1) This three tweet thread from 2021 is the "why" behind crypto. It remains the best thing I've ever written.
2) We're going back to "crypto" (native, organic, punk rock) vs. "Web3" (bad juju, consultant approved, weak) in 2023.
More Personal Wallets, Privacy, DeFi, DePIN.
Less exchanges, black box lenders, and ponzinomics.
3) The core crypto thesis hasn't changed.
Crypto is inevitable because we're winning on talent and capital, we benefit from generation change to digital natives, and there have been dozens of high impact, open source innovations developed in the past year.
4) The biggest problems of this cycle (exchange & lender fraud and mismanagement, smart contract hacks, etc.) will be solved by entrepreneurs who want to build the next crypto unicorns.
Crypto problems tend to yield unicorn companies.
5) Bitcoin is in a historic "buy" range in terms of MVRV - only seen three times in the past decade: Jan 2015, Dec 2018, and Mar 2020.
We're also 18 months out from the halving, and bitcoin is the only crypto considered an "outside money" candidate for USD reserve skeptics.
6) The Ethereum Merge was the greatest technical achievement in crypto in the past five years.
The EVM is now entrenched as the default crypto operating system, and ETH's economics make it a compelling, yield generating asset for a new crop of asset managers.
7) In PoS systems, your market cap is your security. Alt-L1s have much higher structural selling pressure next year (FTX and distressed funds, unlocks, high staking rewards) than Ethereum.
That will make it even harder for them to chip away at ETH's lead post-Merge.
8) The entire DeFi market cap is $12.5 billion.
I'm betting it will outperform it's peer group in banking over the next 1, 3, and 5 years.
9) NFTs are an $8bn market cap asset class. Almost all of that is in PFP projects.
I hope you like the jpegs you own.
Median individual NFT resale value will continue to plummet, but the number of NFT projects will continue to explode. Bullish picks and shovels like OpenSea.
10) Decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) are the most important area of investment in crypto right now.
Censorship risks and platform risks are real.
DePIN like Filecoin, Arweave, Helium, Livepeer, etc. solve those problems.
11) We'll see a flight to "fundamentals" with tokens that have actual users / customers surviving and everything else sucking serious wind.
2022 was an "up year", but we're pacing for an 80% decline in funding YoY.
Entrepreneurs: MAKE IT LAST!
13) Last year we were talking about IPOs and SPACs. This year we're talking about distressed M&A and restructurings. Beneficiaries will be startups with big balance sheets and institutions that want to enter the market on the cheap.
14) Binance and Coinbase are the most important CeFi entities in crypto. All exchanges face regulatory threats, but the juggernauts will be SAFU and weather the storm.
In fact, they and the surviving exchanges will come out stronger on the other side of this cycle.
15) Policy situation is this:
+ We prevented DCCPA from making it into law this year (good), but now comprehensive legislation is unlikely
+ We will hopefully get good stablecoin law
+ Two years of legal battles with the SEC (XRP et al), CFTC (Ooki et al), Treasury (privacy)
🤷♂️
16) Contagion could end if DCG-Genesis-Gemini situation is resolved.
DCG will be significantly weakened by the crisis at Genesis at minimum. (Sell Luno? CoinDesk? Foundry?)
Gemini needs a resolution to avoid regulatory hell.
17) Silvergate *should* be fine based on how conservatively they ran the bank.
But Elizabeth Warren is on the warpath and parroting short-seller talking points to serve her ulterior motive of punishing a crypto friendly bank.
18) You can't just cancel countries.
More countries USD reserve ratios are going to start falling in the coming years. A competitive and private USD-denominated stablecoin could help soften the blow and keep dollars our leading export.
19) Bitcoin mining is still majority "dirty." I'm no climate hawk, but I also think we shouldn't reopen coal plants to mine bitcoin if we don't need to.
Bullish public-private partnerships that lean on miners as a load balancing money battery. e.g. bullish flared gas mining.
21) I spent a month with the Messari team writing The Theses. You can view if here, and fill in the rest of the Theses in the replies. My work here is done.
I've been writing a bit about political theory, and crafting 2025+ plans to modernize and shrink government using modern tech.
But an important starting point is to explain WHY these ideas / technologies are inherently right wing.
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2/ First, some context:
It occurred to me last week that I've been taking a major assumption for granted: the fact that the media, academia, administrative state, HR-Legalist corporate Stasi, NGO complex, and Big Tech are universally aligned with Democrats is still seen broadly as an "alt-right" conspiracy vs. emerging political reality.
The mention of the mere existence of this “Polygon” is a marker you are on the "New Right" or have been "Red pilled," but it sounds insane to outsiders who don’t fully appreciate the political realignment that has taken place since 2016.
I want to back up and try to visualize the political realignment and explain what is actually happening.
3/ The Political Realignment Matrix
To start, I'd ask you to treat the consensus view that Democrats *leadership* has moved to the Progressive Left and Republican *leadership* has moved towards Trump’s brand of MAGA Populism.
With that assumption, I’ve overlayed models from five different political analysts who share this view, in order to explain how the 2024 election has become a referendum on our *establishment institutions.*
We can build off of an in-depth Echelon Insights survey of 1,500 likely voters from May 2024 to build our initial matrix. Echelon is a political research firm that conducts a monthly online opinion survey of registered voters. Their analysis gives us a good starting point when defining the eight voting blocs that pollsters are following most closely.
Echelon's eight major voting blocs in this election:
1/ The reason the election of Kamala Harris would legitimately be the end of the country has nothing to do with her as a person. (If I'm being honest, I would definitely have seven IPAs to her seven glasses of wine, and we'd probably hit it off.)
It's much darker than that.
2/ You have to look at the coordinated information war that has taken place in the past six weeks: the players, the sequence of events, and the outcomes.
If I were part of the "Deep State" or whoever the hell is running the country right now, I would be flexing my muscles...
3/ First, you had a sustained campaign of lawfare against Trump, which culminated in two massive civil suit losses (in Deep Blue NYC), and a sham felony conviction for fraud.
At the same time, the White House, Congress, Media, and others were covering up Biden's dementia.
1/ The FIT21 vote this week will be a big one in DC:
+ We'll see if crypto remains a partisan football
+ It's a legacy defining moment for @RepMaxineWaters
+ Waters vote will likely make or break @hakeemjeffries chance at Speaker of the House for the next Congress.
Why?
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2/ There's three things you should know about the political dynamics of this vote. I'll unpack them all.
1. SBF embarrassed the Democrats and Waters 2. As Waters goes, so goes the Dem conference 3. Liz Warren's SAB 121 rebuke opens the door for a potential landslide FIT21 win.
3/ First, the SBF picture.
Yes, THAT one.
The truth is that Waters and McHenry have had a cordial relationship, and worked productively together for many years. Their approach to crypto has legitimately been a good faith, bipartisan effort.
3/ For the sake of brevity, I'll skip what you may already know about the origins of money thanks to crypto ("there's this island called Yap"), and anything that you could read about early accounting in that wiki.
I'll skip to the "merchants of Venice" who birthed capitalism.