When I think of why so many people can't get comfortable with ETH as an asset, I think of Taleb's concept of a Procrustean Bed.

ETH doesn't fit into reductive categories or cookie cutter narratives - it's just different.

And that's fine, it highlights how unique ETH truly is.
Often times when people discuss what money is on here, they attempt to jam cryptocurrencies into some preconceived notion of what money is.

Isn't the whole point of all this that we're reinventing money, not simply digitizing it?

What money is, is changing.
Btw none of this is to say that we should throw all history and analytical models out the window.

This isn't a "Bubbles are mathematically impossible in this new paradigm" tweet.

Its just that old models may not be perfect for understanding what's going on here.
For those unfamiliar with the bed of Procrustes analogy.
fs.blog/2013/09/the-be…

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More from @RyanWatkins_

9 Nov
On November 18, Zcash will undergo its first halving which will drop its inflation rate from 25% to 12.5%.

But will it matter?

And where does Zcash fit into the crypto monetary stores of value anyways?

1/
The problem with Bitcoin, and nearly every other cryptocurrency, is that they’re completely transparent.

Even just making a simple payment to a counterparty may reveal your entire financial history on Bitcoin - a status quo that is unacceptable to many.
messari.io/article/zcash-…
Storing your assets in transparent addresses and attempting to “anonymize” them through technologies like mixers only to return to transparent addresses doesn’t solve this issue.

Read 13 tweets
2 Nov
The idea that token holders can passively extract rent without providing equal value to a protocol is unsustainable.

In the long-run, token holders will likely need to be active network participants or assume some of the risk of the system to be viable.

1/
Projects like Maker are at the more ideal end of the spectrum.

MKR holders backstop the entire MakerDAO system.

For assuming this risk they are rewarded with the systems’ income.

This risk also incentivizes MKR holders to be active managing the protocol’s risk.
At the opposite end of the spectrum are tokens that simply extract fees from owning the property everyone uses.

They need not assume any of the systems’ risk.

In many cases they just vote on proposals that protocol politicians create, who so far are just unpaid labor.
Read 9 tweets
28 Oct
Proposal to rethink @iearnfinance's capital allocation strategy.

Rather than distributing income to YFI stakers now, Yearn should use income to buy back YFI to reinvest in growth.

The goal is to maximize long-term value creation for YFI stakeholders.

1/
gov.yearn.finance/t/proposal-ret…
Yearn is DeFi’s leading yield aggregator and one of its most exciting community-run projects.

But it's still in its infancy with much work to be done.

This YIP could meaningfully improve the attractiveness of contributing to Yearn, by providing contributors with upside to YFI.
There are many community members that create enormous value for Yearn, yet did not participate in the initial YFI distribution or buy YFI early.

It would be beneficial to all stakeholders in the long-run if these contributors may also participate in the financial upside of YFI.
Read 6 tweets
27 Oct
DeFi protocols now store billions of dollars in assets and facilitate billions of dollars in financial activity daily.

But how do they actually create and capture value?

1/
This summer it was easy to ignore longer-term questions of sustainability and competitive advantage when all DeFi asset prices were rising.

But now that the market has cooled down, more level heads may now prevail and position for the next stage of DeFi.

messari.io/article/defi-c…
Value creation in DeFi all starts with a balance sheet.

DeFi protocols are coordination mechanisms that define rules and provide incentives in order to facilitate financial activity.
Read 10 tweets
22 Oct
yUSD is an incredible product, but it’s also one of the riskiest stablecoins available on Ethereum.

In addition to compounded smart contract risk, yUSD’s risk of peg loss is the sum risk of all its underlying stablecoins losing their peg, combined.

1/
If even a single one of the underlying stablecoins in the yPool (USDT, TUSD, USDC, DAI) underlying yUSD loses its peg, yUSD will also lose its “peg”.

There is nothing insuring against this risk and Curve is clear about this on the risk section of their website.
This peg risk may be addressed in the future by allocating the underlying stablecoins elsewhere to protocols that backstop against this risk, or don’t introduce it altogether, but for now it’s there.

Other ideas for how to insure against this would also be welcomed.
Read 8 tweets
21 Oct
🤯 Ethereum now transacts two times more value than Bitcoin daily.

This is what a cryptoeconomy looks like when it starts to find product-market fit.

1/
There are two key developments over the past year that made this all possible: stablecoins and DeFi.

The two provided a strong foundation for real financial activity to take place on Ethereum.

messari.io/article/ethere…
Ethereum’s progress has been so incredible that it will likely becomes the first public blockchain ever to settle $1 trillion in a year.
Read 6 tweets

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