CoinDesk Podcast Network

This Long Reads Sunday is a reading of Adam Tooze’ recent review of four books on the growing conflict between the U.S. and China.

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Crypto.com.

This week on Long Reads Sunday, our selection is “Whose Century?” by Adam Tooze in the London Review of Books. 

Nominally a review of four recent scholarly works on the conflict between the U.S. and China, Tooze main argument is that the central problem with viewing this as a new Cold War is the idea that it is new. 

Instead, we need to understand that, contra Fukuyama’s famous essay, history didn’t end with the fall of the Berlin Wall – at least not for the Chinese. What’s more, the narrative of having “won” the Cold War fails to take into account the West’s spectacular failures in Asia. 

Only by reframing our understanding can we make sense of the most important geopolitical conflict of the coming century.

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Beyond Crypto, OnlyFans Star Savannah Solo Talks About Money 

Sex workers are starting their own businesses and working online, thanks to social media, according to this adult content creator. 

In this audio interview, CoinDesk’s Leigh Cuen and OnlyFans performer Savannah Solo talk about fintech and the sex industry. From distribution platforms to Twitter and bitcoin, she helps break down what sex workers really need from digital tools.

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Crypto.com.

Savannah Solo started her OnlyFans account in January 2020 and within a few months became one of the top earners on the platform in her category. 

She’s never used bitcoin before because she relies on platforms like OnlyFans and Cash App for regular banking services. She said some performers have been temporarily deplatformed or lost access to their funds, but she’s been lucky so far. She often works a 16-hour day during these first few months of building her business. 

“The market got super, super saturated during quarantine...they [OnlyFans performers] were having trouble getting any subscribers at all,” Solo said. “In my first month, in January, I only made $80.”

There’s a common misconception that sex workers are now making much more money than before the coronavirus crisis. Both Solo and fellow sex worker Honey Li agreed the brief flurry of new customers settled down in the spring and that summer has been a particularly slow season. 

“Nobody is saying they are making more because of the pandemic,” Li said. “There’s a lot more new models….as for the blue collar guys that tip you, a lot of them have lost their jobs.”

Li prefers the camming site Chaturbate, instead of OnlyFans. Chaturbate charges performers nearly half of their earnings to use the site, much higher than the 20% charge from OnlyFans. But Chaturbate offers a feature that Li prefers; customers can pay in cryptocurrency and performers can cash out in bitcoin. The site still acts as a middleman, but at least Li can choose her currency. 

“My customer base is mostly American, so there are instances where bitcoin is more useful for me, especially when I’m traveling,” said Li, who is based in Europe.  

Bitcoin tippers

Li said some Chaturbate performers, like her, take a fraction of their earnings in bitcoin if they make extra that month. This is regardless of whether the customer paid in bitcoin, since the payment is to the platform anyway. 

In addition to cashing out from the performance platform in bitcoin, Li also uses personal wallets to accept money directly from fans. Over the past year four clients tipped her in bitcoin. Yet that minority can have a large impact. 

“Customers that give money directly tend to be regulars, really big fans...5% of my customers make up 90% of my income,” Li said. “There’s not a lot of people that accept bitcoin from clients directly, but I do know some findommes [financial dominatrix] who do. For a birthday gift, for example, I’ll be like cool here’s my wallet.” 

Solo said she also earns the majority of her income from a few big tippers, although she hasn’t been offered bitcoin yet. She’s still trying to manage some of the technical basics of running her own business.

“The platforms do extremely little work to help you out,” Solo said. “There is no [tech] support.”

Tech support

There are a variety of tech-savvy sex workers creating their own bitcoin-friendly platforms and teaching each other how to use various technologies. 

For example, an escort booking consultant named Jo, who has been helping sex workers garner and screen clients for two years, said a few women paid her in 2019 to help them use bitcoin. The bitcoin advertising campaign lasted for a few months, on a website that only accepts bitcoin. This is generally uncommon. Jo said it was a hassle.

“I think a lot of girls in this industry want to protect their identity. However, it [bitcoin] is not the most user-friendly thing,” Jo said about the returns for time spent using bitcoin. “It was pretty dead for a while [bookings]. Business has come back, but it’s slower than usual.”

Solo also noticed the imbalance of supply and demand this summer across the sex industry. She said she usually turns to other performers for tech support and doesn’t know of other consulting options for sex workers. Performers like her generally rely on platforms like Twitter, Instagram, OnlyFans and Chaturbate to advertise their brands. Converting casual tippers into direct customers is the hardest part of the business. Until they do, performers like Solo struggle to deal with refund issues like chargebacks.

“That’s a huge issue,” Solo said about chargebacks. “People send sex workers money...then the person can call their bank, have it back-charged, and all of the money comes out of the sex worker’s account.”

“That’s such a nightmare and it happens all the time,” she added. “People get free service out of that and it’s super gross.”

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The Breakdown Weekly Recap covers growing US-China tensions, worsening job numbers and the next casual $1T-$3T in stimulus.

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Crypto.com.

This week on the Breakdown Weekly Recap, NLW covers:

This week on The Breakdown:

Monday | What Is GPT-3 and Should We Be Terrified? 

Tuesday | What’s Behind the Fed’s New Push to Promote Inflation? 

Wednesday | A Simple Explanation of DeFi and Yield Farming Using Actual Human Words 

Thursday | Will Big Tech Enable or Destroy Small Business? Feat. Sahil Bloom

Friday | Could the European Recovery Plan Actually Break Europe Apart? 

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The EU’s Recovery Plan agreement has been widely hailed, but some argue that it is taking Europe down a dangerous path.

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Crypto.com.

Today on the Brief:

Our main discussion features returning guest Tuomas Malinen, CEO of GnS Economics. 

In this discussion, Tuomas and NLW discuss:

Find our guest online:

Website: GnS Economics

Twitter: @mtmalinen

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More than 50% of COVID-19 related business closures in the US are now permanent. Can tech platforms provide a new avenue for small biz entrepreneurship?

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Crypto.com.

Today on the Brief:

Our main conversation with Sahil Bloom

Sahil Bloom is an investor with Altamont Capital Partners and a prolific author of financial literacy Twitter threads. 

In this conversation, he and NLW discuss:

Find our guest on Twitter: @sahilbloom

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A primer on yield farming, liquidity mining, automated market making and all the other terms shaping the brave new world of decentralized finance.

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Crypto.com.

Today on the Brief:

Our main discussion: DeFi 101

Today’s episode of The Breakdown is a primer for anyone who has lost track of the terminology surrounding decentralized finance. In it, NLW goes over:

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Why the Fed’s strategy on inflation is changing and why the definition used by America’s central bank may be hurting regular people. 

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Crypto.com.

Today on the Brief:

Our main discussion: The Fed’s changing inflation strategy

University of Oregon professor and Bloomberg columnist Tim Duy recently penned a piece called “The Fed Is Setting the Stage for a Major Policy Change” arguing that we’re likely to see more inflation, promoted by the Fed. 

In this episode, NLW breaks down:

Audio clip featuring Alhambra Investments head of research Jeffrey Snider in an interview with Emil Kalinowski.

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The internet is alive with demos of what the latest artificial intelligence language model can do. Should we be nervous?

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Crypto.com.

Today on the Brief:

Our main discussion: GPT-3

Generative pertained transformer-3 – or GPT-3 as it’s better known – absolutely took over the internet this weekend. 

It’s a new AI language model that can do some truly incredible things, from writing poetry to composing business memos to generating functioning code from natural language descriptions.

In this episode of the Breakdown, NLW provides a 101-level overview of GPT-3, including:

Reference posts:

GPT-3 Examples, a Twitter Thread

Jonathan Johnson on AI Language Models

Rob Teows: GPT-3 Is Amazing – And Overhyped

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Long Reads Sunday features two essays previously published on CoinDesk that show the trajectory of stablecoins in the global economy in 2020.

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Crypto.com.

On this week’s Long Reads Sunday, we look at two essays about stablecoins previously published on CoinDesk. 

The first is called “USD Stablecoins Are Surging, but Zero Interest Rates Complicate Business Model” by Hasu and was one of the first pieces to recognize that demand was coming not just from the crypto space but from emerging markets facing crisis time currency pressures. 

The second is “Hyper-Stablecoinization: From Eurodollars to Crypto-Dollars” from Pascal Hügli. The piece argues that stablecoins are likely to play an increasingly important role in the global economy. In effect, they are a better version of the critical eurodollar system.

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Bitcoin days destroyed (BDD) was first introduced as a concept back in 2011. At the time, it had only been two years since the creation of the world’s first cryptocurrency, bitcoin. Individuals were already beginning to innovate ways to measure on-chain transaction activity and value. 

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Crypto.com.

As the first cryptocurrency metric to be created, BDD was quickly followed by a plethora of other unique metrics including unspent transaction output (UTXO), market value to realized value (MVRV) and spent output profit ratio (SOPR). Despite the sophistication of cryptocurrency data and analysis since 2011, BDD remains a fundamental metric to understanding and valuing bitcoin. 

See also: Coin Days Destroyed: Giving Meaning to Transaction Volumes

“[BDD] is a metric that reflects the collective action of long-term [BTC] holders,” said CoinDesk senior research analyst Galen Moore on a special podcast episode about the metric. “What’s the psychology of the long-term holder? You can see that in a collective way [through BDD] in a way I don’t think is possible in other asset categories.”

Moore interviewed Coin Metrics’ Lucas Nuzzi on Tuesday, July 7, to learn more about the use cases for and limitations against BDD. In a follow-up discussion about the interview recorded Thursday, July 9, Moore noted no other financial asset enables traders and investors to see the activity of long-term asset holders as transparently as bitcoin. 

To this, CoinDesk research intern Duy Nguyen noted the motivations behind why long-term holders are moving funds at any given time is still largely a guessing game that requires further off-chain analysis beyond the scope of BDD. 

For more information about BDD, you can watch the 30-minute webinar featuring an exclusive presentation on the metric by Nuzzi on the CoinDesk Research Hub. 

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