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Long Reads Sunday #30.
Grin goes live; Ethereum Constantinople delays; Wyoming leading the regulatory pack; 2019 as year of the DAO?; hostile token takeovers and, of course, ⚡ lightning. 2019 is revving up so smash those coffee mugs, it’s long reads time. /1
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Grin goes live; Ethereum Constantinople delays; Wyoming leading the regulatory pack; 2019 as year of the DAO?; hostile token takeovers and, of course, ⚡ lightning. 2019 is revving up so smash those coffee mugs, it’s long reads time. /1
👇
2/ Let’s start with something great. Crypto is demonstrating the rising global competition b/n states & nations for citizenship/revenue. In the US, Wyoming is showing leadership around crypto legal clarity. Big announcement explained by @CaitlinLong_
3/ In addition to being good for crypto companies and good for the state, Wyoming’s regulatory leadership also provide a point of reference for those, like this former Congressman, arguing that protecting crypto innovation needs to be a policy goal thehill.com/opinion/techno…
4/ Speaking of regulation, a narrative has emerged that, because of the government shutdown, the promising VanEck/SolidX Bitcoin ETF will be auto-approved. @jchervinsky explains why that’s actually unlikely
5/ Not everyone in DC has stopped working though. Check out @neerajKA’s recap of demonstrating the Lightning network in Congress in the first of what is a planned series of 2019 briefings to be held by the Congressional Blockchain Caucus
6/ To many, continued growth and development around Lightning is one of the most exciting things in the space. @lawmaster dug into the metrics to understand node growth, evolving decentralization and more
7/ That wasn’t the only LN coverage from @TheBlock__ this week, with @arjunblj contributing this massive overview of technology and infrastructure advances across the network theblockcrypto.com/2019/01/18/fro…
8/ Lightning is already a pretty good counterpoint to those saying Bitcoin’s SoV use case doesn’t fulfill Satoshi’s vision, but for the hold outs, Bitcoin historian @danheld has 47 tweets for ya on why SoV was always the primary intention
9/ One of the key questions around digital currencies is which properties of money come first. @KyleSamani stirs up a good convo, arguing that the fact that money already exists means replacing a failing UoA may be more important initially than a new SoV
10/ One project that has designed itself to emphasize the medium of exchange use is Grin. The much-buzzed about privacy-centric project launched to mainnet this week amidst what @wheatpond estimates to be north of $100m in VC mining interest proofofwork.substack.com/p/proof-of-wor…
11/ Grin’s launch provoked some great debates. What does it mean to have a “fair launch” with so much immediate capital interest? Is Grin just another distraction from BTC? The thread below is just one example
12/ One great piece of content around the Grin launch came from @ByteSizeCapital, who used a comparative analysis of XMR, ZEC, and RVN to suggest we should be patient and reasonable in our short term expectations
13/ One more interesting observation around Grin came from @DoveyWan, who noticed that some exchanges started trading before it was even minted, and pointed out that it represents a larger problem of effectively printing BTC
14/ Another big conversation this week surrounded Ethereum and their planned Constantinople upgrade. For larger context and background, check out the 2018 Ethereum year in review piece by @0xstark @danielzak @evan_van_ness medium.com/@jjmstark/the-…
15/ To better understand the larger Ethereum roadmap, you can’t do much better than this “engineer’s guide to ETH2.0” by @_prestwich hackernoon.com/what-to-expect…
16/ Much of this week was spent talking about the postponement to the planned Constantinople hard fork. To understand what happened:
@5chdn thread of threads
@MyCrypto explainer
postmortem @teo_leibowitz theblockcrypto.com/2019/01/16/a-c…
@5chdn thread of threads
@MyCrypto explainer
postmortem @teo_leibowitz theblockcrypto.com/2019/01/16/a-c…
17/ There was also a bit o’ chitchat stirred up by @prestonjbyrne with this post arguing about how effectively centralized Ethereum is. As long as “decentralization” is bandied about as a possible legal standard, we’re going to have convos like this prestonbyrne.com/2019/01/18/eth…
18/ There was also some great bull content re: Ethereum as well. @spencernoon wrote a good thread exploring how defensible Ethereum’s DeFi moat is while @Steven_McKie @hthillman @hrdwrknvrstps wrote about Ethereum’s scalability path medium.com/connext/the-ca…
19/ Just a few more threads and essays to share before we wrap.
@scalarcapital @jcliff42 tries to break away from price thinking with a recap of 5 technology advancements from last year that have him excited for what’s to come
@scalarcapital @jcliff42 tries to break away from price thinking with a recap of 5 technology advancements from last year that have him excited for what’s to come
20/ Speaking of recaps, @twobitidiot’s 96 Theses for Crypto in 2019 is worth a bookmark and some serious reflection. Top bets?
LN growth will blow up; Etheruem faces serious competition; ICOs are dead; Privacy will cause headaches medium.com/@twobitidiot/9…
LN growth will blow up; Etheruem faces serious competition; ICOs are dead; Privacy will cause headaches medium.com/@twobitidiot/9…
21/ I really liked this thread by @ercwl about why crypto will find its best and most native expression with kids, who are both well-suited to aspects of crypto culture and who don’t bring expectation baggage with them
22/ @La__Cuen wrote a great piece about the battle to launch 2018 vintage stablecoins and how much it was driven by competitive exclusive discounting. coindesk.com/stablecoin-cry…
23/ @SarahJamieLewis wrote a characteristically passionate thread about the perils of technologists trying to prescribe how their technologies are to be used.
“Abstinence & Prohibition are the two least effective strategies…for minimizing harm” 👏👏👏
“Abstinence & Prohibition are the two least effective strategies…for minimizing harm” 👏👏👏
24/ Two reports of note. First, @ARKInvest published their “Big Ideas 2019,” which goes beyond but includes crypto. ark-invest.com/research/big-i… Second @BitMEXResearch and @thetokenanalyst collabed on a report about use of ICO funds
25/ One project I’ve been watching closely is the Moloch DAO, which is a new approach to resource coordination for public infrastructure around projects like Ethereum. @simondlr contributes some great thoughts on it medium.com/@simondlr/the-…
@simondlr 26/ Speaking of DAOs, @stefanobernardi argues that a set of factors - including the globalization of talent, emergence of DeFI, deplatforming and global instability - make it possible that 2019 will be “the year of the DAO tokeneconomy.co/why-2019-will-…
27/ This conversation sparked by @VitalikButerin about consumer friendly approaches to key management seems actually quite important. I tend to agree that there is going to be *some* consumer standard that involves compromise; but what?
28/ From the news files, two interesting stories: 1) Bakkt may not be live, but it isn’t sitting still, completing its first acquisition theblockcrypto.com/2019/01/14/wer… 2) You can now buy BTC at the grocery store thanks to Coinstar geekwire.com/2019/can-now-b…
29/ Check out this fascinating story from @danprimack about a planned hostile takeover of XRP. axios.com/newsletters/ax… If this is interesting, I recommend @Andy_bromberg’s writing on the topic medium.com/@andy_bromberg…
30/ Finally, inspired by the awesome engagement around @APompliano’s weekly “What’s the best thing you read” tweet - I asked a similar version but for tweet-length ideas. Some super interesting stuff came back:
31/ And that’s a wrap! Get LRS via email getrevue.co/profile/nlw and, as always, let me know what you thought was great and what I missed. Happy Long Reads!
APPENDIX 1/ meant to include this piece by @davidzmorris about major game companies exploring crypto. Continues to be one of the most interesting areas to watch breakermag.com/the-people-beh…
