"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. 👇

$BTC & $USDT & the criminal cartels that pump the prices of BTC while laundering out real fiat profits through their exchange partners. While tax evasion & general financial malfeasance is problematic enough, one has to wonder what else is occurring with the laundered funds ..1/

Despite the romantic, libertarian view of Bitcoin subverting the oppression of the centralized fiat economy, in reality, the backers were also engaging in drug smuggling, assassination markets & human trafficking. 2/

While some of Bitcoin’s ideology of civil disobedience & the hope of building a shining new economy upon the distributed ledger was exciting for a time, the Bitcoin Civil War side-tracked the project heavily. 3/

Once Dread Pirate Roberts and The Silk Road was closed down, nastier websites emerged, and so too did some of the shadiest venture capitalists in the world — necessitating the split of the Bitcoin protocol away from the BTC economy in 2017. But this requires some context. 4/

Unfortunately, in the era spanning 2014-2016, venture capitalists created media entities such as CoinDesk & Cointelegraph, development groups such as Blockstream & MIT Digital Currency Initiative, exchanges like Coinbase & Bitfinex, 5/

Go to 1-4 hour chart.

Use the following EMAs.
13,21,50,180.

Look for a period of consolidation and
13>21>50>180.

Wait for a pull back to 13EMA.
If bounce occurs with volume, Enter.

Exit on bearish cross with 21>13.

1/ crypto VC is going through an explosive 🧨 phase

there are big funds (>$500M AUM), a lot of small funds (<$50M AUM), and *tons* of prop firms + angels

i’ve done 15 deals in the last 3 months as an angel + small fund @CoinSharesCo VC.

observations + implications... 👇🏾

2/ the big firms need to deploy in size - $5M checks and up

a $250M fund could do a $5-10M deal every month for two years and still be under-allocated

and there aren’t enough companies raising series B / C / D rounds!!!

every deal i’ve done lately is under $50M valuation

3/ so we see firms competing to take down entire rounds.

a recent series A financing had two firms competing to take down the ENTIRE ROUND, and it eventually got upsized, a LOT.

if a company is putting up user acquisition / growth and a revenue story, it’s highly competitive

4/ most projects and co’s don’t need money tho - why would a founder take 20-40% dilution when they’re banking cash and crypto? so they do 5-10%

so the valuations go up, but available allocations go down, resulting in an even bigger squeeze on allocators who *need* to deploy

5/ add in the onslaught of non-crypto M&A that’s coming, which is culling the herd of investable unicorns

add in the wave of SPACs and direct listings taking later stage opportunities out

there just aren’t enough places to put capital in size rn

what’s a fund to do?

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.