"But have we *earned* it?"

Vitalik famously posed this question in late 2017, when the crypto market cap first reached $500 billion.

We're past $1 trillion now. Let's see what has changed in crypto, especially in Ethereum and DeFi, since then.

A thread. 👇

2017 and 2018 were marked by vaporware.

Projects like Dentacoin, which promised, uhhh, great things but had little to show for it, garnered hundreds of millions in value.

Look where they are now.

Literal billions in market cap reduced to ashes. And that's good.
We've seen the capital allocated to these ghost projects seemingly flood toward quality.

Bitcoin dominance currently sits at 67% after bottoming at 33% in January 2018.

Ethereum dominance is also up from its lows.

Projects with big promises and no execution were flushed out.
Not all of the vaporware has been flushed out.

Many coins in the top 50 have yet to deliver on promises they made years ago.

But this is changing as coins like AAVE and SNX enter the crypto market's top 20.
Not much has changed about bitcoin on a technical basis, but on a fundamental basis, I think it's stronger than ever.

The confluence of money printing, political uncertainty, and more is driving the need for a scarce reserve asset not controlled by any central party.
Ethereum, too, is killing it.

While I loved CryptoKitties—and the gambling dApps were cool too—we're now seeing functional platforms used by hundreds of thousands built on Ethereum.

Think Uniswap. Think Aave. And so on.

Today, over 1,000,000 unique addresses have used DeFi.
These 1,000,000+ unique addresses have deposited more than $20 billion worth of value into DeFi through the top protocols.

Today, DeFi's total TVL sits at $22.5 billion, up from the ~$50m TVL as of Christmas Day 2017.

That's growth of 49,400%. Not bad.
We have also seen Uniswap, SushiSwap, and other DEXs start to rival centralized exchanges.

SushiSwap did $395m in volume today. Uniswap did $728m.

Per @coingecko, Gemini did $275m, Bitflyer did $480m, and KuCoin did $453m.

Gone are the days of clunky DEX experience.
On a blockchain level, the numbers are looking good as well.

Ethereum daily transactions are basically at all-time highs.

Network utilization is consistently above 95%.

The number of active Ethereum addresses is consistently above 500,000.
So, do we deserve $1t?

Maybe.

All I know for sure is that we're a lot more deserving than we were in 2017.

Capital is flooding towards quality assets that are proving they have a purpose and viable future. DeFi is at the core of that.

More from Crypto

You are running out of time to get ahead in cryptocurrency.

You know what's coming:

🔺️ Regulation
🔺️ More shutdowns
🔺️ Banks deciding who gets to do business

It's time you got your own crypto wallet.

Don't know how? I'll show you.

/////THREAD\\\\\

METAMASK

What's metamask? It's a wallet. That you -- I mean YOU -- own.

You see, when you buy crypto through an exchange like CoinBase, you own it but only kind of.

If they get

🔺 Hacked
🔺 Shutdown
🔺 Servers crash

-- your money is STUCK.

We are gonna avoid that 👇


First thing,

Go to

https://t.co/JXAp9o5RzJ

You can download it on your computer. It's a browser extension.

Alternatively, go to the app store on your Android or iPhone. It's there too.

As part of the setup process, you will choose a password.

More importantly though...

SEED PHRASE

As you follow the setup process, you will be given a 12-word seed phrase.

WRITE. THIS. DOWN.

Take it down and guard it like the map to Davey Jones' Locker.

THESE ARE THE ONLY WAY TO RECOVER YOUR ACCOUNT.

DO NOT LOSE.

We good? Great.

Let's continue.


Once you're all setup, your MetaMask wallet is going to look something like the picture below.

See where it says Crypto Address? That's where your actual address will be.

It'll be a random arrangement of letters, numbers, etc.

Click on it to copy to your clipboard

NEXT STEP
A primer on how to use @coingecko for your crypto data/research/trading needs.

Share it with a friend who needs it!

1/ Getting started with crypto and want to check prices/projects? https://t.co/LFnk4vukxj has info on just about every crypto you'll need :)


2/ Search over 6000+ cryptocurrencies available on the market. You can see what's trending in the space as well.

Researching by categories? Filter (left side) -> Select categories -> DeFi, DOT ecosystem, Exchange-based tokens, NFTs - anything!


3/ Lets say you're looking at #Bitcoin
https://t.co/g205lj03pG

At a glance you get:
- Price
- Mkt Capitalization (valuation)
- Circulating/Total supply
- 24h trading volume
- Links to websites, social media, block explorers
- Calculator

Next - check valuation?


4/ Market cap is used to rank coins, and we'll show you how its calculated - Hover over Circulating Supply (?) for breakdown.

Note: used @chainlink as example here - https://t.co/Jc46fe79Ag

While MC is important also consider product fit, narrative, team, community etc.


5/ If you're trading on AMMs like @Uniswap or @SushiSwap, you can copy the contract address directly to your clipboard.

Using @metamask_io? Add the token directly so it shows as one of the "Assets" that you own in the wallet.

See: https://t.co/94XihMf5oz

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The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.


Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)


There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.


At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?