Excited to share our 2020 #Bitcoin review.

2020 will be remembered as the year the long fabled institutions finally arrived and #Bitcoin became a bonafide macroeconomic asset.

Below are the top highlights of each month for Bitcoin’s historic year.

1/
Bitcoin is now at all-time highs capping off an extremely successful year.

But it was by no means stable ride up.

2020 was a historically volatile year.

@YoungCryptoPM and I provided a detailed overview of every month of 2020 in all its glory.

messari.io/article/bitcoi…
Jan.

3 days into the new year the US assassinated Iran’s top general Soleimani.

BTC surprisingly reacted to the events behaving like a safe haven as the risk of war increased.

The events provided the first hints of BTC potentially having graduated to a legitimate macro asset.
Feb.

COVID-19 reached a tipping point causing markets to crash.

BTC’s correlation with the S&P 500 reached an ATH in the following weeks.

This is when everyone learned BTC was not a recession hedge, it was a hedge against inflation and loss of confidence in fiat currencies.
Mar.

Financial markets in free fall.

The liquidity crisis was so severe BTC experienced one of it’s worst days ever.

Now known as Black Thursday, on March 12, BTC plummeted as much as 50% to below $4,000 at its lowest point on the day.

BTC closed the day down 40%
The sell-off was so violent that cryptocurrency market structure broke due to a cascade of large liquidations on derivatives exchanges.

With turmoil in broader financial markets as the backdrop central banks start printing and governments launch bazooka stimulus packages.
Apr.

Money printer goes brrr meme goes mainstream.

By the end of the month the top four central banks had printed more than $3.5 trillion in just seven weeks.

QE infinity, 0% interest rates, and MMT enter the conversation.

The inflation narrative for #BTC is planted.
May.

Legendary macro investor Paul Tudor Jones revealed that his Tudor BVI fund would be investing a “low single-digit percentage” of its assets under management in Bitcoin.

Says BTC is the fastest horse in the inflation hedge race and says BTC Reminds him of gold in 1976.
The Bitcoin halving came on May 11, reducing issuance per block from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC.

Despite all the hype around the halving it was ultimately uneventful...

Surprise surprise.

messari.io/bitcoin-halvin…
Jun.

The most boring month of the year for Bitcoin.

Despite all the action in Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem and broader financial markets, Bitcoin traded range bound between $9,000 and $10,000 for 60 days starting at the end of May.

It was kind of eerie.
Jul.

The OCC granted national banks and federal savings associations authority to provide cryptocurrency custody services to customers.

This provided regulatory clarity for banks and paved the way for them to launch cryptocurrency products.

theblockcrypto.com/post/72628/us-…
Aug.

MicroStrategy (MSTR) announced it purchased $250mm worth of Bitcoin (21,454 BTC) as part of a new capital allocation policy aimed at hedging inflation.

MSTR would go on to purchase 70,470 BTC over the next few months.

Its current holdings are worth over $1.7 billion.
Sep.

Bitcoin tokenized on Ethereum reached over $1 billion (~92,600 or 0.5% of the total Bitcoin supply).

This growth was primarily fueled by yield opportunities in Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem.

There is now nearly $3.5 billion of BTC on Ethereum.
Oct.

First day of the month, the DOJ and the CFTC filed charges against BitMEX.

The group was accused of operating an unregistered trading platform and violating CFTC rules, including AML and KYC regulations.

BTC surprisingly barely flinches on the news.
On Oct 8, Square announced it had purchased $50 million worth of Bitcoin (4,709 BTC) for its treasury.

On Oct 21, PayPal launched a new service enabling its 325 million users to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrency.

Fwiw we noticed an interesting trend.
Nov.

Bitcoin received yet another major institutional validation, this time from legendary macro investor Stanley Druckenmiller who said he owned BTC.

Weeks later Citigroup published a report stating that BTC could reach $318,000 by the end of 2021.

coindesk.com/citibank-bitco…
At the end of November Bitcoin begins flirting with all-time highs off the strength of increased institutional interest.
Dec.

MassMutual becomes 1st insurance firm to buy Bitcoin.

UK based investment manager Ruffer Investment buys Bitcoin.

Guggenheim CIO Scott Minerd stated that the BTC could reach over $400,000 based on the assets scarcity and the relative value to gold.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
On December 16, Bitcoin finally breaks all-time highs and blows past the $20k psychological barrier.

It was the biggest sign that a new era for Bitcoin had arrived - market validation.

Not surprising, a day later, Coinbase announced it was going public. messari.io/article/coinba…
In the years leading up to 2020 it was clear to many that Bitcoin 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 become valuable as a fixed supply digital store of value, but it was unclear when it 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 become so.

As Covid-19 came into the picture this year the “when” question became more discernible.
In response to the economic effects of Covid-19 governments around the world have inflated money supplies at historic rates, causing many to begin to question the value of fiat currencies.

linkedin.com/pulse/changing…
This has accelerated the timeline for when Bitcoin matters as investors search for inflation resistant assets to hedge against potential fiat currency devaluations.

Bitcoin has the added kicker that it’s an inflation hedge fit for the Digital Age.
#BTC is playing an increasingly important role in the global monetary system, and with institutional grade infrastructure and regulatory clarity, the pathway for increased institutional adoption of Bitcoin in 2021 is clear.

Hope yall enjoy our 2020 review
messari.io/article/bitcoi…

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More from @RyanWatkins_

28 Dec
Nearly all the recent growth in total value locked in DeFi since the summer has come from BTC, stablecoins, and other ERC-20s.

What does this mean for ETH?

1/
Pet rock 1.0 (BTC) looks like it’s about to reach parity with pet rock 2.0 (ETH) in total value locked in DeFi 👀
Lol gave ETH bulls hopium earlier today, now giving them hard questions.

I’m actually not too concerned about the above charts, but I can’t pretend it’s not a risk.

We’ve been talking about this for a while.

messari.io/article/defi-i…
Read 5 tweets
22 Dec
On the surface index protocols appear to just be vehicles for passive exposure to cryptoassets.

However under the hood they're much more powerful than that.

Through meta-governance index protocols may be an attractive DeFi aggregation play through voting power accumulation.

1/
It all starts with the premise that index protocols are fundamentally community governed pools of assets that can be used to provide investors:

1. Passive asset exposure
2. Yield from vault strategies
3. Governance delegation through meta-governance

Index protocols are the latest attempt at DeFi aggregation - a topic we’ve explored multiple times.

The reason why is simple - Web2 aggregators have accrued trillions of $$$ in value by occupying powerful positions in value chains throughout the economy.

messari.io/article/value-…
Read 6 tweets
19 Dec
There’s a growing dichotomy between tokens championed by venture funds vs tokens championed by hedge funds.

VC tokens:
- larger insider allocations
- more core team driven
- methodical iteration

HF tokens:
- little to no VC backing
- more community driven
- rapid iteration
I don’t think one class is necessarily better than the other.

But one of the most important features of DeFi is the democratization of financial opportunities.
And the clearest benefit of projects HFs like right now (YFI, SUSHI, AAVE, SNX, etc) is that their communities got in on the ground floor and feel empowered.

When tokens are only available to the public after 10x - 100x it’s just not that same.
Read 5 tweets
10 Dec
There’s been a ton of development in the Yearn ecosystem recently to the point where it’s worth asking again:

What the hell is Yearn?

@jotto and I did a deep dive into the theory of Yearn to breakdown what Yearn is and where it’s going.

1/
It all starts with the theory of the protocol.

Protocols are coordination mechanisms that define rules and provide incentives for market participants to facilitate economic activity at a global scale.

messari.io/article/the-th…
The second building block to understand Yearn is to understand a key premise of DeFi:

DeFi provides individuals unprecedented access to financial opportunities traditionally reserved for HNW individuals and regulated financial institutions.
Read 20 tweets
7 Dec
On Thursday I posted a proposal to the PowerPool community to create a Yearn Ecosystem Token Index (YETI).

One common question about the proposal was about CVP’s presence in the index.

TL;DR: CVP is an integral part of each PowerPool Index.

1/
CVP is included in each PowerPool index for two reasons.

The first is to enable index holders to participate in PowerPool governance.

Each index holder's voting power will be a function of their share of CVP locked in the index.

messari.io/article/unders…
Index token holders will be able to vote on all proposals and collect rewards using this CVP locked in the index.

For example each PIPT (PowerPool’s first index) holder's voting power will be a function of their share of the 12.5% of CVP in the PowerIndex pool.
Read 13 tweets
3 Dec
Proposal for Yearn Ecosystem Token Index (YETI) - a PowerPool index consisting of YFI, SUSHI, CREAM, AKRO, COVER, K3PR, CVP, PICKLE

YETI will create a simple vehicle to invest in Yearn’s ecosystem, while also coordinating governance among its protocols through meta-governance.
The index will serve two purposes.

For investors it would create a passive vehicle for broad exposure to the Yearn ecosystem - like an index on the Yearn conglomerate of protocols.
For Yearn it would be a way of formalizing its recent mergers, aligning the treasuries and governance systems of the protocols in its ecosystem.
Read 6 tweets

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