CryptoAM: Facebook, the SEC, a Fund Fight and of course, Blockchain.
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Good morning everyone, Avi here! Yesterday wasn't a particularly good day for the markets, with Bitcoin shedding about 4%. For crypto and blockchain as a whole though, we saw some pretty great developments. With great news for adoption, short term price and missing my Bitmex limit orders by $2 bothers me slightly less than normal. Slightly.
Top 2 things you need to know:
One: SEC commissioner gives another bullish speech. The U.S government (for all it’s faults) seems to be coming around to crypto.
Tl;dr: There needs to be fair regulation. Not every ICO is a security & things need to be treated on a case by case basis. The SEC does not want to stifle innovation.
The quote that stands out is “there comes a point where regulatory uncertainty is a greater roadblock than confinement within a particular regulatory regime” - Hester Piece. Seems to me, clear regulation is coming soon.
Two: Facebook creates an entirely separate division for blockchain. This follows suit with many other companies also looking heavily into blockchain technology.
What does this mean? Major companies are coming around to blockchain tech. This is vindication for those who have fought for years, and perhaps a reckoning for those whose industries blockchain will disrupt.
Insiders tell me that Bank of America executives talk about blockchain on every call, and are terrified of it’s disruptive potential. BoA has been patent grabbing as a defense.
What to look out for:
One thing: ZRX (0x) & Coinbase rumors are holding strong. We’re seeing more evidence everyday that ZRX is the most likely token to be added to Coinbase in the near future. Along with the conspiracy theories, there are solid reasons as to why this would be the case.
ZRX is publishing blog posts dealing with compliance
Coinbase has announced ERC-20 support
Be smart. A listing on Coinbase would mean a huge influx of new investors, but a listing that wasn’t ZRX would likely deflate price significantly.
Second thing: Blockchain week in NYC could bring major developments. Enigma has an announcement lined
up, which may move price. Historically, Bitcoin has done well following the conference. If you’re going to be in NYC that week, be sure to check out all the happenings.
I’m reading this today:
The SF Fed came to the conclusion that futures depressed the price of Bitcoin.
They claim that before futures, it was next to impossible to bet against Bitcoin (short-selling was difficult).
All price movement came from optimists driving price upwards, because the only options were to buy or not buy BTC. All that pessimists could do was wait on the sidelines.
After futures came to market, pessimists were finally able to exert downwards pressure on BTC price.
My take? It’s true, and we likely won’t see prices near 20k for a while because of it.
Things I like:
Major releases are around the corner.
Switcheo (SWH) has a mainnet release planned for May 16th.
Stratis has an ICO platform launching on the 9th and smart contracts in C# coming out on the 16th.
IOTA is announcing more information about Qubic in 30 days
NEXO will be listed on a major exchange (likely HitBTC) on May 10th.
Multicoin vs Blockchain Capital
Timeline goes:
MultiCoin publishes a bullish report on EOS and what it can accomplish
Spencer from Blockchain Capital publishes a medium article about how decentralization is paramount, how dPOS isn’t strong enough, and that only truly decentralized applications will survive.
Multicoin hits back by saying that there needs to be tradeoffs of decentralization and efficiency. That a balance of the two will yield the best results and will not compromise integrity.
Read Spencer, then read the rebuttal here
I love to see healthy debate. All too often we see heated exchange with nothing drawn. This is one of the core issues of blockchain and crypto. How much do we give up in exchange for efficiency? What do we give up? The answer seems to be trending towards designs similar to Ethereum, where a central organizations has power in exchange for efficiency— but not too much.
Bitcoin can’t decide what to do:
But Willy Woo has an idea of where it’s going. Willy and his Network Value to Transaction (NVT) metric is back again with a prediction that bitcoin is still overpriced. NVT takes into account how the market cap of Bitcoin compares to it’s usage.
In general, when NVT is outside of the dotted lines, we are in a bubble. Read more here
See you all tomorrow, and don’t forget to get all your friends to subscribe :)
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