Working in crypto without any type of mindfulness practice is like driving a car blindfolded without insurance.

You’re inevitably going to hit something and you either front the bill paying in mental anguish or receive your claim in the form of peace of mind.

Let's dig in 🧵 Mindfulness is thrown around a lot nowadays, often without much substance.

I like to think about it as the intentional exercising of awareness.

This includes awareness of ones thoughts, feelings, and anything else that arises in the general sphere of consciousness.

As a VC-funded company creating public goods we couldn't agree more.

Just because a company raised $ to build a revenue generating biz doesn't mean they should be blackballed from receiving funding for providing value-add services to the community

https://twitter.com/francisgowen/status/1638559728174235649

For example, we have a traditional SaaS biz we make money from

But we're also building public data infrastructure and reporting that we don't monetize behind any paywall

There are substantial resources going into this that require grants funding in order to make it sustainable

Today I lost just about all of my savings in the @eulerfinance hack.

Down about as bad as can be. And yet I’m feeling more clear-headed and motivated than I ever have in my life.

So allow me a stream of consciousness on dealing with a loss of catastrophic proportions 👇 For starters this is my fault. Not the Euler teams. Not the hackers.

I put my money somewhere knowing there were risks involved so I have to take complete ownership of all consequences resulting from it.

A prime example of a cryptoeconomic flywheel working like a charm @helium

Subsidize miner costs early on > attract a growing supply side > create a more useful network > increase usage of the network > make mining more attractive

To understand how powerful this is, a thread👇 Back in 2019, the Helium network went live with a relatively "fair launch" - i.e. no pre-mine

Tokens were created from genesis and distributed to early adopters who purchased hotspots to put up in their house and begin providing wireless coverage in their area

Information asymmetries run rampant in crypto.

When market-moving events occur there are often large gaps of time before they are acted upon due to structural inefficiencies in information channels

This was evident on Nov. 20th with the ANT<>ANJ token swap vote

🚨Alpha leak🚨 For a little bit of background...On Oct. 5th Aragon One proposed a token swap for Aragon Court (ANJ) to the native ANT at a ratio of 1-->0.15

A few days later it was withdrawn only to be re-proposed a month later

forum.aragon.org/t/should-arago…

Humans have evolved over time, developing certain traits to keep us alive.

But we've advanced so much over the last few millennia that many of these traits no longer serve us

Consciously recognizing them can make you a better crypto investor (and a lot happier)

Let's explore👇 Going back to the hunter/gatherer days, you relied on your tribe for survival

A lone sapien couldn't survive on its own

So social acceptance was everything

Once the most valuable DeFi token, MKR has now dropped to #4

One reason is a structural issue that @DegenSpartan has discussed- its 3-body governance problem

To put another way, there’s a “Satisfaction Trilemma” where it’s impossible to keep all stakeholder groups happy

1/ To start there is the Dai user

Their main priority is that the value of their Dai remains pegged at $1

If the price rises they want more collateral types, higher debt ceilings, and higher stability fees to restore the peg

The same vice versa.

messari.io/chart/dai-peg-…

In the next bull run, all eyes will be on the first major IPO in crypto.

The valuation fetched will be of monumental importance acting as a bellwether for all subsequent offerings.

In the latest - I take a stab at valuing one of crypto’s giants @DCGco Using financial information from quarterly reports/other public sources to come up with an estimated revenue of each of their business lines...

Fixed-rate lending is one of the most important primitives underpinning the global financial system

And yet it has been sorely lacking in DeFi... that is until recently

This is a big deal and here’s why 👇 Not only do these instruments provide certainty for lenders/borrowers looking to accurately forecast their cost/return on capital

But it creates important derivative metrics that provide valuable insight into investor sentiment

messari.io/article/the-yi…

Q3 was mayhem for anyone keeping up with DeFi

New projects were spun up and flooded with millions of $$ of mercenary capital

On-chain activity surpassed the expectations of the biggest DeFi bull

Producing a cascade of effects, vital for any crypto professional to be aware of For the first time ever DEXs are being taken seriously as legitimate competitors to centralized exchanges

They reached an astounding 15% of total crypto trading volume

Almost entirely driven by AMMs that account for >90% of total volume, up from ~20% at the start of the year

Crypto data analytics is fragmented - there isn't a ubiquitous "Bloomberg Terminal" yet

For anyone looking to do serious research, it can be difficult to find the data you're looking for

So here's a mega-thread on the Crypto Analysts Toolkit 🛠️👇 #1 @DuneAnalytics is my go-to for all DeFi research

They have a number of pre-set dashboards that are vital to keep tabs on the industry

As DeFi market cap continues to grow, so will the demand for asset management platforms

@melonprotocol is looking to serve this market but since protocol earnings are tied to fund creation it hasn't generated substantial fees

1/ However, newly proposed MIP7 revamps its token economics

Rather than earning revenue on fund creation which has only generated $23k, it adds a modest 20bps annual fee on AUM significantly improving earnings potential

The 21st century is dominated by aggregators.

Aggregators have captured trillions of dollars in value from their role intermediating our lives.

DeFi is now seeing early attempts at aggregation, but will its aggregators capture the same value?

@Ryanwatkins_ and I took a look👇 In order to be considered an “aggregator” as the term is typically used, there are 3 requirements

1. Direct relationship with users?✅

2. Zero-marginal cost for serving additional users? ✅
stratechery.com/2017/defining-…

BTC on Ethereum is blowing up.

After starting the year with <1,000 there is now over 16,000 ($150 million)

This is in large part due to wBTC which is on its way to become the “tether of pegged bitcoin”

1/ With tokens pegged to external assets there is a fundamental tradeoff:

Scalability vs. Trustlessness

1/ Our system is fundamentally broken.

With the implicit recognition the government will bail out "systemically important" companies, they opt to return a disproportionate amount capital to investors to boost their share price... 2/ Rather than, I don't know, maybe buying pandemic insurance to protect your business from complete implosion

cnn.com/2020/03/19/bus…