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| The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day Jan. 7, 2022 If you were forwarded this newsletter and would like to receive it, sign up here. Sponsored by Welcome to The Node.
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Today’s must-reads Top Shelf Bitcoin fell to $41,012 during Friday’s Asia trading session, hitting its lowest level since Sept. 29, amid a greater crypto market pullback.
MEMES RALLY: Shares of GameStop (GME), the original meme stock that stoked retail investor frenzy in buying highly volatile stocks last January, surged as much as 31% in after-market trading Thursday after announcing it will build an NFT marketplace and get deeper into crypto. The video-game retailer has hired 20 new employees for a new crypto division, and is redoubling efforts to achieve profitability.
MAGIC SERUM? Serum, the FTX-incubated protocol that undergirds much of DeFi on Solana, is midway through a $100 million fundraising to expand operations and become self-sufficient. Commonwealth Asset Management LP, Tagus, Tiger Global and executives at Golden Tree Asset Management have put up capital in exchange for Serum’s SRM tokens as well as a portion of the Serum Ecosystem Fund.
VOLATILITY: The Turkish lira is now more volatile than bitcoin. The currency’s 90-day “historical volatility,” a measure of how much the price fluctuated from its average, has increased five-fold in the past two months to an annualized 65%, TradingView data show. Bitcoin’s historical volatility has dropped to 61%, making it less risky than the lira over that same time period. As inflation soars in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pursued an unorthodox monetary agenda including interest rate cuts, rebates to lira holders and firing central bankers.
NEW ROUND: Katie Haun, a former litigator turned crypto investor, is looking to raise $900 million for a pair of crypto investment funds following her departure from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowtiz (a16z). A third of that funding will be earmarked for investing in crypto startups with the remaining $600 million going towards larger companies and digital tokens. Several ex-a16z employees, including marketing head and Coinbase alum Rachael Horwitz, will join Haun’s new venture, called KRH.
TRAD GOES DEFI: Arab Bank Switzerland, the Geneva-headquartered affiliate of Middle Eastern lender Arab Bank PLC, has added 10 major DeFi tokens to its wealthy investor-focused cryptocurrency offerings. The bank, established back in 1962, first started offering BTC and ETH custody and brokerage in 2019. Meanwhile, Tribal, a B2B financing and payment platform focused on emerging markets, raised a $40 million debt round from the Stellar Development Foundation (in Stellar USDC) and the venture debt funding firm Partners for Growth (PFG).
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Overheard on CoinDesk TV... Sound Bites "I think we're gonna see a lot more carbon neutral renewable power come to mining."
–Open Earth Foundation Executive Director Martin Wainstein, on CoinDesk TV's "First Mover."
What others are writing... Off-Chain Signals Peter Marton joins the New York State Department of Financial Services as deputy superintendent of virtual currency (LinkedIn) MoonPay — the unicorn snapping up NFTs for celebs — just bought a $3 million punk (The Block) Joey Santoro, co-founder of the Fei protocol, introduced a new token standard, called Ethereum Request for Comment (ERC) 4626 to “standardize” yield-bearing tokens (The Defiant) “Just two months after Manchester City FC announced a partnership with the crypto firm, the club severed ties with 3Key Technologies.” (Decrypt) ETH-bulls give 2022 predictions including the tame, “a crypto bank IPO,” and the insane, “crypto above $7 trillion” (Bankless) A new startup wants to let people bet on civil lawsuits with crypto in what the founders are calling "initial litigation offerings” (VICE) MIT Tech Review's "worst technology of 2021" list. Nothing crypto-related isn't on it, surprisingly.
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XW Games: If You Build It, They Will Come: The Rapid Expansion of GameFi
The blockchain gaming ecosystem is rapidly evolving with new developments all the time in crypto (play-to-earn), NFTs (digital assets), and social-fi (individual DeFi). On a wider scale, a parallel can be drawn - how Las Vegas was built. At first, there was one bistro with a few slot machines and poker tables. Then more places opened with new games to play, and all winnings could be cashed out and then re-staked at each one of them. That fluidity cultivated the whole ecosystem.
Another parallel would be the growth of alternative asset classes such as financial derivatives, which confer both value and utility to their users. These tend to arrive during periods of uncertainty and over time become investable in their own right. The same is being applied in the crypto gaming space, only that it’s still at an early stage.
Putting the news in perspective The Takeaway How to Stay Sane During a Crypto Market Crash Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are having a rough few weeks. Bitcoin is currently down more than 18% over the last 30 days. CoinGecko’s tabulation of total crypto market cap shows a peak way back on Nov. 10, and steady declines since. The floor prices of some NFTs have also started to show hints of weakness.
For a truly stunning number of crypto newcomers, this may be something of a new experience. The past two years have seen incredible growth for platforms like Coinbase, where verified users rose from 37 million in the second quarter of 2020 to 68 million in the second quarter of 2021, then up to 73 million in Q3.
That likely translates to tens of millions of crypto holders who have never experienced a true crypto bear market, much less an extended “crypto winter.” It’s not certain that we’re in for either of those, but both are possibilities – and for new entrants, it’s worth doing some psychological preparation.
First, some perspective. Bitcoin dropping towards $40,000 doesn’t exactly sound like the apocalypse for anyone who has been in the space for very long. BTC rose to that price for the very first time just one year ago, in January of 2021. It even dipped well below that barrier as recently as July, briefly breaking under $30,000. On a longer time span, BTC’s current 38% drawdown from a November peak doesn’t even rank among the token’s biggest crashes: As recently as 2018, BTC crashed 84% in just a few weeks.
In short, those who bought at moments of highest hype are probably feeling some pain right now, but a lot of other holders – those who looked for good entry points to accumulate – are still up big. That’s perhaps the most important lesson in crypto investing: because they are so accessible and liquid, these assets are subject to big, quick swings in sentiment leading to fragile blowoff tops. Even more than in equities, Warren Buffett’s timeless advice applies: Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.
The most recent sharp crash was back in July, when the drawdown was over 50%. The price recovered handily from that dip, partly fueled by subsequent major developments such as adoption by El Salvador and Twitter. Something similar could reverse the current trend, though broader conditions point in the wrong direction. Above all, the U.S. Federal Reserve’s intent to tighten the money supply this year will be a drag on Bitcoin’s specific “inflation hedge” proposition, and likely tighten startup funding and other speculative investments.
But what seems likely to remain intact is the cyclical nature of cryptocurrency adoption, interest and markets. That pattern has held for most of the past decade. Each crypto boom attracts a huge new inflow of speculators and venture capitalists, many of whom have only the vaguest understanding of the technology and why it’s important. Many of these new entrants get burned by FOMOing into a top. Just as often, they outsmart themselves by buying some token hyped by founders as “the next Bitcoin” that turns out to be a cheap sham or just a bad idea. In the current cycle in particular, “decoupling” among crypto assets has accelerated, and the gap between good bets and bad ones has been huge.
Some of those who get burned – as many newbies are getting burned right now – take their ball and go home, embittered and resentful. But a huge chunk of them actually stick around, learn from their mistakes and ultimately wind up even more deeply involved and committed. Newly armed with understanding, they form an even stronger phalanx of users and advocates the next time price action draws mainstream attention. This cycle obviously can’t continue forever. Eventually, Bitcoin in particular will find a steadier “correct” price. Maybe it’s somewhere around $50,000 and that has already happened – though I personally don’t think so.
The Chaser...
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