Long Reads Sunday #75.
In this edition, we continue to plow through end of year content, digging deeper into the battle to shape the story of 2020, as well as check in on some key happenings from last week, including a bit of regulatory rancor! Strap in, it’s long reads time!
In this edition, we continue to plow through end of year content, digging deeper into the battle to shape the story of 2020, as well as check in on some key happenings from last week, including a bit of regulatory rancor! Strap in, it’s long reads time!
2/ First, a quick announcement! My daily podcast analyzing the key crypto narratives is BACK, rebranded as “The Breakdown,” and is now being distributed by @CoinDesk. Check out Friday’s episode breaking down comments on stable coins from the ECB president coindesk.com/breakdown-why-…
3/ Friday’s Breakdown also dug into the absolutely most interesting debate of the week in crypto, which was the response to @jillruthcarlson EOY piece for @CoinDesk, which argued that perhaps crypto isn’t *DESIGNED* for mainstream adoption. coindesk.com/cryptocurrency…
4/ As you might expect, a piece with a point that…well, pointed…was going to bring up a lot of response. Many agreed. @TheStalwart had himself gotten into some fights a couple months ago making basically the same point.
5/ Others, however, were somewhat less enthused. The critiques I saw tended to fall into a few categories. Some felt like it was a pretty bitcoin specific conversation that perhaps ignored much happening in other realms such as DeFi
6/ Some interpreted “most useful for censored activities” to mean “most useful for illegal activities,” although @jillruthcarlson was very strong on the point that that is not necessarily the case.
7/ Interestingly, when Jill did a poll rephrasing the argument slightly (and steering clear of the legalistic language) 61% of the 5700+ voters agreed with it.
8/ Themes of the piece are actually echoed in another from @CoinDesk’s end of year series by @gladstein, who writes that many more dissidents could be taking advantage of bitcoin but don’t know what it can do for them. coindesk.com/dissidents-and…
9/ The reason I think this is worth spending so much time on is that I believe it gets at the heart of two important narratives. The first is this notion of bitcoin (and DeFi like DAI, depending on who you ask) as a tool to overcome repression that has been a key 2019 theme
10/ The second is a narrative that I see trying to claim its place heading into 2020, which is a return of the idea of experimenting with tokenized networks for use cases other than money. @yanivgraph captured this in a thread debating Jill’s piece
11/ My sense is that there is a significant amount of pent-up energy in experiments that got their intellectual start during their ICO days, but basically haven’t had narrative room since then because of how warped the token landscape got.
12/ This tweet from @Arthur_0x gets at it: “We shouldn’t forget that a well designed crypto economics is an extremely powerful tool of aligning incentives of network participants.” That was the theory of 2017 that really never got to be tested
13/ One last note on this point, last week not one but two of the biggest 2017 vintage token projects resurfaced. First, Coinbase announced that it would be listing the token for Orchid’s decentralized VPN project. Check out @Timccopeland’s recent profile
14/ Second, after a huge amount of waiting and anticipation, the decentralized file storage project @MineFilecoin announced that there testnet was live. All this taken together and I smell a new narrative brewing
15/ Okay, that was a whole lot of narrative talk, so let’s do some quick hits on more news-y items. First, crypto got a rare cross over into mainstream media this week, although unfortunately it was for arrests in a $722 million dollar Ponzi scheme.
16/ Another bit of regulatory action came from the SEC as it charged the Shopin CEO with fraud surrounding their $42m ICO. It turns out that the consequences of all those “partnership” announcements are more than just seeming annoying on Twitter.
17/ Over in the world of central banks, new European Central Bank head Christine Lagarde caught crypto Twitter’s attention with her comments on the need for the ECB to explore stablecoins.
18/ On the other hand, running counter to what we’ve seen from central banks over the past several months, after a study the Swiss government has said that a digital Swiss franc would actually do more harm than good. More from @Dan_Z_Palmer for @CoinDesk coindesk.com/new-risks-swis…
19/ There was also a fair bit on the topic of mining in the conversation. Reuters wrote an article about miners using derivatives to hedge against fluctuations in the hashrate - a surprisingly in depth look from MSM reuters.com/article/us-cry…
20/ @Binance CEO @cz_binance captured attention when he said that “Mining is highly encouraged in China now” - saying that it’s effectively a tool of control for the government
21/ Speaking of attention, much attention was on an extended conversation with @mcuban on his skepticism around bitcoin - particularly around its ability to capture consumer interest. @PhilJBonello hones in on a key point
22/ One person who is doing their damndest to tell that story in understandable ways is @rhythmtrader, who this week published a piece titled “Bitcoin Is A Hedge Against Your Government”
23/ A couple new resources for you to keep in mind. @sassal0x compiled a great list of DeFi tracking tools and @spencernoon is launching a new newsletter/community around on-chain metrics
25/ And there we have it! Another LRS in the books. As always, you can get this via email at getrevue.co/profile/nlw and finally..
26/ Please please subscribe to The Breakdown! Over the next few weeks I’m going to have some absolutely awesome guests who will be joining the conversation to share what they think the narrative of 2019 was, and predictions for 2020 plnk.to/nlw?to=page
