40 Burst results for "Coinbase"
The Bitboy Crypto Podcast
A highlight from ATB: Did Blackrock File XRP ETF(HUGE Volatility)
"Charles wants Hoskinson to create a settlement future and system for Kraken. Will Jesse Powell take the bait? This is Around the Blockchain. Hey, thank you for joining, everybody. Make sure you go ahead and hit that like button because we got three phenomenal guests on today. We got Thinkin Crypto holding it down. Thinkin, Tony, how are you doing today? I'm doing great. It's great to be on. Oh, it's always a great day. Also, it's a great day for Moon and Papa. Moon and Papa, we just had the full Moon. Do you get extra powers during the full Moon? No comment. No comment. Hey, you know, was that you in that Thriller video? Also on today, live from the White House, he's taking Commander's spot. It is Patrick. Patrick, how are you doing today? I'm doing great. I'm happy to be here. I am, in fact, part of the ops now live from the White House, like you said, so we'll see if I can't spill the beans on some stuff. And when I said taking the Commander's spot, I meant the dog commander, not, of course, the CIF. But everybody, let's talk about Solana first. Grayscale's Solana, we have a huge premium, everybody. Some are saying this is front running the pump here, but it exploded to $202 for Grayscale Solana Trust. This is what you can buy on exchanges. If you are a Wall Street investor, you're probably not going to use Kraken or Coinbase. You're going to want to use a entity like Grayscale. Well, each of these shares has a little bit of Cardano within it, about 0 .3 or so. Well, this price is way, way higher, everybody. It looks like we're trading at a very high premium at 869 % premium. So when you do the share, and what that is trading relative to Solana's price, almost a 900 % premium people are paying here. At the time of trading, we're also seeing low prices and high premiums for Grayscale's Chainlink Trust. The Chainlink Trust, a 250 % premium. BioCoin, 900 % premium, close to Solana's premium there. But meanwhile, Solana, still down 80 % from the all -time highs. Now, thinking crypto, I want to ask you, you know, these Wall Street traders, I thought they were smarter than us. I thought they knew how to out -trade us. Then why are they paying a 900 % premium if they're so smart? Man, maybe they know something we don't, and that is maybe that Altcoins will continue to move up with Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin still has a leg up, and we know the liquidity flows from Bitcoin after it hits its overbought scenario, and then the alts pop off. Obviously, Solana and Chainlink have been pumping, so I think they know something. They know, you know, these VCs have been pumping Solana, and I think they see a higher upside, but that premium is, you know, ridiculous.
Simply Bitcoin
Fresh update on "coinbase" discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"You Yeah, welcome to another episode of simply Bitcoin library number one source for the peaceful Bitcoin revolution curve breaking He was called dramatic warfare. We will be your guide through the separation of money and state technical difficulties this morning I couldn't get my green screen to work I was having trouble connecting to restream, but the good news is that we're pumping we're pumping I think we went from like 38 K. We touched fit 42 K last night Everyone's been losing their minds Opti and I were talking about this off-air It's like two years in a bear market finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel Things feel good. People are optimistic Adam back is dropping crazy crazy price predictions. He's calling for $700,000 Bitcoin Sampson now is calling for million dollar Bitcoin. We're gonna break all of that down for you guys today We have all the receipts and we have a very very special guest as well. We have the coin Atlantis That's being thrown in my data Portugal. How you doing Andre? Welcome to the show I'm good. Thanks for having me Well, we're excited excited to have you and excited to talk about what's going on with the event that you're throwing You have a lot of high-profile Speakers flying from all over the world going to this this little this little islands off the coast of Portugal What's happening there? I know that the president of Portugal for example Spoke or the I don't know what the correct terminology is But he spoke at either Bitcoin 2022 or Bitcoin 2023 and that was a big deal Yes, but it's the president of Madera not the president president of my data president my data. See that's why I'm asking That's why I'm asking you Amazing to have the president also there the the big main one, but that's not possible Hey never say not possible yet yet yet We have elections next March. So who knows just actually one week after the conference We have elections for the national government, so who knows yeah So if you live in you live in Portugal, you know what to do Who's always optimistic Opti what's going on with the stream bro, I don't know Actually guys for once this is not my fault This is Nico's all so shouts out to the chat making fun of Nico and not off to you this morning But hey, man, it's all part of the show We made it as Nigel was saying you guys need to lower your time for no No, we want to hit our normal time guys, but hey, it's Monday. It's gonna be a chaotic week and hey, we showed up So we're doing the best we can with what we got working today. You go don't update your computers, bro Yeah Don't don't update if you use restream on your Mac like don't operate your operating system because it just messes everything up Anyways, I do want to talk Ledger makes a backdoor maybe maybe the new operating system that made a backdoor. I don't know who knows Don't update don't update. That's for sure. So Opti was talking about it being a heptic week. Yes Simply Bitcoin is gonna be traveling to Unconfiscatable in Las Vegas. We're gonna be doing some awesome interviews with high-profile speakers And I think we're gonna be also live streaming the conference as well So we will be traveling we might miss an episode or two just letting you guys know But it overall it should be an awesome awesome week. Alright guys, no more delay. Let's jump straight into the show We have a lot to talk about today. Let's check it out The Bitcoin numbers is your Bitcoin in cold storage really secure is your seed phrase Really secure stamped seeds do-it-yourself kit has everything you need to hammer your seed words into commercial grade Titanium plates instead of just writing them on paper. Don't store your generational wealth on paper Papers prone to water damage fire damage. You want to put your generational wealth on one of the strongest metals on planet Earth? titanium your words are actually stamped into this metal plate with this hammer and these letter stamps and once your words are in they Aren't going anywhere. No risk of the plate breaking apart and pieces falling everywhere Titanium stamped seeds will survive nearly triple the heat produced by a house fire They're also crush proof waterproof non-corrosive and time proof all things that paper is not allowing you to huddle your Bitcoin with peace of mind for The long haul stamp your seed on stamped seed Because restream is bugging for me Yeah, your audience a little way down in the video description Yeah, I have no idea what's going on Opti let me know if you do this line. Keep it going at the time of recording. The Bitcoin price is 41,710 sats per dollar 2398 block height eight hundred nineteen thousand seven hundred seven seven hundred sixty seven blocks to having 20,000-233 having estimate April 19 2024 total lightning network capacity Five thousand forty one Bitcoin capacity value roughly two hundred and ten million US dollars Realized monetary inflation one point seven five percent the market capitalization of Bitcoin 816 billion dollars with the B almost at a trillion dollars. We're almost there Bitcoin versus gold market cap 5.92 percent definitely a definitely a big big Big leg up. Anyways, this was an ad that dropped over the weekend Or last week and originally it was a coinbase ad But of course some Bitcoiners hijacked the ad and made it a Bitcoin ad Opti. Let me know if you can hear this System Emma And waiting you work hard get good grades go to college I want to go to college I got good grades Overachieved that's right. She did that is good. That is so good so much debt I can totally save up and buy a house and start a family. I want a family Oh starting a family means you need two or three jobs You can't afford to buy. Oh, you can't afford to rent use cars cost as much as the new ones Oh, it's weird. Good. That is good head of my classes are too expensive work hard get good It's freaking breaking news everything is terrible Does it have to be this way? What if it was different? It's always been that way We've got to build our way out of it. Yeah Control back to the hands of the people not the bureaucracy a system with less paperwork. No waiting. No lines Permissionless just because you're born into a system doesn't mean you have to live with it So Of course Bitcoiners hijacked that are that that that ad originally it was a coinbase ad and then of course Bitcoiners took the ad Took out the coinbase logo and then replaced it with a Bitcoin logo So it's very very fitting But what I got to say about that is that look the overall messaging was on point like I think they correctly Identified the problem now where I think they do a disservice is that they're just leading people Shit coins and saying okay shit coins are gonna fix the solution versus what Bitcoiners know It's that you know, it's Bitcoin or slavery Bitcoin is the solution And another thing they said is like we got to remove the bureaucracy. We got to remove the red tape. Look if You opt out of fiat currencies you're replacing Your central banker with the shit coin developer because they have the ability to change the monetary policy Out of moments known is to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else, right? So, you know again, I understand coinbase It's a public company. They put they bet behind You know, they bet behind these shit coins They're gonna die on that hill. It is what it is. But this is why me Maddox are so important we were able to hijack it and put a Bitcoin logo at the end and You know and get our message out that way. Anyways, I want to get Andre's take on this Andre what's your take especially on the messaging the messaging of the ad was very powerful in my opinion you know, I think the most important part is there are hordes of people that now understand the breaking news everything is terrible part and It's it's What's lacking is just that final step on Understanding what the solution is, but they're coming and it was a magnificent ad actually It was really good and we're seeing the hordes just you know unpleased unsettling and you Here on the first world You know It takes longer because things are not So broken as many other countries so they get it first which is actually an equalizer in itself. It's not a problem and But it will it will eventually come and it's coming fast and in in Europe We feel it a lot, you know, everything's breaking You know the confidence in in in in the old hits in the government. It's never been so low So it's coming and it's coming soon and we are here to help everyone on board the escape That's what that's the job of Bitcoiners is We have to show them the escape valve to use Christine the guards own words to use the head of the European Central Bank Right Anyways, speaking of Christine's our friend actually, she's just making everything faster. You know, did you know that she dated Opti? Rather I tried to date her I tried I bet you didn't see it coming, you know Opti was trying to get as close as possible to the to the cantilever spigot and Opti what happened between you guys? I Think I'm too outside the Elverton window, maybe maybe I'm too young. I don't know, you know, I tried Did she dump you you dumped her? Well, she belongs to the street. So I dumped her, you know I she she wouldn't let me get close to the money printer. So I had to escape and find my own exit route, but Deep Honestly, I Didn't see it until now. I saw everyone was talking about it on Twitter. I didn't know that was a coinbase ad but To be honest that messaging is is very good. And I hopefully it was Ronan who like changed I don't know what the end looked like. Maybe it like popped up coinbase or something, you know coinbase has had Some very bad ads for a while, but this one is very on point It's kind of what we've been talking about here on the show for a long time that the powers that be the the cantilean insiders the central bankers the politicians everyone that paints Bitcoin as Being criminal or something to avoid are really doing the best advertising for Bitcoin That we could even imagine because everything's getting more expensive, you know, they're getting more tyrannical they're trying to stifle the freedom of speech they're trying to stifle information and Look, you know Bitcoin just hit 41k Bitcoin is pumping And so it's something you said to me a long time ago Nico It's like you can't hide the shock of inflation and now everyone is feeling it's becoming the defining conversation right now People are wondering what is going on with the money. What is going on with inflation? Why is everything getting more expensive? Why are it wise shrink inflation a thing? Like why are they printing more money? What is going on here? And so these are the questions that lead people to asking themselves. What is money? What is the best money? What is Bitcoin and Now that Bitcoin is I think officially in a bull run at least by all metrics We've probably been in a bull run all year. I know you guys have been yelling at me It's like we've been in a bull run for the whole year I know that I think we're at like what a hundred and fifty percent price appreciation this year in Bitcoin alone It's becoming very clear to everyone out there. It's like wait What is the problem and is there a solution and this is what we talk about constantly on the show like yo If you're an average person of average means you can't save in dollars Life is getting more expensive You're barely able to make ends meet people are working two to three jobs and still living paycheck to paycheck Well, you might want to look for an alternative. And of course that alternative is Bitcoin there is Bitcoin and then there are shit coins and everything else is a shit coin in comparison to Bitcoin and so Again, I've been saying this for a while and I'm glad that Niko is finally getting stupidly bullish You know saying that we might not be seeing diminishing returns anymore. We're asking we're asking the chat right now About 86 of you. I have already voted Does diminishing returns break this cycle? 56% of you said yes, it does. I'm gonna pass it on to Andre Andre. Do you believe in the diminishing returns theory? I wouldn't bet on any Okay, any of and any of the outcomes You know, I just believe in the low long-term perspective on the thing and there it will break everything as a seller put it Destroyed and it will eventually break everything But on a good way so and it's not the first time that shit pointers do Good ads I still remember FTX on the golden ball or whatever It was kind of funny and it was on point at the time as well Yeah, we all know why they ended up but oh Man, I do remember that. Yeah, dude the shit corner man We we got to step up our game as Bitcoiners and get on the marketing department and they're good at it Really good. They're really good. I mean I was literally joking with Nico the other day I was watching a football game by chance and it was like blockchain calm all around the arena. I'm like, yeah like These shit corners are everywhere man, like we need to get some of that shit coin money. If only we didn't have principles man They're everywhere, you know in Europe we are, you know Big big football fans. There's shit pointers on almost every shirt even my my my favorite team in Portugal They have been ants the year I don't know if people know this as well. But Cristiano Ronaldo, for example, is from the other and Actually, there was a couple of news today or yesterday that is being sued So you lay your own bad man, you'll eventually learn so Man alright Opti, let's jump straight into the culture We could talk about Bitcoin Atlantis and then we'll hit the news We'll talk about Adam backs crazy price prediction the news in the segment after that. But first I do want to give a shout After Bitcoin 2024, it's gonna be the largest Bitcoin conference of the year It's gonna be hosted in Nashville, Tennessee, July 25th through the 24th Opti and I are gonna be there you can get your tickets now a GA ticket is 349 an industry pass the prices did go up. I've been warning you guys the industry pass did go up to 1099 the industry pass gives you access to three days of the conference and Exclusive access to the backstage VIP lounge. I got to meet Tulsi Gabbard back backstage last year You can get yourself a VIP ticket for four thousand nine hundred ninety nine You can use the promo code simply to get a major discount to Bitcoin 2024 get your tickets quickly before the prices increase again. Alright everybody. Let's hit the news The daily culture Brought to you by Swan Bitcoin calm Swan is the best way to build your Bitcoin stack with automated Bitcoin savings plans and instant purchases Serving clients of any size from ten dollars to ten million dollars We love Swan because they incentivize self-custody and dollar cost averaging. What are you waiting for? Visit Swan? Bitcoin calm today Let's go. So I Got this nigga, I got this here. You're you're getting lost in the matrix right now Alright, so Andre You've been talking about Madera Portugal and we will get to the Bitcoin Atlantis at the end of this but let's start with your first project What is free Madera calm? What are you working on? Well, you cannot disconnect the project the free mother from the conference because three that organizes the conference and it's part of the objectives as well But yeah free mother is in the basis of it all It's a non-profit so Basically it was set up to for the high level of adoption and education of all Bitcoin touches in our region in our archipelago and We have a lot of plans, you know Bitcoin touches everything so it goes from education to remittances We have a big diaspora outside of Madera as well a big connection to Venezuela and other places Energy we're working with the public power company on Educating them to integrate mining and other, you know other parts of the technology in their services We're creating a Bitcoin business hub where we'll have the three mother headquarters The meetups the podcast the you know sovereign engineering project. So educational projects Inside and and especially a place where Bitcoin companies can incorporate work from there with the co-working space You know private offices and so on. So many many good Long-term projects that we're trying to establish some of them are already Full on some are still on the planning but many many good goals for for the for the overall organization and mother of course Awesome love it. Okay. So let's just jump straight into Bitcoin Atlantis for those listening in audio How is Bitcoin Atlanta shaping up? When is it? What can people expect all that good stuff? So I was shaping up shaping up to be a great week in Madera, you know Since we decided to do it it grew it became this monster conference That we're doing in a stadium in downtown for show We're hoping to get 5,000 people things are going very well on ticket sales. So we're probably almost there and Yeah, we because of our advisory board that we have it from a data, you know with people like Jeff boot Try cross and Samson and OB and so many good people Helping us we were able to reach out to this long list of speakers that are already on board We have many actually many more news to give on the following months, there's a lot more that you can see on the page right now But of course, we have all the big names Jack Dorsey Michael seller Jack Mallers Jeff But you know this goes on at the back for Giacomo OB. I don't know there's Over 120 speakers confirmed and that will be on the two main stages Yeah, the main stage in the open-source stage would for in our view it's also a main stage because a lot of good conversation is going to happen there and And a bunch I mean a serious bunch of satellite events That we can speak in more detail but it's going to be a full week of activities in the island and in the venue and I Many other smaller venues around even some nature ones not related to you know Bitcoin itself parties and music first of all the list goes on Because we decided from start, you know, but that is a is already a very Okay, so a very known Tuistic destination and an amazing place to spend the vacation So we decided to make it a full week and if people are coming to Madera Why not spend some vacations? So we invite people to come a few days before go a few days after and get to know the island There will be a lot of activities of nature like boat trips and hiking and many other things to do So just you know treated as a vacation with the family and you know with an amazing conference in the middle of it Love it. Love it. Okay for the audio listeners, huh? Go Mika. I can hear you. Am I coming in clear? Okay. Yeah. Yeah guys don't update your computer So yeah, you can use promo code simply right now and it will give you a I think it's a 10% discount if you guys want to get your tickets to Bitcoin Atlantis in Medea Opti Yeah, yeah, I just want for the audio listeners Andre when exactly is this conference So the conference the main days are one two and three of March. That's Friday Saturday Sunday But the event start three days before I think the first main event is a golf championship We're calling it the whole corner So for every golf aficionado, they could come three days before this amazing golf Course that we have in the mountains beautiful views It's gonna be a fun day with a finishing with the lunch and some saps prizes and so on And then there's many many others like we on the 28th we already and we have some partner satellite events so, excuse me if I forget some but we'll have Me premier Bitcoin with a with an event previous to the conference We're gonna have the raspy blitz guy with guys with another event. We're gonna have a women's brunch We're gonna have the mega pleb dinner that I'm just you're just scrolling by on Sunday We're gonna have the Atlas music festival on a very cool park near the main venue. It's gonna be headlined by Theo Katman We're gonna have a special meetup on Nini Design Center a very cool place in the port of for show We're gonna have the pitch day the so a startup Vc day for a presentation of new Bitcoin companies We're gonna have the Welcome to Bitcoin so a noob day before the conference starts one day before the conference starts on the 29th just for for newbies 100% in Portuguese Well, what more boat trips pleb walks you were gonna have the half in a seaside run for running a fix aficionados So many things That I'm probably skipping a few that's gonna be awesome. Yeah, man. I'm Def guys definitely get your tickets to Bitcoin Atlantis. Do the prices go up as time progresses Andre? Yes Next increase and final increase is we didn't we didn't do a lot just you know quarterly So the next one is on the 1st of January bye-bye. So buy your tickets this year still Yep, buy your tickets this year guys. You could check out the link in the video district and Use promo code simply and that will give you a 10% before we move on Andre what what exactly is the response to Bitcoin in Madeira? Like is it known how do people look at Bitcoin over there? Well, it's still like most places I would say the majority is still very far away either they a People are involved involved in shit cornering as well, you know, you know the spirits Christiano Ronaldo endorses shit coins So it's it's hard. We're starting from the bottom But we are we are very very surprised not only for the community that already established here in but that is becoming quite big actually a lot of businesses and families Some of them already here some on our way some already, you know, we're very interested We've been getting messages every day and and I was very surprised simply started the open murder the merchants Trying to get merchants on board when we confirmed the conference and really wanted to push it I was very surprised by how many people just on board and Bitcoin without even blinking of an eye, you know I was very surprised and we're growing we're growing numbers every day. We're being almost like Bitcoin What a bull run of merchants adoption here in mother now So I think the perspectives are very very good Love it. Love it. And I think it just kind of goes What what your goal is with the conference to onboard noobs and of course bring Bitcoiners to your lovely lovely island It's a it's a very it's a golden opportunity to Increase the education by a file by tenfold, you know people get a lot more curious We have big names. It's gonna put a lot of movement like but that is not that big and the main city for show It's a medium-sized city. So you can imagine five thousand big corners in a week and down long for shells gonna pick completely crazy so of course it pushes the awareness and and One of our goals we have a layer one ticket just for residents quite cheap. So very cheap for locals to for the curious locals to come to learn and I think a lot of them will be surprised because they're gonna be Very surprised that they go to the conference and almost nobody's gonna pick speak about price So it's gonna be very technical very, you know we're gonna speak about energy about microeconomics about a lot of stuff and all this surprise and hopefully learn why become is so different from Everything else that they're being, you know slapped in the face every day Yeah, I love it. Love it. All right. Well Nico, I think your audio is doing well, so am I back? Before we get to the news that sponsor Rex they're the most trusted place to buy sell and host mining equipment You could check out the link in the video description and it will take you directly to the kaboom Rex Inventory on telegram where you can connect with a member of their sales team. They make purchasing their products easy and transparent You could also sell mining equipment with them Access their vast network of domestic and international customers when you sell your mining equipment with them. Check out their racks It's the most trusted place to buy sell and host mining equipment All right, everybody. Let's get to the news. We got a lot to talk about today. Let's check it out The daily news I Want to give a shout out to our sponsor foundation devices, it's self-custody done, right? They built a premium grade hardware wallet called passport right here in the u.s. It's fully open-source and verifiable It's the most intuitive Bitcoin wallet designed with the UX reminiscent of a simple feature phone So you will know how to navigate it and use it the moment you pick it up Get your Bitcoin off exchanges and into your into your own hands in just a few minutes Experience a peace of mind that comes with taking ownership of your own keys after a massive sellout during Bitcoin, Miami 2023 the passport is back in stock at foundation devices calm Bitcoin only open-source verifiable completely air gap security model gorgeous design craft Premium grade materials if you're thinking about getting your Bitcoin off exchanges This is the one for you. Check out the passport link in the show notes below to learn more You Nico do my back. Yeah Opti in my back. Oh my god Your Mac don't upgrade your Mac books everybody. Okay, you can check the Video, you can check the link in the video description. It will take you directly to the Passport foundation devices website we can get yourself a passport harder wallet guys. Remember not your keys Not your Bitcoin, all right everybody so crazy prediction by Adam back Basically saying calling for a hundred thousand dollar Bitcoin by the having you bet He made that famous bet with the king go But I think he was feeling extremely bullish because he made another he made another prediction last night Basically saying that by this having and Samson Mao and him were going back and forth by this having there's a possibility That we might see $700,000 Bitcoin why $700,000 Bitcoin he is saying that Bitcoin might flip the price of gold now Something crazy is happening Look, we're really not that far off from the previous all-time high About 50% it's according to this this trading view Statistic this is going absolutely parabolic. This is not at all. What happened last cycle So things are just things are heating up and especially it's it's not even the Bitcoin having yet And I think the reason for all this and of course, we're speculating. There's no way to know this for sure is For two reasons primarily Primarily reason number one is the Bitcoin ETF A lot of people are getting excited because of the Bitcoin ETF and because of the potential Inflows coming into Bitcoin with all this institutional Money coming in that's reason number one and reason number two And I think the the more important reason in my opinion is that Michael Saylor is in the green his average price for bitcoins Around 30,000 and naim bukele this morning Which is what we're gonna talk about on tomorrow's episode tweeted out that El Salvador is now in the green as well as the price of Bitcoin is at $40,000 per coin That's two massive deals on the public company level Michael Saylor has proven that Bitcoin is not only an a viable alternative to holding Fiat But is a better alternative and then on the country on the nation-state level Naim bukele is proving that Bitcoin again is not only a viable alternative to fiat currencies but it is a better alternative clearly El Salvador's Bitcoin strategy is Winning and that's in complete contradiction to what the IMF predicted because the IMF was Hit El Salvador with all this legacy media propaganda attacks Using the corporate media saying this is gonna be terrible for your economy. Your economy is gonna collapse and then with Argentina When the IMF gave Argentina another bailout one of the conditions was that the Argentine government had to de incentivize the adoption of Bitcoin and crypto right? So the IMF the predictions that they made they got it absolutely wrong now It's undeniable that naim bukele with the Bitcoin law made the right decision and I think Because they fixed the base layer of society. I think you see you're seeing El Salvador flourish. You're seeing El Salvador improve Maybe it's too early to tell but as a Bitcoiner who was adopted a Bitcoin standard for about six seven years now I could tell you that it's completely changed my life. It's improved. My life could say the same thing about Opti I could say the same thing about everyone who's really adopted a Bitcoin standard. Anyways, this is Adam back. This is his prediction I think he was feeling bullish last night with the price of Bitcoin flying he said digital gold Bitcoin will surely flip physical gold sooner or later and Probably this halving cycle. So within a year or two currently I would take 700,000 seven 700k Bitcoin But it may be partially a substitute some people start selling gold to buy Bitcoin crossing the market cap Below that right and of course We always read you this on Clark Moody's dashboard and we do it on purpose Bitcoin versus the gold market cap and it's at 5.91 percent so I think when we started covering this it was in the 3% So it still has a while to climb But I mean look someone who was who was cited in the Satoshi in the Bitcoin white paper Making these types of bullish predictions. I mean Something might be happening there and I'll get to why I think it starts to make a little bit more sense So here's Vijay boy a potty. He wrote the very very very famous Piece that went absolutely viral that it was eventually turned into a book I think he might be speaking at Bitcoin Atlantis, I think Which is the bullish case for Bitcoin and he says Bitcoin all-time high before the halving for the first time ever Adam back responded with that's what I've been saying. My bet is a hundred K Bitcoin before the halving So Adam back is feeling Bullish to say the least on the other side of things Here is Opti's ex-girlfriend Christine Lagarde and here is a tweet by the European Central Bank Just to contrast both things international cooperation has brought indisputable benefits But mistrust has grown among citizens says Opti's ex-girlfriend Christine Lagarde to respond Policymakers need to focus on citizens priorities and lead with courage while being held accountable What about being held accountable for all of that money printing? Why do they keep gaslighting us? Why do they keep trying to shove? CBDCs down our throats, right? So again, I think this is the another definition of Gaslighting just gaslighting right up in your grill. Okay, so Adam back is predicting these crazy things, right? That's what I've been saying 100k for the halving and he's predicting 700k Bitcoin this halving cycle you guys know the deal and simply Bitcoin we don't really speculate but we can make the case So first we kind of have to go back in time and see what happened Last cycle and I think that this played a major role in why the last cycle was played short So if anyone who's looking on the screen right now here is the US dollar the US dollar price in April of 2021 and It was at it peaked at roughly 60 or 58 thousand US dollars and then it crashed last cycle At the same time of that crash the Bitcoin hash rate crashed as well The Bitcoin hash rate crashed because the majority of Bitcoin miners were located in Mainland China and the CCP made it illegal for you to mine Bitcoin in mainland China I believe this was a major reason as to why Bitcoin did not hit a hundred K last cycle I think it was attacked on a nation-state level and there's a direct correlation Between the price of Bitcoin and the crash of the hash rate as the hash rate recovered You know Bitcoin broke all-time highs again, but more importantly it survived a nation-state attack it Decentralized the hash rate in the process and the hash rate is literally going Parabolic it shows no signs of slowing down So all those people that are bullish on the future of Bitcoin Continue to invest a large sum of money into the infrastructure that is required to mine Bitcoin so, I mean that's a really really good sign also on another side and I think this plays into the Narrative by Naim bukele and by Michael Saylor is that Bitcoin is just a superior asset It's not even at all-time highs But if you've been saving in Bitcoin The US dollar is actually 90 percent cheaper than it was five years ago The oil is 85 percent cheaper.
Cryptocurrency for Beginners: with Crypto Casey
A highlight from Crypto Wallet How to Transfer Crypto from Exchange (Tangem Wallet 2.0 Review ) New Features!
"We are going to become our own bank, our own security system. We are going to 100 % own and have complete control over our digital assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Altcoins, and other cryptocurrencies and NFTs all in less than 90 seconds right now. This is the latest version of Tangent Wallet, a multi -currency, multi -chain cryptocurrency wallet that is the size of a credit card, the most affordable cold storage hardware wallet, and extremely easy to set up and use. Check it out. Opening the box here, we have the three cards with a new sleek matte black design. Next, installing the correct and official Tangent Mobile app on our phones and opening the app, tap Scan Card and touch one of the cards to your phone like so. Next, tap Create Wallet and tap the card to your phone again. Nice. Now that we have a wallet, let's create backups of it. Tap Backup Now and then tap Add a Backup Card and tap the second card to your phone. Cool. Now tap Add a Backup Card again and tap the third card to your phone. Then tap Finalize the Backup Process. And now we need to create an access code to secure the wallets. Tap Continue and then type in whatever word, phrase, numbers, or combination of text you want to use to access your wallet. Re -enter it to verify the access code and then scan the primary card ending in the corresponding numbers on the screen that matches that card, holding you up to your phone until the operation is complete. Then repeat this process for the two backup cards. Sweet! Now your Tangent wallet has been configured and is ready for use. Now we can continue to the wallet, check out the mobile app, learn how to use it safely and securely, and then move some crypto to it. Hello, I'm Crypto Casey and in this video we are going to go over the new features of Tangent's latest wallet and how we can transfer crypto off of exchanges to completely own and control it with this cold storage hardware wallet. Let's hit it! Here is Tangent's original wallet we fully reviewed together on the channel, which you can check out by clicking on the link above. And this is their latest sleek matte black design with some interesting new features. Side by side, both cards are the same shape and size, however the new one is more sturdy with some nice weight to it. Tangent compiled a list of the most requested features by users and implemented them in their new Tangent wallet card. One of the main differences being three different options for private key generation versus only one. So in addition to using the certified true random number generator, TRNG, which generates and stores the keys inside the card's chips, where neither Tangent nor anyone else can see what it is and no copies exist in space and time outside of the Tangent wallet cards. Now with the new wallet cards, we have the option of generating a seed phrase with the Tangent mobile app and importing it to the cards, and also the option of importing an existing seed phrase from another wallet. Cool stuff. So it's important to note that if we create the wallet without the seed phrase option, generating a seed phrase will not be possible later. So we need to carefully consider the pros and cons of each option and decide which one we are most comfortable with long term. Tangent creates a seed phrase through their app on your phone, a hot device connected to the internet, which is not ideal if your phone has malware on it has been compromised or similar. So if we do decide to create a seed phrase for our Tangent wallet, or if we decide to import a seed phrase from an existing wallet, consider disconnecting from any Wi -Fi networks and switching your phone into airplane mode to make sure the process is more secure. Do not take a screenshot of the seed phrase. Instead, write it down on a few pieces of paper to store securely in different locations in case of something like a fire, flood or similar, and then get something more durable than paper immediately for the long term. There are some great offline options for storing the private keys like the crypto steel capsule solo offered by Ledger. This is a solid steel capsule to protect your seed phrase designed to resist extreme conditions. And the BILFODL also is offered by Ledger. BILFODL is a solid steel case to store and protect your seed phrase designed to resist fire, water and more. With cold wallets like Ledger and Trezor devices, the creation of the 12 or 24 word seed phrase is done offline, which is more ideal and secure. However, vulnerabilities and security risks are still present because, as we've discussed in several videos on the channel, if anyone has access to your seed phrase, like if they came across them written on a piece of paper or had access to a Ledger crypto steel capsule or BILFODL with the seed phrase, or if you stored it on a device that can be hacked like your computer, cell phone, or if a scammer tricks you by pretending to be Ledger, Trezor or similar, sending you a fake email or directing you to a fake site and instruct you to give them your seed phrase by lying and saying your funds need to be recovered or something like that, then all the funds on your wallet will be gone. So seed phrases are designed to help us with self custody and to manage our cryptocurrencies and digital assets more easily and restore any lost access to our funds. However, like we just discussed, there are risks. And even if you decided to try and remember it by heart or mix up some of the words, if you unfortunately suffered a brain injury, memory lapse or similar, that's also a risk of completely losing access to your funds. So think about this. Cryptocurrency private keys are generated by elaborate mathematical algorithms where data is encrypted many, many times using a huge amount of computing power. And then the most important key is then just converted into a 12 word seed phrase that can be used by anyone anywhere at any time to steal everything. Right. Important things to consider. So do your own research and never put your eggs or crypto all in one basket or even several of the same types of baskets. Diversification in investments is just as important as diversification of the same type of assets, like spreading cash into several different banks and spreading crypto across different types of wallets. Diversify some digital assets into seed phrase based cold storage hardware wallets like Ledger and Trezor and also diversify some digital assets in different technologically based wallets like BC Vault or Tangent Wallet. With Tangent Wallet, instead of a seed phrase as the only way to backup our cryptocurrency, backup copies of the wallet are created and used on the other Tangent Wallet cards. So let's say we have our Tangent Wallet card and two backup cards. We can store them in different geographical locations in case we need to restore access to our digital assets. And if anyone happens to come across the card or steals the card and even downloads the Tangent Wallet app and tries to access our funds, an additional security layer is necessary, which is where we encrypt our wallets with an access code by creating our unique series of numbers or letters or similar to a PIN code or passphrase. And to protect the wallet from brute force attacks, after each wrong password attempt, an increasing amount of time delay between each attempt is executed. So our crypto remains secure. Amazing. The other new features we will explore apply to both the first and latest versions of the Tangent cards as updates to the Tangent Mobile Wallet app and overall user experience. This includes a new dark mode where we can navigate through the mobile app comfortably in low light environments. So it's easier on the eyes when using it at night or in the dark. It also looks a lot cooler as you can see here on some screenshots. With the new update, we can now sort and group our cryptocurrencies and tokens however we want, whether it be by balance, by blockchain network, like cryptocurrencies on the Ethereum network versus Polygon or similar, or manually in whatever order we prefer to see them. Tangent added an extra layer of protection with an option to hide our balances when the app is open to keep our crypto holdings more discreet without us having to sacrifice convenience if others are close by and can see our phone screen. And they also added an option to turn off access code recovery, which increases security. We can now monitor price changes over the past 24 hours of all of our assets directly in the app to help us make informed decisions during crazy dynamic markets. There is rapid access to buying, selling or hiding a token by tapping and holding it on the home screen. Bitcoin and Ethereum transaction histories also display directly in the app without us having to check third parties like Block Explorer, Etherscan or similar. And Tangent is working on adding more blockchain networks in future updates. Tangent now offers 24x7x365 support so they can answer any questions we may have or guide us on how to properly do crypto transactions with Tangent Wallet no matter what time it is or what time zone we are in, which is huge for beginners just getting in the space. More features are on the horizon like a market data feature directly inside the app, an address book, cross -chain swaps, staking and more support for more blockchains. Brilliant. Now let's transfer some cryptocurrencies off of exchanges to our Tangent Wallet together so we can get more comfortable with the process as well as transfer some back to the exchange to practice for our profit -taking strategy in the next bull run, which you can learn more about in this video guide by clicking on the link above. And after that, we will learn how to connect our Tangent Wallets to Web3 applications like Morales Money, a platform for finding undervalued altcoins before they pump in the next bull cycle. So stay tuned to the very end to learn more about becoming your own bank with complete control and ownership over your digital asset investments simply and easily with Tangent Wallet and a very important free tool we can use when interfacing with Web3 to further protect our funds. Nice. Let's move some Bitcoin we have on our Coinbase account off of the exchange together to hold in our very own cold storage hardware wallet, Tangent Wallet. Open the Tangent app, tap scan card, scan the card, and enter the access code. Scan the card again. And from here on the dashboard, press and hold Bitcoin, then tap copy address. Next, open the Coinbase exchange app, tap the send button, tap Bitcoin, paste the Tangent Bitcoin wallet address into the to field, and tap continue. Enter the amount of Bitcoin we want to send. I always recommend sending a small amount as a test first to make sure everything is good to go. So in this case, we are sending $100 worth of Bitcoin. Tap preview, make sure everything looks good, then tap send now, and it's on its way. In a few minutes or so, when we open our Tangent Wallet app, we will see the $100 worth of Bitcoin that we now completely own and control. Repeat the same process for any other type of cryptocurrency by copying the corresponding address on Tangent Wallet, also making sure we select the right network. Like for example, with Tether, there are many other available networks like Ethereum versus BNB Smart Chain versus Solana and more. And then repeat the same similar process on any other exchange we may have crypto on by using the send function, pasting the address in the recipient field, and checking to make sure everything looks good before sending. The process is actually much easier and simpler than most people think that are new to crypto. And it's a lot like riding a bike. I can try to explain how to ride a bike to you, show you how to ride a bike, and you can read about riding a bike. However, at the end of the day, you need to get on the bike and ride it for yourself to learn. So start practicing transferring to and from different exchanges and wallets to prepare for the next face -melting bull cycle so you can take profits and potentially change your life with some nice gains. And if you want to explore a simple tool any of us can reference to increase the probability of us making gains by buying and selling altcoins at the right time, check out this video guide all about the Morales Moneyline charting tool by clicking on the link above. Great. Now let's transfer crypto from our Tangent Wallet back to Coinbase exchange to practice for when we want to lock in profits by converting it to fiat and transferring it to our bank accounts. Note that you can take profit in stablecoins directly on the Tangent Wallet app without transferring it by tapping on the token, tapping exchange, entering the amount, and tapping swap. There's also an option to sell for fiat using moon pay if we tap sell. However, you will have to set up an account with them which is a good idea so we have multiple options to trade and sell crypto when the market is hot as some exchanges get overwhelmed, freeze transactions, prevent withdrawals, etc. So open the Coinbase exchange app, tap receive, select the crypto, for example Ethereum on the Ethereum network, tap copy, then open the Tangent Wallet app. On the dashboard, tap and hold Ethereum, then tap send. Paste the Ethereum network wallet address from Coinbase in the address field. Select the amount of Ether to send, which as usual start with a small amount to test first to make sure it works, then tap send. After a few minutes or so, depending on how busy the network or exchange are, it will show up on the exchange and from there you can sell it for your country's currency and then transfer it to your bank account. Amazing. Now let's connect our Tangent Wallet to a Web3 application so we can start using decentralized platforms like Morales Money. But first it's extremely important to make sure we are accessing the correct and official sites as well as understanding exactly what is going to happen when we sign transactions to avoid losing all of our funds from a scammer or hacker using a free browser extension called WalletGuard. I've been using it over the past year and it's been working great, popping up warnings, helping check everything out before transacting, so it's definitely worth checking out and giving it a go whether we are new or experienced in the space. For example, if we start interacting with smart contracts like for minting NFTs, when accessing the site, WalletGuard's phishing protection layer executes and warns you if the website might be harmful, if it was created recently, and if it has a low trust score and if we do proceed to do so with caution. And when we do, before attempting to verify a transaction with our wallet, a second layer of protection is executed with a clear human readable warning about what exactly will happen if you decide to proceed with a transaction, like if it's going to drain your wallet instead of actually mint an NFT. This feature alone would have saved me from losing over $20 ,000 when minting an NFT on a fake lookalike website back in the last bull cycle. Absolutely insane. It can also detect and will notify you if the site is making multiple attempts to interact with your wallet, trying to hack and steal funds. So, WalletGuard is a must have as a crypto investor, so make sure to scroll down and use the link below to access the correct and official site to download WalletGuard's free extension to protect your wallet and crypto assets today. Seriously, it takes like 10 seconds and if you'd like to see a video guide all about how it works, click on the link above. Nice. Now that we've got an added layer of protection to keep our wallets and funds more secure when interacting with Web3 apps, let's learn how to connect our Tangem wallet to a Web3 app called Morales Money. Make sure to use the link in the description area below to access the correct and official site, as well as redeem any special offers they have for us. Before connecting, open the Tangem app, tap Manage Tokens at the bottom, tap BNB and make sure the BNB Beacon Chain and BNB Smart Chain options are enabled. That way the connection to Morales Money platform goes more smoothly. Using the link below, when we arrive at the site, we can see a screen full of crypto bubbles that show us which altcoins are up versus down in the latest price action. And in the top right hand corner, click on the Sign Up Login button, then click Login via Wallet. Here we can see a secure login screen where we can click Connect, then click on the option called Wallet Connect here, and then we will see this QR code. Next, open the Tangem wallet app, tap on the three dots in the top right hand corner of the screen, then tap Wallet Connect, tap the Add icon in the top right hand corner, then hold your phone facing the QR code on the Morales Money screen. On the Tangem app, you will see a message, tap Start, and next on the Morales Money screen, we just need to click the Verify button. Then on the Tangem wallet app, on the message that pops up, tap Sign. Enter your access code, tap the Tangem card to your phone, and on the Morales Money screen, enter your email address, and now you're connected to the Morales Money Web3 app. This is a platform with a lot of different functionalities that helps us with finding new altcoins, trading them, and much much more, which you can learn all about in this video walkthrough by clicking on the link above. Just to give you an overview of what we can do with our Tangem wallets connected to Morales Money, we can check out our wallet balances by clicking on this profile picture in the top right hand corner and then clicking My Wallet. And here we can view all of our tokens, and under the NFT tab, we can also view any NFTs on our wallets. Nice. And on the navigation menu at the top of the screen, if we click Swap, then click on the dropdown that says Trading Account, we can click Main Account, which opens up our wallet. And if we click Swap, we can select a token to sell from our wallet to buy another token on the Ethereum, Binance, or Polygon blockchain networks. All straight on the blockchain without having to transfer tokens to and from centralized exchanges. Very neat. On Morales Money, we can also go to the Explore Coins option and choose a predetermined filter like Top Recently Minted Coins with Experienced Buyers. And if one of the tokens seems interesting and you want to gamble on some, click on it. And on the right here, we can instantly swap tokens in our wallet to the new token directly on chain. There are a ton of other interesting tools and tricks on the Morales Money platform with many more to come. So if you're interested in checking it out, be sure to scroll down and use links below to sign up. If you would like to learn more about Morales Money and how it can help us potentially make life -changing gains in altcoins, check out this video. If you would like to watch a video guide about how crypto wallets, seed phrases, and private keys work, check out this video. And to get your very own Tangent wallet, click on the link in the screen. Like and subscribe for more. Be safe out there.
Bloomberg Markets
Fresh update on "coinbase" discussed on Bloomberg Markets
"Jess and Paul. Well Paul I feel like since Tom Kean isn't with us anymore right now we can actually bring up Bitcoin. I was going to talk to him about it earlier but I was worried it would ruffle his feathers. But if you look at that up more than 150 percent this year and of course crossing that 40 ,000 threshold that everybody was watching. So what a move there. You're looking at other stocks especially Coinbase with up more than 4 percent. Also Marathon Digital ticker symbol MARA more up than 4 percent. Alright big move into crypto space. Let's bring in our next guest who looks at all this all this stuff stocks bonds crypto all this stuff Tatiana Daria she covers the markets for. She joins us here in our Bloomberg studio in New York City. Haven't seen her for a while. She's
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from Avalanche Skyrockets Gaming Bull Run Begins
"All right, today we're going to dive into some blockchain game wars that I think you guys are going to want to listen to. We're going to be breaking down a lot of projects and also giving you some insights as to where maybe some of these game companies are going to be going. It's going to be a good one. My name is Paul Baron. Welcome back to the Tech Path. All right, let's get started. I do want to thank our sponsor today, and that is Tangem. If you are looking at a self -custody wallet, which you probably are, maybe jumping into crypto for your first time and you're thinking, I want to park some of my crypto off of exchanges. This is one of the tools that you can do it. All you have to go and do is go over to tangem .com. You can jump right into one of their cards. One of the things you're going to like here is the flexibility of both the card and the app versus using a hardware wallet. You know what I'm talking about. It's very simple. You get a three -card set, keep one with you, park the other two, hide them up, and then use it anytime you need to do a transaction right there on your phone, both iOS and Android. Make sure and check it out. You get an initial discount by just using our code, so we'll leave one down below. Make sure and check it out. It helps out. Now, I know everybody was kind of dogging us a little bit about my statement last week, a reference to the situation around Alluvium and them being on Avalanche. I just want to kind of clarify, there's a lot of research that comes, of course, across our desk here, and some of it is through things that we just are constantly perusing. One of the things that really kind of caught our eye was what was happening over on BeamHub. And BeamHub right here, as you can see, and our team tells me that this used to say coming soon, even though it says popular Alluvium Arena. And so the theory is that maybe there's going to be some action here of Alluvium on Avalanche at some time. So that's just, I just want to get that out there, kind of get it away because I know everybody was kind of freaking out about that earlier. I want to get into a couple of tweets. We'll kind of start right here, Coinbase Exchange, adding support for Solana and Avalanche Perpetual Futures. This course is in the international exchange. Now why is this? It's very simple. Both Solana and Avix, very active in the gaming ecosystem and the likelihood of moving and seeing a lot of growth, I think, in the coming months and years for blockchain gaming and Web3. Overall, this is a good move by Coinbase for sure, and I think eventually we may see some stuff like that here in the US, but right now we've got to deal with what we've got to deal with. And of course, that's just getting Coinbase past their lawsuit with the SEC. If you have not checked out our full playlist on Avalanche, go check it out. It's going to give you a full rundown of a lot of the projects, some of the games, some of the SocialFi experiences, all sorts of things that we've covered over the months and years with the Avalanche team, many of their devs, all that, executives, et cetera. Check it out. You guys will like it. It's a good playlist to get kind of indoctrinated into understanding what's happening in gaming, and why Avalanche is going to probably be one of the top ones out there. So why are so many crypto games are switching chains or calling it quits? And there's some reasons here. I want to kind of highlight a couple of points here. Let me kind of zoom out on this. There's a few things that I want to focus in on. 81 % of current blockchain games use non -gaming -focused layer 1s, so that's one reason. Early on, they're going to have to move into some of these layer 2s. 74 % of games are now choosing an EVM network, like Solana's virtual machine. Comes in a distant second, making up about 10 % of games, and this is in comparison to what's happening over on Ethereum and Polygon. ETH sidechain Polygon remains a top choice. You can kind of see the chart right here. And the number, Solana looks like they're number four, ETH number three, and obviously BNB and Polygon pretty much holding the top two spots, so something to be aware of. 65 of % blockchain games move networks, so this year, up from 48 games switching things up across all of 22. So a little bit of activity. Could be something happening there, I think, on the sense of urgency, meaning that people are probably realizing, okay, we've been building, we're at that time now where the market is going to start heating up, we need to be ready, and we need to be on the blockchain that we're going to be on. So I would agree that it's a good strategy move. 60 % of games that left a layer one network moved to a layer two scaling network. This is all based on fees. It's the situation that really kind of boils down to everything. As more people have migrated to Polygon, this is one of the developers, we just started to run into scaling issues with Polychain, and we're paying between $3K and $4K a day on gas. Just untenable, so this is preventing us from both scaling and the game. So that's a problem I think eventually will be solved with some advancements in Polygon tech that will eventually get that into a scalable solution for the growth that we're going to see around gaming in general. Also want to take a look quickly, just so you guys are aware, Polygon soared last week after IMAX Immutable, a Web3 gaming platform, shook hands with video game giant Ubisoft. So similarly, Solana has also been favored by institutional investors recently, getting some attention of top crypto whales, which I think both those tokens in general, but more importantly, the vision of what these tokens represent. That's the thing that I think a lot of people are going to continue to see happening for sure. So, very interesting, I'd love to get your feedback. When you look at all the chains, whether it's what's happening, or within the ecosystems, if you're looking at IMAX or you look at Immutable, you look at what's happening within Solana or even Polygon, maybe Avalanche. Is it something that you would focus in one particular area or games within one particular area? Let me know, drop some comments down below. Make sure and smash the like button is one of the ways that we understand what you guys really want here on the show. One other thing, I want to kind of go into a few tweets, this of course coming in from Sandeep over at Polygon. It's easy to price talk, this is obviously with the price changing and moving so quickly over the last few days. It's hard to discuss fundamentals, fundamentals have the last laughs, I always agree with that. And I think this is something also, hopefully we're supposed to get Sandeep on the show. He's been scheduled a couple of times, we're going to try to get him on the show, hopefully before year end to give you guys kind of an update of what's happening at Polygon. Here's Robbie Ferguson from Immutable. Are you getting it, Hanon? I don't know if that's a message or not. We'll see. Anyway, Assassin's Creed, Maker Ubisoft is building a crypto gaming experience with Immutable. And I think this is something that we're going to continue to see a lot of major partnerships really make their way into some of these projects that I think are good for the industry, but more importantly are good for this cycle. And what I mean by that is, and everybody always asks me, you know, what's going to be the big winners this time around? I totally believe that it is going to be gaming. We thought gaming was going to be the last bull run metaverse kind of play. Many of these projects just were not ready. Many of these, you know, blockchains weren't ready. Now it's a different story. And when you think about that, look at what is happening with Avalanche. Why are AAA game studios choosing Avalanche? They're on a full PR run right here, and you can kind of see some of the things that you have to kind of focus in on with Avalanche. Shrapnel, Gunzilla, build on Beam, we've been talking about that. Again, Beam, definitely one that I'm watching very closely just in reference to the token itself. Obviously Shrapnel, we've had Shrapnel team on our show. Great graphics. Gunzilla, just the ability for them to be able to kind of leverage both traditional and Web3 I think is going to be a pretty big deal. Now let's remember some guys in the moves that you guys will probably recognize. This of course is Ryan White. And Ryan was over at Polygon, and now he's moved over to Optimism. So I knew he wouldn't stay out of the business long. And the interesting thing since Optimism, this is just something that you have to look at, if you look at Optimism in general, a little bit of activity here, this is just on the price. Market cap right here as you can kind of see it exploding a little bit, 1 .6 billion currently. And if you look at the Explorer token unlocks, there are some things getting ready to unlock in a big way here. So I don't know, could be some action going on here. So I would just be very aware of that. If you are looking at or really analyzing Optimism OP as a whole, just something to be aware of. There's getting ready to be a pretty significant unlock. What does that mean? It means that we're going to see a dump. For some of you guys who have not seen or been around the crypto markets very long, if you haven't subscribed to the channel, eventually you'll start to get and understand kind of the vernacular that we use and what the industry use, follow crypto Twitter religiously and make sure and follow the projects themselves. Because a lot of times there's a lot within the projects and the devs within those projects that can be looked at that can kind of set you on a research role that I think you'll pay attention to. A good example, a tweet from Alexander from Scott Mavis, Axie Infinity, if you guys are, maybe you have been around crypto gaming for a while, you know Axie, but if you haven't read up on it, learn a little bit more about what Axie did because they were really one of the first ones out there. Now what he's talking about here was in reference to a show we did last week where we released a PBN exclusive and that was Roblox talking about introducing NFTs into Roblox. This was actually the piece that Alexander is talking to specifically. It was an interview with Squawkbox and the CEO of Roblox and it was all about the potential for NFTs. Short answer, yes they're going to be planning, it's coming into their roadmap and I think that was what Alexander of course is kind of referencing is that hey they've been involved with Roblox often and of course they've got investments from them and plans for Ronan and Axie and all that starting to play together. Point being is that there's a lot of intersection between what's happening in traditional gaming, Web 2, and what is getting ready to happen in Web 3, which is why everybody needs to be paying attention. This is a good example right here, Gala Games putting out a simple tweet, never short on Web 3. You'll notice this little icon right here guys, does anybody recognize that? I'm going to zoom in on that just for you guys a little bit. Right there, does anybody recognize that? Yeah, well that's IMX because they bought the hashtag and now every time that's being used, kudos to Robbie, you just punked everybody on crypto Twitter for sure. Interesting stuff out there. Games are being played in many ways right now and it's more than the kind of blockchain games that we're thinking about coming our way. Alright rolling out another topic, of course many of you guys have probably heard us talk about Zilliqa way back in the day. Well they're active again and guess what, they're making the Fusion Gaming Hub, the first ever Web 3 gaming platform available for download through the Microsoft Store. It's real guys, there's a Web 3 platform called Fusion, right there Fusion, on the Microsoft Store and you'll kind of get here Web 3, some of the things that are happening there. I don't know, I'm just, we'll see. But the point is, is that someone's going to be first and of course this is interesting that this was the case. Alright further into it, let's go over here, Chili's on the move again, likely to be on the move for some time with this move right here, announcing that Animoca Brands joins Chili. Chili's as a new validator, so they aligned the blockchain innovation with Chili's Sportfi, we've talked to Chili's before, we've went around Chili's and if you don't know about Chili's check out some of our videos because we do a full breakdown. Think of it really as a blockchain for the fans of a lot of these major sports leagues and this could be everything from MMA to soccer, etc, you know, European football for those of you in Europe. And then another one I want to hit on of course, this is Yat -Su right there, starting to rev up the engines with of course Torque. We had the Torque, well rev on their team on, so we were dropping a video this week, you guys are going to not want to miss it, make sure and check it out, this is just giving you kind of a precursor. Another thing that we've got coming is an interview with the HiveMapper team and if you guys don't know about HiveMapper, this is the company that is really expanding mapping in the blockchain and what that might mean for every kind of company out there in logistics, all that. This is the utility scenario that plays into a lot of that. So just, it's a good one to watch, we're going to drop a video on that this week as well. Alright, just as an example, this of course as everybody understands, Atlas was one of the first movers out and of course that as we've seen with in terms of their amazing development as a game overall. Others to watch this week, Uniswap we're kind of keeping a close eye on, if you're watching some of our videos you'll know why, go back and look at our video a little bit more on stablecoins tokenization and around that. Other ones to keep an eye on, I want to kind of scan down in here, this is Chiliz, this is the one that we just mentioned a second ago. This is another one to keep an eye on and a handful of others, there's obviously Wild, we've talked about Wilderworld before, over, a couple others you might want to take a look at. Anyway, the point is that we're starting to see a little bit of activity in Web3 around a lot of these games and eventual platforms of what's gonna play into the future of gaming as a whole. Alright, if you guys are not part of the Diamond Circle, make sure and get in right now, it's one of the best places that you can get additional alpha from us. Couple of podcasts, Kyle has his Web3 and business podcast over there, it's a great one, listen to that one. And if you want to follow me out there on X, it's at Paul Baron, catch you next time right here on Tech Path.
Markets Daily Crypto Roundup
Fresh update on "coinbase" discussed on Markets Daily Crypto Roundup
"This episode of Markets Daily is sponsored by CME Group and Harpy. It's Monday, December 4th, 2023, and this is Markets Daily from Coindesk. My name is Noelle Acheson, Coindesk collaborator and author of the Crypto is Macro Now newsletter on Substack. On today's show, we're talking about strong crypto moves, Bitcoin criticism, and more. So you don't miss an episode, be sure to follow the podcast on your platform of choice and turn on notifications. And just a reminder, Coindesk is a new source and does not provide investment advice. Now, a markets roundup. Crypto markets were active during the weekend, building on Friday's positive momentum. Then, during Asian trading hours today, interest picked up even further, briefly pushing Bitcoin through $42,000 for the first time since early April of last year. It has since settled back some, but seems for now to be holding within a new range. According to Coindesk indices, at 9 a.m. Eastern time today, Bitcoin was trading up 5.2% over the past 24 hours at $41,750. Ether was up 3.5%, trading at $2,233. What triggered this jump? Truthfully, it's always hard to pin down any specific catalyst. It could be one or several large orders, it could be short covering, it could be a rumor getting traders excited or maybe all of the above. As we've been discussing here regularly, the backdrop is positive for crypto assets more broadly. Growing institutional interest, the imminent likelihood of a US Bitcoin spot ETF, declining interest rate expectations, and increasing monetary liquidity, all of these are positive drivers for crypto assets, and we could be seeing more large investors wake up to this new environment. For now, this still seems to be a Bitcoin-led rally, as Bitcoin's market dominance is heading up. Bitcoin currently accounts for over 54% of the total crypto market cap, up from less than 52% just a couple of weeks ago. Crypto-related stocks are also doing well. On Friday, Coinbase jumped 7.25%, while MicroStrategy climbed almost 6%. In Macromatters, this week we're going to be talking a lot about US employment data. There's a strong flow of key metrics on the calendar. Tomorrow, we get the latest reading on US job openings. On Wednesday, we get the ADP national employment report. On Thursday, we have the challenger job cuts and unemployment benefit claims. All of these will be building up to the climax on Friday, when we get the latest official US jobs growth and unemployment rate. Expectations are for the unemployment rate for November to hold steady at 3.9%, while non-farm payrolls increase by 180,000, more than October's increase of 150,000. In a public appearance on Friday, Federal Reserve Chair Powell once again pushed back against expectations of interest rate cuts in the first half of 2024. At one stage, he said, and I quote, the FOMC is strongly committed to bringing inflation down to 2% over time and to keeping policy restrictive until we are confident that inflation is on a path to that objective. End quote. He went on to repeat that the Fed was prepared to hike again if necessary, and that it was premature to conclude that a sufficiently restrictive stance has been reached. The market wasn't buying it and is now pricing in an almost 60% probability of the first rate cuts by March. At one stage on Friday, the yield on 10-year treasuries dropped as low as 4.2% for the first time since early September. So you can see why this week's employment data is going to be so significant for market sentiment.
The Breakdown
A highlight from Markets Surge as BlackRock Files ETH Spot ETF
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Friday, November 10th, and today we are talking about BlackRock's Ethereum ETF filing. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Hello friends, happy Friday. Before we dive in, I just have to give you a little bit of information about the show and the weekend. Unfortunately, this show is going to be a little bit shorter than normal and there will be no weekend episodes. Late last night, I started having to deal with an unexpected family situation that has wanted to round out the bullish end to this week and really capstone our shift away from the SAM -based world of last year and face forward into what's coming next. With that in mind, on Thursday morning, news broke that BlackRock had registered an entity called the iShares Ethereum Trust in Delaware. Although representatives for BlackRock refused to comment, the filing appeared legitimate. It named the Managing Director of BlackRock Advisors as the filing agent. There was initially some skepticism at first and people not sure if it was rumors, but suspicions were confirmed in the afternoon after markets closed when it was revealed that BlackRock had filed to launch a spot Ethereum ETF. Now this is not the first spot Ethereum ETF to be filed. A few months after the flurry of spot Bitcoin ETF filings in June, asset managers doubled down on crypto products with matching Ethereum filings. VanEck, ARK Invest slash 21 shares, Hashdex and Invesco slash Galaxy Digital all have applications awaiting approval. There's also a conversion application for Grayscale's Ethereum Trust filed with the SEC. The difference with BlackRock's application is, of course, that they are BlackRock. They are an order of magnitude at least larger than the other asset managers. And of course, what that means, at least according to the markets, is that these ETF applications are not merely speculative but actually stand a good chance of being approved. BlackRock's track record speaks for itself. The firm has filed over 570 ETF applications with the SEC and all but one of them have been approved. Now the rationale for the legality of a spot Ethereum ETF is the same across all of the current applications. Following the Grayscale court decision, it seems that the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs is almost assured to happen. The court found that there was no material difference between spot Bitcoin markets and futures markets. As the SEC had already approved futures based Bitcoin ETFs, they had no reason to deny spot based products. Ethereum futures markets have grown massively over the past few years, achieving a similar size to Bitcoin futures in 2021 when those ETFs were approved. Partly due to this increase in market size, a large number of asset managers were able to launch futures based Ethereum ETFs last month. So then, using the same logic that was deployed in the Grayscale lawsuit, Ethereum spot markets are obviously tied to futures markets. This would dictate that spot based Ethereum ETFs should be approved to trade alongside their futures based counterparts. Nate Grassi, the president of the ETF store, put it more succinctly in a tweet. Grayscale Courtwin plus SEC approval of Ether futures ETFs should equal spot Ether ETF approval. Now BlackRock pointed to this argument specifically in their filing, stating that, quote, given that the SEC has approved ETFs that offer exposure to ETH futures, which themselves are priced based on the underlying spot ETH market, the sponsor believes that the SEC must also approve ETPs that offer exposure to spot ETH, end quote. Now, if the BlackRock application is approved, it will include a market surveillance agreement with Coinbase to monitor spot markets for manipulation. BlackRock also leaned on existing surveillance sharing agreements with the CME Ethereum futures market that are present in the other products. They wrote in their filing, Ether CME surveillance can detect spot market fraud that affects both futures ETFs and spot exchange traded products, or that surveillance cannot do so for either type of product. Having approved ETH futures ETFs in part on the basis of such surveillance, the SEC has can detect spot market fraud that would affect spot ETPs, and the sponsor thus believes that it must also approve spot ETH ETPs on that basis.
Bloomberg Surveillance
Fresh update on "coinbase" discussed on Bloomberg Surveillance
"Here? Yeah I think you've got sort of your market -wide you know cross catalysts and then your Bitcoin specific catalyst. So I'll talk about the market -wide ones first you know I think for one thing you know dawn broke in Asia Monday morning and people whoever they are decided the feds done you know and not only with Bitcoin look at what gold did overnight I mean gold popped above 2 ,000 that has u -turned and done a round trip it's now lower on day the but Bitcoin started moving right around the same time pretty dramatic move in it it was kind of range -bound there for a while there is this a lot of optimism about the ETFs coming still that a big part of that but I think you know something took it through that 40 thousand level and then there was just an air gap in the chart up to 41 42 air gap it's technical it's like between my ears you know that's what I got what I got going on and hey as Tom as I'm sure you know you know trying to get too specific about the catalysts for Bitcoin is kind of a fool's errand but that's that's what we're hearing over and over again is for one thing you know what we've seen in the markets kind of a delayed reaction to the move lower in yields that we saw last week the move lower in the dollar but then when you when you think about Bitcoin specifically a you know so much hype around the ETFs also that halving next year is expected in the spring so what that means is you know Bitcoin has sort of a set supply schedule going forward and every now and it halves the supply of new bitcoins you know the this is what the miners get in return for all the work they do to validate the transactions so the amount of supply coming is going to go down by half okay early next year and that's you know the real Bitcoin sort of evangelists well you know they love this about it that you know it's not up to some central banker or a treasury what the supply is that it's a predictable and diminishing supply of Bitcoin so that's further out in the future that's a big thing and I'd finally say you know strangely enough the resolution to the binance case had a lot of people excited because it's kind of feels like the worst of the all the legal problems are in the rearview mirror of all that if I want to make my first buy of Bitcoin am I going to do it in an ETF this year well the argument is that a lot of people will that you know if you having have a financial advisor you know imagine your financial advisor talking to a client who's really been itching to get Bitcoin you know well do you want that those assets leaking off your platform in the Coinbase or into Robinhood or something else you might have been sort of pushing back on that for a while now if you can advise him okay buy an ETF you know it's saved by a gold ETF you combine you know you could buy a Bitcoin ETF right right it's it's it's just a it's a it's less of a risk in a lot of people's minds the difference here Paul is Regan's taking this hook line and sinker to the point where he's using Grecian formula number nine he's walking in here looking like a 28 year old Bitcoin stud you know absolutely so do we have a sense of timing on this ETF decision and and who's the decision coming from is this an SEC SEC decision the guys at Balchunas at Bloomberg intelligence is sort of the the leader of the pack on this yeah and you know it's funny you see all the the the Bitcoin aficionados on social media they love them because he Eric thinks is gonna happen Eric says 90 % of first approval by I think January 10th is the date and you know this is the main reason being at the SEC lost that big case against grayscale so they've sort of run out of reasons to turn it down. We interrupt Mike Regan here we'll come back to him to join our retirement correspondent John Tucker who's 201k triple lovers on cash so missed Nvidia John how about that Bitcoin to a diversify away from market risk I don't get it I mean I don't understand it I don't know what it is this is like it's up but it's like no so load up on know it I somebody on there if I hit the number one rule for Tucker investing you don't get it stay away yeah stay far away so Warren Buffett said that and also here's the here's the contrary indicator it's the one topic at the barbershop that is like just stay away sixteen thousand to forty thousand do people in that world say it's a bull market how do they talk yeah some are saying that I mean look we're still down off of the peak of sixty nine thousand so it's hard to really you know use the old definitions of bull and bear market with this with this thing I mean we've had like you pointed out what we're up 150 something percent but that's included three fold drawdowns this of year greater than twenty percent so that's the kind of market it is you know it's it's pure speculative sort of ride ride the waves of it but you know people are considering this the beginning the beginning of a new bull phase perhaps again it's it's really without really any fundamentals to sort of be your guiding star this is a secular just binary thing I believe it therefore I own it I don't believe it therefore I don't note know it I don't it doesn't feel like people are and I just think you know the more and more people get on this momentum trade just it builds on itself we get these big swings you know yeah I think you know there's definitely that sort of you you know polarized mentality towards it when it comes to discussing the sort of utility of it but there are certain people I think that say I don't get it all I know is it keeps going up yeah I want to own and that's you know scary and that can be silly and
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from Macro-Economy vs Crypto with EconomicNinja
"All right, so lots of influential factors right now in the markets today from real estate, what we're dealing with, with inflation, and also banking issues that really could affect your strategy going forward around crypto or real estate, all those kinds of things. We're going to bring in a special guest today to kind of break this down. This is going to be a good one. My name is Paul Baron. Welcome back into Tech Path. Joining me today is the Economic Ninja. If you guys don't follow him, hit him up over on YouTube as the Economic Ninja. Great to have you on the show, Ninja. Hey, Paul, thank you so much for having me on. So let's get into a couple of topics around the current state of the markets, we'll call it. Some of the things that are happening right now, obviously around jobs, we saw, of course, COBY kind of reporting on this, 150 ,000 jobs in October. This was below the expectations of 180. And it's likely that this is highly underreported in the sense of real job loss overall. When you look at some of the research and the data that you're doing, I know on your own YouTube channel, you look at the current situation with jobs as they are and where those jobs are coming from, because they're coming from places that are not necessarily even job growth areas. Do you feel like this is a major catalyst for a potential oncoming recession or do you think this is kind of a natural evolution of these down markets? Well, you've got a couple of different factors at play. One is that the government is not reporting the truth in the way that it should be reported. It actually gives out the facts and figures. But one fact and figure that they really go a little light on is the headlines come out and they say that employment's increasing, employment's great. But what's increasing is part time jobs, not full time jobs. When you see it seems to be right now about for every one full time job that's taken away, taken off the market, that's somebody that's fully employed, has hopefully some type of benefits package, has insurance, things like that. For every job that's taken away full time, we add about three to four part time jobs. And a lot of this is because of government overregulation where governments have stepped in and they tell employers, hey, if your employees are employed at a minimum 30 hours a week, that's considered full employment. So we want you to give them benefits so easily. And it makes sense. Companies go, OK, we're going to start pulling back and giving certain employees like twenty eight hours a week so that they stay right underneath that threshold. So that's one factor that's really not explained very well. Another thing is that the Federal Reserve is hell bent to raise unemployment. And this is what normally happens during a tightening cycle. The reason why the Federal Reserve has to tighten anything is because inflation got out of control. The Fed has always had an inflation mandate. Their numbers are two percent, which we all know inflation runs a lot hotter year after year, over two percent. But again, they're moving these metrics are changing the goalposts. And so now that inflation has gotten away, they need to tighten. One of the ways to tighten is to cause unemployment. Well, how does the Federal Reserve cause employment? It puts the pressure, turns the screws on to the employer in the form of less money being lent out into the market, higher interest rates, things like that. Do you feel like this is just the beginning of the iceberg in terms of jobs available, true unemployment spiking into possibly some people out there have even pushed out into what we could see? If you look back at some of the recessions in the past where we see double digit unemployment over 10 percent, do you think that is even possible with the current status here in the United States? Yeah, 100 percent, I completely believe that by the time we hit a bottom, we will be well into double digit unemployment numbers. Let's give the car industry as an example, we've seen numerous auto lenders completely pull out of the market. The latest large auto lender that pulled out of the market was Bank of Montreal. Now, if you think about it just from that aspect, that means that there are less lenders lending into the market, allowing people to be able to buy a car because most people and I'll tell you, I've got a car for sale right now around nine thousand dollars. There's not a lot of phone calls. My phone's not ringing off the hook. And the reason why is because people don't have the cash to buy it. They need to finance nine thousand dollars. And so they're having a harder time because their interest rates are so much higher. Why? Well, one of the reasons not only the Fed raising rates and the bond market going crazy, but also since there's less lenders in the market, a lot of these auto lenders have to take a certain stance on risk. And they go, hey, if we're going to loan at a certain amount of money into the market with the certain average credit user or the person that needs a loan, they have a credit score of X or they've got bills of Y. They've got to ask higher rates. So the problem is now you've got employment being affected there, too, because if there are less car loans going out, there are less auto salesman employed. There are less people working behind the desk giving those loans out. I know that might seem real small, but when you look at it from a twenty thousand foot view perspective, you start really thinking about just one little step where the Federal Reserve makes it so impossible for a bank to loan money to someone that chain effect that going down the stairs, stepping down from one job loss, two jobs lost, three job loss after a while, it starts just multiplying. So a lot of factors here that you're mentioning and you look at this because we're talking about potentially still job numbers going up, if job numbers and when I say job numbers in the sense of unemployment, if it does go up, wouldn't that kind of align with what Powell's directive is, which is job loss goes up, inflation numbers start to reduce and we see what we could see, which is maybe that target of two percent. Do you think that's achievable in, say, the next two to five years? What is your thoughts on what Chair Powell is looking at in terms of hitting that target? Yeah, so I actually believe that you're going to see a two percent inflation rate in five years, maybe six, and the reason why is because we're going to have an epic crash before then. The Federal Reserve historically does not start touching or pivoting its rates until we see about 20, 25 percent taking off the major indexes of the stock market. It takes a lot more than just a housing correction to do that. If you look back on when the Fed started to really pivot last time was 2007, which was in line with not only a housing correction, but also the stock market indexes started really trending lower. It wasn't until it hit its crescendo between September of 2008 and the spring of 2009. But you also have to remember, too, the Federal Reserve did not have its repurchase window open until January of 2009. So we'd already seen a massive haircut off of stock market indexes. We saw a massive haircut off of home valuations well before they even opened up the repurchase window. Now, what's different this time is that the repurchase window has been opened for quite some time. We have over 700 banks failing. That's from the Federal Reserve, not from me. We are seeing an epic crash in the banking sector. But tying this back into like what you were saying with the pivot and the unemployment numbers, the unemployment numbers are actually showing positive. If people don't really disseminate them, it's showing that employment strong, but it's strong in the wrong way. We're getting more part time and under employed employees and we're losing these full time jobs. As a matter of fact, we are already seeing the month of October has been impressive as far as job losses because we're seeing companies shave 10 percent of its workforce or at least are announcing that they're about to lay off 10 percent. Even Citigroup came out September and they said we're going to lay off an undisclosed amount of people and then we'll really let you know in a couple of months. And the reason why they said that they're preparing people. They don't want everyone jumping ships. They don't want everyone to know exactly what they're doing. But at the same time, they're trying to appease their shareholders because they're trying to keep their shareholders from selling their stock. And they're saying, hey, we've got a plan. Don't worry, everything's be fine. Very similar to what happened with WeWork. WeWork gave you the idea in the last couple of months. Hey, we don't see ourselves really going forward in the normal direction. We're going to have to start talking to our creditors and starting to try and renegotiate leases. And now you find them in bankruptcy. So we're in that situation where CEOs are trying their hardest to keep their shareholders calm. We saw that with Lowe's and Home Depot back in the spring where they said the consumer has changed. And they're trying to give you very interesting ways of wording or wordsmithing. Please don't panic. Don't sell our shares because we're essentially screwed right now. Some of the things I want to kind of point to, Fed has lost control, bank collapsed, commercial real estate disaster, pension fund devastation. Something is running up quickly. This is kind of the topic around what's happening overall. And then I want to play a clip from Peter Saint -Ange on what's happening in Switzerland. Let me just jump to this clip real quick and let you listen in. In an ominous sign for our coming financial crisis, Switzerland is considering locking people into failing banks using capital controls that would stop depositors from withdrawing their money. I talked about this in a previous video, so -called friction tech that would lock depositors into dying banks, forcing them to go down with the ship so no banker is left behind. The Fed has also been pushing such controls in a series of papers ever since Silicon Valley Bank went down back in March. So specifically, Switzerland's considering limiting withdrawals to 50 ,000 Swiss francs per year. Franc is about a dollar. Larger withdrawals would be subject to a three month notice period. So you'd have to wait three months. I'm going to pause it there. So it isn't, in fact, taking place in Switzerland, but they're looking at doing this. Remember, if you look at the European Union, about six months ahead of us in terms of the economic cycles and they're obviously already in a recession. If something like that, if the Fed were to come in and put those kind of controls in to kind of avert what happened at Silicon Valley. How do you think consumers would respond to that retail? I mean, because everybody is already on edge with this and now I'm going to have a limit on what I could pull out of my bank. What are your thoughts on how Americans would say, OK, we're OK with that? This has actually been happening for over a decade. We've seen times of banking crisis and I guess the ruble would be one of the most recent examples. And there was some examples in certain Slavic countries where they were told that they were only allowed to withdraw a certain amount of money per day when there's an actual banking crisis. And it's happening in America right now in cryptocurrency. If you have a Coinbase account, you know if you deposit some money, wire it that day, it shows in your account. You could buy Bitcoin with it all day long, but you can't withdraw that Bitcoin for 72 hours. It's because they are insolvent. That's a derivative. And most people don't understand how that works. And so these are great signs when you see countries start to say, hey, we're looking at doing this or you look at what's just going on with Bank of America and some other key banks just a few days ago where they had a quote unquote glitch. And I'm going to tell you, this is sort of the conspiracy theory side. I don't believe that these are glitches that just accidentally happened. There are some that happen, but it's also a test to see how depositors react. And that test was a few days ago. Your deposits were coming into your bank, but it might take a day or two or maybe three for you to be able to access that money because there was a glitch. And really what that is, is the ability for bankers to be able to see how the public reacts to such an event. And those are things that I'm reporting on all the time. I'm sure you are. And I think people need to take heed. So what can you do? First thing is separate your risk. And that is big multinational banks, local regional banks and credit unions. But then also, you don't have to have all of your finances in paper as well. You could actually get alternative assets.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
Fresh update on "coinbase" discussed on Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
"Unfortunately, you know, they're starting to wake up. So that means I don't think we're at the euphoric stage yet, but we're maybe halfway there to the euphoric stage. Expect this week CNBC to start pumping the hell out of this market. Right. They started talking Bitcoin's over 40K. What's coming next? Should you buy this all coin? Jim Cramer going bananas. Right. And but remember, that's the time you want to be selling, not buying. So, folks, be careful, especially if you're new to the market. This is a lesson I had to learn and not to fall in the trap and the time to have to be buying Bitcoin and ETH and so forth was in November, December, January of well, I should say November and December 2022 and January 2023 at the bottom when there is blood on the streets. That's a time to buy. Yes, I bought. I'm sure some of you saw the receipts I had posted both on YouTube as well as on Twitter showing my entry points in Bitcoin at 16, 17 K, 18 K and so forth. And obviously I'm up. So be careful. Don't buy pumps. Wait for pullbacks. Of course, dollar cost average. But folks looking bullish here, the ETFs we know are around the corner potentially. You know, there's no guarantee they get approved. But the SEC has been meeting with the different applicants. The other factor here on the retail side and you're for a side is that Google Trends, the there hasn't been any major spikes. There was one in October, late October, and then it came back down and normalize. Now, if I go maybe on the seven day view, I think there is a bit of an uptick. But once again, nothing too crazy in the past day. Yes, you know, some activity. But once again, the euphoria stage is not here. So the Google Trends is a good indicator because people start, you know, the normies, the retail start googling Bitcoin whereby Bitcoin by crypto and things like that. So I think we still got some ways to go. However, you know, Bitcoin, it's not going to go in a straight line. It may go to 42 K and then pull back and then keep working its way up to maybe 48, 50 K. And will that happen in December? I'm not sure. It could play out till January or even later. The market has a way of doing the opposite of what you think it's going to do. Right, folks? So I say all of this to help you learn that no one has a crystal ball, but we are looking at probabilities of what may play out. And you want to have a plan and stick to that plan. And don't be afraid to take profits. If you're walking away with money, you made money. That's a good thing because nothing is guaranteed. And we can at least take profits off the table as it keeps moving up. I'm, of course, ultimately holding for new all time highs in 2025, but I'm taking some money off the table here. I don't know what the hell is coming later this year or early next year, but I'm not upset about higher prices. Right. I just don't know what's going to come next. Now, quick word from our sponsor, and that is Uphold. Uphold is a great platform where you can buy Bitcoin and all the top all coins. It's a platform I've been using since 2018 to have 260 plus crypto currencies. They're available in over 150 countries. You can also trade precious metals on here like gold and silver and so forth. They have a great app, a great platform. And folks, they are fully reserved. That's the important part, right, that they are safe to use. You can check their audits. You can look at their whole reserve breakdown and all the documentation there. It's important that you use a platform that is reserved and secure. So I can vouch for this platform because I've been using it for a long time. I've interviewed their CEO, CFO, and many other folks at the company. If you'd like to learn more about Uphold, please visit the link in the description. Now, folks, quick word on crypto hiring. This is another indicator that I use in addition to capital being raised, funding and so forth to measure, you know, are people still interested or is they so bullish on this market, right? Because if you have talent leaving TradFi, leaving the Web 2 technology companies and moving to crypto, that's a very good sign, right? So crypto hiring, Grayscale brings on new managing director, the head of ETF decision. So Crypto Asset Grayscale hired John Hoffman to be its managing director and head of distribution and partnerships. Hoffman spent the past several years at Invesco, where he most recently headed up the firm's ETFs and Index Strategies division in the Americas. Hoffman joins the firm as some speculate that resolution in Grayscale's years long attempt to offer a spot Bitcoin ETF could come soon after the new year. So big hire by Grayscale. This guy's from Invesco. In addition, you also have Argo Blockchain and Bastion, Botap's senior executives this week. The crypto mining firm Argo named Thomas Chepas, CEO. Chepas' lengthy resume includes stints as CEO at CBOE Digital, Citadel Technology and managing director at Citigroup and Barclays. That's a pretty heavyweight person there. Caroline Friedman left her post as chief of staff at A16C Crypto to become chief operating officer at Bastion. Other notable hires or hiring news include former Coinbase chief compliance officer Mike Lepress joined the board of directors at MoonPay. Ben Caslin became chief marketing officer of South African crypto trading platform Valor. Caslin was most recently chief strategy officer at Mask X. So, folks, great to see people are coming into the market looking to work here. They see what's on the horizon. So, folks, let me know what you think about Bitcoin's next move. What will happen? Is this going to be a big week? Could Bitcoin green candle like crazy and go to forty eight fifty K? It's possible. Is it very likely? Probably not. But anyway, whatever happens, as long as we keep moving upwards, I'm fine with that. From a macro standpoint, yes, there will be volatility. Yes. Tomorrow Bitcoin could crash a thousand dollars. We know how it works. Right. But as long as it's holding the support levels and those key support levels and it's staying above the moving averages and all that jazz, I am bullish. So let me know what you think. Leave your thoughts and comments below. Hit the thumbs up button. Leave a five star rating on the podcast platforms. Also, folks, please sign up for my free email newsletter. Link will be in the description. Follow me on Twitter, which is also X TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. Links will be in the description. Thank you for watching and listening. I appreciate your support and I'll talk to you all later. Bye.
Ethereum Daily
"coinbase" Discussed on Ethereum Daily
"Welcome to your Ethereum news roundup, here's your latest for Thursday November 9th, 2023. Coinbase rolls out EAS-powered attestations, Circle announces the USDC version 2.2 upgrade, Cal protocol introduces programmatic orders, and core developers plan for additional testnet shadow forks for Dankoon. All this and more starts right now. Ethereum is up 11% over the last 24 hours, currently trading at $2,121 at the time of recording. Coinbase introduced Coinbase Verifications, a feature that leverages the Ethereum attestation service to enable Coinbase users to issue attestations. By linking their Ethereum wallet to Coinbase, users can sign a gasless message that attests to ownership of a verified Coinbase account and their country of residence. Coinbase published verified account and country of residence schemas accessible on the base quarterly testnet and on base mainnet. Coinbase also set up contracts for managing the storage and indexing of attestations. Coinbase verified attestations can be integrated into various dApps to provide SYBO resistance. Circle announced the version 2.2 upgrade for its USDC and EUROC stablecoins, aiming to cut CAS costs by 3-7% and enhance account abstraction capabilities. Additionally, the update will rebrand the EUROC token to EUROC. The upgrade also introduces support for EIP-1271, a standard that allows smart contracts to verify signatures. It allows developers to build products that leverage account abstraction, such as allowing USDC and EUROC to be used for gas fee payments. The upgrade is also backwards compatible. The upgrade will be deployed across six EVM-compatible blockchains in the coming months. No action is required from developers or end users. Cal protocol introduced programmatic orders and the programmatic order framework, a new DeFi primitive that enables the creation of orders that automatically execute when preset on-chain parameters are met. Programmatic orders can facilitate perpetual automated orders with a one-time signature. Changes can also be made with a subsequent signature approval. The framework allows developers to craft complex orders or automate DAO operations with a single on-chain transaction. A watchtower relayer component ensures that orders execute when their conditions are met. Cal protocol is seeking grant requests for applications that leverage the programmatic order framework. And lastly, Ethereum core developers agreed to launch two additional Gourley shadow forks before initiating shadow forks of Ethereum mainnet for the Denkun upgrade. Shadow forks are copies of the existing chain state used for conducting tests prior to implementing updates on live testnet or mainnet environments. Earlier this week, developers successfully activated the Denkun upgrade on a shadow fork of Gourley. Upcoming forks will incorporate specifications from the most recent updates, including networking rework on the consensus layer. Developers also agreed to continue hosting Awkward Devs calls during Dev Connect and on Thanksgiving Day. In other news, Rocketpool releases its Houston upgrade roadmap. Eigenlayer announces the winners of its LSD race. And Sablir version 2.0 goes live on Scroll mainnet.This has been a roundup of today's top news stories in Ethereum. You can support this podcast by following us on Twitter at ethdaily. Also subscribe to our newsletter at ethdaily.io. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye. Bye.
Coronavirus
A highlight from Coinbase Verifications Powered By EAS
"Welcome to your Ethereum news roundup, here's your latest for Thursday November 9th, 2023. Coinbase rolls out EAS -powered attestations, Circle announces the USDC version 2 .2 upgrade, Cal protocol introduces programmatic orders, and core developers plan for additional testnet shadow forks for Dankoon. All this and more starts right now. Ethereum is up 11 % over the last 24 hours, currently trading at $2 ,121 at the time of recording. Coinbase introduced Coinbase Verifications, a feature that leverages the Ethereum attestation service to enable Coinbase users to issue attestations. By linking their Ethereum wallet to Coinbase, users can sign a gasless message that attests to ownership of a verified Coinbase account and their country of residence. Coinbase published verified account and country of residence schemas accessible on the base quarterly testnet and on base mainnet. Coinbase also set up contracts for managing the storage and indexing of attestations. Coinbase verified attestations can be integrated into various dApps to provide SYBO resistance. Circle announced the version 2 .2 upgrade for its USDC and EUROC stablecoins, aiming to cut CAS costs by 3 -7 % and enhance account abstraction capabilities. Additionally, the update will rebrand the EUROC token to EUROC. The upgrade also introduces support for EIP -1271, a standard that allows smart contracts to verify signatures. It allows developers to build products that leverage account abstraction, such as allowing USDC and EUROC to be used for gas fee payments. The upgrade is also backwards compatible. The upgrade will be deployed across six EVM -compatible blockchains in the coming months. No action is required from developers or end users. Cal protocol introduced programmatic orders and the programmatic order framework, a new DeFi primitive that enables the creation of orders that automatically execute when preset on -chain parameters are met. Programmatic orders can facilitate perpetual automated orders with a one -time signature. Changes can also be made with a subsequent signature approval. The framework allows developers to craft complex orders or automate DAO operations with a single on -chain transaction. A watchtower relayer component ensures that orders execute when their conditions are met. Cal protocol is seeking grant requests for applications that leverage the programmatic order framework. And lastly, Ethereum core developers agreed to launch two additional Gourley shadow forks before initiating shadow forks of Ethereum mainnet for the Denkun upgrade. Shadow forks are copies of the existing chain state used for conducting tests prior to implementing updates on live testnet or mainnet environments. Earlier this week, developers successfully activated the Denkun upgrade on a shadow fork of Gourley. Upcoming forks will incorporate specifications from the most recent updates, including networking rework on the consensus layer. Developers also agreed to continue hosting Awkward Devs calls during Dev Connect and on Thanksgiving Day. In other news, Rocketpool releases its Houston upgrade roadmap. Eigenlayer announces the winners of its LSD race. And Sablir version 2 .0 goes live on Scroll mainnet. This has been a roundup of today's top news stories in Ethereum. You can support this podcast by following us on Twitter at ethdaily. Also subscribe to our newsletter at ethdaily .io. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye. Bye.
Ethereum Daily
A highlight from Coinbase Verifications Powered By EAS
"Welcome to your Ethereum news roundup, here's your latest for Thursday November 9th, 2023. Coinbase rolls out EAS -powered attestations, Circle announces the USDC version 2 .2 upgrade, Cal protocol introduces programmatic orders, and core developers plan for additional testnet shadow forks for Dankoon. All this and more starts right now. Ethereum is up 11 % over the last 24 hours, currently trading at $2 ,121 at the time of recording. Coinbase introduced Coinbase Verifications, a feature that leverages the Ethereum attestation service to enable Coinbase users to issue attestations. By linking their Ethereum wallet to Coinbase, users can sign a gasless message that attests to ownership of a verified Coinbase account and their country of residence. Coinbase published verified account and country of residence schemas accessible on the base quarterly testnet and on base mainnet. Coinbase also set up contracts for managing the storage and indexing of attestations. Coinbase verified attestations can be integrated into various dApps to provide SYBO resistance. Circle announced the version 2 .2 upgrade for its USDC and EUROC stablecoins, aiming to cut CAS costs by 3 -7 % and enhance account abstraction capabilities. Additionally, the update will rebrand the EUROC token to EUROC. The upgrade also introduces support for EIP -1271, a standard that allows smart contracts to verify signatures. It allows developers to build products that leverage account abstraction, such as allowing USDC and EUROC to be used for gas fee payments. The upgrade is also backwards compatible. The upgrade will be deployed across six EVM -compatible blockchains in the coming months. No action is required from developers or end users. Cal protocol introduced programmatic orders and the programmatic order framework, a new DeFi primitive that enables the creation of orders that automatically execute when preset on -chain parameters are met. Programmatic orders can facilitate perpetual automated orders with a one -time signature. Changes can also be made with a subsequent signature approval. The framework allows developers to craft complex orders or automate DAO operations with a single on -chain transaction. A watchtower relayer component ensures that orders execute when their conditions are met. Cal protocol is seeking grant requests for applications that leverage the programmatic order framework. And lastly, Ethereum core developers agreed to launch two additional Gourley shadow forks before initiating shadow forks of Ethereum mainnet for the Denkun upgrade. Shadow forks are copies of the existing chain state used for conducting tests prior to implementing updates on live testnet or mainnet environments. Earlier this week, developers successfully activated the Denkun upgrade on a shadow fork of Gourley. Upcoming forks will incorporate specifications from the most recent updates, including networking rework on the consensus layer. Developers also agreed to continue hosting Awkward Devs calls during Dev Connect and on Thanksgiving Day. In other news, Rocketpool releases its Houston upgrade roadmap. Eigenlayer announces the winners of its LSD race. And Sablir version 2 .0 goes live on Scroll mainnet. This has been a roundup of today's top news stories in Ethereum. You can support this podcast by following us on Twitter at ethdaily. Also subscribe to our newsletter at ethdaily .io. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye. Bye.
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from Gary Gensler Wants To Relaunch FTX | SEC vs Crypto
"All right, so a lot happening this week, and today is no different. Gary Gensler is on the Warpath, we're going to be talking about that, and also breaking into what's happening with Bitcoin and some of the markets. We'll get into all that good stuff for you guys today. My name is Paul Bearer. Welcome back to Tech Path. Before we get started, I want to take a moment and thank our sponsor. On November 14th and 15th, Human Protocol is hosting Nukeonomics 2023 in Lisbon to discuss the impact of AI and Web3 on the world and the economy of tomorrow. Make sure and use our promo code PB50 for 50 % off. Nukeonomics is planned to set to explore the future of Web3 with thought leaders around the world. Cool thing, across the program, they're going to be doing a full kickoff. On starting the event, you'll be able to get access to new speakers. They're going to discuss the impact of blockchain and creating human -centric economies and the future of crypto. They'll also have this thing called the L -Room, which is going to be a startup pitch, so make sure and check that out. And then the following day, you'll be able to go to what they call the LX Mainstage, and all of that is going to be where we'll see Web3 in music, along with AI and other influences in digital media. Some of the guest speakers include Sam Weeks from Google, Erica Wykes -Snade from Adidas, Cyrus Faisal from Swisborg, and Javier Garcia de la Torre from Binance. Make sure and check them all out. Don't forget to use our code down below. We'll leave a link. All right, so let's break into it today. Let's go over to the first tweet. This is the Kobayisi letter just in. Market cap of Bitcoin officially rises above $750 billion for the first time since April 2022. I want to zoom in on that for you guys a little bit. The entire crypto space is nearing $1 .5 trillion market cap. That's nice to see, $1 .5 trillion. First time nearly two years that we've seen this. Bitcoin prices are now 35 % over the last month, 120 % on the year. I want you to take a moment for all you guys out there that are buying in Bitcoin, have been buying maybe since the beginning of the year. You're 120 % up. How do you say that to people when you look at that? I'm just kind of curious. How do you play it? And also, what tokens are you playing right now? Make sure and leave some comments down below. Smash the like button if you guys like breakdowns like this. Let us know. These are the kind of things. So we'll kind of guide you along here. But the resilience of crypto is incredible. The statement here, can't really deny what's happening out there. You guys are in the right place at the right time. The cool thing is, is when you like this video, it's going to share it to others who will start to learn what's happening out there in crypto as a whole. A couple of posts here. I want to go to Scott Johnson. And it looks like we've got some confirmation. One with a hard timeline, so almost certainly decided along with other open apps, the most likely outcome, US SEC said open talks with Grayscale on the spot Bitcoin ETF push is underway. So this came in further on him and he said, my guess is Grayscale is one of the two positions they received assurances that they will receive a new order, X number of days alongside the open apps. And then they have not received assurances, maybe demanding a new order. Kind of curious which one you think would be the case. Will Grayscale be aligned with the rest because with this alignment of discussions happening, you get back into the scenario of, yes, ETF is going to start positioning and maybe that's the opportunity. Now, the real question is how does Bitcoin respond once an ETF does come through? Pentoshi kind of hits on a couple of points here. A lot of people argue that Bitcoin ETF is going to be sell the news. Yes, some pricing is going on, but we have no idea what the demand will be and there will be some to start. Sure, illiquid supply is at an all -time high. That's one thing. A lot of Bitcoin is now in diamond handlers. Yes, we know that. And then don't pretend you know what's going to happen. I agree. I don't think anybody really knows for sure. You can assume, I think with some reason, that there's going to be some demand movement. But the biggest point, I think, is a little bit of a ephemeral approach to it. And what I mean by that is that when BlackRock comes into the space, if BlackRock is the one that, say, leads the way out, maybe there will be another winner here. Could be ARK, could be Fidelity. Whoever wins that marketing war, I think that's the point in which traditional investors will start to question their resolve around crypto. And when that happens, there will be a tipping point and I think that's the point in which a lot of this is going to start to peak. Now, maybe the timing is going to be perfect too because you've got, obviously, next year we've got the halving occurring. Hopefully we're out of what could be a recession. Hopefully we're out of these conflicts and other things are starting to settle. We'll talk about that in a second. Here's Will Quamente. He kind of jumps in on this. It's pretty obvious that if BlackRock is filing an ETH ETF, then the Bitcoin ETF must be a dumb deal. I don't know if it's a done deal, but this is interesting that they bring this up front. Now, granted, they may have enough indicators there that this is going to happen and they don't want to be left behind in the sense of a strategy around an ETH ETF. I just had James Saferd on. He and I had kind of been going back and forth. First time I had James on, he mentioned to us and we asked him straight blank, what about an ETH ETF? He wasn't really a fan of that, but he's changed his position. So I think that he, along with other Wall Streeters out there, are in a position now that ETH is going to make it through as an ETF. Here's John Deaton. Although I believe a spot ETF, Bitcoin ETF, should have been approved a long time ago, I believe the timing of a spot ETF approval is going to help create a perfect storm for Bitcoin. Whether you look at, you know, Wall Street getting what they want or you know what's happening overall, what he talks about here is we all know no matter what happens in the not too distant future, second and third quarter, rate cuts going to happen combined with rate cuts. This is my point is that you're going to get into some scenarios for 2024 where the cycle starts to feed upon itself. Rate cuts, the market looking at a much more structured capital alignment with an asset class that has now maybe come of age, along with all the technical components of what's happening with Bitcoin, and then what I think will be an absolute barnstorm of what's going to happen in Web3. That's going to include all the traditional tokens that we talk about here all the time, including, you know, ETH, AVAC, SOL, and many others in the Web3 ecosystem. So a lot definitely kind of lining up here for good news. SEC Chair Gensler says rebooted FTX is maybe a possibility if it's done within the law. All right. So this I would tread on very, very lightly in the sense that I think the brand damage has been done. I just cannot imagine, it would take maybe years to get way past where we are today. Any of the people that know about crypto today are going to most likely be feeding into the crypto investors of the future, and what I mean by the future, the next two to three years. FTX is still going to be a memory that's not one that's easy forgotten. And I think because of that, just the brand ethos that FTX pretty much imposed itself on the industry, I don't think is going to be forgotten. So I think it's going to be a scenario. They will not be overcoming it. And the thing that, you know, Gensler might be trying to do here is maybe just set it up for failure so he can do what I told you at some moment. I don't know. But I would not. Why? Go that route. Why would you bring that sore back up into the industry when there's so many great projects out there and great exchanges and places where you can do things, including all these new entities? I just don't know. I'm not sure. Let's listen to a clip right here. This is Brad Garment House. He's talking about FTX. Listen in. I've spoken with a lot of Democratic lawmakers, crypto skeptics about this, and they cite fraud often, that a lot of people are defrauded through crypto scams. How much more work needs to be done to push back against that kind of narrative? The fraud FTX wasn't a crypto fraud. I mean, yes, it was a fraud. Maybe if Gary Gensler and the SEC weren't so focused on going after Ripple and meeting openly with Sam Bankman -Fried, maybe we could have actually avoided some of that, right? Marty bracing myself for when I go check Twitter after this to see everything the XRP army had to say about this conversation. All right. So you can kind of see maybe with Brad Garment House, obviously I'm trying to take this to the Supreme Court, will maybe adjust his opinion of how they negotiate with the SEC. And maybe that's what he's talking about there. It would be interesting if that actually occurred. Maybe there is something that could be done and salvaged between that relationship. I don't know. I want to go over to another clip here. This gets into Garment House talking about Coinbase and what their current status is. Listen in. I followed the Coinbase case a little more closely. And so maybe I can comment there a little bit more. You know, the SEC is not trending well there. And again, if at some point you would think if you keep getting losses, you would say, okay, wait a minute, let's step back, let's reevaluate. Or even better, let's be part of championing a legislative solution. Well, you say you're hopeful that something happens legislatively, but ultimately the way things are going right now, do you think more clarity is likely to come from Congress or is it just going to continue to come from the courts and the judicial branch? I think that's a question for Chair Gensler.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from THE PROTOCOL: Krakens Potential Layer 2 Development and Coinbases Influence
"Dive deep into the blockchain realm with The Protocol Podcast with Coindesk founding editor of The Protocol newsletter Brad Count and tech journalists Sam Kessler and Margo Nykerk. They unravel the intricate technologies powering cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum one block at a time. Just a reminder, Coindesk is a news source and does not provide investment advice. Hello and welcome to The Protocol Podcast. I'm Brad Count here with my co -hosts Margo Nykerk and Sam Kessler. Please first don't forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter The Protocol on Coindesk .com. And real quick, let's just take a second. We've got Sam Kessler here. He's actually missed a couple of our recordings over the past few weeks because he was down covering the Sam Bankman free trial, which is a story that Coindesk owns. Or we did break the story that led to the ultimate collapse of his business empire. Sam, you've been down at this trial and just like getting up at what, like 3 a .m. to get in line to get in the courtroom. Tell us what has it been like covering that trial? Yeah, it was a crazy experience. I'm glad to kind of be back to my normal life. Like you said, some days you had to wake up as early as 3 a .m. Somebody showed up at 10 p .m. the previous evening once to see Sam testify. I was not that crazy. I can only do that a few times the early day. But anyway, overall, it was a pretty insane experience. And yesterday we did sort of a panel with Coindesk reporters, four of the five Coindesk reporters who have covered this throughout the month long run of the trial to hear from members of the crypto community about questions they had and reflections on what was going on. And one of the questions that we received was around whether this trial was, in fact, the indictment of the cryptocurrency industry that everybody in the mainstream seems to frame it as. Or is this kind of this anomalous thing that exists outside of crypto, particularly because FTX was a centralized exchange? The question being, why did it feel like such a big deal? And I think the place where we all landed, like why this got the sort of breathless coverage that it did is because there is a difference between the crypto technology and the crypto industry. And I do still feel and I think those the folks who joined me on the panel agreed that this whole thing, even though it doesn't say much about the technology that undergirds all of these projects that we talk about on this podcast, this whole fiasco was an indictment of the crypto industry. The money, the attention, the focus, you know, the panels that people are willing to go on with Sandbank Manfried all just go to show that it does matter. The companies and the folks who we associate ourselves with cover. I mean, media plays a role in this, too, regardless of whether it has anything to do with the core blockchain technology itself as a centralized exchange in this case. That's super interesting, Sam. I mean, one thing I would just add, you always see giant frauds around new technologies, right? I mean, it's just like inevitable. People are always taking advantage of the opacity and the incredible, complicated stuff. And I mean, we see it all the time. But it's just stuff so hard to understand that it's pretty easy to like pull the wool over people's eyes. You know, I mean, I think we can talk a little more freely about this now that he's convicted. Anyway. OK, well, thank you, Sam. We're so glad to have you here. All right. Let's get right into it now, as we say, with the latest news and developments in technology behind crypto and blockchains. In our first segment, we will be talking about Arbitrum's governance. Of course, Arbitrum is the biggest layer two network atop Ethereum. Margo covers them all the time and they are super interesting project. But Sam, you know, this story you wrote yesterday focuses on some dissension in that community. Why don't you just give us a little brief overview of what that story is? Yeah. So like you said, Arbitrum is one of the people that I might be aware, I might remember last spring when they switched over to a decentralized governance model. So they made this big shift where they launched a token ARB and allowed holders of that token to be a part of something called the Arbitrum DAO that would govern the protocol. And the thing that we're seeing here is a nod to the growing pain, one of the growing pains that we see with all decentralized autonomous organizations, which is the difficulty of reconciling the need for decentralized governance, vast networks of people governing these protocols in like the spirit of crypto, with the reality that you need some somewhat centralized or at least professionalized decision making expertise in order to guide the direction of these really important platforms. Arbitrum has, you know, over two billion dollars locked in it as of today, if I recall correctly. But anyway, in this specific case, Arbitrum's community is currently grappling with a proposal to introduce a research coalition that will be helmed by BlockWorks Research, the research arm of the media organization, Gauntlet, a risk firm and one other cybersecurity firm that's not as specific to crypto. And those folks will kind of serve as this guidepost for the wider DAO to make its decisions. And there's been a lot of controversy around how much they'd be set to get paid under the proposal that BlockWorks presented in conjunction with these other. Let's just, Margo, what were your thoughts reading this story? So, well, two things. I sort of want to know what's in it for BlockWorks. Like, why are they putting themselves forward in this kind of proposal? But also this sort of like what Sam was alluding to drew us back to last spring when there was a controversial proposal about the DAO and there was like a ratification and they started transferring tokens before like that period had even ended. So I feel like ever since that happened, there's been a lot more attention on the DAO and like the proposals it puts forward. So there's always these controversies around DAOs and like the grapple they have to do with centralization and decentralization or professionalism in that case and having some kind of an authoritative figure that will make decisions. And so I wonder if we're looking at this more with a critical eye because of what happened six months ago and because we've sort of seen some controversy with the Arbitrum DAO. But I don't know, what are your guys thoughts on that? So it's a really good question. So that event that you're talking about was essentially when the DAO was established, there was also this foundation that was established, the Arbitrum Foundation. And you see this set up a lot of times where you have a foundation, you have a centralized company that builds a product, and then you have a DAO. The foundation kind of straddles the middle where it's like a real incorporated entity. But anyway, the foundation was suddenly granted a bunch of tokens from the initial mint of ARB. And members of this new DAO who had also just been airdropped a bunch of tokens were like, whoa, wait a minute, we didn't really have a formal vote on where those tokens should go. So it essentially looked like what it was, which was the people who initially created the blockchain granting a bunch of tokens to this foundation, which people think had some links to the old organization, the firm that ran things. So the chief irony here is that the whole idea of a DAO and the whole idea of this specific proposal is to decentralize things further so that something like a centralized foundation, something like the organization that created Arbitrum don't have an outweighed role in the direction of the chain. But the irony is that people see the same centralization issues with this new format. So one of the comments that we have in this article came from one of the voters in this Arbitrum DAO who said, quote, having the same parties review and provide opinions on proposals, cover those proposals publicly via media networks, vote on proposals, review the security concerns of a proposal, and then execute the Arbitrum network upgrades is fundamentally lacking separation of powers, which is a nod to the role that all of these different entities who would be on this coalition currently serve for Arbitrum. And this person showed that these folks who would be on this coalition also hold a huge number of ARB tokens. They'd now be kind of suggesting proposals or at least giving research on these proposals that they're also voting on and have an outweighed weight in terms of, you know, I mean, it's so interesting. It gets right at the heart of this debate, you know, the topic that just keeps coming up over and over again, which is, is all of this really about the tech or is it really about the money? It's like everybody wants the money and some people are providing value. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether this is going to actually be valuable or if it's just somebody who wants money, right? I say I'm curious, the research they're talking about, what kind of research is this? Like, why do why does Arbitrum DAO need research? Yeah, it's a good question. So it's quite interesting. One of the cool things about DAOs is you can go into the governance forums of any of them and you can see people weighing different proposals and those proposals will. So when it comes to research, sometimes there's going to be financial sort of research that they'll do into like what kinds of rewards we should give users of our protocol for doing certain things like what sort of interest should accrue to a token. Not really relevant in this case, but in the future, you know, if ARB should accrue interest, which it doesn't currently, it would kind of help make that call. You'll see a lot of risk assessment. So if Arbitrum is deciding on what bridge partners to use to transact with different chains, somebody like Gauntlet might come in or the cybersecurity firm might come in and do research to determine, hey, which of these bridge partners, given the technology we use and whatever platform we're bridging to uses would be the most secure. That's something that you saw in the past blew up on Uniswap when there's questions around conflicts of interest between the people doing the research and the bridge platforms themselves. But that's the kind of research you'll see, kind of like the technical and financial. Very briefly, the reason why this, you know, bristled so many people was the fact that it would cost two million dollars over the course of a year. And based on the cost breakdown, one person wrote, can the organizations involved demonstrate their time is worth, quote, six hundred fifty dollars to fifteen hundred dollars an hour? That seems exorbitant, as in more than I pay for a Harvard lawyer's exorbitant, literally. So these folks are asking for a ton of money in exchange for their services and they've had to defend themselves. And currently the proposal is really 50 -50 in terms of whether this is a temperature check, whether it goes to a real vote. The community can't decide whether that's a fair breakdown of costs. When does the temperature check end? It ends tomorrow. It ends tomorrow. And there's still some big voters that haven't weighed in yet. So we might be talking about this next week. One thing that is kind of cool, I will say, is in companies, modern companies, you know, the CEO and the board make the decisions and, you know, shareholders do not get to weigh in real time on kind of major strategy stuff or even like line item costs, initiatives or whatever. So that part of it is kind of cool that, you know, people are voting on whether they should spend the two million dollars. So let's turn to our next segment here. Well, there's a project called The Graph, and they came out with some news this past week. We wrote a short story about that. They call themselves the Google of Web3, or they say that people call them the Google of Web3. And the idea is that what they do is they basically look at the data that's on the blockchain and then kind of figure out how to, and then deliver that to protocols or teams and for whatever they need that blockchain data from. It's sort of like, my comment was the opposite of what Chainlink does, which is deliver, you know, stuff data onto the blockchain for protocols that need it. But they came out with this new era roadmap. I mean, a lot of it's pretty technical stuff, you know, it's like features, but they, you know, the line in the story was that this was one of their biggest upgrades since they had a 50 million dollar fundraising last year. And the development team, you know, similar to the decentralization in the previous segment, there's always, there's a development team and then there's the project. The development team is called Edgenone. And we sat down with their CEO, Tegan Klein, who, by the way, I think they said she was going to go on her honeymoon this week. So shout out to you. Congrats, Tegan. But anyway, Margo, you know, you were on this call with Tegan and you wrote up the Q &A. What were kind of your big, big ideas on this? Yeah, I thought it was interesting to hear her talk about like what the graph is, like who they serve, sort of like what entities, what protocols they serve. What I'm still sort of grappling with is like, I understand, like obviously there's a need for decentralizing data, but, you know, we'd asked sort of who her competitors are, who in the space is sort of similar to what she does. And her answer was that there isn't really anyone else in the space that does indexing like they do. Like if they do do indexing, it's something in -house. And so, yes, there's been efforts, I think, which one of, you know, Sam or Brad, you guys can talk about that because I know you have talked to Tegan about that before. But if there's no one else that does the indexing like the graph does, like how much of a hold do they have over organizing data on blockchains, especially because she claims that most of DeFi uses the graph? You know, I think that is a rare position to have in this industry, if that's true. You know, I think we haven't done a ton of reporting on this particular space. I think we're sort of more focused on the blockchain stuff that's kind of infrastructure layer of things and who's winning that race and all the apps. These are, they're kind of one of these middle players. They're not really front -facing, you know, they're sort of B2B in the sense that they're, you know, taking stuff from blockchains and delivery it to kind of like the backend of somebody's website or whatever. But I mean, in general, you know, we're going to get in the next segment, we're going to talk about all the layer twos, you know, that are developing and there's tons of layer one blockchains. But I don't know, that's kind of interesting to have a dominant position in anything in blockchain. It seems like there's tons of competition. I don't know. What do you think, Sam? Yeah, nothing comes to mind that does exactly what they do, which is they serve as a kind of like Chainlink sort of Oracle -ish function, but they're completely on chain. So they aggregate and index data on blockchains so that entities like Chainlink, like Uniswap and so on can use them. But I think that there are some, like I remember reporting on them a while ago and one of the problems that The Graph had and continues to have is just that it's extraordinarily complicated. They have their GRT token, they have these things called subgraphs, this role like indexers. And there's like all of these different, you know, jargon that you find all throughout crypto, but is particularly pronounced on The Graph that some people think is wholly unnecessary and it wouldn't be worth getting into all of it on Coindesk on this podcast, you know, is something that they still haven't been able to fix entirely at the same time. Yeah, I do think that they are somewhat unique in this intersection, but I also noticed that like some of the folks that they mentioned to you, Margo, that they, you know, are partnered with are the same folks that they've mentioned to me over almost like, I think like a year and a half ago when I last wrote about The Graph. So it's like art blocks, which is an NFT project that is really cool, but hasn't like been, you know, super huge in a while. They mentioned Uniswap. I also mentioned them, but if I recall from at least when I was, you know, writing about The Graph, their Uniswap thing is used for Uniswap to display prices on its website. It's not something used in the protocol itself, which is a distinction that might matter. The Graph is like certainly a really exciting project and it is the only one that I'm aware of that's doing, you know, this whole indexing decentralized role. I think that they are still kind of trying to exactly find their place and reach that level of ubiquity that they've wanted for a while. That's really interesting. You know, especially given that these projects that they help haven't really changed over the last two years. And one of the things we had asked her sort of is like, where are these new users that they can cater to? Especially, you know, we're in winter, so where's the growth? Like who are you poaching users from? So that's interesting. Yeah. I mean, to their credit, they did make a big gamble a while ago where they got rid of this centralized, this hosted service that they had, which is more akin to a Web2 service where they would index things and then you would query their own kind of hosted server in order to read off the data. They moved to this decentralized model a while ago and there were questions around whether they'd be able to kind of sustain those operations. And it seems like they have, you know, they really are working in alignment with that whole decentralized crypto ethos in a way that a lot of these sorts of information providers, aggregators aren't. They've had some staying power, at least as a result of that, regardless of whatever their user numbers and partners are. I mean, it's interesting when you were mentioning how technical some of this stuff is. All right. Well, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about the story of the week. Margo Scoop, Kraken coming out with a layer two. We'll be right back. Calling all developers. Consensus 2024 is happening May 29th through the 31st in Austin, Texas. Experience three days of intensive learning with technical talks, 40 plus expert speakers and 20 or more in -depth workshops, including dedicated half days for Ethereum and Bitcoin. Don't miss the opportunity to network a curated developer meetups, discover new career opportunities and explore numerous side events and hacker houses around town. Score a Consensus 2024 developer pass for just one hundred nine dollars, but act fast. Only a limited number of these passes are available. Visit consensus .coindesk .com now to secure your developer pass before they're gone.
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from Robinhood Relisting Cardano, Solana, Polygon | Cathie Preps for Bitcoin ETF
"All right, so is Robinhood setting up for a bull run? Are they getting prepared for something that could be very unique in the crypto space? We're going to break all that down for you guys today. You're going to love it. My name is Paul Baron. Welcome back on the Tech Path. Before we get started, thanking our sponsor that is iTrust Capital. If you guys are looking at long -term holding and you want to do it in an IRA, this is one place you can do it. And of course, with iTrust Capital, you can do this by either locking up your ETH, your Bitcoin, put it in an IRA. It's self -directed, so you're only making trades within the IRA itself, and that's the only time you're going to incur a fee. So make sure and check it out. It's absolutely no monthly fees. All you have to do is use our link down below, get a $100 funding reward if you guys decide to go that direction. All right, so a couple of things I want to hit on here. This is Kobe Easey hitting up on Robinhood. Robinhood did their earnings yesterday, if you guys heard. They missed. I'll show you some stuff around that. But there may be a silver lining in this, and I want you to kind of follow along here. So stock officially traded below $10 on the share after missing earnings. Interestingly, Robinhood also noted a major slowdown in retail trading activity, obviously for most of the activity around crypto that's really reduced. And I think also retail traders, in essence, have also been damaged to a certain extent. But their transaction -based revenue decreased 11 % year over year, $185 million. Trading platform monthly active users dropped 16%. That's the bigger number that I don't necessarily like, down to $10 .3 million. And volatility in the stocks and crypto have been cited as the potential drivers. Okay, that's kind of the known area. And I think everybody that's following Robinhood probably understood that they were making a ton of money off of things like Doge and just crypto in general. And remember, they had to delist three of the biggest assets, and I'll talk about that in a minute, this year. And that also, I think, affected them as well. Another tweet right here, never quite understood Robinhood's business proposition. I want to play this clip for you guys to listen in, so people can kind of get a framework of how Robinhood is really set to make money in the future, because there's some things changing with them. Listen in. But how does it speak to what we're seeing across platforms right now where retail traders are concerned and where trading activity in this volatile environment is concerned? Well, to tell you frankly, I never quite understood Robinhood's business proposition because they have 10 million customers or 11 million customers, and they keep reporting losses. We interactive have brokers, has two and a half million customers, and we have about $3 billion of profits a year. So I just don't see, I don't understand. That's okay. It's okay that you don't understand, because I think there's a silver lining in here of where this is going. I want to hit on a couple of headlines here. ARK investing is and betting big on Robinhood Coinbase with over a billion dollars invested. Now, many people will say, well, I don't trust Kathy. I don't think her strategy is right. But I look at it this way. They, ARK, have been very forward about getting into innovation and really understand where innovation is going. And that, I think, is the thing that Wall Street is missing here. I want to go to another tweet right here. Now, this one goes more of a flip side of the previous clip you saw, that they didn't understand the model. Listen into this one. It's a little different of a story. Because we did have this loss. We had had a profitable quarter last quarter, monthly active users coming in below expectations. It looks like revenue is missing, even though those were up 29 % year on year. And a lot of talk about higher rates offsetting the weaker volumes. But overall, we're continuing to see some of the activity on this platform sag. Is that the right way to think about this? I actually would think it looks better than meets the eye, or basically the results are actually better than people think. So if you think about those mouths, I think they declined about 500 ,000. They went from 10 .8 to 10 .3. The decline is more muted than the decline between the first quarter and the second quarter. I think it went from 11 something to 10 .8. So you're seeing like an abating of the decline. To me, that means the first derivative is turning positive. So I would actually be less negative on the results. I'm looking at those first derivative trends, and they don't seem as bad. They give you like every month, they give you the trending update. So there's not that much surprise here. They're kind of losing the element of surprise because everybody kind of knows what they're going to report. So it's more about these sort of intricacies. Okay. Is it a buy here then as the stock sells off? Oh, 100%. You own Robinhood for the future. You don't own it for like... All right. So own it for the future. And I think the key here with this, and this is something that Cathie Wood talks about a lot, and I'll show you some clips on her, is that there's something here that could be even bigger than maybe some of the crypto plays. So I think Robinhood is poising up nicely. There is some recent news, though, in the earnings call that I think is interesting. And I want you to listen into... We're going to have a few clips of Vlad, who is their CEO, who will talk about some of the things that are coming down the pipe, but also something to watch for that I'll see if you guys can catch it. But listen to this clip right here. Robinhood could be a great place for traders to benefit from the future Bitcoin ETF. Can you maybe talk a little bit about the opportunity if it exists? Robinhood has been early to offer Bitcoin in its native form. Robinhood has really, really competitive pricing, but maybe customers aren't aware of that. So we're looking to solve that problem. We believe we have solved it. For our crypto customers, we've rolled out some changes to the user interface on mobile so that customers can clearly see the spreads that we offer on our crypto transactions. This makes it easier for customers to see their all -in cost of execution, compare it against other platforms, and see how great of a deal Robinhood is giving them. All right, so I'm going to show you a screenshot of the mobile platform. And what you'll notice here is you'll see that the spread is identified now. So it gives you the actual spread within it. And this is super important, and here's the reason why. When you look at the ETFs that will happen, all right, they're coiling up for an ETF to hit the market. There's going to be new players coming into the space that are going to say, okay, I'll go with BlackRock, I'll go with Fidelity, and here's my fees. That's the key right there is where are the fees? So what Vlad is betting on is that maybe Robinhood wins the direct access to the asset with lower fees within the Robinhood app. So he may get a bump, he, Robinhood, may get a huge bump in trading activity around all of this just because they're going to be lining up fee -wise cheaper than Coinbase and then possibly going head to head with some of these ETFs of getting direct exposure to the asset. So that's something to really pay attention to. And as it plays out for them, and I think because they're focused on that, it's pretty significant that they see something coming down the pipe. The other thing that's playing out right now is their strategy on a global perspective. Also in the coming weeks, we will launch crypto trading in the EU. Crypto benefits from a relatively clear regulatory framework in the EU, and we're excited to bring our capabilities across the pond to better serve that market. And that's going to come right on the heels of the UK brokerage launch. Just trying to understand in that context what kind of products or services that you could tangibly point to there. Would you envision kind of more assets for trading in the EU than the US? I really don't want to get ahead of the launch that's coming in a couple of weeks and tell you what the value props are going to be. But yes, in general, we do expect, given the clarity, to be able to offer a different set of assets and capabilities in Europe as in the US. Within the EU, because of the regulatory framework, it's going to set up a very interesting opportunity for Robinhood. They could energize a lot more tokens back into the platform. Likelihood, as we'll see, you know, the three horsemen, Cardano, including Polygon, and Solana, make their way back onto the platform in Europe. And could they be setting that up here in the United States as well? And don't forget, just in, Bank of England now poses allowing stablecoins as a payment option for goods and services. This is huge for what's going to happen in the EU. That gets back to the whole point. Will Robinhood be a successful platform in terms of a trading exchange within the EU? Very active overall, if you just think about the UK in general, much less some of the other emerging countries around financial services. Robinhood could end up leading the way there. This could be a big, big bonanza for hood. And I think with Coinbase, they've already kind of gone that direction. Now, of course, with all that happening and the good stuff, here's the bad stuff. Right now, US Treasury official says Biden is wanting to basically create new powers from Congress to crack down on crypto. So while everybody else is moving on and starting to understand where the growth is going to be, right now we have the US basically shooting ourselves in the foot. So this is a problem I think that we're going to have to face. At some point, Congress will be able to address this. I think that or an election. Next thing up here I want to hit on is getting Robinhood to talk about delisting relisting and tokens. Listen in. Taking the other side of that, looking at the US market, you know, you guys recently delisted some of the crypto assets. What would give you comfortability to relist some? Yeah, it's hard to say what specifically we're waiting for to give us comfort. I think that rules, rulemaking, court case data, that all helps. And of course, we'll continue to push for regulatory clarity because I think it would be a shame for the innovation that we've been seeing in crypto to be co -opted overseas. I think it's very, very important for the US to remain a leader in every new technology and industry that we possibly can. Now, remember, all the way back here in June of 2023, this is when Robinhood ended support for Solana Polygon and Cardano. And this, of course, was because of the SEC's crackdown on some of these additional tokens. Now, remember that. You take that, and then you take the opportunity of coiling up with what could be prepping for an ETF and or the win, obviously, with Ripple and most likely the Coinbase case that will be very critical of Robinhood being able to relist some of these assets and things change again over there. I want to go to a clip real quick. And this is talking about how Cathie Wood perceives Robinhood as a growth vehicle. Listen in. Robinhood, along with Coinbase and Block, the three of them we think are in the running for dominating potentially the digital wallet space. Robinhood is very user friendly. It could become either the digital wallet. More likely it will become a part of a digital wallet ecosystem, either alone, standalone or in partnership and in partnership with someone or as part of someone else. Taking a look at some of the stocks here, I just want to take a look at Coinbase. They had reported $674 million in revenue. Their estimate was $650. So they over indexed there. That was great. If you look at Hood, just to give you an idea of what happened here on theirs, they had reported $467 million. The estimate expectation was around $480. So that was the big problem. And obviously what you're seeing right now in terms of the stock bleeding out. So is this the time to look at Hood more of a long -term play? Maybe this is it. If you look at, and I'll go to the daily here and I'll really kind of squeeze out into time. And you can kind of see from where Hood has come from all the way down. We'll go up to back here in 2021 when really they were at the peak of the market, when all that Doge community was going like crazy. Bitcoin was flying. And of course, crypto services and crypto fees were being transaction on Robinhood in a big way. But the slide down, is this maybe the bottom? The last time they hit this range was around $765 back in December of last year. And then prior to that, it was in June of 22. So very interesting positions right now for Robinhood. If in fact they are lining up for a bonanza around the ETF and taking advantage of this next evolution of regulation. All this could be playing in. Make sure and stay tuned right here for all that good stuff. We'll continue to cover these kind of topics. If you guys are not in the diamond circle already, make sure and get in. It's another place where you can catch additional content. We have two podcasts over there now. And they're basically not available on YouTube. So you've got to go over there. Just visit the link down below. You can catch them there. If you guys want to catch me out there on X, it's at Paul Baron. We'll catch you next time right here on Tech Path.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from MASSIVE RIPPLE XRP NEWS!! HSBC METACO, RIPPLE PAYMENTS XRP LEDGER, AFRICA EXPANSION
"Welcome to the Thinking Crypto podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. If you are new here, please hit that subscribe button as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. Well, folks, I'm recording this in the airport because I'll be traveling over the next few days. So content will be a bit late, but I wanted to share the following bullish news. It's incredible around Ripple and XRP. First, I want to start off with Bitcoin, though, because CME futures open interest just surpassed 100 ,000 Bitcoin for the first time ever. Are you bullish yet, folks? I think we see the bull market on the horizon. It's going to take some time. We've got the Bitcoin halving next year. We also have the Bitcoin spot ETF approvals around the corner. So I think the markets recognize this and we are seeing bullish activity. Now let's jump into the Ripple news. First, we got Ripple introducing what's called Ripple payments. The next evolution of Ripple's payments product, delivering a licensed end to end solution for financial institutions and SMEs with 70 plus payout markets, expanded crypto liquidity options, integration with the XRP ledger, decentralized exchange and much more. So they did a full breakdown on their websites. But here we're just seeing Ripple expanding and the use of the XRP ledger is involved. So a lot of the folks who've been saying that XRP will never be used, banks, no one will ever use XRP. Now it's pretty clear what's happening and I'm bullish on XRP. It has the clear path, the clear runway with the SEC lawsuit wrapping up recently. And it has the clarity to go hit new all time highs in the next bull market. So let me give you some of the details here from their blog posts. Ripple has received money transmitter licenses across numerous US jurisdictions, allowing Ripple payments to offer its products and services within those jurisdictions. With single onboarding, customers are now able to access nearly 100 % of global payout coverage to more than 70 payout markets through Ripple's international payments network. A new integration with the XRP Ledger's native decentralized exchange will buttress global liquidity options for Ripple customers, streamlining customer onboarding into new markets and improving product performance. Through newly expanded liquidity options, Ripple payments can fulfill customers' liquidity needs on demand 24 -7, 365 days per year. Huge news. Now, remember Medeco, a firm that Ripple has invested in, and then they backed out from purchasing, but they're still an active investor, but here's some big news they put out today. HSBC that announced it will be working with Medeco as it plans to launch a new digital assets custody service for institutional clients who invest in tokenized securities. We've been talking about the token economy, everything on the blockchain, assets, securities, real estate, you name it, everything running on the blockchain. And Ripple, of course, is in the mix here, right? With HSBC, a bank, of course, and Medeco. So here's a photo of the team together, Monica Long, who I've had on the podcast, and we'll try to get her back on soon. So huge things happening in the market, folks, and even Medeco's CEO weighed in on this, what HSBC is going to be doing. And obviously, like I said, Ripple is in the mix, and you can imagine the XRP Ledger will be used for tokenization, right? Because you can tokenize pretty much anything on the XRP Ledger. Now we also have news that Ripple has formed a new partnership with Onafriq, if I'm saying that right, O -N -A -F -R -I -Q, which will utilize Ripple payments. Our crypto -enabled payments technology to open up three new payments corridors between Africa and the rest of the world. Folks, I see global expansion happening here. So there you have it, folks, XRP Ledger is in the mix of all of this, and Africa is one of the biggest markets out there with many countries within Africa who have emerging economies and are using blockchain tech and much more. So huge, huge partnership here. I hope you see what's happening. As I said before, I am bullish on XRP. Now the SEC has filed their opposition to Binance's motion to dismiss, and Paul Grewal, chief legal officer at Coinbase, weighed in on this. I'm not going to read through everything, but a TLDR here. He highlights the SEC asserts that a virtually unlimited flexibility of the securities laws grants it a complete authority over crypto exchanges. That misrepresents the law. So Paul goes into details, but that's the TLDR. The SEC, once again, not abiding by the law, they've been called out by the judges in many different cases, being called arbitrary and capricious in the grayscale lawsuit. So we got to keep fighting, we got to keep exposing scumbag regulator, Gary Gensler. So we got to get on social media, contact our representatives and much more. Now we've got news here that Polygon and NEAR, the NEAR protocol, are bringing ZKWASM, so WASM to life if you want to call it that. So the ZKWASM prover research is underway and expected to launch next year. Let me give some details on what this is. This means that developers who build with Polygon's chain development kit, CDK and open source code base will soon be able to use the ZKWASM as a prover. As you all know, with zero knowledge proof technology, you know, everybody's trying to get this going. It's going to be the next layer in how we transact on the blockchains in ZK technology. A prover refers to the party trying to show a claim is accurate to a verifier without revealing the information itself. A verifier is responsible for acknowledging that the information is accurate. So it's great to see these two blockchains working together, NEAR and Polygon. I don't hold any of the NEAR tokens. I do have Matic in my portfolio. I am bullish on Polygon Matic. They're being used by quite a few brands with NFTs and Web3. So this is pretty interesting. We also got news here that decentralized AI platform Ritual lands $25 million in seed funding. We're seeing capital flowing into the market, both into the infrastructure, companies building the infrastructure, as well as the tokens. The Ritual is the brainchild of Web3 investor, Neeraj Pant, who funded projects like Eigenlayer with Anselana and the Keshpoti, Quant, and then builder at data analytics company Palantir. Over the last year, AI companies have witnessed significant growth that offers new experiences, products, and a new source of revenue, Pant said. Although this may be the case, there are also significant problems taking place. So one of the things I've been talking about is that blockchain is gonna be a solution to help police AI, as we are seeing a lot of deep fakes when it comes to media, content, video, you name it, that's gonna be an issue. So blockchain will help verify is the source of this content and this information coming from the actual source, or is it from AI and something that was spinned up by a nefarious actor or whatever it may be. And look, we're also gonna need to have AI police AI itself. So we'll see how things go, but blockchain is the way to improve that verifiability around different content and the rise of deep fakes and so forth. Finally, as our sponsor is Uphold, one of the great crypto exchanges out there, they have plus 260 cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, all the top old coins, they're fully reserved, secure. I've interviewed the CEO, CFO, so I trust this platform, I've been using it since 2018. So if you'd like to learn more about Uphold, check out the link in the description. And actually a quick note, they're doing a 50 ,000 XRP giveaway this month. So if you conduct at least $20 in trades, every $20 in trade that you make, you get an entry to win that prize. So check it out. Link will be in the description.
Cryptocurrency for Beginners: with Crypto Casey
A highlight from How to Take Profit in Crypto Profit-Taking Strategies! (Ultimate Beginners Guide! ) #Crypto
"The only way investing in risky new speculative technology like cryptocurrencies is going to change our lives is if we reap the potential rewards of being early adopters by taking profits. What is profit taking? When investing in anything, profit taking is simply locking in gains by selling some or all of our positions that have risen since our initial investment. So when we buy cryptocurrencies and watch their values fluctuate over time, anytime our positions are up or the value is higher than the amount of money we put in, those numbers we see on the screen are just Faguzzi Fugazi fairy dust. It's nothing but a number on a screen. Gains are not ours until we have either sold crypto for fiat and completely transferred it off of the exchange to our bank account, or two, sold crypto for a stablecoin and completely transferred it off of the exchange to our own crypto wallet. Some people, myself included, like to take gains from altcoins and buy more bitcoin. Either way, same thing, transfer the bitcoin off of the exchange to a cold storage hardware wallet like Tangem Wallet, the most affordable and easy to use hardware wallet available, which you can check out using the links below. Cool. So how do we decide what to sell, when to sell, how much to sell when taking profits? And what should we do with our profits? Simple. We need to put a profit taking plan in place that dictates what crypto we sell, when we sell it, at what point, and ultimately what we do with the profits. Most of us jump into crypto without a profit taking plan, which is totally fine. Let's make one together. Hello, I'm Crypto Casey and in this video we are going to explore different profit taking strategies, learn what the profit taking process entails with crypto, warnings we should be mindful of when taking profits, as well as helpful tips to make the process as simple as possible. And make sure to stick around until the very end to learn about a neat way we can skip the selling transferring process altogether and access our crypto gains instantly if we need to. Let's hit it. Please be sure to check out our sponsors, Ifani, Heatbit and Tangem Wallet. Get 100 % protection against SIM swapping using Ifani's secure cellular services, which you can learn more about in this video. Easily mine Bitcoin for passive income with Heatbit Mini's easy to use 3 -in -1 Bitcoin mining rig, which is also a space heater and air purifier. And invest in your very own cold storage hardware wallet like Tangem Wallet. It's the size of a credit card, multi -currency, multi -chain, and is by far the easiest crypto wallet to set up and use on the market right now. And they just released their latest new wallet that is a sleek black design with cool new features. So scroll down and use links below to access the correct and official sites, as well as redeem any special offers they have for us. Sweet. All crypto investors have or should have an extremely high tolerance for risk because we are dealing with extremely new speculative technology and a new emerging digital asset class that has not been around a while with a lot of regulatory uncertainty and a lot of things could go wrong. All crypto investors should never invest anything they absolutely cannot afford to lose and should always be mentally prepared to potentially lose all of their crypto investments. It's the cold hard truth about crypto and it has been since the beginning. We are still super early so we need to be prepared for anything to happen over the next several months and years. Cool. Please note none of this is financial advice, crypto is the wild wild west, so keep that in mind throughout your crazy crypto journey. And once we come to terms about the risks and realities of investing in crypto, there are two different investment and profit taking strategies we can adopt. Short term or long term positions. First let's talk about short term investment strategies and corresponding profit taking plans. A short term strategy in crypto should be treated as like rolling the dice in a casino, a straight up gamble. The potential pros, which very few people experience, are potential fast profits. The absolute cons are that it can be stressful, there is a lot more time and work involved, we will pay more transaction fees, we will have to pay capital gains tax on any profits we may incur, and we are taking on the risk of keeping money in crypto on an exchange, which can have outages, get hacked, freeze funds, or sometimes if there is a ton of volume, orders we had set up for our short term investment strategy get blown through and never get filled. So someone who wants to bet on price swings versus the long term viability of a project, meaning you just care more about the project increasing in price by 10 % over an hour a day or a week, not whether or not the project will survive over the next few years, then before buying that particular crypto, make a plan by implementing one of these three strategies or by doing a combination of them. The first strategy is the aim for the gain. This is where we determine the gain we are aiming for or hoping for rather. This means deciding that we are going to sell everything once the value of our position goes up by a certain predetermined percentage, like 5%, 10%, 50%, etc. For example, let's just say we are interested in gambling $50 on Dogecoin and decide we are going to sell all of it once the value goes up by 20 % when our initial $50 goes to $60. The best way to implement this strategy is after buying Dogecoin on an exchange, placing a limit order to automatically sell all of it if the value increases by 20%. Placing limit orders can be great because it takes a lot of the work and decision making out of the execution of your profit taking plan. However, the cons of using limit orders is that you have to leave your funds on an exchange, which is not ideal because they can go bankrupt, get hacked, freeze your funds, have an outage, or if there's a ton of activity, your limit order could get blown through and not filled. So if you are a beginner and would like to learn how to place limit orders and other advanced trading techniques step by step, I have a video guide on how to trade on Sweet. The second strategy is the sell schedule. This is where we create a sell schedule that determines certain percentages of our holdings we are going to sell at different price points as the price hopefully increases over time. For example, let's say we are going to buy $1000 of a cryptocurrency that is currently worth $1 per token, and we decide we are going to sell portions of our holdings using the following sell schedule. If the price increases from $1 to $1 .50, we are going to sell 10 % of our holdings. And if it increases to $2, we are going to sell 20%. If it's $2 .50, we are going to sell another 20%. If it's $3, we sell 40%. And with the remaining 10%, we can decide to just write it out and see what happens, or choose a price point at which we would sell the rest. And we can also use limit orders on exchanges to execute this strategy automatically for us. Nice. The third strategy is called house money, and it's very simple. Let's say we decide to buy $100 worth of a cryptocurrency, and if or hopefully when it doubles in value and our holdings are worth $200, we take out our initial $100 investment and let the rest of the money ride out the house money. That way, if the price decreases, we won't lose what we initially put in. With the house money strategy, it's still important to have a price point or percentage increase in mind for continuing to take profit with the house money if the value of the crypto continues to rise, which we could also use limit orders to do automatically. Amazing. So those are three profit taking strategies we can use individually or in combination with each other. For example, let's say we implement the house money strategy. And if or when we take out our initial investment, then we implement the sell schedule strategy on the house money still in the market. Simple enough, right? Nice. With short term investment strategies, since there is more exposure to price volatility than long term strategies, we should also consider implementing the first two strategies to mitigate loss. For example, if we flip the aim for the gain strategy to limit for the loss strategy, we can decide that if the price drops 40 % or more, we sell our entire position to limit our loss. Or if we flip the sell schedule strategy, we can decide to sell 10 % of our holdings if the price drops 20 % and then sell 30 % of our holdings if the price drops 40 % and so on. Either way, with short term gambling, we have the potential to make profits fast. However, we are taking on a lot more risk and more often than not, short term traders get burned. So next, let's talk about long term investment strategies and corresponding profit taking plans. When we buy to hold for the long term, we are talking about planning to hold for at least an entire year. Ideally, we are planning for a two to five year timeframe. So it allows us to at least catch one halving cycle, which is coming up around April or May of 2024. And if you don't know what it is, check out this beginner's guide by clicking on the link above. Cool. A couple things to watch out for as a long term investor is getting too attached to our investments and never wanting to sell and therefore never locking in potential life changing gains and never allowing it to enrich our lives and our family's lives. And so an important part of profit taking plans for long term investors is before jumping in, deciding what you want to use potential life changing gains on, whether that be paying off debt, buying a new car, buying a house, diversifying into other types of investments like real estate, stocks, bonds, gold or similar. And if you haven't yet, check out my video guide about the importance of taking profits in crypto and getting excited about converting our gains to enrich our lives by clicking on the link above. In it, some of you shared what you used your gains from the last few bull cycles on. So it will give you some great ideas. Sweet. So once we figure out how we want potential life changing gains to change our lives. Next, we need to implement a strategy to DCA or dollar cost average out of the market over time. For example, let's say we have been accumulating Bitcoin over the past few years, some Bitcoin at $1 ,000 per Bitcoin, some at 10 ,000, some at 30 ,000, and even some at the top around 60 ,000, all with the plan of holding for several more years. So when there are big price swings upwards, we need to get comfortable with the idea of taking profit to use on one of our predetermined goals like buying house or whatever, using it for anything else you may need to buy or similar or allocating it to another investment category like art, starting a business or similar to keep our investment portfolios diversified and balanced. A tool I've been using for the past few years to identify long term trends, like when we flip from bearish trends to bullish trends or vice versa is called the money line, formerly known as the BSI or Bitcoin strength index indicator. This tool is available at Morales money, which is a platform with a growing number of tools to help us prepare for and take full advantage of any potential opportunities available in the altcoin trading space by helping us find altcoins before they pump, which you can learn more about in the step by step video guide by clicking on the link above. And Morales money has many other helpful tools like these crypto bubble charts to help us quickly see which altcoins are up versus down during different timeframes. And as I mentioned, it gives us access to the money line tool, which we can try out for just $14 for seven days using the links below. If you'd like to learn more about how the money line works and how it's performed historically with predicting market trends, you can check out this video guide by clicking on the link above. Amazing. So with a long term investment strategy, we can also implement the aim for the gain and the sell schedule strategies, which would be the same as when we use them for short term investing. It's just over a longer time period. However, I do not recommend ever leaving any amount of crypto you would be upset about losing on an exchange for an extended period of time. So any crypto you are accumulating over the long term, make sure you are transferring it off of exchanges to hold securely on cold storage hardware wallets, like Tangent wallet, ledger devices, treasure devices, BC vault, etc. And you can check them all out using the links below. Sweet. So you can see how a long term position is less work, less mentally taxing. And at the end of the day, how most crypto investors have realized financial success in a relatively shorter period of time. Other types of investments typically take a lot longer to reap potential benefits. While in crypto, since it's so new, and we are still so early, price swings can be wild and produce a ton of profit for people in shorter periods of time. At the end of the day, the only person that can decide what profit taking strategy is best for you is you. We are all different ages and different stages of life. Some of us just need to look out for ourselves while others have kids, family and people that financially rely on them. Some of us have more responsibilities. All of us have different risk tolerances, different levels of technical skills, different amounts of money required to maintain certain lifestyles. So we need to sit down and decide ideally before jumping into crypto, at what price points we are going to take profits during our crazy crypto journeys together. Brilliant. Next, let's go over five things we should be mindful of with the profit taking process, regardless of what strategies we implement and why it is so important to practice transactions before to prepare. One, transaction fees. Every time we move our crypto around, it costs a transaction fee. So when we transfer our crypto to and from our hardware wallets, to and from exchanges, to and from each other, to and from anywhere, we will have to pay a fee from our wallet or from our account. And on crypto exchanges, when we buy crypto, sell crypto, exchange crypto or convert it, those will also cost us some fees. So when deciding on a profit taking strategy that works for you, make sure you take transaction fees into consideration, especially if you are investing with smaller amounts of money, because we don't have our profits until we either one, get the fiat on our bank account, or two, get the stablecoin to our own crypto wallets. Selling the crypto and transferring it off of an exchange will cost us transaction fees. Another thing to be mindful of is if you have an ERC 20 token like Uniswap on wallet, and you want to send it to the exchange to sell, you will need to pay the transaction fees in ether, which means you will need some ether in your wallet to pay to move it. So make sure you're familiar with any cryptocurrencies you have in which network they are on. So you have the right currencies to pay transaction fees to move them around and take profits. Each network and each wallet also synchronizes with their particular blockchain network at different speeds with different confirmation requirements. So in addition to fees, there may be some wait time we need to build into the profit taking process as well to banks when dealing with crypto, especially large amounts, our traditional banks sometimes freeze our withdrawals deposits and entire accounts for suspicious activity. So it's important as a crypto investor to one have multiple accounts with multiple banks. So we have several options when the markets are hot into call and let your bank know ahead of time when you plan on both taking profits and making big money moves in general, so the process goes more smoothly. Nice. Three stablecoins. It's important to keep in mind that stablecoins like USDC and USDT are not completely decentralized, meaning there is a central authority controlling the network that can choose to freeze your funds if law enforcement gets involved, or for any other reason they may deem necessary. So if you're trying to avoid taking profits and fiat with a bank for more control over your profits, just be aware of these facts when making your profit taking strategy die is a decentralized stablecoin option, meaning there is no central authority controlling it. And we can check to make sure that it's over collateralized on the blockchain. However, there is some technological risk and that it's still extremely new technology and could potentially lose its peg to the dollar suffer from glitches, hacks or similar for exchanges when taking profit, especially in hot markets with a ton of activity, exchanges will be your main issue. They experience outages, there are sometimes big lags in time before your account is credited, or when the money is transferred to your bank. Exchanges can suspend withdrawals for certain cryptocurrencies due to network congestion, they can freeze funds, and sometimes depending on the exchange, it can take more confirmations for certain cryptocurrencies than others to clear your account. So as crypto investors is extremely important to have many accounts with many different reputable exchanges as possible, and get their highest level of verifications. So we have as many options as possible when implementing our profit taking strategies. So scroll down and use the links below to access the correct and official sites of all of my recommended exchanges. Sweet. Five regulators, sometimes regulators go after certain crypto projects, which forces exchanges to delist them. We have seen this with ripple and other tokens over time. So it's important to keep in mind that when implementing a profit taking strategy, because if our cryptocurrencies are targeted by regulators, and exchanges start delisting them, we won't have many options to sell when we were planning to if our cryptos are targeted, it's best to either choose to sell it quickly altogether. Or if you want to take the risk, make sure you know that you may be very limited in your options to sell when the time comes. Great. Thanks for sticking around to the very end. As a bonus, here's a neat way we can access our gains instantly if we need to, without selling, transferring and waiting for funds to clear our bank accounts by using crypto debit cards. With crypto debit cards, we can choose to spend our crypto instantly by turning them into everyday purchases. Coinbase has a Visa debit card that allows us to spend our cash or crypto all while earning crypto and purchases and crypto .com also has a Visa prepaid card that allows us to spend cash or crypto all by earning crypto in process. Tangent wallet is also working on Tangent pay, which will be the first ever hardware wallet certified for direct payments in the visa network. So it will be the first ever self custodial payment card with cold storage that can be used at over 95 million visa terminals around the world. At the time of this video, the Tangent Visa card is still in development. And when it's ready, we'll provide a non custodial solution for combining crypto saving with the ability to In the meantime, Tangent has released their latest wallet with this nice sleek black design that works the same as their classic wallet, except now we have the option to generate a seed phrase or import one from another wallet if we want. Tangent's mobile wallet app has its 5 .0 software update right around the corner, which will feature a dark mode, the option to automatically or manually organize our crypto holdings, the capability of hiding our balances from the main screen, 24 hour crypto price change history, transaction histories for specific networks like Bitcoin versus Ethereum, rapid access options from the home screen, and an overall comprehensive redesign of the app, making it cleaner and more user friendly. So scroll down and use links below to access the correct and official sites of any cards that interest you and redeem any special offers they have for us. Awesome. If you would like to explore the growing Morales money platform and how it can help us potentially make more profits this next bull cycle, check out this video. If you like to learn how to use Tangent wallet and transfer crypto off of exchanges to our own cold storage harder wallet, check out this video and to get your very own Tangent wallet, click on the link on the screen. Like and subscribe for more. Be safe out there.
Crypto Banter
A highlight from The LayerZero Airdrop Is Almost Here! How To Prepare NOW!
"Layer Zero is one of the most anticipated projects in crypto. In today's video, I want to run through a few major things to do with the Layer Zero airdrop. Is it too late to qualify for what could be one of the biggest airdrops in crypto history? If it is, how can you still make money from the Layer Zero ecosystem and how can you prepare yourself for an impending airdrop? Some of the indicators that I'm going to show you in today's video show us that a potential airdrop could be happening very, very soon. So if you've been following Layer Zero at all over the past couple of years, you should pay attention to today's video. So looking in front of us, it's clear that Layer Zero is one of the biggest projects in crypto just by sheer size in terms of how much they've raised. They raised $6 .3 million to begin with, relatively humble beginnings, but still led by MultiCoin Capital and Binance. But then they came in with massive backers in A16Z, Coinbase and Amoca, MultiCoin, and then actually Christie's led their own funding round. And then they've had some massive funding rounds since then with $120 million raised at a valuation of $3 billion. So the latest raise that occurred on the 4th of April, 2023 indicates that Layer Zero is a $3 billion protocol. And look, when the token gets listed on the market, it's likely that it's worth even more than that in terms of the actual token price itself, because the raising value and the total market capitalization, FDV, is a very different thing. For example, Arbitrum launched at like, what, 12 bill FDV, and they raised nowhere near that. Obviously, investors need to make a return on investment, right? But what we do know is that for investors to get a return on investment, airdrops are one of the vehicles, so basically by launching a token, that the projects can essentially pay back its investors and pay back its stakeholders. So incentivizing these investors with the token is one of the major ways that attracted this much liquidity. And there's also a way that they can bootstrap liquidity on the ecosystem to ensure the success of the Layer Zero protocol long term. And when you have an airdrop, obviously that means, especially with a big valuation, that there's going to be a slice of the pie given out to the community. And the bigger the raise, the more the slice of the pie is going to be. And with Layer Zero being such a big protocol from a valuation perspective, it's no doubt that it could be when the airdrop comes, one of the biggest airdrops in crypto history, one of the biggest airdrops that we've ever seen. And this is one I've been preparing for for quite some time. You can see here I did my first full deep dive on Layer Zero back in October 2022, over one year ago now. If you've been farming this airdrop for over a year, you're in an amazing, amazing position. I actually mentioned it even before this in the context of another thread, which amalgamated a bunch of other airdrops as well. And I also did a follow up earlier in the year as a last warning, a last reminder. And I also did videos on it on crypto banter at the time that you should highly consider going for the Layer Zero airdrop if you haven't already for the people that weren't already farming the airdrop. So I hope I've prepared you guys for what could be a potential airdrop. But if you haven't been farming the airdrop and if you've done nothing on Layer Zero, don't worry. Towards the end of this video, I'm going to show you a way that you can still make money in the ecosystem because there's going to be a massive amount of liquidity coming into the ecosystem. Once the airdrop takes place, like Arbitrum, there were tons of opportunities on the protocol side. And there's actually a couple trades right now, which I believe are decent Layer Zero proxy trades, which I want to get into. But for the ones that are potentially looking at an airdrop, I'm sure you want to know when airdrop, well, we got some really interesting revelations over the last few days. It's funny, if you look at the poly market odds for Layer Zero airdrop, if you go into the week, they spiked to an 84 % probability based on the market's interpretation of the Layer Zero airdrop, due to the fact that the SSL certificate was officially lodged. And we can see that the lodging issuers do show that a Layer Zero Foundation common name was issued. Now, what an SSL is, is it's a digital certificate that authenticates a website's identity and enables an encrypted connection. Companies and organizations need to add SSL certificates to their websites to secure online transactions and keep customer information private and secure. We saw an SSL certificate application for Arbitrum the week before their airdrop announcement. We also saw the day before the airdrop announcement Arbitrum pump in terms of its poly market odds, enabling people to speculate on it beforehand. So this obviously has led a lot of people to believe that a Layer Zero airdrop could be coming sooner rather than later. But it's been a bit of a saga on the day since we saw that odds because we've seen people out of the Layer Zero camp say that nobody actually manually triggered the lodgement of that certificate and that they thought it was an automated event, which is quite interesting. But then again, Arbitrum did deny a lot of these things until they went live. So they may be stalling, they may have known about it. We don't have full transparency over what the team is doing here and what the team is up to. All we know is that things are looking like there's going to be an airdrop and Q4 has been touted for quite some time in terms of the period where we'd get an airdrop. And obviously we're in November heading into December. It's really, really close to a potential airdrop if not the snapshot's probably been taken already, right? And if they do choose to delay then 2024 Q1 could be a logical period for them to launch an airdrop. So CC2 summarised the current airdrop situation for Layer Zero. He anticipates that this week either they'll push a significant announcement that the snapshot occurred. This would indicate that an airdrop is coming soon. He said that the smartest minds that he talked to said waiting until at least Wednesday. So it's currently Tuesday, maybe Wednesday in some countries depending on where you're watching it from. So that still hasn't happened yet. He also said the other outcome could potentially be them not announcing anything beyond the usual chain and partnership integration. And potentially the airdrop happens either later in Q4, so December, or maybe in the new year. If it is in the new year, it's unlikely they do it over the holiday period. It's more likely that they do it in late January or early February in my opinion. But if we look at the Polymarket odds right now, the market is saying that it's roughly a 50 -50 split versus whether or not there will be an airdrop. So that is fluctuating and it's interesting because there's a vehicle for speculation there if you do want to speculate on a potential airdrop. It could be within the next 10 days, possibly, if the SSL certificate is an indicator like it was for Arbitrum. But I still think if you are in line for a Layer Zero airdrop, I wouldn't get your hopes up too much. If you did follow my airdrop guides, though I think you're in an amazing position to get an airdrop, if you didn't follow those guides, I think there's maybe a possibility the snapshot isn't taken. But for me, it's not a high -risk roleplay anymore. You're better off because these guys have had years, your competition essentially, have had years or over a year to build up trading volume across Stargate, across bridging volume, frequency, all of that stuff that's obviously going to play into who gets a big airdrop. If you're starting today, you're not going to have time unless you're a whale to build up that volume and you're definitely not going to hit the frequency or the time components or the governance on the STG side, those components that could provide a little bit of nuance to benefit our loyal users of the laser ecosystem because they're clearly going to want to reward those guys too and try and knock out cyber wallets. So I think if you've missed it and you haven't been airdrop farming, I would turn my attention to some of the next biggest airdrops, a few that I could think of off the top of my head. You've got Starknet, you've got Linear, these kind of airdrops that I've done videos on. If you search up airdrops, Miles Deutch, or Crypto Banta, I'm sure lots of videos come up from my show because I've done guides in the past. But yeah, I would definitely turn my attention to focusing on those if you missed the Layer Zero airdrop. If you did miss it though, now let's talk about the ecosystem because here are where some interesting trades start to present themselves. So one, I think that the Layer Zero airdrop could act as stimulus for the overall ecosystem. You can see in front of you some of the key ecosystem dapps. But two, I think in the lead up to the airdrop, if people want to speculate on the Layer Zero token before the token is officially launched, then you're going to have to use ecosystem dapps as a proxy bet. So there's kind of two plays here. There's kind of a buy the rumor or airdrop trade heading into the airdrop. And then there is also like a concrete play on additional liquidity entering the ecosystem. Or maybe the Layer Zero token launches a little bit overvalued, right? And people try and play the proxies, the catch up plays based on relative valuations, because we don't quite know where Layer Zero is going to land in terms of its valuation, although I expect it to be probably a top 20, if not a top 10 protocol, given the fact it has a three bill valuation on the cap table, which is one of the biggest raises in crypto history in terms of value, alongside things like Starknet and Scroll, these other L2 type products, which are charging massive, massive, massive valuations. So the ecosystem is an interesting trade. Within the ecosystem, two tokens really stand out Stargate being one of them being pretty much your primary Layer Zero powered application and Radiance as well, which is an application that gives you exposure to not only the Layer Zero ecosystem as they use Layer Zero to power their multi chain borrowing and lending strategies, but also the Arbitrum ecosystem, which currently has its incentive grants taking place at the moment, as well as an underlying EIP narrative and Arbitrum staking, which just got proposed to. So I'm pretty bullish on the Arbitrum ecosystem at the moment, I'm bullish on Layer Zero. So radiant becomes a decent proxy bet. So I have been adding radiant at some of these key levels, I've made two buys into radiant around the mid range here at the 23 cent zone, bought a little bit more on the breakout here at 24. My next add up add zone will be after any major pullbacks, we are heading into a bit of resistance. But if we do get a market pullback, and I think Sheldon talked about that on his show, Radiance definitely one that that's on my watch list. And I highly recommend if you haven't already, you make a trading view watch list, a buy list, a trading list, whatever to track the tokens that you're currently interested in. Because radiant is definitely online. And it's definitely one that I'm watching on that I talked about in yesterday's show and my weekly watchlist on Twitter as well that I post every Monday. So radiance one Stargate is actually the other one, which hasn't actually moved up as much as Radiance. So you can see from the bottom Stargates moved up 44%. Actually, they're pretty similar. And over the last few days, Radiance moved up 44 % as well. They've both moved up Stargate probably hasn't had that massive thrust based on prior price action due to the fact that there is some impending supply overhang due to FTX. Radiant for that reason becomes my preferred play of the two. But if you zoom out onto the weekly, you can see Stargate, although it has moved, I mean, still significantly down from highs and you can put radiant in the same category as well. Although it has made a significant push up from the bottom and is now coming into this major mid range territory here, if you want to draw out like major timeframes on the weekly where you'd be drawing out your horizontal support around this level at the 32 cent zone. So making its way into that area, that is the area that I'll target any sort of pullbacks back down towards range low, I think would be a great zone to load up for a potential targeting of this upper bound at the 32 cent zone, which I think eventually we will get to in my opinion. So these two become decent proxy bets on layer zero if you haven't got any exposure to the ecosystem, either through the applications or through the airdrop. One thing I'm doing for a token like radiant specifically, because it's on the Arbitrum chain, I've been using Kyber AI to actually track the momentum for the token based on AI data. So if you go into Kyber AI, there's a link in the description below to sign up for beta access, and you switch to the Arbitrum network, you click on radiant capital, you can actually see the momentum for radiant. So when this ticks into bearish territory, that's when I'm going to start. So you see here when the Kyber score goes super bearish at 26 cents, it ticked upwards and then it pumps to 28 cents. When we have reversals like this, and we get sub 20 on the Kyber score, which is a metric that takes into account a bunch of on chain analysis, if that lines up with a broader market pullback, that is one of the confluence indicators that I will use to buy more radiant. So I'm monitoring Kyber AI all the time, you can create watch lists on Kyber AI, put all of the tokens that you're trading in there, and you can use that to solidify your trading strategy. So that's a good tip. It gives you all sorts of on chain analysis and data, which is of course amalgamated into that Kyber score, which is based on machine learning. But you've also got also a bunch of in depth order flow type statistics like trading volume, net flow to whale wallets, etc. Centralised exchanges, number of transfers, all that really in depth data that's going to help the on chain sleuths on chain traders out there. So that's something I'm using with a link in the description below to access it if you haven't already. I want to give you an update on my radiant bots as well. I've been doing a lot of trading bots recently, you've probably seen some of my trading bot videos. I want to give you a quick update on my radiant grid bot. So my futures DCA martingale strategy is currently up 75%. So doing really, really well up a p &l of $200. It's a small test position for me, but nonetheless, pretty impressive p &l, which I actually put my full size into this. But I've just been testing out bots radiant worked really well because it was within a range. And it got some nice averages while it was within this range, you see this range here. And then when it broke out, a lot of those cells got to execute. And that's why the p &l really pumped on that one. And then you can also see I've got another grid strategy, a futures grid strategy, which isn't a martingale strategy, which basically alters the buy size depending on Yeah, if you go down, it kind of doubles up martingale doubles every time and takes profit on the next grid. The futures grid is more linear, so it doesn't double, but this one's up $85. And 34%, one of my highest performing bots as well. So for me, a great way to get exposure to these trades isn't just through trading them on leverage, it's actually through setting up bots and setting up the parameters to trade buy and sell radiant within a certain range, when you get a breakout, you can actually execute on a lot of these orders. So if you're bullish on a token, setting up a long DCA gridbot is not a bad idea. If you know what you're doing, I have a tutorial, which I'll link in the description to okxgridbots if you want to learn more about it, and you're confused what the hell I'm talking about. I've done an entire video on this that will be in the description below that you can check out. I want to give a quick shout out to one of our official show partners, which is SmartX. If you are interested in earning passive income on any of the tokens listed on the AMM across Arbitrum, BNB, base and polygon, you can do so in the description below and get access to APRs of up to 60 % on the SmartX platform. And SmartX is really cool because they've engineered a way to drastically reduce the negative effects of impermanent loss. If you go into their on -chain compare function, you can actually see the performance of SmartX pools versus similar pools on other AMMs like Uniswap v3. And you can see, for example, the Arbitrum USDC pool is performing a lot better in terms of impermanent loss. Actually, it's in impermanent gain versus the other pools. And this is because of the algorithm that SmartX has. So in the past, putting a stablecoin alongside a token that you like hasn't been the best because if the token pumps, it really limits your upside. And it can also really screw you on the downside if the token moves significantly in price against the other asset. That's what impermanent loss is. With an application like SmartX, you can often get much better results where you can maintain the efficiency of the token that you're in, the efficiency of the LP overall, because you'll be pairing it with another token, of course. There's many examples of this, the Matic USDC pools the same, much better performance overall, net performance 7 .8 % versus these other pools which are much lower. You can see this as well in USDT, BNB. So all this is transparent. You can check out the on -chain compare function on their website. And yeah, link in the description below if you want to deposit liquidity or swap or even stake some of your assets. So link in the description below to SmartX and also to the OKX video and also to Kyber AI if you want to check out some of the AI -powered data that I've been referring to in the show. Hope you enjoyed today's show on Layer Zero. Hopefully it gives you a bit of info into how I'm trading it. Pretty bullish on Stargate and Radiant, especially if we get a pullback. Those will be tokens that I look at adding to. I am pretty excited for the Layer Zero airdrop as someone that's been involved in it for over a year. It's going to be amazing. I can't wait for the day. We may need to wait a little bit longer now, but I mean, we may even be surprised towards the back end of this week. So keep your eye out for that. And yeah, it's a super exciting time. We can actually see Layer Zero's trading already on the hyper liquid market. So it's an IOU contract which enables you to buy it. So if you really want to buy it now, you can actually buy Layer Zero, but you won't actually own the token. It's an IOU. And often these are really overpriced. It ended up coming down significantly in price when the token actually launches. So I will see you in the next show. Have a lovely rest of your day. Peace out.
Crypto Curious
A highlight from 103 - Crypto Shockwaves: SBF Verdict, Safemoon Drama, and Coinbase Surprises!
"Welcome to the Crypto Curious Podcast, proudly brought to you by the Bamboo App. Crypto Curious is your go -to source for all things cryptocurrency, whether you're a seasoned pro or new to the world of crypto, we've got you covered. Each week we'll break down the top news stories of the past seven days, giving you the information you need to stay on top of the latest trends and developments. Plus we'll share the quick bites of news and insights that you won't want to miss. If you're new to crypto, we recommend starting with our early episodes where we break down the basics and give you a solid foundation to understand the crypto world. Join us as we explore the ever -evolving world of cryptocurrency and educate ourselves along the way. In this week's episode, we'll take a look at the news about Sam Bankman -Fried and his guilty verdict. We'll talk about SafeMoon, what's going on there with those founders. We'll also look at Coinbase and their earnings and what might be on the horizon. Join me. My name's Tracey and this week Blake is on leave and it's just Craig and I. Hey Craig, how are you going? We're so back. What, the market? I've taken a few weeks off and the market has been ripping and tearing and it's been good to see. You've been filling your bags, haven't you? Yes. Oh mate, I can't believe it's back. And people forget how quickly it moves up. It has, it's been good. It's been good to see. It's been good. It's been nice. It's been a relief. Things have been moving and all of a sudden everyone is, you know, these coins are moving. Some of them are moving 40 % in a day. It's been crazy and it feels a little bit like a pre -bull market. I don't want to jinx it but the degens are back, the apes are back. It is good to see. Yeah, so we've got the crypto conference this week. I really hope Alluvium are there like they were last year. I hope they're there again. I hope to see a bunch of crypto games hopefully that are there that we can have a look at because I think that's the big sector everyone's got their eyes on. They had their eyes on it last year but obviously last year it was a, literally FTX was hitting, that was going on last year. So and it was actually more than a year ago, Trace, it was last September was the last crypto conference. And we were there and we will be there again this weekend and like Craig said, we will give you the lowdown on that this time next week. And Tracy, what about, who are you interviewing? Have you told? Oh yes, yes we did. We spoke about that. Spoke about it, yeah. Yes we did. So I will be chatting with Michael Saylor so I'm really excited about that one.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from BIG CRYPTO NEWS! CUSTODIA BANK BITCOIN CUSTODY, A16Z WEB3 INVESTMENT, ETHEREUM WHALE LOSES PASSWORD
"Caitlin Long's Custodia Bank has officially launched their Bitcoin custody platform. A16Z leads a $4 .2 million seed round investment into a UK Web3 infrastructure firm. Kraken is looking to launch its own Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution to compete with Coinbase. And an Ethereum whale who bought 250 ,000 ETH at 30 cents has lost his password. Let's break it down. Welcome to the Thinking Crypto Podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. If you are new here, please hit that subscribe button as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple or Google, please leave a five star rating and review. It supports the podcast and it doesn't cost you anything. Well, folks, I want to start off by highlighting the hypocrisy of Nouriel Roubini. If you don't know who he is, he is a fake economist hack. And I call him that because he has been trashing Bitcoin crypto in the industry for years. But look at this, Binance CEO CZ called him out because apparently he is working on a project that has a token. So look at that, right, folks? I always say watch what they do, not what they say. Nouriel Roubini has been a very vocal critic and he's getting exposed. So CZ said some people are shameless after attacking Binance publicly on stage a year ago, now issues a token and puts Binance logo on their website without permission. So unbelievable. There's even a BlackRock Goldman Sachs logo here. I don't even know that's legit. Now, the name of the project, CZ blurred that out. And I understand why he doesn't want to give these guys any type of press here or any try to drive people there to invest in whatever token they're building. But this guy, Nouriel Roubini is a piece of shit, in my opinion. And I hope he's listening. Nouriel, you're a clown. Now let's move ahead to some really big news, folks. So Custodia Bank, which is owned by Caitlin Long, who I've had on the podcast many times, has officially launched their Bitcoin custody platform. Custodia is a bank built by Bitcoiners and we offer segregated custody accounts on our custom built Bitcoin custody platform. They tweeted out, they also said, our Bitcoin custody service is purpose built for businesses, fiduciaries, investment advisors, fund managers and corporate treasurers. We're currently offering some of our services in various U .S. states. As a non lending bank, we offer integrated Bitcoin custody and U .S. dollar services, which is not FDIC insured under one roof, which simplifies other operations and reduces risk. We recently earned approval from Wyoming Division of Banking to go live with our Bitcoin custody service. Since we built our Bitcoin custody platform in -house, we're especially grateful to those willing to help us by providing user feedback. This is great news, folks. This is a bank built out of the crypto industry. Caitlin Long, of course, being very bullish on Bitcoin, has been fighting for crypto regulations for a long time. And we saw the Fed did not want to give Custodia a master account. And Custodia, in fact, sued the Fed. The Fed tried to get the lawsuit dismissed, but then the judge said, no, no, no, you're not dismissing this. Right. So we're seeing just the operation choke point from the government and the pushback against crypto to protect the TradFi incumbents. But we're winning in the court. So Caitlin's bank is a big win, folks, going live. It's a big win. And I hope she wins her lawsuit against the Fed and she's able to get that master account, folks. So huge, huge news. Now, Caitlin was also tweeting out because she's at the DC FinTech Week, which Gary Ganser, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and other crypto industry leaders will be at. And the current OCC acting chair, whose last name is Sue, if I'm saying that right, she said he unfortunately displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of crypto at DC FinTech Week. He supports private blockchains for tokenization to solve settlement problems, but then said crypto is only for speculation and criminals. Unbelievable. So you know what he's supporting there, right? He is supporting JPM coin, the private blockchain, a centralized blockchain controlled by the biggest bank in the world. That's what he wants. So you can tell who's pulling his strings, right? He's a puppet. His talking points are probably coming straight from JP Morgan, but we've seen these wall gardens are not going to succeed. They're going to work within their own ecosystem. So JP Morgan and all its branches can use their JPM coin, but no way in hell is a bank of America or a Citibank and these folks going to trust that coin, right? You're creating just a new centralized system where people are not going to trust each other. So this is why the public permissionless blockchains are the way to go and setting up the proper rules. So this guy's clearly a puppet for the TradFi folks. She said, Caitlin continued, she said, I've complimented Sue multiple times in the past, but must call this out. His remarks ring hollow when the federal bank regulators green light the big banks like BNY Mellon to provide Bitcoin and Ether custody, but block startups like Custodia Bank. And they ring hollow when a giant incumbent BlackRock is in the pole position for a Bitcoin spot ETF approval over upstarts whose applications have been pending for years. Great context, right folks? I've been talking about it. These two things happening in parallel, Gary Gensler and the SEC, the Fed, and these different folks weaponized against crypto startups, yet BNY Mellon gets crypto custody license, BlackRock applying for Bitcoin spot ETF, right? Fidelity, Charles Schwab and Citadel launch a crypto exchange. Mastercard and Visa are expanding their use of crypto and blockchain. PayPal launches a stable coin. See the two things running in parallel, right? That's not by coincidence or accident. It's a clear agenda. And Caitlin is absolutely right. She highlighted here that Mike Keagney just spoke the truth. Public blockchains are useful, but private blockchains aren't. Might as well use a database instead. She said, this is on target. I hope federal bank regulators learn this. Keagney's right. The tokenization that federal bank regulators want is only useful on public blockchains. So clearly this guy who is the acting chair, he is a TradFi puppet and probably, you know, given his talking points from JP Morgan and whoever else. Now here, Omid Malikin weighed in on Caitlin's comments and said, I want to echo what Caitlin said. Sue's comments are more evidence that US regulators care more about protecting incumbents than embracing innovation or inclusion. Private blockchains are exclusionary by design, not to mention useless. I wouldn't say they're useless. They're useful within those ecosystems, right? You want a private blockchain, have at it, go for it, right? But don't expect anybody to use it outside of your company. So like I said, JP coin is probably working really well between the JP Morgan headquarters and all the different branches around the world. That's fine. Good luck to you, right? Best of luck for you. That's right. But nobody outside is going to use it.
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from Bitcoin ETF Frenzy | Bloomberg Intelligence INTERVIEW
"All right today we're going to dive into some ETF news but also some analysis from the experts really looking at the potential of what ETFs might mean for crypto in general but also of course Bitcoin. We'll dive in deep. My name is Paul Berra. Welcome back in to Tech Path. Joining me today is James Safert who is an ETF analyst over at Bloomberg Intelligence. Great to have you back James. Thanks for having me on Paul. Happy to be here. Excellent. Excellent. Last time we had you on early stages of a lot of the ETF activity. I won't let you off the hook about the ETH ETF though because we're going to ask you about that. The potential. But I want to go into first of all a little bit about what's been happening over the last 60 days. And most of this has been around the potential for BlackRock. And let's just kind of get that question out of the way. Obviously BlackRock I would say the number one at least institutional asset manager out there that's being looked at as possibly could be the leader. In your opinion you look at all the filings that have been made. What is going to happen when we do get these approved? If they all come at once do you feel like BlackRock just automatically wins the race here because they're BlackRock or do you think there would be some others that could really win some marketing points? Yeah. So the way that we look at the space is it's a winner take most world. It's not like there's going to be a winner take all type situation. You can't overlook the fact that Grayscale already has 20 billion in assets right now based on the current valuation. So they're also going to be a big player. So there's going to be anywhere we look in the ETF space there's usually one big leader who gets most of the assets, possibly most of the flows and the trading volume. But usually there's other aspects of what these issuers will find ways to differentiate themselves. So in gold ETFs some ETFs are going to be way cheaper than the most liquid ones. So that's grown. Some are going to store through their gold and Swiss vaults instead of the London vaults. So I suspect we'll see something similar on the Bitcoin side of things. You're going to have issuers that are going to focus on the fact that they've been dealing with advisors themselves and talking to them about what this space looks like and what it's going to look like and offer to be like we know this space very well. We're not just an asset manager. We're putting blockchain and crypto first. So people focus on that and then the people that will say like we're going to lend out the underlying Bitcoin and give you dividends or offer very, very near zero fees. Some will talk about like different custodians are going to possibly market on the custodians they're using. As we know, we've seen that has been an issue. So there's like a whole bunch of different ways, but it is likely to be winner take most in this world. And BlackRock obviously is likely to be the leader. But the idea that we have GBDC and Grayscale already existing with 20 billion assets is that's a huge thing to hurdle even if you're BlackRock. So based on you guys's analysis, if you look at the ETF services that could be offered because there's probably going to get some fairly creative services within these companies, what would you think would be one of the most critical things that a BlackRock or 21 shares or even a Fidelity could bring to the market to say, this is what we're going to do. We're going to come out and kind of hit with a splash and try to draw in these investors. I mean, the easiest, most simplest one is going to be fee, right? No matter what you do, no matter what your offerings are, if you're charging double the price of everyone else, you're going to have a hard time competing. Right. But also, you hinted at it. We think there's going to be a lot of marketing around here. BlackRock is likely going to market the hell out of this. You're going to see ARK in 21 shares. We've already seen VanEck start to market this type of stuff already. So we're going to see a lot of these players try to market and get to advisors. Directly to retail, they're going to be talking about why their products are better versus the others. But like I said, it tends to be a winner -take -most type world in the ETF space, particularly when you have just a single asset here, right? It's just giving exposure to this one thing. So people are going to differentiate on what they do as a firm and the products individually and who knows where it's going to go. But like I said, one of the things I did mention is in gold, there are some ETFs where if you have enough money, for the most part, you can't redeem the actual gold. But there are some ETFs that like, if you have $10 ,000, they'll deliver it right to your doorstep, things like that. So there might be a similar situation in crypto down the line and won't, not initially, but that might be a case down the line where like, if you have a certain amount, they'll send it to a private wallet. Right. Right. Okay. You mentioned something here about retail and because I look at this and this was in reference to an article, you know, Crypto Reshaping the American Dream for Younger Generations. This is a report by Coinbase. And within the Coinbase art or the Coinbase report, there were a few things that they pointed out to. One of course, was this millennial age group, 26 to 40. And a lot of this was around just crypto and blockchain as kind of the future of finance. Millennials really see this as a big opportunity. When you look at retail and you look at the current runway for a lot of these institutions today, do you feel that the target audience, because it seems like the millennial audience could be the new holy grail of the investment class, especially in reference to retail. Do you think owning that would possibly put someone out in front or do you think it's going to be kind of old school capital that could be leading the way at first? What are your thoughts on that? So specifically for the ETF, it's probably going to be more the advisor type of space that it's going to be looking at this. I mean, if you're a retail person, anyone, if you really wanted exposure to this, you could have downloaded Coinbase or Gemini or any app, FTX, you could buy at the click of a button. So one of the parallels we like to look at is like when gold ETFs came out, they democratized investing in gold. Yeah, you could always go down to like the corner street and buy like some gold coins, but that's very different from having it in a like professionalized portfolio. So that's more what the ETF is going to do. We don't think the one thing it will do for retail potentially is if you're a trader and you're like to trade these things in and out, the ETF is going to be way cheaper than a lot of these platforms. It's going to trade penny wide, there's going to be no commissions, which is not the case for most of these platforms. So the real people that are going to use these products if and when they get approved are really going to be institutions and advisors who maybe they have clients who have money in their own personal accounts on the some of those apps I mentioned, and it would just be way better if like we could control it. If an advisor, they know exactly how it is, they can basically sell when it gets too large of a portion of the portfolio and buy more when it dips below because we know we all know how volatile the market is. So just getting that professional management. Also from the advisors perspective, if I'm an advisor and you're my client and you're buying this on Coinbase or FTX, I don't know what you're doing. And also I'm not making money. That's not under my purview. Like typically the most advisors nowadays they charge an AUM fee. So whatever those total assets are, they're going to charge a slight fee on those total assets. And this brings us under that umbrella. So what ETF is going to do is going to put DeFi on the TradFi rails in a way that hasn't been done yet, which again kind of goes against the ethos of many of these things. But it's not going to detract from the underlying ethos of Bitcoin and what people want it to be. It's just going to be additive to people who want it in a different basically wrapper. Yeah. I was looking at your partner, Eric Balshunis in there, this is one of the many reasons so bullish on ETFs and think they'll dominate for decades to come is their usage is inversely correlated to age. Eighty -nine percent of millennials say the vehicle of choice versus boomers, which is though it is increasing in the survey data that came in from Schwab. But I guess the future is really going to lean toward these other alternative investors who are going out to advisors and saying, hey, I've got some assets here I want under management and here we go. And with that being the case, you've already got a mindset that's starting to restructure how capital might be deployed in the future. Is that something where do you think the switch would happen? Is there a time frame that you say, OK, maybe over the next three years, this we could truly see a shift in the demographic data that could push these ETFs into kind of a stratosphere? Yeah, so like if we're just looking at ETFs in general, one of the things I track, I obviously don't just cover crypto. I look at the whole space. And one of the big trends recovering is mutual fund to ETF transition, which goes to a lot of those things that Eric was pointing out, specifically on the ETF side. It's not going to be like these things launch and all of a sudden they're going to get like billions of dollars in in one week. Like I said, it's going to be institutions. So a lot of institutions, endowments, pensions, they have restrictions on what they can and cannot hold. So they have to hold securities or bonds, what have you. They can't hold this thing directly. Putting in an ETF wrapper allows them to hold it. So if there is there and we know for a fact that our institutions out there that want to have a one percent allocation to this thing, this might be a way for them to do it. The other part of it is basically it's the advisors, right? They're not going to if they want to put maybe some portion of their clients they think would fit to have a one, three, five percent allocation to a product like this. They're not going to do it the day it launches, right? They're going to do their due diligence. They're going to look at things or they're going to slowly put it in over time. So it'll be like an allocation that goes on over the next one, one to three years, kind of like you mentioned. So it's more about the long term impact of these things being launched necessarily than necessarily like, oh, this week it's launching and all of a sudden it's going to send things to the moon, if you will. That's unlikely to happen, in my view, personally. So obviously we'll get an initial splash once these do hit the market. That's going to be kind of the case. Is there any framework of what you guys think at Bloomberg would be the kind of inflows that would be relevant to what the size of this asset class is? I guess it would be similar maybe to what gold or is it even similar to gold that first hit the ETF market? Yeah. So when we look at gold ETFs, which is like something that people kind of overstate, gold ETFs in the U .S. have a hundred billion in AUM. This is, I mean, Bitcoin ETFs aren't going to get there anytime soon, in my opinion. And like I said, Grayscale, I mentioned like twice or three times already, GBC already has 20 billion in assets. So the idea that all of a sudden there's going to be hundreds of billions in these products in any sort of shorter timeframe than years or decade out is kind of unlikely. But yeah, I think of the upper limit or in like a three year time frame would be that a hundred billion number maybe, but there's no way to actually know what type of money's going to come in. The problem is like, we don't know what advisors are going to do, right? Are they going to do that 1 % allocation, 3 % allocation, 5 % allocation and what percent of advisors are going to use these products? And then also what percent of their clients are they going to want to hold these? Not every, this isn't going to fit for every single client in the world, right? It's going to fit for a subset of clients that they feel like meet their risk profile. So deciding that. So it's hard to really know Galaxy actually did a really good piece on this. I'm trying to guess the numbers. They guess I think 14 billion in the first year, but there's also a lot of things going on. We don't know how much money is going to come out of Grayscale because a lot of money that's in there was specifically playing what was going on with the premiums and discounts. And not necessarily like, Oh, I want this exposure. It was more like, this is a trade I'm making to bet on the discount closing or to bet on the premium or something like that over the last five years. So there might be some flows that are come out of there that might not go into some of these other ETFs. Now, how much of that is going to happen? I don't know. So here's a question to you is with Bloomberg, the way you guys analyze ETFs, but also the advisors within the industry, is there any data out there showing the demographic of the actual advisors? Because I would think that if they are falling into the millennial audience, they may kind of be leaning a little bit stronger into these kinds of assets. Yeah, there are a lot of advisors that are leaning into that. So like this, this kind of gets a little bit out of my wheelhouse. We don't have a lot of the advisor data because most of that is like survey data. There are a lot of really good sources that get into that and we'll use those other sources and let me try to figure out what's going on. But for the most part, a lot of the advisors are much older crowd that aren't really interested in this. That said, if you have a client and you're older and the client says they want exposure to this, this is the way that they're going to do it, right? They're not going to open a Coinbase account for them. They're going to go through and just buy this ETF if it's allowed, even allowed. There's a process that could take one few months or two, three years where these platforms have to get the okay from their risk metric teams and compliance teams to actually be even allow advisors or anyone to brokers to even buy these things for their clients. So who knows how long that could take. You mentioned Grayscale obviously kind of being a potential leader, I guess, going out of the gate. What is the next step for them? Obviously, they've had a much further advancement, but why not, why are we not seeing this just going out as a listed ETF right now? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't actually know. The real answer is like they won their court case, right? And there's likely a conversation that's happening between the SEC and Grayscale. Grayscale saying, probably pushing the argument that, look, the deadlines and the statutes say if there is no issued order here, then all of a sudden we're approved. And your order was vacated and that timeframe means we are de facto approved, which that's a legal framework that's unlikely to actually ever happen in the real world, but that's probably what they're saying to the SEC. I'm assuming the SEC was saying, no, you're going to restart and refile this whole process, which is a 240 -day process to go through this and then we'll talk. And then I'm sure there's some like haggling going back and forth. We'll make a deal. We'll refile if we get X number of days, like you guarantee we're going to give us an answer or maybe even just the SEC is telling them we're going to give you an answer on what's going to happen in the next 30 days. We don't know. It's completely quiet. I thought we would have had an answer to like what the next steps are and what's happening last week, the last week or the week before. So I was like thinking by last Friday, we'd have an idea of what's going to go on. And I think I actually tweeted this out. I was like, we have nothing. They're completely quiet. So we're entering a zone right now starting tomorrow where theoretically they could start approving some of these things. Obviously, I'm not saying that that's what's going to happen, but like up and tomorrow is the first date that it could theoretically happen in the last of the next few months. All right. So with that being the case right now, I know you and Eric have kind of looking have been doing these percentage of probability ranges by end of year. Where are you guys at now on this? We're still at 75 percent by the end of the year, but we think basically one thing that goes into all this is we think the SEC is going to try to allow most, if not all of them to launch on the same day. They're not going to play kingmaker. They played kingmaker with Bitto, which is the pro shares Bitcoin futures ETF, got a billion and a half or over a billion in two days dominate. They have 96 percent of the assets, 96 percent of the volume. They utterly dominate. I don't think they don't want to do that again. So I think the SEC is going to try to find these like angles and areas where they can allow a whole bunch to launch at the same time. And like I said, one of those one of those like time periods starts tomorrow and goes through like roughly the 17th, maybe the 21st, depending on with all these other filings. But if you include GBTC, there's 12 active applications right now in front of the SEC. So the SEC might have to figure out a way to do this. So like I said, November could happen. There's also a period in December. Our view is that the final deadline for ARK and 21 shares is January 10th. And I just don't think if they deny then by that January 10th deadline, if they wait all the way up until that deadline, which they don't have to, they can go very early if they want to. We saw that in September. They went months early in some of these cases. They will approve by January 10th is our view. We're at 90 percent on that now. That said, if they deny at that time period, it's unlikely that they're going to deny ARK in January and then approve everything else in March, which is when BlackRock and all these other issuers are due. So we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. But we think we're at 75 percent this year. I think they could try to get it done just like before the Christmas and New Year holidays. So it's kind of a tight squeeze to fit it in like right after New Year's and before that January 10th deadline, unless they have everything ready to go. And again, the next like opening where we could see like a wave of approvals is later this week, potentially into next week.
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from Cathie Wood Questions Bitcoin | Ethereum Rally Incoming
"All right, so let's get into Ethereum today. Is a rally incoming? After some interesting performance over the weekend, we're going to break it all down for you. My name is Paul Barron. Welcome back in the Tech Path. Before we get started, I want to thank our sponsor, and that is iTrust Capital. If you're looking at long -term holding or maybe going into a crypto IRA, one of the best things you can do is check out iTrust Capital. And, of course, you can get into Bitcoin, Ethereum, a whole slew of altcoins, as well as precious metals. So there's a lot of options over there that you guys do have. And there's no fees monthly, you're just doing transaction fees for when you're doing something inside your account. So make sure and check it out. It is a link down below. You get a $100 funding reward if you use our link, and it works out for you guys. Let me know. All right, so let's get going here on a couple of things. I want to jump over to an article on the block. And this one is really just hitting on the whole issue around inflow. $767 million six -week streak, ETH, of course, now seeing the largest inflow since August of 2022. A couple of points within the article. Come and zoom in on that one right there. Digital asset investment products as asset managers, such as CoinShares, Bitwise, Grayscale, 21 shares, et cetera. The funds have been adding $261 million to $767 million over the past six weeks. So pretty big deal considering this passes or surpasses all of the inflows we saw in 2022. And I think you can kind of see the chart right here of the inflows. What is it that is happening that's causing this? Some people would look at a couple of things. One of course is the movement on Bitcoin as an ETF, because could that mean that Ethereum could get an ETF? Or does Ethereum move in unison like it has in the past with what Bitcoin is doing? One other thing that was in the article here is if Ether crypto funds generated the most inflows since August. One of the things here though, this of course total $17 million, a significant turnaround from $107 million in outflows that they face this year. So that's another factor I think that plays into this. I don't know, when you guys, and I know I'm a big investor in Ethereum. I get behind this project, I like the ecosystem, I like the potential of it. But I'm always questioning, are there other faster ones? Are there some other opportunities out there? There's a lot of different angles that you can go. But of course with ETH, one of the things to look at is a recent analysis on this is just looking at this potential bullish breakout. You can kind of see this downward wedge that's painted in by this analyst. And they've looked at a couple of points where it's bounced off this wedge top and has retraced down. But right now it's outperforming this, which is the point of where we've seen this $1 ,900 breakout. If it continues to fly over the $1 ,900, which is where it is right now, does this mean that maybe Ethereum is set to have its own little mini rally, much like what Bitcoin had going up to $35K? This is going to be a good one to watch. Hong Kong, of course, is now, their regulator is welcoming crypto spot ETF proposals. And a lot within this that I think is important. This is the SFC's chief executive, Julia Leung, said that the regulator will entertain proposals that boost efficiency and customer experience. And we're happy to give it a try as long as risks are addressed. Our approach is consistent regardless of the asset, she said. So basically what they're doing is they're talking about crypto ETFs. That to me is a pretty significant scenario, especially because of what's happening here, even within the United States, having so much struggle just getting a Bitcoin ETF passed, a spot ETF passed. I think this is an opportunity for Hong Kong to kind of plant a flag in the sand and maybe show that this can be done in a very responsible way. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, HKMA, is also developing guidelines to help banks hold tokenized asset. This is another factor that I think we'll see a big ramp up on once we get an ETF underway and once the SFC starts to hopefully give some leeway on what's going to happen within the crypto markets. I think banking will be one of the next areas that will be on deck for sure. But let's not forget, there's still a lot of Ethereum FUD in the market. One of them, of course, is this article from Bitcoinist, Ethereum Insider Drops Bombshell, ETH Founders Fraud Bigger Than the FTX Fraud. Of course, we have to show this. Just to kind of show you, this is the attorney that was talking about this and I'll highlight this right here. Naroff said that the two Ethereum founders have allegedly orchestrated fraudulent activities regarding ETH blockchain and exceeded the scale of actions even by the former FTX CEO Sam Bankman -Fried. So, I don't know. These are the kind of things that I feel like within this market, there's always FUD. One way or the other, you're getting FUD on Bitcoin, you're getting FUD on Ethereum or any project out there. But I think if you're doing the research, you start to realize where these opportunities are. And when you ask the questions, it starts to reveal the answers. I want to jump over to a couple of clips here. And this is Cathie Wood asking questions and maybe revealing some answers to herself listening. Can I just ask a quick question? What would be the, what would be opposition to that? Any particular reason or is this taking off pretty quickly? For like stablecoins on Lightning or for integration into the service providers? Integration. So, I think on the integration side, well, the first thing is that there is no stablecoin on Lightning live yet. And so, hopefully you'll have like a USDC or a USDT that goes live. I think the second step is that if you're developing a predominantly for like an EVM environment, if you just do like EVM and Solana, you already have some like 90 % of the smart contract market share. And so, you really only have to do two things and they all kind of work like relatively in similar ways. Now, the clip here is of Cathie Wood and a lot of Lightning developers that are kind of addressing the issues and the questions she has in terms of expansion of the project, but also the functionality of it. And that is the thing that is interesting because it's relative to what's happening with Ethereum right now. And part of this is not only in adoption, because remember ETH, largest ecosystem out there, largest number of developers, probably the most apps, even though we've seen a lot of movement, both in Avalanche and Solana, but this next clip goes into the adoption of Lightning. Now, and this isn't about Lightning versus ETH, but it is about how Ethereum has a potential here as a payment architecture in the future. But listen in. Des, is this more of a developed world or is the developing world getting involved? I just don't know your business well enough. Yeah, I mean, I would, the majority of our users, I would say are in Latin America. So it is for us very much largely developing regions. All right. So as you can see there, they're talking about Lightning's deployment in terms of adoption. A lot of this happening in the emerging markets. We've known that even if you look back at the success that Bitcoin has had in El Salvador and also Lightning to a certain extent, because it's being used across Strike and other platforms that integrate with Lightning. But her question was pretty straightforward. Why are we not seeing these kinds of integrations on a global perspective in some of the major markets? Now, granted, we are not necessarily seeing that either within the ETH ecosystems. Now, granted within the ETH ecosystem, we're seeing a lot of dApps starting to develop and solve some of these challenges and these problems. And I think that's the thing that maybe Woods is getting to is trying to understand why we haven't seen the kind of opportunities that Ethereum has represented. So it's a very interesting situation, I think, with both Lightning and Bitcoin, along with the alternative, which really right now I would still say is Ethereum, even though Solana has a lot of potential, it still is an emerging layer one that does have a lot of use cases. But again, it's hard to match up to what's happened within the ETH ecosystem in such a long period of time. Now, granted, it doesn't mean it can't be done. There's still a lot happening there. I want to jump over to another article. Brian Armstrong says OnChain is the new online, as Coinbase beats their expectations with $674 ,000 in revenue for the quarter. And the internet was and is a game -changing technology that redefined our modes of communication. Totally agree with him there. Business and social interaction, blockchain and crypto are doing the same thing today. Totally agree with him there. Broader access to financial services and even changes how we think in identity, governance, artwork and non -financial services. All this is applicable. Here is my argument with what Coinbase and what Brian Armstrong is talking about. And actually, I think he knows this. And you know, I've talked to many of the Coinbase team and I feel like they all kind of get it in the sense that when you look at the birth and the growth of the internet, we never really addressed the monetary or the financial system. It was really more about the information system. Now what you're doing with Web3 and the evolution of blockchain is you're addressing both. You're addressing the information system and you're addressing the financial system. And that I think is going to be the challenge and it's the continuing challenge. That's why it's been so hard I think to get a regulation here in the United States is because it is messing with the one thing that most people have not messed with in the past and that is the money. And I think that's the scenario we've got to face. Last point he hits on was regulatory clarity. In the U .S. it's still a big hurdle. To my point, that is one of the biggest issues. Further in this, just to give you kind of an insight on this, SEC now is struggling to hire crypto experts because they all seem to want to hodl. I like that topic line. A couple of points from the article and kind of zoom in on this right here. Many qualified candidates hold crypto assets which the Office of Ethics and Council have determined would prohibit them from working on particular matters of effecting crypto assets. I don't know if you would get a crypto expert that wouldn't be holding crypto. So are they looking for a white elephant? I think they might be. It's very possible. And then when you don't have the crypto experts you can't really find the crypto bad guys? They're going to have to probably loosen up on those situations. Candidates are often unwilling to divest their crypto. Can you imagine that? I'm not willing to give up my Bitcoin, my Ethereum, my Solana so I can come work for the SEC. Interesting. Maybe they already know. The writing is on the wall. Let's go to another clip here. This is talking about developers also coming in from Cathie Woods. Listen in. One of the metrics we like to look at is the number of developers. Over time, the number of developers on Ethereum has really taken off. And while the number on Bitcoin generally has, it's still moving up, the slope had changed and flattened out. Have all of the developments that you're talking about on the Lightning Network changed that dynamic? Are we starting to see an inflection point with more Bitcoin developers here? Yeah, I mean, I definitely think so, especially when you think about like ordinals and all of those things. I mean, those are kind of those kind of came and they haven't went, but they're not as popular as they were. There was a hackathon recently. There was like 200 people that submitted ideas. And yeah, maybe they're not like building those out in full. But I think it's just it's I know it's nothing compared to the scale of Ethereum, but it's hard to build on Bitcoin. I think everybody knows here it's it's a little bit harder. I don't think it's ever going to have the same amount of developer interest as Ethereum because you can't experiment as much. You know, when we come to building games with rewards in them, you know, we're not messing around with like NFTs and tokens and all of this that just kind of complicate things. So I think in short, they're simply saying, yeah, this is not going to develop at the scale or at the pace in which Ethereum or other chains like it are developing on. But at the same time, I look at it and I think, well, other layer ones have been able to do this. We have Solana right here, you know, 7000 registrants, 907 submissions, participants from over 120 countries. This is what happens. I think this was the hyperdrive hackathon that they did. Tolle was talking about that in terms of the growth, but almost a thousand submissions here. This is developer, a developer ecosystem that is starting to explode, much like what you saw in the birth and the explosion of the ETH ecosystem. Those are the ones that I'm watching again, ETH is continuing to skyrocket and do these kind of things, which again gives it the opportunity to experiment, to try new things, to do things that really solve real world problems. That at the end of the day for blockchain is where it all matters, because if you don't solve real world problems, what are you doing, you know, what are you doing out there? Let's go over to another clip real quick. This is talking about Ethereum and Solana. Listen in. I think it's a little bit naive to be like, hey, everything else is a scam and this is the only thing that's not a scam. What Ethereum is trying to do is build a credibly neutral blockchain on which anybody can build whatever they want. And like even looking at something like Solana, like their values are really straightforward. They want to be the cheapest and the fastest. They just want to be an app platform. 99 % of the people in each of these things are building things that they want to build for people that they want them to use it. There's a small cohort in every community and the bigger community has it as well that talks and, nonsense you know, is scammy and misleads people. All right, so you kind of can see that there is a bit of a light bulb, I think, going off in Cathie Wood's head. Now, I know Cathie is big into Bitcoin, but I think maybe she is starting to look a lot stronger into these alternatives, including Ethereum, Solana and others that will kind of flow into that. One of the articles that kind of point to this, this is a repeat of the 2019 bull run crypto now in play amid Bitcoin and Ethereum surge. This is coming from Chris Berniski. Now, remember, Chris Berniski was on the ARK team, former head of crypto at Cathie Wood's ARK, and basically says right here, if Bitcoin ETH rip here and everything else follows, it's going to be just high enough for people to believe that maybe, just maybe all new time highs are around the corner before ending in a final wipeout. This would be Q1 2024. This will be interesting because if people are looking at this, because there are a lot of people that are kind of analyzing the current move here that's similar to 2019, to where we could see another kind of fake bull run, and then a drop in the market, and then an adjustment, obviously, post halving, to where we'd start to see some of this move. But right now, he goes on to say, predicts that Sol will continue to be the prime outperformer in the next market expansion. And he loves ETH, grew up professionally along Ethereum's rise, continues to support many Ethereum projects, so that's good. But this cycle, Sol has been and likely will continue to be the faster horse. I don't know, I'd love to give you guys' input on this. I'm still a big ETH fan, obviously Solana is surprising me daily, just with what they've been able to do. So, love to get your feedback, drop some comments down below. If you're not a subscriber of the channel, also hit the subscribe button, it's one of the best ways you guys can help kind of spread the word around what's happening in blockchain as a whole. I want to go to this last clip here.
Daily Crypto Report
A highlight from "Coinbase expands Global Advisory Council" Nov 07, 2023
"As a person with a very deep voice, I'm hired all the time for advertising campaigns. But a deep voice doesn't sell B2B, and advertising on the wrong platform doesn't sell B2B either. That's why if you're a B2B marketer, you should use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has the targeting capabilities to help you reach the world's largest professional audience. That's right, over 70 million decision makers all in one place. All the bigwigs, then mediumwigs, also smallwigs who are on the path to becoming bigwigs. Okay, that's enough about wigs. LinkedIn ads allows you to focus on getting your B2B message to the right people. So, does that mean you should use ads on LinkedIn instead of hiring me, the man with the deepest voice in the world? Yes, yes it does. Get started today and see why LinkedIn is the place to be, to be. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Go to LinkedIn .com slash results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn .com slash results. Terms and conditions apply.
CRYPTO 101
"coinbase" Discussed on CRYPTO 101
"There are so many use cases. That one, applications can innovate on that totally, right? So imagine there's a request box like you have on Twitter, but because it's built so connected to a wallet platform, the ability to attach $10 to open this message and a application like Coinbase wallet could facilitate that type of request inbox that gives value to the end user and the wallet itself. There's so many versions of that, that I think can really help to drive more value towards the end user, which I think is ultimately the goal of the entire space. Now, this is actually bringing to mind this big new trend that just caught fire this last couple of weeks with FriendTech and iterating on similar concepts that almost you guys and Earn were. Do you guys have any general high-level thoughts? Kind of open it up on what that system is or we could breeze over it. I'm just curious if you had seen anything about that, Sid or Shane. I'll let Sid respond because I haven't used it enough, but I just love seeing people innovate on user value models, new models in which people can exchange interaction and value between each other or even investing in others at a people level. And then to see it built on base is also super cool. I also think what's cool that they did is they built it in a way to do commerce in an L2 with a messaging and peer-to-peer investing thing outside of the App Store. To see them do it in a Safari browser and you download it as part of the onboarding and it installs an app, but it's really just a bookmark on my home screen, shows one, how much work they had to do to even make it work. And two, I think maybe can start showing Apple and the others how much value there is to be captured here to start working together on making it possible to innovate in this space at an application level. Yeah. And it's funny, I was just tweeting about FriendTech over the weekend. It's definitely so exciting to see. I mean, it's really fun. If you're in this space, you want to see fun experiments. The experiments themselves may be short-term successful or long-term successful, but some of these ideas that they create then spin off new launches and new products. And so a couple of the things that are really interesting is just the idea that very spontaneously these decentralized markets could pop up, right? And people are just able to just come on board, import their identities, and a market will spin up around their identity and their level of influence. And you would have these bonding curves that would just automatically price based on supply and demand. That's really innovative. And you have this underlying blockchain that can help make all of this stuff easy to build and provably secure that you wouldn't have in a Web 2 system.
CRYPTO 101
"coinbase" Discussed on CRYPTO 101
"All right, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, gather around. I hope you are having a fantastic start to your day, end to your day. Maybe we're finding you smack dab in the middle of the long drive from work or whatever it may be. But wherever you are in the world, you're certainly in the right place because we're joined by some absolute killers in the space, some crypto legends. In fact, crypto partners. There's a very big partnership that just got announced between Coinbase and XMTP. So we've brought on two folks, two representatives from both, to talk about this partnership and how we're going to be increasing crypto user adoption across the map. So we've got Shane Mack, who's the co-founder of XMTP, and we've got Siddhartha Koeloprabhu, who is the senior director of product management at Coinbase. So Shane, Sidd, welcome to the Crypto 101 podcast. Hey, it's great to be here. Thanks for having us, man. Yeah, great to be here as well. Thank you. Yeah, we're excited. And Brendan, do you feel the energy? Do you feel the lightning, the electricity in the air with these two? Yeah, it's going to be a big one. This is going to be an exciting one. A lot of people are tuning in and sometimes they might be on the fence, especially with where the market's at. But this time we are coming with some electricity. So get ready for it. No, I'm big on this because this isn't just another flash in the pan. I mean, this is truly a lasting partnership with the goal of bringing more user adoption. That's really what we want. And so before we dive in to what this partnership is and how it's going to grow space and make just things easier for all of us, I want to get to know you guys a little bit and introduce you to the audience and just a little bit about the background. So Shane, Mac, we'll start with you. Tell us a little bit about your background, how you came to found the protocol, XMTP, and then Sidd, we'll move on to you right after. Awesome. Yeah, I mean, I've been working on messaging and social for the last 15 years of building on top of Twitter and Facebook data to aggregate social data and identity around email addresses and be able to build a smarter address book. That ended up growing to a hundred million people in under two years and Blackberry bought it for 50 million bucks in 2009. And I worked on BBM and actually BBM was the light bulb. When I saw messaging on BBM, Blackberry Messenger, right? For those who don't know. People wanted to have their BBM pin code. People were buying because of the Blackberry Messenger. I was like, holy crap. People's affinity towards messaging and status and having this device actually is because they have Blackberry Messenger. The double check mark came from there, which is now how WhatsApp works. All these innovations were happening. And for me, I was like, this is how the world should work. Why do I have to call a business? Why do I have to use a phone book? Why can't everything just go towards messaging? And I think for me, that inspired me to go work on my next company, which was business messaging. The first platform to ever bring businesses to Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS, Apple Business Chat, et cetera. And I was the CEO of that for almost nine years. And during that time, I was in San Francisco. All my friends were working on crypto. I knew a lot of people building. Ethereum had already happened. My co-founder now was way more into the crypto space and everyone was kind of building. And the question for me in 2019, our company got acquired, was could there be a new identity? Is the wallet address going to be it? Or is it going to be a mechanism by which you will own your identity? And if that's true, is there an opportunity to build a base layer messaging protocol that is more secure than like an SMS per se for this new means of transferring digital kind of value between different addresses? And that sparked a conversation with Robert Leshner, who's the co-founder of Compound Protocol. And he said, hey, I have $11 billion in the smart contract. I know every single address of everyone who owns it and I can't send 95% of them a message. Why can't I communicate to people that are so valuable to this protocol? He said, imagine if a bank couldn't talk to 95% of their customers. And that was like a light bulb for me. And I was like, that's crazy. And for me, I love messaging. I've always worked on it. If I'm going to do something else, I might as well do the same thing I've been doing. And there were two opportunities. One was to build something with a new mechanism that had a better relationship with developers. So in my past, I built on top of Facebook and on top of SMS and on top of Twitter. And for 15 years, I got rugged. I got APIs changed, the business model changed. They pulled the curtains. V2 cut us off. We had to do new deals. It was all backdoor deals. Everything felt like building on top of them was so hard and it wasn't mutual partnership or relationship where we were actually driving the same way together because they had to build an ad business. So they needed to aggregate all the attention to the application layer, cut off all the developers. And ultimately most of those ecosystems died. And so for me, that was the opportunity really looking forward was the ability to build a new communication protocol in a way that actually worked with developers versus against them. Brian Feroldi Can I just say, I love that approach. You looked at it and you said, how can we make Web3 better than Web2? What are we missing in Web3? What can we complement what's already happening? And you started there with the problem and then ended up with the solution where as a lot of the time, people just jump in. They go, oh, I want to jump in the Web3. They don't really know what they want to do yet. They don't know what kind of problems they want to solve. We see that with a lot of projects, but you jumped right in. You said you saw this $5 billion problem. That was just with Compound. And then you started working towards the solution. I just think that approach to crypto and Web3 is such a strong one. Brian Feroldi It's the only thing I know. And every single person I talked to said the same thing. They would show me these Dune dashboards and all these things of all these wallet addresses. And I would say, what do you do with it? And they'd be like, we can see all the stuff happening between them. And I was like, but can you message them or build relationships with them? They're very clear in that moment. Everyone said, but if I could reach the wallet and communicate to the wallet, that would unlock everything. And that was the insight that led to Sid and even the Coinbase conversation. And I definitely want to dive in more there because there's so much to unpack. But Sid, I do want to make sure that we get up to speed on how you became senior director product management here at Coinbase and really what drove you. I have a background in a variety of different things. I started my career in investment banking. Then I went to work in government. Then I was a fintech entrepreneur. So I've done a bunch of different things. And at some point, I read the Bitcoin whitepaper and something just clicked in my head and I said, this is the future. I've worked in finance 1.0. And there's so many broken things about that model. And both I've worked in the West as well as emerging markets. I was like, this is the future. And so I interviewed at Coinbase. It just so happened that our CEO, Brian, wanted to launch this product. There would be a self-custody wallet and specifically focused on Ethereum. And it was the beginning of Ethereum had just launched recently. People were building dapps and we wanted to build a gateway. And so he hired me to help launch the product. And so I came on board, launched Wallet. It was called Toshi back then. And I've just been working on it ever since over the last six years. And it's been an incredible journey because what we've seen is we started with the core premise of just self-custody and giving people access to their own crypto anywhere in the world. And we've layered on all these new layers of interaction. As Web3 has been building them, we've been bringing them to customers. So it started with dapps and then NFTs and then ERC20 tokens and then DEX trading and staking. And then ENS, the identity protocol to give everyone usernames and now all the way to messaging. And that's really our goal is to be your app that you open up. And it's a universal banking and finance, but also social app. And you can do everything you want in Web3 all within the most secure and easiest to use experience. And so, yeah, I've been doing this for six years now. Every year has been a new challenge, a new set of developments in the industry, a new set of opportunities. And I still love coming to work every day because I get to work and partner with awesome people like Shane and build incredible product. I love it. No, that's incredible. And we're going to dive into some more specifics about Coinbase wallet and how it's different from maybe even Coinbase exchange. But one thing I want to go back with Shane and kind of I love the idea of XMTP where you could have all this inter chain messaging. And it's more than just human to human messaging, which I think is so important because it enables secure machine to machine messaging as well. And I think that's what a lot of people don't really realize is that cryptocurrency is not just the future of money for people, but it's the future of money for AI and machines. And so, do you kind of see your protocol and this space developing along that way where you have autonomous secure machine to machine interactions and payments and all of that kind of being facilitated with Ethereum and XMTP? Or is that just a pipe dream of the web three bros? Not at all. I think machines talk to machines all day, every day. I think it even goes further than that. If you think about every single identity as having a story, every single wallet has a story. Your ability to actually talk to any address in a world where the AI and chat GPTs are coming online, you can even imagine human to human, machine to machine, human to machine, right? And so, if you go even further, every single identity on a blockchain has a history. And the history is actually fascinating of what's happened. What's transferred. Where did the things go? Who are the other people? What are their histories? What are they interacting with? What are the overlaps between all these communities and the ability to actually communicate from peer to peer, machine to machine, or even people to machine? Plus, with everything coming in the future with AI, I think all those are totally possible and even more that we're probably not even thinking about, which is why working with developers to go explore and build all these cool experiences is amazing. And Shane, can you explain the concept of digital identity? Because I know we're going to be throwing around that term as we continue to dive in here, but everyone listening might not understand exactly what a digital identity is and the significance of it. I mean, DIDS, as they are called, right? DIDS. Yeah, digital. XMTP actually is identity agnostic. And we actually work with many partners like Coinbase who has the CB.ID identity. Right. They enable people, Sid could probably talk about it better, to get that identity and own that identity when they join Coinbase wallet. And I think the major difference for me is just instead of renting your identity from Instagram or Twitter or any of these platforms, the ability to own your identity in the future so that no one can take that from you and you can use that across all of the applications in all of the space is the shift. You're not just using your one Instagram handle on Instagram. You're actually using the identity you own to talk on WhatsApp, to talk on iMessage, to talk on Instagram. But in our world, it's different products and different services, but actually now they all work together. And that ability to work together and you own it means that the owner of a platform can't want your Twitter handle and just take it from you. And I think that's a huge and very important shift that needs to happen based on the last 15 years of the internet. Oh yeah. And it totally empowers like, you know, you and me and just the average user to say, Hey, I'm building a following on Facebook. I could bring that following to the next new platform and bring it to the next new platform. And I'm not really tied down to one platform, which completely subverts the economics of the web2 ecosystem that we've been in. If your business earns millions or tens of millions in revenue, stop what you're doing and take a listen. Because NetSuite by Oracle has just rolled out the best offer we've ever seen. NetSuite gives you the visibility and control you need to make better decisions faster. And for the first time in NetSuite's 22 years as the number one cloud financial system, you can defer payments of a full NetSuite implementation for six months. That's no payment and no interest for six months. And you can take advantage of this special financing offer today. NetSuite is number one because they give your business everything you need in real time, all in one place. To reduce manual processes, boost efficiency, build forecasts, and increase productivity across every department. 33,000 companies have already upgraded to NetSuite, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, e-commerce, and more. If you've been sizing NetSuite up to make the switch, then you know this deal is unprecedented. No interest, no payments. Take advantage of this special financing offer at NetSuite.com slash strategy. NetSuite.com slash strategy to get the visibility and control you need to weather any storm. NetSuite.com slash strategy. So yeah, it sounds just really beyond incredible. And I think that, Sid, there's a lot of things that Coinbase could be working on. Why do you think that this is so important? Identities in particular? Yeah, exactly. Identities and really like kind of solving it in this way. Do you think that, you know, of all the things you could be working on, this is like the one that needs to be solved? Yeah, I think it's one of the core primitives of, so let's take a step back, right? We're seeing this like bigger story arc where people are now like building their lives or at least some portion of their lives on chain. And so what that means is not just buying crypto and trading it anymore. That's kind of very like five years ago. What we're seeing now is a little bit more of like you buy NFTs and you join the community. And now you represent yourself as being someone in that community. You have opinions that you share in that community. You may do the same thing for other assets that you own. You may be transacting with people online and maybe you do business online and you get paid in crypto. And so you want to share out like a handle that people can know you by. For all of these reasons, you're basically becoming like a citizen of Web3, a non-chain citizen. And if you're doing that, every citizen has a passport or, you know, a citizen of any country have a passport. We want to give that to people. And, you know, right now people have this world where if I wanted to send you money, Bryce, you would probably send me a 40 digit address and I'd have to copy and paste it and be really like clunky. And if I made a mistake, money would get lost. And also, you know, if you do kind of have a personality on Twitter, for example, and you have people that follow you, maybe people want to see what you're buying and selling and, you know, they want to see what communities you're a part of. There's no real way to share that unless we all adopt a common sense of identity and a common protocol and standard. And so about, I want to say a year and a half ago, we worked with the ENS Foundation. And, you know, ENS is probably the most widely adopted username protocol and system out there. And we said, you know what, why don't we try and pioneer together a free ENS that's similar to the dot each system. It's the same system. It's compatible with it. But, you know, with dot each, you've got to pay money. You've got to pay money on mainnet. It can cost anywhere from $10, $20 to $50, depending on the kind of the gas fees at the time. And then not to mention some of these dot ENS names or thousands of dollars I've seen, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Right. And so look, that's a vanity. It's like a vanity license plate, right? Like if you want one, you're free to go buy one. But what about like really like going mainstream, emerging markets, global reach? We said, let's give everyone a free username that's compatible with this broader system that everyone is buying. So maybe the analogy I'd give you is, you know, in the early days of the internet, you if you wanted your own email, you would probably like very, very early days of the internet, you'd have to buy your own domain. And then, you know, set up your email on it right with your own server. We said, no, let's do, let's have the hotmail moment where we give everyone a free username. All you do is you sign up for Coinbase wallet. And right in the onboarding, you just type in your the username you want. And it's actually not just a username in our system. It's a universal username. And you know, you can use it in any other wallet that supports ENS. The dApps will recognize it because it's all built on protocol. That's the power of protocols, right? And we've done that. And we've actually now given away more free ENS based CB.IDs. Then there are actually L1, ENS, you know, .EATS. And so it's been very, it's been hugely successful. Customers love it. And so we're pretty proud. And, you know, for customers that do want like the full, like the experience of buying their own username, we support that fully. We support the .EATS. It's native inside wallet. But we also give them this free option. And so that's just the base, right? Like that makes easy for people to send and receive crypto. But we're also seeing people now building their identity. So if you go to profile.coinbase.com, you can look up any ENS in the ecosystem, whether it's a .EATS or a CB.ID. And you can see the broader strokes of their profile, right? Like what else kind of identity are they building? Which NFTs do they own? Which assets do they own? And now in the future, you'll also be able to message them. And that's all the layers are coming together, right? You can, you can pay them, you can message them. And so all of these puzzle pieces are coming together into like a really rich experience for Web3 citizens. Yeah. And it really, this isn't like a question, more of a comment, but it does seem like it's, you know, reinventing the social network, but also in so far as we're not going to like have a bunch of these impersonators and all that kind of stuff. Like on Twitter, you know, I've got a small following, but sometimes there's these impersonators that have my same picture, my same bio and all that stuff, but it's off by one letter, one, you know, people will be like, well, why did you just friend request me? Didn't you already follow me? And it's like, that's not me. And so in this new paradigm that you guys are building, that kind of stuff wouldn't, wouldn't really happen, I imagine. That's exactly right. Just think about the case. So, you know, the, in the NFT community, right? There's a lot of like trading and bartering that happens. And so what will usually happen is like, you'll have someone who's like popular, like a bit of a, crypto Twitter character, a personality, they've got a following. Someone will now go into a discord of that community and send a message, pretending to be them. And the, you know, because it's discord, it's not, may or may not be blockchain verified. They'll now say, Hey, I have this NFT, you want to barter it? Here's a link, click on the link. People are like, Oh, that's a great deal. They click on the link. Boom. They're, all their NFTs are gone. And they scam, you know, then they go back to Twitter and they're like, Oh, look, look at what happened to me. If this was to happen inside Coinbase wallet with XMTP, when you see someone messaging, you tap at the top and you see that, that username, you see what they hold. That's all based on like, what's on chain. There's no, there's no fool in there. Like, like in order to like, You don't have to trust their attestation. You have a verified attestation For them to, for them to be able to first send you that XMTP message in the first place. They've got to sign it with their keys that control that wallet. So now, you know, There's a one-to-one relationship. This can't be someone who's spoofing or pretending. It's very much like what you see is what you get. And that's really powerful, like trust boost for the ecosystem. This is certainly not where we are today. When you look at what's going on, on, on Twitter and all the scams out there. And this is also where verified messaging was the thing we saw as the most important first use case because of all the scams happening across the space is the ability to message someone and know that the person you're talking to owns what they say they own because the identity is actually tied to the account number changes so many things for everyone, including the idea that a message is signed by the actual private key for that wallet. What's cool about that is think about sending wires today and the biggest interactions in the random address. And you send six cents and eight cents before to make sure that they actually got the wire to send it again. That whole interaction when the message is signed by the same key that's signing the account is gone. I would literally just say, Hey, Bryce, this is Shane mack.eth. And the message is guaranteed and verifiable that it came from that wallet. That solves such bigger things that I think people aren't really seeing or thinking about yet, but everyone's felt the pain of. I mean, definitely, it's been a problem in crypto for pretty much as long as crypto has been around. And doing that would solve one of the biggest gripes that people have in this space, right? Because we have these outside sources and that's what they always like to pick at crypto with. But if you have the solution to eliminate that problem, and it sounds like we are very, very close to getting to that point, that brings- Preston Pyshka I would say we're here. Jake Taylor I mean, we're here. That would remove the biggest, I would say, withholding point for a lot of the people that aren't in crypto. If you have this just safe haven option. Anyway, I think it's awesome. I think it's cool. I have a question for both of you about once you set up your decentralized identity, is this now cross-chain? Is this now a cross-chain identity? Do I need to set up a new one for Ethereum, a new one for Solana, and so on and so forth? Or is this cross-chain? And the same goes with the messaging as well. Am I able to do cross-chain messaging from something like Ethereum to a Solana identity? I'm just curious how the different cross-chain aspects work in this. Pankaj Agarwal I can take the wallet piece, and then maybe Shane can take the messaging piece. So I'll give you the very real example of Coinbase wallet. Coinbase wallet is a multi-chain wallet. We support Ethereum and the entire EVM L2 ecosystem. So all of the 15 different L2s and more. So we support all of them. We also support Solana. And then we also support Bitcoin. And so you can see we've got all the top blockchains in one app. For our identity system in particular, we picked ENS. And ENS is kind of like an EVM-centric identity system, right? It's actually logged to the Ethereum blockchain. However, it does allow you to add addresses for other chains. And so it's a good hybrid approach where, yes, Ethereum secures the protocol, but it lets you address different blockchains. And so, for example, with your CBID, it'll have your Ethereum address, and it'll also have your one Bitcoin address and one Solana address. So if someone wants to send you crypto, they can send you any of those different coins on any of those different chains. And then the messaging aspect is blockchain agnostic. And so maybe, Shane, over to you to handle that piece. Totally. Yeah. Like I said earlier, XMTP is identity agnostic. It is also chain agnostic. And that is very, very important. Our focus on the go-to-market has been around the EVM ecosystem and all the development partners to make that work. But that's all the infrastructure we need to then be able to communicate to any identity and any wallet address in the world, and really any identity in the world. That's really, I think, ultimately the goal. And because the consumers, to go to billions of people, I just want to share my digital ticket with Bryce. I might not even know the name of the chain. I might not know the name of the technology, the L2, any of it. I might not even know XMTP exists. What I need to know is that I can send a verified message and a digital asset or a digital ticket or a digital kind of signature to another person. And so we're very much focused on that long-term vision to bring a lot more people in the space. Yeah, no, I love it. It's funny when you say it like that, it makes so much sense because we watch Netflix or HBO, and we're not thinking, oh, well, is it coming from an Akamai server? Or is it coming from AWS? Or what web API endpoint or socket? You just care that you're getting the content delivered. You don't care really how it's done in the background. And so with something like what you guys are building, it really abstracts a lot of confusion and stuff away from it. And so you just get basically the service and the product that you want. I guess one of the questions that comes up naturally here is blockchains are totally public. Are the messages totally public? Or is there a way to encrypt them or make it so that the person you're messaging is the only person reading that? It's very important to separate the two. So the messaging is private and encrypted, and it is not on chain. And the thing that is on chain is the public identifier that allows for the encryption and decryption to happen with your private key. And so that is kind of the differences of the two. We use your public wallet identity to route messages and send between wallet addresses, but the messages themselves are stored off chain, fully encrypted, and privacy and security are very important to everything we're doing. Brandon Turner And kind of along that same line, I'm curious just about for the inbox, is there a way to determine who could message you with whitelists or a spam filter or those kinds of things that just get developed over time? Totally. And we're working a lot on this at both the protocol level and the application level. Coinbase already in their wallet has an approved, just like a DM you would get on Instagram or Twitter. They already have, if you've never got a message from someone before and no past interactions, you have to approve that message before it actually is able to send you post notifications or land in your inbox. And I think those kinds of controls will be very standard. And there's also things we can do at the protocol level in the future to help give more information to applications to better sort and innovate on the inbox and how to help users control their inbox. And I think both are actually very important to ultimately give users more control over their attention. Brandon Turner And Sid, I got a question for you. I mean, what other ways are you hoping to see decentralized messaging and payments used? Is this going to be something that you see being used for alerts and announcements and businesses and different kinds of automation? There's so many different ways that pretty much this system can be applied. So I'm curious, what's going through your brain? Where do you want to see this stuff really kind of play its part long-term? Yeah, it's a great question. It's something we wrestle with all the time and very closely with Shane as well. I think it's very clear to me that in the medium to long term, it's everywhere. The whole point of a decentralized protocol is that it's general purpose. It can be used for so many different things. And in the beginning, though, as you start going zero to one, where are the best places to look for early adoption? And so some of the green shoots we're seeing is there's some section of users that do want to be able to message other users securely. And they're already in the crypto ecosystem, they're Web3 natives, and they want to be able to know that when they message another Web3 native, they are reaching the right person. And then when they send money, they don't have to send test transactions and everything. They can first see the identity itself and chat with it for free and then send the money that they want to send or do an NFT trade, et cetera. So very much the peer-to-peer kind of messaging and transacting component. There's another component which is also in the peer-to-peer space, which is many of the existing finance apps that you do peer-to-peer payments, they all tend to be very geo-restricted. So like CashApp, I think is very Western and it's only in a couple of countries. Same thing with Venmo. I think there's another angle here where both messaging and payments for peer-to-peer are global in self-custody wallets with XMTP. So like Coinbase wallet, anyone in the world can message and now send money to anyone else in the world. That's and separate is the dApp developer influencer and creator to user stream. And so the idea here is, I think Shane mentioned this as well, guys like Robert Leshner of Compound don't have a way to reach their users. They have a thriving user base, hundreds of thousands of users. They'd have no way to use them to reach them. So that's another way. And I don't see these as being very different use cases. They both help grow the network. They both help grow adoption. In an ideal world, open up your wallet and you see some critical alerts from your dApp. You also see a couple of messages from people that you know in the ecosystem. And those are very complimentary sitting in the same inbox. And so those are at least two of the ways that I definitely see a little bit of adoption. There's also an angle of communities, right? Like over time, do you actually have your communities participating in similar forums? So it's like more of a multi-dimensional graph and people are like chatting in a common community and then they break off in one-on-one chats because they want to connect about something that someone said in an open forum. So that area we haven't really seen. I think that we'll see that eventually, but right now I think it's the peer-to-peer use cases, the dApp to user use cases. And this honestly to me seems like an extension and an improvement, honestly, going back to a long time earn that Coinbase acquired from Bology, where you were able to give somebody $5 to get to the top of their inbox or you could set your price. Say, I want to spend, give me $20 and I'll answer your email. And that's another thing that you guys can apply here. And it just seems so relevant. So you guys are just continuing to expand on greatness.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
"coinbase" Discussed on Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
"Agency debt and mortgage backed securities plus other assets as collateral. Fed valuing these assets at par. There's the bailout. So the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury, all these folks, they release a ton of statements this weekend. They're essentially bailing out these banks and so forth. And once again, quantitative easing will start. Now, as Caitlin mentioned, inflation is still an issue, and I think they, they're not going to be able to get inflation down to 2%. Not any time soon. So they're probably going to have to put the narrative out there that, hey, we're going to, I think, if maybe inflation at 5% or 4% is sustainable, you know, they'll put that narrative out. But we need to help these banks, which are failing. And we got news, in fact, that President Biden apparently he's going to address this tomorrow. There's a report here saying that he's going to give a speech on the banking crisis tomorrow morning. So let's see what's going to happen, what he has to say, what they say about crypto, right? That's going to be a big part of this. And here Caitlin shared some additional thoughts. She said federal bank regulators led everyone down, bond portfolio losses at the three banks that just failed didn't build overnight. In all three cases, state bank regulators stepped in, not the feds. It's time for the feds to greenlight banks holding 100% cash against volatile demand deposits. There's definitely a need to upgrade the system and to move away from fractional reserve banking. I mean, it was just a matter of time before these things collapse and people can't get their funds and you have bank runs, right? So they kept kicking the can down the road and maybe here's the point of you got to pay the piper right here's the point of, well, that's not going to happen anymore. And as I stated in yesterday's podcast, you know, could this be the introduction of the new CBDC system? Maybe maybe not, right? But I know they don't, they never let a good crisis go to waste. And of course, they cause the crisis. So it's funny how that happens. Now, we had folks in the crypto industry continue to weigh in on these collapses, especially the most recent one, which was signature bank, and I'll share what ripple CEO had to say, what coinbase was what Jeremy or lair, CEO of circle had to say as well. But first, Ryan selk is a massari said crypto banking rails have been effectively shuttered in less than a week. Next up, USD C the message from D.C.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"coinbase" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"Are going to be speaking with coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on the regulatory and market pressures facing the crypto industry. So, you know, there are thousands, I think, of coins and tokens listed on coinbase now. More like hundreds. Hundreds. 250. I didn't flip through all the pages, but there's a lot. And you guys say that you never actually list securities. But it feels like nowadays there's so much uncertainty over, you know, you could wake up tomorrow and the SEC says this is a security or that's a security. I mean, how can you say with confidence that you don't list any securities when it feels like that's a very fluid thing at the moment? Look, the best thing for us and for the whole industry would be, here's a clear rule book. Everybody has to follow it, you know? And if the rules change, give us a new rule book, we'll follow that one, right? We've actually been requesting that. And we filed a petition with the SEC on this. People can read it on their website. And we sort of enumerated, look, these are the ways that the current securities laws don't really address some of these underlying questions in crypto. Like if there is no common enterprise or centralized entity behind this thing, who publishes the disclosures, you know? So there's questions like that. What we've done in the absence of that clarity, which again would be the best case scenario, is that we have created our own internal process to review assets. And we developed something. Anyway, it has like 70 two points in the legal analysis and kind of one area it looks at is securities law. It also looks at compliance risk, cybersecurity risk, things like that. And we've evaluated probably roughly a thousand assets through this process. About 800 of them we have rejected. And for various reasons, whether securities or compliance or cyber, about 202 150 or something like that, we've decided to list. So I guess the heart of your question is what happens if the SEC comes out and says, okay, so if they come out and they, again, we were asking for more clear rules, right? Right. So if they come out and say, we think this asset is a security. That's great. Okay, now we have clarity. And assuming it's not, it meets the legal definition. It's not going too far. We would be happy to sort of update our process in our system based on that new information. Now, ultimately, if they publish something and they say, well, we think all these assets are securities. Well, that's not really our understanding of the law. And of the third party is an external council. We've worked with. And so there is a line here where I think as an industry, and it's not just us, it sees asset issuers, which are even more primarily affected. They would have to say, okay, well, let's let a court decide that. Because, you know, we have to follow a rule of law. So does the SEC, right? And so if they put out their opinion about something, that doesn't necessarily mean it's true, it just means the court ultimately has to be the decider on that. Can you give an example, not necessarily of a specific coin, but of something that you have seen in tokens that you've rejected, that to your mind said, nope, we can not list this because this is a characteristic of a security. So there's a variety. I mean, there's many prongs of the howey test, right? And I don't want to get into an in depth legal analysis here, but we've never done a howey test episode, and so this could be it. But no, go ahead. Yeah. So there's multiple prongs there, right? I think if people are buying it primarily with this expectation of profit and there's a common enterprise and so is there something in the speaking in terms of patterns that you see within crypto projects. That when you look at it's like, no, this team, like the type of things the teams do that would say, you know what, this token is not going to be kosher for coinbase. Are there things that you see in the industry where you think teams are crossing that line into, I don't know whether it's the common enterprise aspect that preclude them from at least your judgment being safe to list. Yeah, I mean, so I'll give you a security example, but there's others in cybersecurity and others. So look, if you're legitimately just trying to raise money for your company or for some project, like an apartment complex or something like that, that is a security. That's the point of security law. There has to be an investment of money into this thing. And for, you know, in a common enterprise, with an expectation of profit based on the effort of others. So that should exist, by the way, and we want that to exist in the world. We've acquired a broker dealer license. We're dormant right now. We'd like to activate it. We're working with the SEC to hopefully make that happen. Crypto is a technology that could make cryptocurrencies could offer benefits and update the financial system and improve all kinds of things. Time to settlement and various things like that. So that's an example. If people are out there kind of really hyping these things like on YouTube and the tokenomics are sketchy and there's really low float and the insiders are selling it. These are all bad fact patterns. And those are the things we try to avoid for consumer protection. You know, there's other ways there's other reasons we may reject assets too. I mean, another example would be cybersecurity risk. So we often will evaluate the smart contracts for is there some exploit in this or there's an ability the acid issuer is not even like in a malicious thing, but an accidental thing, if they lose the key, everyone's funds could be swept or something like that. That's not secure enough, right? To meet our standards. So those are examples. Is crypto shooting itself in the foot in some respects by resisting the security designation. Is that a tacit admission that maybe there isn't a reasonable expectation of profits here? Loaded questions. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we want actually crypto security is to exist. So we're not saying none of these things are securities, but on the flip side is not true either. It's not that all of these are securities. Both of those are inaccurate. Statements. And I guess the thing I would say too is that just an expectation of profit alone does not make something a security. It has to be every prong of the howey test is my understanding. So an example, people might buy a Picasso painting, hoping it goes up in value, or by gold, or something like that. So those aren't securities. So yeah, basically Bitcoin Ethereum and the assets that we trade on our platform today, we believe our crypto commodities. And people trade those and some of them they want to go up in value, just like they buy gold. Other times they're using it for various utility aspects. This is sort of, I want to give back to the regulatory question, but before I forget, can you talk for a second about how you view Bitcoin specifically because it feels like the crypto industry in many respects has moved on from Bitcoin and I'm sure you're mentions on Twitter are filled every day with angry
Crypto Curious
"coinbase" Discussed on Crypto Curious
"If you're new to crypto, we recommend starting at the early episodes we will break down the basics and give you a solid foundation to understand the crypto world. Join us as we explore the ever evolving world of cryptocurrency and educate ourselves along the way. Let's dive in together and discover the exciting potential of crypto. In this week's episode, the lowdown on the most talked about topic this week in town, which is coinbase's layer two base plus murder and intrigue as we talk about the death of crypto Queen and fugitive Raju ignatova, as well as the biggest drop of the NFT market in history, which happened over the weekend. And why did that happen? Well, we're going to tell you. All of that is in today's episode. So hang around. My name is Tracy and I'm joined as always by my co hosts, Blake and Craig. Hello and welcome boys. Hello guys. Hello, Friends. How are we? Good to be back for this week. And as we said, a lot of news, but let's get into it and talk about what was arguably the most talked about a bit of news over the last 7 days, which is coinbase launching and Ethereum layer two called base. So this one offers developer friendly ways for anyone anywhere to build decentralized apps. Coinbase has stated that the goal here is to onboard billions of users through this new layer two. And also a lot of people are saying this is a real boost for Ethereum as well boys. Yeah, so coinbase have doubled in decentralized products before they had their own wallet, which was a competitor to meta mask, which I think no one uses. But base, which is what the layer two is called will be built using the optimism OP stack and they say that the OP stack is the most legit layer two on Ethereum going. Optimism is actually its own layer two and our base is another competitor built on top of that layer two. So Blake, can you explain that? Because I got confused. Yeah, so just so we can go back over with a layer two is layer ones protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum and generally these platforms are very secure.
Bankless
"coinbase" Discussed on Bankless
"A coinbase
Bloomberg Crypto
"coinbase" Discussed on Bloomberg Crypto
"All right, we're here in the London studio. For the first time, I believe all three of us Beth and Anna welcome gathered here in the London studio, Anna, obviously you are a resident of London and you've been here before Beth. It's your first time, isn't it? Not to London no, but the first time in a while, I was supposed to come right before COVID and then, of course, that changed everything. But most certainly first time in the London studio. In the London studio, yes. And I usually dial in from Zürich. So it's very nice to sit here with you guys face to face and talk about all things crypto. And so let's get into it. Coinbase reported earnings, fourth quarter earnings this week and it was not very pretty. Was it Beth, can you give us the sort of potted highlights of what they came up with? Yes, not pretty is one way to frame it. There were was expectations that it was going to be bad. It was bad. Yeah, down in a big way. And while they beat expectations for these reduced revenue or less of a loss, their revenue was actually down some 75% from a year ago transaction revenue tumbled, trading volumes were down actually 23% and they've been losing. Coinbase is affected obviously they're in crypto exchange. So if trading volumes are down, they're going to be hurt. We know what happened in the fourth quarter of 2022. FTX imploded, the market went down, and then just finally on the stock, the stock fell more than 80% in 2022. And it's had quite a rally in coming into this year along with the rest of the crypto market in general and other crypto stocks. Whether it has further to go is anybody's guess and analysts are a little cautious about it, even the company itself is cautious. The CFO on the earnings call said not to make a lot out of the January and February rebound in crypto necessarily, even though they've seen trading volume increase. And they've also said that they are going to keep headcount at least where it is and they may even cut more jobs. So there's definitely not a sense that they're out of the Woods yet. That was interesting to me that they would not basically rule out more job cuts. I mean, you've had them take out about 20% of the workforce earlier and then you've had this massive or fairly substantial rally across crypto. And these sort of cautious comments that they're making, and how would you read what's your read on that? Coinbase has been through crypto winters before, right? They're one of the oldest sort of OG crypto exchanges. They've been at it before. So you could be a little bit confident that they at least know how to shrink and expand very quickly. The difference here now is that they're public, right? They weren't public before. So everybody can take a close look at their numbers and concluded, and they have investors they have to respond to and they will have investor relations and speak to people. So I imagine they're having to be more cautious because they can't even signal to the market that things are picking up. And it has picked up, but volumes are nowhere near what they were last year. And it takes several months of rally before your fees go back to what they were before. And as much as they have been diversifying, I think the biggest error work changes make money as trading fees. So if volumes don't pick up, they don't. So maybe they can start thinking of ways to make money on other things that are kind of like crypto winter proof. I don't know, I was thinking maybe things like analytics like stuff that's different. I'm thinking traditional exchanges had to reduce their reliance on trading fees. Especially in equities when fees were compressed and so we saw them buying technology companies and becoming software providers. So I wonder if they'll start thinking of ways to do that, but obviously they have less money now. So they can't really go out and buy things. So it's just an interesting thing to see if they can sort of, if they survive this winter and then if they can future proof their exchange for another crypto winter. And I'm going to make a pretty big switch now. I'm going to talk about Central Bank digital currencies, CBDCs, in Nigeria. So you were part of the story this week about the E naira. And some of the developments there. Can you talk a little bit about what's going on? So yeah, so this week we reported that the Central Bank of Nigeria is looking for new partners for the Ira, which is the Central Bank digital currency that they launch in 2021, which made them the first African nation to launch the Central Bank digital currency. And one of the First Nations in the world really, because a lot of central banks are talking about it, especially the big ones, but very few have launched them. Now they're looking for a new partner not to replace bit, which is their current partner straight away. But what they want to do based on what sources have told us is that they want to take more control of the system. So that they control the ledger and it's their own. So the discussions are early days, but it just shows how things are changing and moving, and it raises many of the questions that we have when we think of a digital Euro or a brick coin, which is like, when is it coming? When will I be able to pay my coffee with a digital year? I don't know if you guys think about it when you wake up. But some people might not. Right, but one of the things is you're planning now for a token that a product that will come out in 5 years. And so if you think about it, the technology you might be deciding to implement now might be really bad in 5 years. And so this shows how complex it is. And maybe the central banks that rush to put out things before, maybe find themselves now in a situation like a technological situation that is not ideal. And as Beth knows, because she edited a really great piece earlier this year, the inara has had really not great adoption as have other CBDCs that are out there. Because one of the big questions is you put it out, but does anybody want to use it? What's the point? Isn't one of the points here that you have, as you said, E 9 is very much in a developing country, Bitcoin is very much in a developed country with a fairly robust FinTech infrastructure already. Doesn't Nigeria have a good case here when it comes to wanting to establish a CBDC in a more developing environment. On the face of it, yes, I think that is one of the main pushes behind it get to the quote unbanked population. And there are even allowing you to be able to use the use the E naira via mobile phone. You don't even have to have a digital wallet, they're doing those kinds of technical innovations. One of the issues that's come up with the iron in terms of adoption is very funny because it kind of relates to crypto too. As a developing nation and one with sort of a struggling economy, they've have rampant inflation. They have a devaluing currency. The economy is not doing so well. And many Nigerians are fleeing to crypto as in the cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and tokens like that and not the Ira, which they see as a proxy for this currency that's devaluing. And so for them, they don't see any protection and they see better use in crypto, which actually confusingly that the Central Bank is against that kind of crypto, the crypto that we all think about. And they're trying to promote this Central Bank digital currency that a lot of people don't want, though they do want crypto. And so you've got this
The Cryptoshow - blockchain, cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and decentralization simply explained
"coinbase" Discussed on The Cryptoshow - blockchain, cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and decentralization simply explained
"Coinbase is launching a new blockchain initiative. And in this video, I want to talk about 5 things that stick out for me. I want to talk about if I see value in this, if I don't devalue this, I want to talk about up sites, risks, potentials, whether you should be investing in this new blockchain if you actually can invest. And a few of my other thoughts. So dive in. I'm at the airport, by the way. So if in the background, if you in the background, here's a nice because I'm on a business trip for two days. And so I found out about this video here at the airport. Okay, so first and foremost, what happened? Coinbase announced that they are launching layer two built on top of the optimism stack on top of Ethereum. It's obviously going to be open-source. They announced that just yesterday. When you look into the GitHub, you see that they make the testnet life three weeks ago so the data announcing this and they are planning on going into the mainnet, they're talking about in the summer. So that's kind of the timeline here. Just looking at the guitar at the moment, it looks like there were 5 comets being done, some renaming. So not all too much to be on is so far. In the whole process. Now, absolutely key and this is just crazy because people are already trading some base token that does not that's a total different token. They are not going to be creating their own token. It's purely going to be centered around Ethereum. That's going to be interesting when I talk about bullish bearish opportunities, risks, and so on. So as a whole, it doesn't look all too planned out for too long. Because Brian Armstrong is CEO a couple of months ago still said that they are not planning any kind of blockchain initiative and now they go out and doing one. So it seems in the last couple of months, maybe with the SEC. They're kind of going this route, then so that's kind of what we know so far. So let me go into some speculation on my part. Why are they doing this? What is their motivation behind it and so on? I think on the one hand, they want to have a possibility to escape the C 5 regulation. Now we have seen there's a lot from Gary gensler from the SEC and so on. So that could be a big opportunity to kind of escape that regulation. The second part, obviously there's a lot of crypto natives coming in, coinbase has a 100 million users, more or less, about 10 million of them trade on a daily basis on a regular basis. So they want to offer something for them. They want to capture that market. And obviously they want to be in control of that ecosystem. So this is a bit of the motivation. They're building on top of Ethereum, which makes, in my opinion, most sense for them as well. They work with the optimism team. So I think that's all very much aligned. So that's obviously a bit of the motivation behind this, kind of being able to escape some of the regulation, have some possibilities add more customers. Great. So let's talk about potential upsides, potential downsides. Who's going to win in all this? Well, obviously I think the entire DeFi sector as a whole is going to win. I think Ethereum is going to win. Everyone that's building on top of theorem. Any kind of layer two, I think, will also win. There will be strong network effects. So if you're investing in defecting, I think that's going to be a big winner. I was the optimism Assyrian this kind of system. A big question is going to be how much is coinbase going to be able to pull actual users over attract builders, attract projects, so we're going to have to see that. But I think that's going to be definitely the winners. And then obviously what's the risks who are the losers? I do think that all the other layer ones here are really being put under pressure. So all the Ethereum competitors, they, in my opinion, really lose from this deal in partnership, coinbase is one of the largest players. They're going to bring massive massive attention to Ethereum with that. So to me, these are some of the biggest losers. Big risk here though in all of that is regulation at the moment regulation has stopped globally at the protocol level. So blockchain so far haven't been regulated. This could change now, right? Gary gensler, the SEC could step in and say, listen, we're going to regulate the protocol level as well now. We want to stop what coinbase is trying to do here. And obviously, that is a big risk out of all of that. Yeah, but as a whole, I think this is very, very bullish. Now, obviously, there are very critical voices already. Where these critical voices coming from mainly obviously from the Bitcoin kind of side of things, because it makes sense, bitcoiners are a bit scared of that now. And I was the media cerium kind of competitors. Now what's one of the criticism here? It is that the way this is structured right now is extremely centralized. There is this it's not like a coordinator. This is not that way, but the system that swords that transactions and that system in theory could completely halt the chain. At the moment, this is completely controlled by coinbase. So there is at least at the beginning. Zero blockchain and everything is basically a centralized database. They need to decentralize that down the line. So let's see if they're doing this, how they do in this, what's their process in this? So this is, I think, a bit of the criticism. But as a whole, I think this is very bullish for its DeFi space. I'm very bullish for anyone working with your layer twos. And so I think it's quite exciting. Please do not fall for scams to tell you that you can invest into a base token, so you have to be extra careful with that. And yeah, obviously on the company side here, at cake, we're going to be looking closely into that. Maybe looking at some partnerships, maybe looking into what we can do there. I think on DeFi chain side as a community, it's going to be quite interesting to see kind of network effects there, strengths there. So as a whole looks quite good. So yeah, data also from China, looking quite promising, so that's interesting. Yeah. So not much else to add. I hope you're staying healthy, staying safe, having a good end of a week. And yeah, I'm going to go and catch my flight. So with that, see you soon at the next video. Subscribe, like, comment. Obviously, subscribe to the podcast, if you're listening to the audio version, and then I'll see you soon. Thank you so much. You're truly Julian bye bye. Unfortunately, we are already at the end of today's episode. If you find the crypto show helpful and would like to continue being a part of it. Don't forget to subscribe so you are notified when we have the next episode out. If you want to do me a huge favor, please leave a review. It literally only takes a few seconds, but it helps the podcast platforms to rank this show. Hear you next time Julian
Crypto Banter
"coinbase" Discussed on Crypto Banter
"How can I earn money off the potential growth of the coinbase letter? Well, for one, there is stock, but also multiple chains have launched without tokens and still being lucrative with new projects. Optimism and other projects will also incentivize farming. Now there's actually a lot to break down in this tweet. I could probably do a 20 minute 20 minute video to break down this tweet specifically, but let's approach the first point that he makes. So how can you earn off the coinbase base layer two? Firstly, that stock. Now obviously the first thing I want to say is not financial advice. I'm not recommending you buy or sell the stock. I'm simply going to give you Adam's take and then talk a little bit about how it could impact coinbase, but obviously we don't know how exactly it could impact coinbase. Adam Cochran says, very clear that Wall Street still has no idea how to price an L two with coinbase still trading at prices of last week. Despite this announcement, their loss might gain coins earnings cycle will be a game changer. Layer twos make a 100 million a year on sequence of fees even in the bear market with less than 500,000 users. Coinbase has a 110 million users, account obstructed chain means ability to use coinbase KYC to add RWAs. Fast scalable cheap L two plugged directly into the app markets make it easy for retail to use DeFi. So essentially what he's saying here is this could be a catalyst for the coinbase stock itself. And I'm not going to comment on the price performance of a stock, but you can look into in your own time the ramifications that you think it could have on the coinbase share itself and if you agree with Adam, whether you think they are potentially on the pricing this in the market. But of course, you have to do your own research on that. That's the first potential bullish catalyst that Adam points out in terms of how you can actually take advantage of the base L two. The second thing he said is multiple chains of launch without tokens had still been lucrative when new projects. And this is pretty spot on. So let's look at arbitrum, for example. Arbitrum is launched, accrued a whole lot of TVL, but arbitrum doesn't have a token. So how the hell is the network been accruing value? Well, it's occurred $2 billion with the TVL, which is how to direct benefit on the prices of many of the daps in the ecosystem. So we've seen GMX obviously perform super well being one of the primary arbitrum DApps. GNS since its launch, we've seen our radiant capital, a whole lot of other projects like dopes, vela, which is one of the newer per dexis launch on arbitrary and actually performs super strongly despite arbitrum not having a token. So since coinbase, the L two is going to be launching, there's got to be a lot of daps that launch on the app. And they're going to be the good investments. So when coinbase first launches, keep the base L two first launches, keep your eye on the projects that deploy.
The Crypto Overnighter
"coinbase" Discussed on The Crypto Overnighter
"Default on chain experience with access to products on other chains. In addition, coinbase announced the creation of the base ecosystem fund. This fund will invest in and support early stage projects that are building on base and meet certain investment criteria. And for anybody asking, coinbase has stated that they do not intend to create a new token.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
"coinbase" Discussed on Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
"Very bullish, whether you like coinbase or Ethereum or not. It is great. I love to see the infrastructure being built for this market and the on and off ramps being built that will help usher in more folks into the technology, whether they're builders, investors, whatever it may be. So this is awesome. Coinbase, of course, has a strong brand or the largest U.S. crypto exchange, you're publicly traded and they're using Ethereum. Of course, which is one of the top crypto and blockchains out there. I hold ether in my portfolio. So this is really great. You know, I've often talked to you guys about Metcalf's law and network adoption. The more building that happens on a blockchain or a network, the stronger it becomes, the more valuable it becomes, and here those stronger this Ethereum blockchain is going to become and for other blockchains as well, the same is true, but then the native token becomes more valuable as a result. Now it's important to note that base is not a token. They said we do not plan to issue a new network token for base and we'll use eth as the native gas token. So that's great to hear guys because what we don't want is another FTX FTT token. And one could say BNB as well, right? A centralized token and I think that would be seen very bad given all the things that we saw happen last year with Celsius and FTX and so forth. So great to see that they're supporting the native token of the blockchain. Now, this is a great initiative, a great idea, and I think game theory will play out here. We could see other crypto platforms do the same, and they're not, you know, they're going to use other blockchains, like maybe algorand, the XRP ledger, whatever it may be cardano, but this is really a great idea. And it's just going to help a lot of people to enter the crypto market to easily build and hear the website for bases based on org if you want to go learn. And you can build a lot of different things, games, lending protocols, whatever it may be. Brian Armstrong, the CEO of coinbase, he tweeted out about this. Some more data or information here that they shared. Base is secured by Ethereum empowered by coinbase open-source with optimism and I personally have not heard of optimism. The optimism foundation and they said that through the open-source set up with optimism, they're able to achieve decentralization. So that's great to hear and they said finally here would big features and small fees. So they also said base will be the on chain home for coinbase and open ecosystem where anyone anywhere can build decentralized apps that reach the next 1 billion plus users, a bridge that brings our users on chain
Techmeme Ride Home
"coinbase" Discussed on Techmeme Ride Home
"It's an easy to use default on chain experience with access to products on other chains. Meanwhile, coinbase also announced the base ecosystem fund, which will invest in and supports early stage projects, building on base that meet determined investment criteria. Quoting our friend Alex Willem on Twitter, hyper curious about this move, kind of a long-term move by coinbase to try and grow the overall crypto market so that its role as a central hub for U.S. market becomes more valuable over time. It's that time of year again leaked iPhone 15 cad files reveal a larger 6.2 inch display for the upcoming lineup dynamic island, USB-C charging as everyone has rumored, and more, quoting 9 to 5 Mac. One of the most notable changes is that the iPhone 15 will ditch the notch for a dynamic island instead. This is a feature that was introduced on the iPhone 14 pro models last year, and it consists of an oval shaped cutout at the top of the screen that hides the front camera and face ID sensors. The dynamic island seems to be making its way to all four iPhone models as it's unlikely that applewood choose to have outdated technology on the larger size of their newest flagship phones. Another change that we spotted on the cad files is that the iPhone 15 will finally adopt USB Type-C as its charging port. This is something that many users have been asking for for years, as USB-C is more versatile and compatible than lightning is. USB-C can also support faster charging and data transfer speeds than lightning. Apple does seem to be keeping the classic dual camera setup for the standard iPhone, the third camera and LIDAR still seem to be exclusive to the pro model iPhones. The cad files also show that the iPhone 15 will have a new display size of 6.2 inches, which is slightly larger than most recent base model iPhones, except for the iPhone 14 plus, and 14 pro max, of course, the display resolution and refresh rate are unknown at this point, but we expect them to be similar to those of the iPhone 14 models. One thing that we noticed missing from the cad files are capacitive buttons, which were rumored to be coming to some iPhone models this year. However, it seems like capacitive buttons are only available on the iPhone 15 pro models this year as the iPhone 15 still has physical buttons like every previous iPhone end quote.
Bankless
"coinbase" Discussed on Bankless
"To it. It's like that one. And so this really is emblematic of the Ethereum layer two design philosophy and what I've personally enjoyed about the design strategy of the layer two road map, which is that if you decide to build a layer two on Ethereum, you are also synergistically plugged in to all other layer twos on Ethereum as well. And so this is answering the problem. Ethereum's layer two road map is answering the problem of coinbase would like a chain, but it doesn't want to create its own silo. It wants to be a part of the broader global crypto networks. And the layer two design philosophy does that. But that's just one layer of this. It's also specifically the OP stack also does that. And so the replicability of the OP stack and the reproducibility of optimism's OP stack allows for the base chain to have more synergies with other layer two is because neither did you fork off and create your own layer one, but you also didn't fork off and create your own layer two. You also are building on optimism's OP stack, which makes you synergistic with the optimism network effects. And so this synergy with the broader crypto landscape, at least with the Ethereum layer two landscape, I think is really, really strong. And so I just like to say, thank you, and I'm proud of, I'm proud of coinbase, and thank you for also seeing the same synergistic vision between chains that I see in Ethereum's layer two philosophy. Now, am I just espousing my own biases or is this also what you see Jesse and what coinbase as well? No, you're spot on. I think that two and a half years ago when the Ethereum community shifted the road map from being kind of this execution sharding layer one into the rollup centric scaling road map, I think this is exactly the vision. It's that we're going to have many roll ups that work together to scale Ethereum and they're going to be open-source. They're going to be freely available and they're going to work really well together. And that's exactly what we want. And interestingly, one of the ways we actually started building a relationship with optimism was we started working with them almost a little more than a year ago on EIP four 8 four four, which is a part of this road map for scaling Ethereum. And I think what we found was that the context of working and I guess before I go into this, EIP four a four four is also called Proto dank sharding. It's going to create a new form of data availability on Ethereum that's going to lower cost of roll ups like base and optimism and arbitrum by ten X and likely even more in the years ahead. And I think what we found in working on EIP 44 four with optimism the other client teams was that context of writing code and contributing to this platform was such a powerful context for building that trust for building the vision, the shared alignment around what this future looks like. And for doubling down on those values of the centralization, open-source, interoperability, and interconnection into the broader crypto economy. So Jesse coinbase is really waited for the technology to get there and the technologies here. So you guys are doing this. Now, you're not first to the party though when it comes to kind of other exchange competitors. Let's say binance has been doing this for a few years now. Do you think coinbase has kind of a second mover advantage here? Or is the BNB chain not even the right benchmark? What is kind of the success metric and can you catch up to some of these chains that have been in existence for a while in particular, some of the exchange chains? Yeah, I mean, I think in the grand scheme of things we're at day zero of the growth of the crypto economy. Even if you add up all of the transacting addresses on every chain in the world, it's still less than 10 million transacting addresses. Probably less than a few million real humans who are transacting on chain every month. A few million, every month, there are billions of people in the world, and over the next 5 to ten years, we're going to get all of those billions of people transacting on chain. That's the future we're headed towards. And so I think first and foremost, we just believe we're at day zero on this. And there's so much growth and so much opportunity for everyone to grow the pie and work together and growing that pie. In terms of binance, smart chain in particular, I think that binance has done a really admirable job like pushing the limits of what's possible on chain. You look at the activity that's driven on that platform, there's probably more real user activity on chain through binance smart chain than any other environment kind of in the world. And so I think as we look to that, there's a lot there's a lot to like. There's a lot to admire. I also think that when we think about how we want coinbase and base to operate, it is this value of kind of interconnection into the crypto economy, contribution back to the public goods that are kind of supporting this work. That's why we're building as an Ethereum layer too, not as an alternative L one. That's why we're committing as a core contributor to the OP stack. Not just taking the technology and going doing our own thing with it. That's why we've been working over the last year to ship code in Ethereum to scale Ethereum for everyone, not just coinbase, but every L two and everyone in the world. I mean, I think that prioritization on the decentralization on the interoperability and on the open-source foundation that we're building together is what's going to make base really stand out as a contribution to the broader ecosystem. That's that that you just pulled out that we probably have just a couple million, maybe a few million users who have ever gone on chain, that is a subset of the total amount of coinbase users. So how many coinbase users are there right now like in total? Yeah, I think the number that we shared yesterday our earnings is about a 108 million verified users. As of the end of last year, and so most of those users are using our custodial products where we have pooled wallets where we're managing their crypto for them, whether it's Bitcoin or Ethereum or any of the other hundreds of assets that coinbase supports. And we think that that's a really great first step for people. You have to start somewhere. And I think the thing that we've seen over the last few years, as we've built products like USD C and coinbase wallet and CBE, is there's so much opportunity for the emergence of really powerful applications that are on chain native. And that's where we increasingly want to be bringing our customers with coinbase not just serving as an exchange and a custodian, but really the gateway to web three, where users are going to get access to these apps that give them real world value every day. So Jesse, I'm just kind of running the numbers. So just a few million people on chain, right? And so this is the population of a reasonably sized U.S. city. That's all that we have of people going bankless for this entire movement. We only have a few million right now, but coinbase has a 108 million. Is that what you said? Registered
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
"coinbase" Discussed on Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
"Who launched crypto services, of course, and I believe it was 2021. They now have to abandon anything they're going to do with stablecoins. So innovation halted in the United States, that's not good. And this is why we need Congress to act. This is why I'm saying you guys got to contact your representatives, make content, tweet, get it out there, guys. Our voices can be heard through social media, the regulators, the politicians are all on Twitter, right? We have social media to our advantage. So I hope some of you, if we just go out there and make a small video and you tweet it, tweet it at your representative, send them an email call them. These things will help my Friends. It's not just about, you know, YouTubers or podcasters, but your voices can be heard and if you guys put together a video and you tweet it and you tag me, I'll retweet it and try to get people to retweet it as well so that we can get some momentum here. Now, here's something related to the kraken issue that we had recently where the SEC targeted kraken. Well, Jesse Powell, who is the cofounder and I think he's now the former CEO of kraken. He tweeted out, I Gary gens statements on CNBC last week. He said, oh man, all I had to do was fill out a form on a website and tell people that staking rewards come from staking, which I'd seen this video before paying a $30 million fine and agreeing to permanently shut down the service in the U.S.. How dumb do I look? Gosh. So, you know, clearly calling out the BS that Gary was spouting on TV, right? We know we played the clip for you guys in the podcast last week. And he was just, you know, going on with the same BS talking points. So I think everybody sees through this even Warren Davidson, congressman Warren Davidson called him out. He retweeted Jesse and said genser expects Americans to believe that kraken paid a $30 million fine and shut down its U.S. staking program because they forgot to fill out a form on the SEC's website or is this the predictable consequence of regulatory uncertainty and regulation by enforcement. I think we know what the answer is there. Now, some good news here that I want to highlight, you know, with coinbase CEO, you know, I was talking about it last week that I wish cracking had fought back the SEC and didn't just give in. I wished all the U.S. exchanges coinbase cracking uphold Gemini, all these guys will come together and sue the hell out of the SEC for clarity. I think if they're united and all the companies come together and do it, they couldn't get traction because you have an entire industry suing the SEC. That's going to carry weight, right? Especially in Congress as well. But you know, it's a hard thing to do, but I wish coinbase could be the leader here, Brian Armstrong, and so forth could do it. And here there's an article coinbase will defend staking it in court if needed. This is according to Brian Armstrong. So that's good. They would fight back. I just wish cracking and given and I wish cracking would have called up coinbase, right? And they could have put their heads together. Put their legal teams together and figured this out. Brian Armstrong actually tweeted out today. I'm in Washington D.C. and had a meeting canceled. We'll be at the dirksen Senate office building snack bar for the next hour or so.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
"coinbase" Discussed on Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
"They found something that's bad, then that is the free market. That's fine. But like I said, guys, the SEC is trying to make this stablecoin a security. And that's the problem I have, not the reserve issue, and shutting down pack so issuance, not that circle reported to the New York authorities or regulators about paxos and BOS, the SEC trying to sneak in again and saying, hey, this stablecoins is security, which is asinine. So paxos will officially stop issuing dollar peg binance tokens, they will allow redemptions of existing BUSD. So if you want to redeem your BSU, be USD if you have that, you can do that, but they're not going to issue any more tokens. And the SEC suing paxos regarding this and remember paxos is regulated in the U.S.. I had to actually interview the CEO of paxos. I think just last year, Charles cascarilla and the one user called out here, the SEC suing the company that's already regulated, but the same SEC did nothing with FTX. Right there. That tells you what type of regulator you're dealing with, right? A corrupt regulator. Here, the SEC has labeled BUSD as an unregistered security and is suing its issuer paxos, but not about how on earth is a stablecoin considered a security. And by the way, this is some miles. If I'm saying that right, it's a crypto guy here who does a lot of news and so forth. He says, when it clearly doesn't meet the howey test criteria, no one has ever had the expectation of profit when buying USD. Right, because it's one to one to a U.S. dollar. That's all, right? So it's pretty ridiculous what's happening here. And it shows that Gary's going beyond the howey test. He's trying to throw everything all of crypto on the security, the security regulations, even though it doesn't fit or match to how we test. This is, once again, what we're dealing with here, guys, a corrupt regulator. So paxos, of course, they said they categorically categorically disagree with the SEC would be you as the not a security under the federal securities laws and they go into details and so on and so forth. So I'm hoping paxos fights here because we need more people to go after the SEC and we're going to talk a bit about that later in the podcast what coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is saying about that that they're ready to fight. Now it's a more details about this paxos SEC situation. So the SEC issued a no action letter to pocketful of quarters, a crypto blockchain gaming token in 2019. There was no expectation of profit prong of the howitz since the token value was fixed like a stablecoin. How can the SEC treat a paxos issue token as a security and remain consistent? This is from another crypto person here to CEO lomita wealth and he talks a lot about his name is rom ahluwalia. He's a crypto CFA. So once again, I'm just assuring some more thoughts because a lot of people are just like, how the hell is this stablecoin? The security. That's a 9, right? He says here, hard pegged stablecoins have no expectation of profit, so they can not be securities anymore than stored value gift cards are securities. The key is they have a fixed price to buy and sell. This is a link to the SEC Noel action letter in 2019, so he points to that.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"coinbase" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"Shinai basic. Coinbase investors loved this new. It's so interesting, Emily, because if you look at coinbase shares, they really took a leg higher today. It's up about 10% on the day. Pre market that jump was much bigger. So it paired some of those gains for the day, but it's so interesting, especially because coinbase is shares, have gained almost 40% more than 40% over three days. So you're really seeing some of the gains come back to coinbase, the stock that's down still more than 60% this year. I want to flip up the board a little bit and talk about what Wall Street really feels about coinbase because you're seeing one of the biggest players come into it. The 12 month price target for coinbase has also come down meaningfully among some of these larger challenges, even with some love from people like black rock, you have coinbase is 12 month price target, still really flying at around a $100, a $101 per share. If you look at it today, it's just below 90. If you flip up the board again, you still see again with all the challenges still love from Wall Street about 58% of folks say bye. 25 say, hold, which is basically, you know, we don't really know how to feel about things given all the volatility. 16% said Sal. So there's been a lot of questions around whether the momentum would move to the downside for coinbase. Emily, I have to say also interesting is the opportunity provided here from black rock because this partnership, not just with BlackRock, but with a part of BlackRock that's called Aladdin. It gives you exposure not just a big institutional investors. Aladdin works with a lot of wealth management platforms across Wall Street and around the globe. And the reason that's interesting is that it potentially exposes you not just institutional clients, which is a growth area for coinbase, but more people that can really fly into the more traditional retail business at a time when rivals like Robinhood are under a lot more pressure. What does this mean for coinbase longer term? Obviously, the crypto winter is not over, you know, maybe this is the beginning of something, but how much farther how much colder how cold is the road gonna get? So that's a question because it's all correlated to Bitcoin prices and you saw something similar when it came to blocks earnings that reported after the market close today. This idea that transactions have really slowed. Remember a lot of the retail investors that got into cryptocurrencies at the end of last year are very much in the red. And so how much powder is there left on the sidelines for investors to get back into it in volumes to come back again. The good news for coinbase is and you saw it here with Robinhood and just this week, when you see some of the rivals under pressure here, it is good news for coinbase and you saw it reflected in coinbase's stock. But just for a sense of how far we've fallen for coinbase. I mean, this is still a company that's under $20 billion in market cap. This was one $75 billion in market cap, and that was at the end of last year. So how quickly can Bitcoin recover get back to 60 70,000? I think it has a lot to do with whether coinbase can regain its former glory. And whether that even matters if people see enough crypto adoption moving forward among the big institutions, like you saw today with a BlackRock. So what are you looking for next year? Obviously we've seen a wave of difficulties for there's been bankruptcies. There's been increasing regulatory scrutiny. There's been this big letter from hundreds of skeptics to Congress. What's going to be the next inflection point in the story of crypto? You know, we've been talking about it a lot. You and I, this idea of coinbase versus the SEC. Why does that matter so much? Because exchanges, coinbase, FTX, the more that they don't part with the SEC, you wonder if they look more like traditional exchanges, like the New York Stock Exchange, like the Chicago, the board options exchange FTX has been highly regulated, working with a lot more traditional players here. And you wonder if there's a future where people list a token, they go public, they don't necessarily choose between the two or do both. The worlds are merging. So the question to me is how much does Quinn base embrace that? Again, like you see today with a big institutional partnership or how much do they stick to kind of the heart of crypto, which was very focused on a decentralized finance and things that were so far away from Wall Street as we know it. All right, shall we? Shall I bos? Thank you. As always. Coming up, the AI startup that is saving grocery stores upwards of 34 million pounds of food per year