Emergent” - basically new narratives shaping the conversation. Last week saw the emergence of the “ETH Death Spiral” as a thing that was happening, not just a thing that could happen.
5/ Ascendent narratives are those that have been around but are on the rise. Alongside the specific death spiral concept, the last month has definitely seen an uptick in Etherum skepticism, exemplified by @TetrasCapital’s Ethereum Bearish Thesis medium.com/@tetrascapital…
6/ A couple more pieces on the Ethereum skepticism. @JonathanCheesm4 wrote this “wake up call” medium.com/@jc_78614/a-wa… and it was hard to avoid this newsletter last week:
7/ Maybe the biggest “winner” was the rise of "Fat Monies" over the last couple months. Many have noted how quickly sentiment has shifted in this direction. For a good primer, check out this podcast with @eriktorenberg, @arjunblj & @MustStopMurad
8/ Of course, as Fat Monies is rising, so too are the arguments that belief in the essential importance of crypto as digital money doesn’t preclude being interested in other uses for blockchains.
9/ A narrative relating to price that saw an increase recently was the “Decoupling” - which is in short a sense that a separation in price between Bitcoin and the rest (or even a basket of BTC & top alts & the rest) represents maturity in the markets
10/ One more ascendent narrative. A few weeks ago, there was a big hullabaloo about whether holding BTC was free riding. Since then, the notion of holding (store of value) being *the use case* for Bitcoin has gotten much stronger. See @BMBernstein's piece tokeneconomy.co/cryptocurrenci…
11/ The flip side of the above ascendent narratives was definitely the relinquishing of place of the Fat Protocols thesis that animated crypto for the previous couple years. Whether this reduced status sticks is yet to be seen.
12/ What about narratives that are floating around but not really a big thing yet? I put these together in a “Watchlist”
13/ I’m really interested in the "Usage Bull” narrative which thinks that it takes some meaningful usage from a breakout dapp (or series?) to get the markets excited again. @cburniske’s thread here explores the gap between usage value/speculative value
14/ What if it’s not fat protocols but Fat Apps that can capture value? I’m watching to see if this fat app idea starts to provide a counter narrative for the strict crypto-is-only-good-as-money narrative. Start with this @KyleSamani / @multicoincap piece:
15/ The conversion about security tokens as such as been on a few week low ebb, but within that, there is a growing vibrant conversation about crypto native security tokens that can help new types of organization flourish. See @stefanobernardi’s recent: tokeneconomy.co/58-fully-digit…
16/ So that's the first Crypto Narrative Index. I’m really interested: what are other narratives that you’ve seen that we should be keeping an eye on? What’s emerging?
PS many thanks to @yanroux and @stefanobernardi for publishing and for working so hard to make Token Economy the great resource it is.
