Howdy everyone — this is the 5 minute crypto update for Thursday May 25

We’ve got early bitcoin history, DCG and Gemini fight!, Apple iOS, blockchain VC stats, and more.

Let’s get it on!

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As of this recording...

Bitcoin continues its slow downward slide, currently at $26200
ETH is at $1780

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On to the news

Origins of the phrase HODL
In honor of Bitcoin pizza day earlier this week, I wanted to share a bit more bitcoin history, which is the origins of the term HODL
Just a snippet of what he wrote:
GF's out at a lesbian bar, BTC crashing WHY AM I HOLDING? I'LL TELL YOU WHY.  It's because I'm a bad trader and I KNOW I'M A BAD TRADER.

https://twitter.com/fintechfrank/status/1660561518461583360?s=46
Now Gemini, the Winklevii’s exchange, claims that DCG has missed a $630M payment that it owes
And together with other creditors, are working on a plan for DCG to avoid default

https://www.theblock.co/post/231646/apples-crypto-policy-softens-as-stepn-offers-in-app-digital-asset-trading
Two signs now that Apple may be relaxing its policy towards crypto - although these could both be exceptions or oversights

From the Arca newsletter, an interesting take on Tether’s announcement that they’ll invest up to 15% of their quarterly profits into bitcoin
But the Bitcoin component is interesting. They certainly don’t need to do this. Tether could invest 100% of their cash holdings in short-duration U.S. Treasuries, and they would still print roughly $4 billion in profit per year with arguably the simplest business model on the planet...

https://twitter.com/ramahluwalia/status/1660624641897971714?s=46
Takeaways and themes from Bitcoin Miami conference

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/05/17/usdc-issuer-circle-moves-87b-to-repo-agreements-to-protect-reserves-from-us-government-default/
Though I’m sure part of the move is PR motivated, officially Circle had this to say:
While this plan has been underway for many months, the inclusion of these highly liquid assets also provides additional protection for the USDC reserve in the unlikely event of a U.S. debt default

https://medium.com/@HuttCapital/hutt-capital-blockchain-vc-landscape-2023-edition-744ec489a0ce
Hutt Capital’s 5th review of the blockchain VC space
-track 224 blockchain venture funds that manage $34B dollars
-first time funds represent 2/3 of the total - or about 150 of them

https://vogue.sg/9dcc-gmoneys-web3-fashion-empire/
But gmoney who is an OG NFT whale, is having some success with his luxury brand 9dcc

https://twitter.com/LambolandNFT/status/1658573938228690945
Great recap of some controversial moments in NFT history

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/books/michael-lewis-ftx-bankman-fried-going-infinite.html
Michael Lewis, the author famous for his storytelling biographies of famous men, had been embedded with SBF and the FTX team in the Bahamas for months before the collapse happened
I hate to say this. It’s horrible. It does not reflect well on me as a human being, but my first thought was, ‘Oh my God’ — it was like a lock clicking into place — ‘now I have the story.’ It didn’t occur to me for a moment that it would blow up the book. I did think, just how messy is this going to get, as the writer, because I’d been so involved.

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That’s it for today! All the links are in the show notes. You can follow @twodegenspod on Twitter and subscribe for more!

For our outro clip… 

Patrick Bet David on recent banking failures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1PRsS4SyUc

Howdy everyone — this is the 5 minute crypto update for Tuesday May 23

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Special update for listeners today, instead of the usual crypto news overview, I wanted to deep dive on another fantastic report from bitcoin OG Tuur Demeester (in partnership between his Adamant Research and Unchained

He’s one of the most influential early crypto writers and investors, I only have admiration for his ability to think pragmatically, holistically, and peek into the future of where bitcoin will go

This report was so good, I wanted to highlight some areas I found particularly interesting, and link to the report will be in the show notes:

https://unchained.com/how-to-position-bitcoin-boom

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That’s it for today! All the links are in the show notes. You can follow @twodegenspod on Twitter and subscribe for more!

For our outro clip…a mindblowing bit from Epicenter with a16z crypto’s CTO on software v hardware
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnk-poMHUsM

Inflation

https://twitter.com/watcherguru/status/1656275510937235458?s=46

ETH supply deflation - Ultrasound.money

BRC-20s

https://twitter.com/the_smart_ape/status/1655905530982850560?s=46

Bitcoin / halving

"All in all, my expectation is that Bitcoin peaks somewhere between 12 and 18 months after the April 2024 halving. This would mean a bull market *price peak sometime between April 2025 and October 2025.*

In terms of price, my base case is that this price peak will be 4-8x higher than the price at the halving. Assuming that price is $30k (it could easily be higher), that would mean a bull market *price peak of $120k-$240k per Bitcoin."

https://www.onceinaspecies.com/p/bitcoins-halving-is-less-than-a-year

Token M&A

This liquidation likely means an end to the $56M market cap of the VGX token. But VGX won’t ever really go away—there is no mechanism for a token to disappear. The debt and equity of Voyager will be swapped into new re-org equity through the bankruptcy process, but the token will live forever—even if it has no underlying company or reason to exist. VGX token holders will be looking for a new use case, a new narrative, or a new home for the orphaned token

https://www.ar.ca/blog/bitcoin-vs.-bank-equity-why-you-should-hedge-with-bitcoin

Howdy everyone — this is the 5 minute crypto update for Sunday May 21

We’ve got DefiLlama stats, Animoca finances, North Korea hacks, Goldman Sachs survey on family offices, and more

Let’s get it on!

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As of this recording...

Bitcoin is slightly up at $27200
ETH is holding at $1820
Quite interesting to see Lido’s staked Ether, or STETH, as a top 10 token with a market cap of almost $12B. Again all roads lead back to ETH

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Metrics update
For today’s metrics update, I wanted to take a look at top projects by fee revenue on DefiLlama

—

On to the news

https://www.animocabrands.com/animoca-brands-update-on-financial-position
Animoca Brands released an unaudited report on its finances:
-cash + stablecoin reserves of $194M
-liquid digital assets of $566M (inclusive of Sandbox’ utility token SAND)

https://www.theblock.co/post/231039/solana-sees-surge-in-new-users
Solana has seen 305K new addresses, the highest 7 day average for a year now
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/05/09/litecoin-transactions-hit-record-high-as-bitcoin-fees-surge-amid-brc-20-frenzy/
Similarly, Litecoin transactions hit record highs of 525K this month, double Litecoin’s bull market peak reached in January 2018

https://dailyhodl.com/2023/02/09/north-korea-linked-crypto-theft-surpassed-600000000-in-2022-shattering-all-time-high-report/
https://coingeek.com/north-korea-stole-1-2-billion-from-japan-vietnam-elliptic
Did you know North Korea’s hacker army has stolen over $2B of crypto?
The most affected country was Japan, followed by Vietnam, the US, and Hong Kong

https://decrypt.co/139695/gaming-dominates-on-chain-transactions-in-april-as-arbitrum-users-surge
Blockchain gaming makes up 38% of all crypto transactions
This is among almost 700K daily active wallets - which means 250K of those wallets are playing blockchain games

https://www.gsam.com/content/dam/pwm/direct-links/us/en/PDF/onegs_familyoffice_eyesonthehorizon.pdf?sa=n&rd=n
Goldman Sachs surveyed 166 family offices - basically high net worth families, 70% of whom have net worths above $1B
26% hold cryptocurrencies, a rise from 16% in 2021, but the number who have not invested and have no interest has also risen from 39 to 62%, perhaps because we’re in the depths of a bear market

https://www.theblock.co/post/231317/osmosis-axelar-and-akash-fund-mesh-security-model-for-cosmos-ecosystem
Cosmos has a few competing visions for how to share security across blockchains

https://milkroad.com/news/big-price-moves-coming
Celsius has requested to unstake 428k stETH (~$780M worth) from Lido’s  liquid staking  platform. 
For perspective, there are 18M+ total ETH staked, so that’s around 2% of all staked ETH

https://blockworks.co/news/ripple-cbdc-xrp-ledger
I’m not a fan of Ripple, but they are often in the news and they still have a top 10 coin, so I feel obligated to report
Ripple stated in 2021 that around 80% of countries were reportedly exploring a CBDC. Recent reports suggest that this number has now increased to 90%.

https://blockworks.co/news/uniswap-governance-fee-proposal
Uniswap - the leading Ethereum DEX - may finally charge a small fee to liquidity providers, and the revenue generated would accrue to a treasury that presumably would then flow back to UNI token holders

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That’s it for today! All the links are in the show notes. You can follow @twodegenspod on Twitter and subscribe for more!

For our outro clip…we’ve got the Chopping Block podcast talking about L1s and how they compete with Ethereum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgvMBaTjxm4

Howdy everyone — this is the 5 minute crypto update for Friday May 19th

Let’s get it on!

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As of this recording...

Bitcoin is still ranging at $26830
ETH is holding at $1800
Ups this week include a Pepe bounce and liquid staking derivatives

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What’s going on in crypto land…

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/05/17/tether-says-it-will-buy-bitcoin-for-stablecoin-reserves-using-realized-profits/
Well now it turns out it’s part of a larger strategy
Tether has now publicly stated they’ll use up to 15% of their realized profits to buy the corn — and they make a LOT of dough

https://twitter.com/magusdevon/status/1658467068117655552?s=46
This time, the issue is a new feature, shared security, where your seed phrase, essentially the key to your device, is separated into 3 pieces, encrypted, and sent to 3 different companies: Ledger itself, Coincover, & EscrowTech.

https://twitter.com/0xjaypeg/status/1658279708310802432?s=46
Some highlights from 0xjaypeg’s thread
I’ve found that when unique holders go up over time in accordance with the floor price, that is a sure-tell sign of a STRONG nft community

https://twitter.com/zakaimill/status/1658110118288916490?s=46
It’s the ERC-6155 standard
It lets NFTs act like crypto wallets, so you can receive, store, and send tokens
They’re called “Token Bound Accounts” or TBAs for short

https://www.theblock.co/post/230049/abu-dhabi-bitcoin-mining-marathon-digital-zero-two
Abu Dhabi developing a giant bitcoin mining operation in partnership with Marathon Digital and Zero Two
Capacity of 250MW

https://www.theblock.co/post/230002/paypal-ether-bitcoin-holdings
In a small but notable milestone, the total value of customer’s crypto holdings on PayPal and Venmo nears $1B
About 50% or $500M is bitcoin, and 36% is Ether

Thread from actual user of Solana’s new phone
https://twitter.com/notashenone/status/1653813361631539213
I can honestly say that if you gave this to an Android user, they wouldn't even notice a difference.
There’s a Solana dApp store
It costs $1K

https://newsletter.blockwareintelligence.com/p/blockware-intelligence-newsletter-8db
Some interesting Bitcoin stats from Blockware Intelligence
-67.5% of BTC has not moved in 1 or more years
-At a typical hosting rate today, new-gen Bitcoin ASICs require ~$14,925 worth of energy to produce 1 BTC

https://blockworks.co/news/pudgy-penguins-ip-raise
Everyone’s favorite NFT penguins have raised $9M led by 1kx, Big Brain, and Kronos Research
The Penguins launched in 2021 and were acquired in April 2022 by serial entrepreneur Luca Netz for 750e

https://blockworks.co/news/doj-claws-back-ftx-donations
In an amusing development in the FTX bankruptcy case, the US Department of Justice, has now told politicians that any donations they received from FTX or SBF himself are to be returned, to pay back customers and creditors

https://blog.bitmex.com/the-bitcoin-forum/
Based on the current spot Bitcoin price of US$27,000, this Bitcoin is worth around US$34 million. As far as we can tell, this 1,250 BTC balance has remained pretty much unchanged since 2017.

—

That’s it for today! All the links are in the show notes. You can follow @twodegenspod on Twitter and subscribe for more!

For our outro clip… 

We’ve got the 1000x podcast - a new favorite of mine - talking about institutional interest in ETH’s revenue and deflation narrative
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2afnJQjblA

Howdy everyone — this is the 5 minute crypto update for Wednesday May 17th

We’ve got some fun crypto history, Cosmos talk, Solana experiments, US macro, Three Arrows gossip, and more

Let’s get it on!

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As of this recording...

Bitcoin is ranging around $27060
ETH is slightly stronger at $1820
Greens this week include XRP, Decentraland’s Mana, and Litecoin

—

What’s going on in crypto land…

https://blog.bitgo.com/bitgo-crypto-water-cooler-may-10-d31082369e63
MTGox exchange origins and hack

https://twitter.com/ordinalenjoyer/status/1657782951050919948?s=46
First bitcoin trade for something other than cash

https://twitter.com/ZeMariaMacedo/status/1655575900048506885
From Delphi Labs, who are incubating projects on Cosmos chain
Cosmos finally getting native USDC stablecoin via Noble

https://twitter.com/ThugGod6666/status/1656204342263705600
Fascinating demonstration of what you can do on Solana for just $1 - and also by extension a beautiful illustration of what blockchain uniquely enables

https://twitter.com/RuneKek/status/1656731619753852951
Rune Christensen, MakerDAO founder, tweeted out Maker’s roadmap and strategy
According to DefiLlama, DAI is the 4th ranked stablecoin with a current market cap of $4.6B, behind Binance USD and ahead of TrueUSD

https://twitter.com/dunleavy89/status/1655713461677219840
-Consumers are dealing with the tightest financial conditions in 50 years. They can't afford to continue to pay up and above inflation.
-The market is pricing US default as the most likely its ever been

https://coingape.com/arthur-hayes-gets-restraining-order-from-3ac-founder-harrasment/
In the crypto gossip files, the disgraced Three Arrows Capital founder Su Zhu has filed a restraining order in Singapore court against Arthur Hayes, who had been tweeting at Su and Kyle that they still owe him $6M from 3AC’s failure

https://coingape.com/worlds-largest-bitcoin-holder-bullish-on-bitcoin-ordinals/
“Every time someone builds an application that’s cool on Bitcoin, like all the Ordinals and inscriptions and whatever that are driving up transaction fees, it’s a catalyst”

https://twitter.com/enur72/status/1656720217798475778
Fascinating story from the author of the book Fraudcoin on how, according to him, “the Norwegian krone has become a shitcoin”
My takeaway here is that inflation almost always hurts workers, middle and lower classes more than the upper classes, since the upper class is more likely to own investment assets, and are closer to the money printer, benefitting from the Cantillon effect

Great description of zk v roll ups from Pantera Capital partner Paul Veradittakit’s weekly newsletter, which does great weekly crypto deep dives
https://www.veradiverdict.com/p/zk-vs-optimistic

https://www.0xtrends.com/issue-008-revenue/
The playbook is simple: Pay users with your relatively illiquid utility token -> Watch usage soar and earn revenue in valuable tokens -> Degens ape into your token because they see the revenue and usage -> Token value pumps, making incentives even more tempting -> Rinse and repeat

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/05/09/market-maker-jane-street-jump-retreating-from-us-crypto-trading-bloomberg/
According to Bloomberg and Coindesk, two of the biggest US market makers - Jump Capital and Jane Street - are retreating from crypto trading as regulatory crackdown grows

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That’s it for today! All the links are in the show notes. You can follow @twodegenspod on Twitter and subscribe for more!

For our outro clip… Saylor talking about ordinals and bitcoin catalysts

Howdy everyone — this is the 5 minute crypto update for Monday May 15th

It’s been 5 days since the last one, so this episode will be a bit longer than usual

We’ve got a metrics update, Binance pulling out, Bitfinexed with more Tether tea, US inflation, Dork Kwon, bitcoin halving, crypto hopium, and more more more

Let’s get it on!

—

As of this recording,

Bitcoin continues its slow downward slide, currently at $26,800; it’s down 6% for the week
ETH is at $1788, down a bit less, 5.6% for the week
A few tokens managed some greens including Lido and Rocket Pool, both up 4% for the week

—

What’s going on in crypto land…

According to https://moneyprinter.info/
The top chains by value of daily issuance are bitcoin at $25M, Solana at $2M, and dogecoin at $1M
The top chains by issuance rate are Solana at 6%, Avalanche at 4%, and dogecoin at 3.5%
So, uh, you may not want to buy so much doge or Solana

https://www.theblock.co/post/230689/bitcoin-binance-pulling-out-of-canada
https://twitter.com/binance/status/1657099651210969088?s=20
Binance is leaving Canada

https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/1656304700872962049?s=20
From Bitfinexed, famous for its criticisms of Tether, so treat as grain of salt
-Tether holds $53B in US Treasury bills
-$7.5B in money market funds
-$1.5B in bitcoin
-$3.4B in precious metals

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/05/10/us-internal-revenue-service-files-claims-worth-44-billion-against-ftx-bankruptcy/
The US tax collection agency, the IRS, just filed a claim against FTX and Alameda in the amount of $44B

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/current-inflation-rate/
US inflation has fallen to 4.9% for April, compared to 5% in March and 8% the same time last year

https://twitter.com/theblock__/status/1656987557668827137?s=46
Do Kwon getting a little taste of freedom
His lawyers have negotiated a $436K bail from Montenegro jail

https://medium.com/paradigm-research/defi-in-d908ea8b
-Curve deploys a US dollar stablecoin
-Synthetix adds markets for 9 new perps futures including SHIB, Curve, and Lido
-total value locked in Defi is $47.3B, with Lido dominating at 25%
—
Paradigm itself made news recently for buying $50M worth of Coinbase’s stock COIN

BRC-20s explainer
https://twitter.com/the_smart_ape/status/1655905530982850560?s=46
-The BRC-20 standard was created by Twitter user @domodata on March 8th, 2023

https://www.onceinaspecies.com/p/bitcoins-halving-is-less-than-a-year
Great essay from Jesse Myers aka Croesus BTC
Right now, Bitcoin’s supply inflates by ~1.8% every year. In April 2024, the 4th halving will happen and suddenly, Bitcoin’s supply inflation will drop to 0.9% per year. This will make Bitcoin a “harder” asset than gold, whose supply grows 1.5-2% every year from global gold mining efforts.

https://ournetwork.substack.com/p/ournetwork-issue-168
OpenSea's volume is primarily driven by Normal users (64%), with the the top 1% contributing 24% to the total volume. On the other hand, Blur's volume is led by the the top 1% of NFT traders (69.5%), with Normal users accounting for 18% of total volume

https://twitter.com/redphonecrypto/status/1654173100139847681
I expect the next cycle to onboard the biggest group of crypto users we've ever seen.
It will be the beginning of the grand migration from Web 2 to Web 3.

Amazon’s new NFT marketplace is launching May 15 / this week
https://twitter.com/moritz_web3/status/1653716087752769536

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That’s it for today! All the links are in the show notes. You can follow @twodegenspod on Twitter and subscribe for more!

For our outro clip… Jeff Booth talking about how Bitcoin holders will experience growing purchasing power o

Show notes: 
- tech boom and innovation in Vietnam
- how Michael saved his friend's, and his friend saved his life by getting him into crypto
- what led to Polygon's success, lessons learned
- how Dcentral conferences got started and the expansion into Asia
- ERC6551 and how this can accelerate NFT usecases
- how has crypto conferences evolved over the years
- MapleStory building on Polygon
- AI is going to eat AI
- "complacency kills"
follow Dcentral Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer Michael Huynh on Twitter @thedegenboii  and check out their upcoming events at https://dcentral.co/

Howdy everyone — this is the 5 minute crypto update for Wednesday May 10th

We’ve got a lot to cover including the battle for Aragon DAO, Bitcoin shitcoins, Blockworks raising money, Hasu’s transaction supply chain and more

Let’s do this like Buddhists

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What’s going on in crypto land…

…which is, that it’s been one year and one day since the Luna Terra collapse
https://twitter.com/kasperloock/status/1655331673863602177?s=46
It’s a friendly - if a bit painful - reminder of crypto’s volatility and counterparty risk
—
There’s a good run down on last year’s epic crypto crash in David Gerard and Amy Castor’s newsletter
https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2023/05/07/crypto-collapse-one-year-since-terra-luna-new-york-goes-after-crypto-coinbase-launches-offshore-casino-central-african-republic-abandons-bitcoin/

Next let’s talk about the siege of Aragon
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/05/09/aragon-cancels-planned-community-control-of-200m-treasury-amid-battle-with-activist-investors/
-So Aragon is one of the original Ethereum-based projects, the founders are all OGs, and their product focuses on building tools for DAOs
-Ironically, Aragon Association had planned to devolve more power to its own  community DAO, but now those plans are being cancelled.
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/05/09/heavyweight-hedge-fund-arca-joins-activist-fight-against-dao-builder-aragon/

Bitcoin BRC-20 trading
https://twitter.com/defiignas/status/1655442232349196288?s=46
He shares how BRC-20s have grown, and how clunky the whole experience still is
A few notables
-total market cap is north of $500M - and may have now surpassed $1B
-75% of the trading takes place on something called the UniSat marketplace which I’ve never used

https://twitter.com/paddi_hansen/status/1655883224726241281?s=46
Interesting thread from Paddi Hansen on how after Europe’s MICA laws passed - their version of comprehensive crypto regulation

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/05/09/crypto-media-outlet-blockworks-raises-12m-at-135m-valuation/
Blockworks, whose reporting we’ve heavily relied on for this podcast and itself has a great podcast network, has raised $12M at a $135M valuation, led by PE firm 10T Holdings
https://www.axios.com/2023/05/09/crypto-blockworks-raises-12m-135m-valuation

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/state/2023/05/09/texas-senate-bill-2334-proposal-new-digital-currency-texas-gold-purchase-everyday-goods/70195299007/
https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/billtext/html/SB02334I.htm
There are early moves from Texas state politicians to create a digital currency backed by the state’s own gold

https://forkast.news/headlines/south-korea-crypto-bill-review/
Korea crypto legislation, according to media pub Forkast, the legislation could pass by the end of this year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmBqoBr6yl4
Hasu, who is an OG crypto researcher, currently at Flashbots, one of the smartest guys we have in the space
He gives a talk on the concept that he calls the Transaction Supply Chain

Finally, just a fascinating perspective on JP Morgan, which has been the savior during these recent US bank failures and increasingly looks like the linchpin of the global financial system
To quote from a Chartbook piece by Adam Tooze:
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-213-expanding-the-fortress

—

That’s it for today! That was X:YY minutes long. All the links are in the show notes. You can follow @twodegenspod on Twitter and subscribe for more!

Outro clip
Kevin Kelly on BTC and historical comparison to telegraph
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6NqRctN2RI

Show Notes
- takeaways from Consensus 2023
- learn why the Vietnamese farmer is a powerful model and meme
- his experience as a published writer inside the American media complex
- deep dives into his most viral threads including warfare + business, meme coins
- why he's a doomer right now but thinks long term crypto can't lose

- check out his twitter @backthebunny and what he's building at RabbitX (@rabbitx_io) -  https://landing.rabbitx.io/ - a global permissionless perpetuals exchange built on Starknet ZK infrastructure, featuring
- milliseconds latency
- zero gas trading
- up to 20x leverage
- orderbook liquidity
- global markets (FX, commodities, interest rates)