0/ It's been a big 2 weeks for $BTC as it hits a new ATH, $MSTR completes a $650M convert, Mass Mutual invests $100M, Ruffer Management buys $745M, Jeffries recommends a 5% allocation, Guggenheim's CIO gives a $400K PT, OneRiver, FinCen rules better than feared & Coinbase S1

1/ $MSTR completed a $650M convertible bond offering at 0.75% with the intent to purchase $BTC (and per @michael_saylor) it looks like they completed that buy. Since first announcing their $BTC purchase in mid-August the stocks +143% (with BTC over 2.0x during that time)
2/ Mass Mutual with its ~$235B general investment account purchased $100M of $BTC through NYDIG (after making an equity investment alongside @BessemerVP & $MS).
3/ Ruffer Management a ~$27B asset manager bought $750M of $BTC to equate to ~2.5% of the portfolio:

"We see this BTC investment as a small but potent insurance policy against the continuing devaluation of the world’s major currencies,”
4/ Jefferies Christopher Wood amended his long-only asset allocation recommendation for pension funds cutting gold to 45% from 50% and initiating a 5% position in $BTC.
5/ Guggenheim CIO Scott Minerd claimed that the firms "fundamental work" shows $BTC should be worth ~$400,000.

"Bitcoin has a lot of the attributes of gold and at the same time has an unusual value in terms of transactions," Minerd told Bloomberg TV.
6/ OneRiver & Eric Peters aims to own ~$1.0B of $BTC & $ETH in early '21 and has reportedly acquired in excess of $600M already with the backing of Alan Howard.
7/ For the past few weeks the crypto community was worried about rules that would come out of FinCen & @stevenmnuchin1. They were better than feared not covering unhosted to unhosted wallets and puts $BTC on a similar footing to USD from a FI perspective.
8/ @coinbase has been executing a lot of these large buy orders for institutional investors / funds & has filed their S1 to go public. As they continue to take back volume from offshore exchanges and as CME grows it leads to the maturation of the market.
9/ This fact pattern is the biggest difference between now & '17 which was very much a retail driven frenzy. You are having multiple 9 figure $BTC spot orders placed in market when daily inflation is ~1/2 of what it was on top of a more conducive macro backdrop.
10/ All of this is in the last 2 weeks & excludes the $PYPL roll out, the success of $SQ, @DigitalAssets, new custodians, guidance from the OCC, macro investors like Druckenmiller & PTJ talking about $BTC's place in the portfolio, etc... will shape up for an interesting '21.

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Michael Pettis @michaelxpettis argues that it is not always obvious who (China or the U.S.) adjusts best to "turbulent changes."
Bitcoin answers that question.
Thread:


World economies currently suffer four major redistribution challenges:
The most important is increasing government stealth use of the monetary system to confiscate assets from productive actors.
/2

That process is exacerbated by "Cantillon Effect" transfers to interest groups close to government ("the entitled class," public sector workers, the medical industrial complex, academia, etc....), which is destroying much of that wealth /3

The shadow nature (see Keynes) of government inflation makes the process unidentifiable, un-addressable and undemocratic.
The biggest victims (America's poorly educated young) are unequipped to counter generational confiscation tactics of today's wily senior beneficiaries. /4

Government control of the numéraire in key economic statistics (GDP, inflation, etc...) makes it impossible for economic actors to measure progress and liabilities. /5
I'm sure someone else has explained this, but it is just so cool and I want to explain how this works.


So Curve is awesome for swaps between similar assets, right? The fact that they trade very close to each other is a key part about how Curve works, using it's custom swap invariant function.

That's step 1

Step 2 is that Synthetix is awesome for creating "synthetic assets" (aka synths) which are assets that trade like other assets, that are backed by another, entirely different asset. Basically, a plastic banana that I can buy and sell like a real banana.

Synthetix has a feature that lets you swap between any two synths with zero slippage and a flat fee. That's because it is simply converting the sythentic asset into another synthetic asset, the backing for the synth doesn't change it just uses a different price oracle now.

This is important. Absolutely no slippage, at any size

Swap $1m sUSD for $1m sBTC? flat 0.3% fee

Swap $10m sUSD for $10m sBTC? flat 0.3% fee

swap $100m sUSD for $100m sBTC? Well, there isn't that many synths in Curve, yet but you get the point. The only limit is the pool depth

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I'm going to do two history threads on Ethiopia, one on its ancient history, one on its modern story (1800 to today). 🇪🇹

I'll begin with the ancient history ... and it goes way back. Because modern humans - and before that, the ancestors of humans - almost certainly originated in Ethiopia. 🇪🇹 (sub-thread):


The first likely historical reference to Ethiopia is ancient Egyptian records of trade expeditions to the "Land of Punt" in search of gold, ebony, ivory, incense, and wild animals, starting in c 2500 BC 🇪🇹


Ethiopians themselves believe that the Queen of Sheba, who visited Israel's King Solomon in the Bible (c 950 BC), came from Ethiopia (not Yemen, as others believe). Here she is meeting Solomon in a stain-glassed window in Addis Ababa's Holy Trinity Church. 🇪🇹


References to the Queen of Sheba are everywhere in Ethiopia. The national airline's frequent flier miles are even called "ShebaMiles". 🇪🇹