1/ Crypto’s biggest potential impact to society is in sustainably distributing wealth, capital & ownership to a larger % of the world.

This is also its biggest risk: crypto can exacerbate inequality if it is not made accessible to everyone—especially those who need it most.

“What do you think about Ethereum?”

A question all Bitcoiners should have a good answer to when their friends and family ask them.

A few thoughts beyond the “shitcoin” meme...

The truth that ETH devs won’t admit is that they’re a bunch of tech nerds that want to hack on something exciting. Their priority isn’t to move humanity to sound money. They want to build the next big thing and feel like they’re on the cutting edge. Typical developer / SV mindset

Bitcoin is a binary bet on the whole market. There are two possibilities:

1. Bitcoin survives and goes to $10MM a coin because it is humanity’s first perfect money

2. Bitcoin is destroyed by central bankers / governments in which case ETH will certainly meet the same fate.

We know exactly what Bitcoin is.

Perfect money: Scarce. Transferable. Divisible. It’s doing one thing, and doing it well. And that one thing has enormous upside potential. Buy it, hold it, and don’t worry about it changing.

Ethereum on the other hand…

I’ve seen Ethereum change from:

- The new Internet infrastructure (lol at Blockchain replacing relational databases)
- Crypto Kitties with massive gas fees
- ICO scam platform
- “Eth is money”
- “Eth is bonds”
- DeFi platform for a bunch of two-bit startups relying on AWS

Lindy Effect 101

With Bitcoin's return to the spotlight, debates on its long-term viability are raging. Its proponents contend @nntaleb's Lindy Effect says the technology is here to stay.

But what is the "Lindy Effect" and how does it work?

Here's Lindy Effect 101!

👇👇👇

1/ First, a few definitions.

The Lindy Effect is a theory that the future life expectancy of specific non-perishable items, like a technology or idea, is proportional to their age.

Put simply, the longer it has already lasted, the higher the likelihood it will continue to last.

2/ The term "Lindy effect" is a reference to Lindy's, a New York deli frequented by comedians in the 1960s.

While author Albert Goldman used the term "Lindy's Law" in a 1964 article, it was mathematician Benoit Mandlebrot who moved the dialogue towards the current definition.

3/ In his book, entitled The Fractal Geometry of Nature, Mandlebrot commented that the more stage appearances a Lindy's comedian made, the more future appearances he could be predicted to make.

The longer he lasted, the longer he would continue to last.

4/ @nntaleb built upon Mandelbrot's work, formally coining the term "Lindy Effect" in his book, Antifragile.

He noted the Lindy Effect with books - the longer a book has been in print, the longer it is likely to survive.

With no natural upper bound, power laws come into play.

Some thoughts on this super inaccurate piece.

tl;dr: this is not a defence of Tether/ iFinex, who I would like nothing more than to see disappear into irrelevance. However, most of the conclusions here show zero understanding of crypto market

1. First up: it’s completely inexcusable that Tether refuse to have a 3rd party audit. I can’t find a single good faith reason for this.

Bitfinex GC recently did a superb job of sidestepping that question on WBD:

2. For better or worse, USDT (tether) started as a way for people to move fiat between exchanges (a major problem) in the absence of the ability to onboard banking partners, none of whom wanted to touch crypto. USDT is now the dominant stablecoin by mkt cap & liquidity.

3. As a result of the difficulty of having a fiat on/off rail, many exchanges, like Binance, chose to be ‘crypto only’, using stablecoins in lieu of fiat. This is why the majority of inflows into BTC (article says 70%) is via USDT

4. Unbanked exchanges are in aggregate larger than banked ones. This is true, but it’s not because of a giant conspiracy to steal your BTC. Being unbanked = real regulatory arbitrages (lower cost + ability to innovate fast), and lower barriers to entry means there’s more of them.

We're in the phase of the market where there's a lot of retail inbounds but not enough education about the Ethereum ecosystem and DeFi.

So, let's break down the basics of some of the top protocols.

First on deck: Aave (@AaveAave), an Ethereum-based money market protocol.

A 🧵

TL;DR: Aave is a protocol through which any user anywhere in the world can take decentralized loans by collateralizing their assets.

Aave also allows those will idle assets to earn a relatively safe return on capital from lenders, whose rates are determined by a curve.

1/ For years, most crypto assets had no indirect or direct utility.

Users would hold BTC, ETH, and other assets (including many ERC-20 tokens) with no expectation of a native yield or dividends.

ETH, for instance, was long just an asset for transaction fees, as was Bitcoin.

2/ If users wanted to borrow against their assets, they were relegated to centralized platforms—which were few and far between years ago.

3/ Aave, formerly ETHLend, is a protocol allowing users the ability to lend and borrow on-chain, without KYC and untransparent fees.

Users can deposit a variety of assets as collateral, then use that collateral as ammo to borrow other assets to be used in DeFi or beyond.

The CBN's official reason for its recent cryptocurrency restriction is that cryptocurrencies are anonymous and used for money laundering, terrorism financing, and tax evasion. Let’s dig into what the facts say.

A THREAD #Nigeria #Bitcoin

1/21

We’ll break up the allegation into two. First up, “cryptocurrency is used for money laundering.”
Cryptocurrencies have been used for illicit activities but so too have official currencies. So the CBN's argument must be that cryptocurrencies make the situation worse.

2/21

But as things stand, significantly more illicit activities are conducted with regular money than with cryptocurrencies. According to the UN, between $800 billion and $2 trillion is laundered globally every year, mostly in cash.

3/21

Meanwhile, the entire global value of cryptocurrencies is currently $1.4 trillion. Chainanalysis, the leading crypto-analysis company helping governments track criminals, estimated that 1.1% of all cryptocurrency transactions are illicit.

4/21

So, if the government is trying to clamp down on money laundering and terrorism financing, they are better off spending their energy on their naira accounts.

5/21