$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/

The global blockchain market is growing fast & it is expected to grow from USD 3.0B in 2020 to USD 39.7B by 2025 at an impressive CAGR of 67.3% during 2020–2025. The global fintech market has also significantly grown over the past 2 years & so is the case in Southeast Asia. (1/n)

2) Thanks to the increased application of blockchain & cryptocurrency in the region.
With a total pop. of 570M, a young demographic & high Internet usage, Southeast Asia (SEA) is promising for companies & investors in blockchain & crypto.

#Blockchain

3) The use of blockchain in SEA has certainly come far ahead from the time when the technology was seen as another speculative commodity or a mere passing fad.

Today, the application of decentralized finance (DeFi) is under the limelight.

4) The region’s fast-growing economies are well-positioned to drive adoption of #blockchain & crypto. As each country competes to stay relevant in today’s digital age & embrace emerging technologies such as blockchain & #cryptocurrency, large-scale adoption is the key to success.

5) Here’s an overview of where the region is headed in terms of blockchain w/ respect to digital financial transactions.

As the financial hub for SEA, Singapore plays a critical role in supporting the region to push it forward technologically & financially.

Will start this thread with a disclaimer. I have never invested a rupee in cryptos 😀

But I have studied bull and bear cycles and financial bubbles extensively. Saw 1992, 2000, 2008 with own eyes. The first one as a novice, the next two when I knew to analyze

The amount of chatter I am seeing in friends, family and social media about cryptos has gone through the roof. For everyone, it's a dream to make 100x or even 1000x easily. Basically, become stinking rich easily
( it never happens )

In any financial bubble, the top is made in extreme speed and violence. The distribution happens on the way down. Unless one saw the rates of 65k on bitcoin, one wouldn't buy at 30-35k or 20k. That 65k is an anchor point which leads to greed

During the tulipmania, a single piece of tulip reached a price of $750,000 in today's money. When we see that history, we think "what idiots". But consider this, as of now meme coins generated by someone in their garage are being traded at absurd prices

Then there is this joke called NFT. A piece of "digital art" basically made by someone on their computer ( who is not even a known artist) are being sold for millions of dollars

1/

So what actually moves the prices of cryptocurrencies? We spent over a month parsing through data to answer that question for you 👀👀

Special thanks to @eToroUS for partnering with us on this research

A thread:

2/

Leveraging The TIE’s Crypto SigDev™ feed we set out to identify whether news moved the crypto market and what, if any, impact sentiment had following key announcements.

SigDevs are news on token updates or major events (like M&A and Listings).

3/

Looking at ​maximum price increases within 24 hours after different SigDev announcements, we see that certain announcements tend to procure more responses than others. These are ordered from left to right in order of increasing average positive effect on price.

4/

These initial results are intuitive: one would expect 51% attacks — a negative assault on a blockchain — to not typically have a positive effect on price, while getting listed on a new exchange (“L​isting​”) increases demand for a cryptocurrency and thus should increase value

5/

Although Listings and Partnerships have an immediate large influence on price, it does not mean the increase is sustained.

We looked at how sustainable each SigDev was. Specifically, the max price 24 hours after each SigDev compared to the following week's average price

Unlike #ETH and #BTC $ Algo uses delegated proof of stake (DPOS) #AlgorandandFriends

Under the DPOS mechanism, the community will empower a number of users the delegates to choose the next block. This is a mechanism that is used by blockchains such as EOS etc. $Algo

There is a fixed number of delegates & these delegates can be viewed as having centralized control. In the adipose blockchain, the delegates may own a tiny fraction of the total money in the system. Yet, the whole blockchain is secure. $Algo

The Algorand consensus mechanism is called pure proof of stake. And it operates on this simple principle. It makes cheating by a minority of the money impossible and cheating by the majority stupid. $Algo

$Algo developed a mechanism so that those with small stakes cannot cheat, those that have a large stake in the network won’t cheat. It will completely devalue their holdings & make no economic sense. As long as 2/3 of the majority are honest, the protocol will work just fine. $

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.

1. Ultimate blockchain, NFT and crypto learning thread 👇

(warning 100's of hrs of content)

2. @CalBlockchain 's Spring 2021 fundamentals course: slides and

3. @tferriss @naval and @NickSzabo4 's podcast about crypto and

4. Similar one to previous but @tferriss, @naval and @VitalikButerin 's podcast on scaling, ETH, NFTs and

5. @a16z Crypto startup

NFT Crypto Guide 101 📚

🔹What are Non-Fungible-Tokens?
🔹What are NFTs used for?
🔹What do I expect for the NFT space in 2021?
🔹What NFTs do i hold?
🔹Where do I buy NFTs?

I will go through all of these questions.

Thread below 👇

🔹What are Non-Fungible-Tokens (NFTs)?

NFTs are crypto tokens that represent something unique. They are not mutually interchangeable.

This means that one NFT is not the same as the other.

Unlike for example Bitcoin, where each satoshi is exactly the same as the other.

These NFTs exist on the Ethereum Blockchain. Instead of ERC-20 tokens, we call these NFTs: ERC-721 or ERC-1155 tokens.

Each of these NFTs have an unique ID that seperates them.

For example, The Hashmask with ID #6718 is completely different than the Hashmask with ID #9939.

Different visually as well as the ID on the blockchain.

🔹What are NFTs used for?

NFTs are used to create verifiable digital scarcity and digital ownership.

The main applications we see today are:

🔹Digital Art
🔹Collectibles
🔹Games

@VentureCoinist @HypeBillion @MycolePawket If the whole world settled on one stablecoin, I'd agree with you. But stablecoins are always going to be tied to jurisdictions and counter-parties too. So it is unlikely one winner will emerge.

@HypeBillion @MycolePawket Today, one of the roles of the dollar is acting as an intermediary or bridge between currencies. For that role, its tie to the US jurisdiction is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Better US than a worse jurisdiction, but a pure digital asset is better still.

@HypeBillion @MycolePawket Imagine a future (maybe not so far off) where everything is tokenized and you can have your salary agreed in dollars but gold gets delivered to your wallet and you can buy groceries by selling tokenized shares of a REIT.

@HypeBillion @MycolePawket In that world, there will need to be concentrations of liquidity. You can't go from gold to shares of an obscure REIT by finding people who want to go those same shares to gold. The liquidity-concentrating asset likely can't be one country's currency. How could that be universal?

@HypeBillion @MycolePawket So, sure, if you get paid in dollars and pay your bills in dollars, it may make sense for you to use a dollar-denominated stablecoin for short-term holdings and payments. Absolutely.

Options used to be close to irrelevant for bitcoin's price.

Until now.

At current price levels, hedging large option notionals has a major impact on price.

Here's a quick thread on options 👇

Let's start with the meaning of delta.

Delta is the rate of change of an option's price relative to a change in the price of its underlying.

For example, the price of a 50 delta option will move 50% as much as the underlying.

For practical purposes, think of it as how much of the underlying you have:

- if long 50 delta call on 1 BTC => long 0.5 BTC
- if long 50 delta put on 1 BTC => short 0.5 BTC
- if short 50 delta call on 1 BTC => short 0.5 BTC
- if short 50 delta put on 1 BTC => long 0.5 BTC

An option where the option's strike (i.e. exercise price) is equal to current spot price is known as an at-the-money option (ATM). ATM options have a delta of 50, while deep in the money options have a delta of close to 100.

Can also think of delta as probability. A 50 delta option has a 50% chance of expiring in the money.

For a call, the higher price goes => the more in the money the call => the higher the delta.

Once delta gets close to 100, odds are ~100% the option will expire in the money.

stacks are eating the world

business used to be easiest to comprehend via a) market-based logic of horizontal vs. vertical STRUCTURE, b) professionalization/specialization based FUNCTION c) core competencies based BEHAVIORS

this has pretty much collapsed in the last decade

Structure = sclerosis
Functional specialization = bureaucracy
competencies = inertial habits

"Stack" thinking instead lets technology structure (rather than market structure) drive business org logic

Companies seem to do well when they identify an entire stack of technologies they are good at (not just point bits) and organize to conform to its logic. There is a "full-stack" dimension of technical specialization that is the spine of the org

It feels buzzwordy, but it really is getting to be that way. AI stack, decarbonization stack, mobility stack, electrification stack... some end-to-end pathway of turning physics into economics via layers of tech artistically baked together like a cake

Think crypto is confusing?

You're right.

Let's make it easier.

Here's Crypto Terminology 101: 🧵

Altcoin:

Any coin that's not #Bitcoin

Ether (#ETH) is the second most popular coin overall and the most well-known Altcoin.

Ether is the native cryptocurrency on the Ethereum blockchain.

There are thousands of other altcoins, but for now, this is the one to know.

Bitcoin: (#BTC)

The first decentralized digital currency.

Launched in 2009 by an unknown person or organization known only as "Satoshi Nakamoto."

It is the most famous, and most valuable cryptocurrency.

Blockchain:

The core tech behind Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies.

An open, distributed, general ledger where transactions are organized into blocks which are then connected using cryptography.

Coin:

A store of digital value that lives on a blockchain.

Some blockchains, such as Bitcoin, use the same name for both the network and the coin.

Stable coins are another type of cryptocurrency which are backed by fiat currency (e.g the US dollar) or commodities such as Gold.

While my time investing in crypto and previously playing poker has gotten me used to experiencing large daily personal net worth volatility, it's never a pleasant experience

Short thread (by my standards...) with some ramblings that help me get through it 👇

1/10 Imo, some DeFi projects represent 10-1000x upside opportunities

Obviously, like all of crypto, it is extremely risky and can go to 0. That said, given the magnitude of potential outcomes, it just doesn't have to succeed that often to make it a massively +EV bet

2/10 As with all early stage tech, realising these outcomes will require 4-8 year holds

Unlike early stage tech, crypto investors will have liquidity, i.e. the possibility, and thus the temptation, to sell

This is both a blessing and a curse

3/10 A look at any of the best performing public stocks will show you that you cannot have 10-1000x upside potential without volatiliy and occasional large drawdowns

Crypto, as early stage tech, is much riskier than established public companies and thus even higher vol too

4/10 Obviously, one should take advantage of this liquidity as it allows for rebalancing. Most importantly, it also makes outcomes less binary and thus less volatile than traditional VC

However, one should not let the liquidity take advantage of us

1 - Over the years I've learnt a lot of new things that I wish I knew when I first started so I want to make this thread for all the new traders out there who wants to turn their trading into a profitable career 🔥

Will be adding to this thread over time.

17 - Because trading is a game of numbers and probabilities, whenever you see a setup that fits your trading rules and aligns with your edge, you NEED to take the opportunity!

Don't pick and choose, just religiously follow your plan and rules!