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Liquid staking: Any prospects with $LDO?This is a continuation of our previous idea : In the first part, we dissected native staking, the current situation, and made a firm prediction about what Ethereum will face next. In this article, we will define liquid staking, examine current data and the most important liquid staking protocol, Lido, and forecast what's next for the $LDO native token. What is liquid staking? Liquid staking is a method of staking in which the user receives derivative tokens from the provider protocol, such as stETH from the Lido protocol, which can be used to generate additional revenue through DeFi protocols or converted to any other token via CEX or DEX. What is $LDO? Today, there are 9 most popular liquid staking protocols that account for ~40% of the total market. Lido is the most popular protocol (~28.9% of total staking volume and 87.5% of liquid staking volume). LDO is a governance token. It does not entitle holders to a share of the generated yield or commissions. The token also has additional inflation. Lido constantly cooperates with different projects and provides incentive awards for pools with its tokens. 2-3 million LDO per month. But the number of allocated rewards is gradually decreasing. Smart-money in $LDO We should also mention the smart money that invested in $LDO tokens in the early stages. In short, all of the major funds that invested in $LDO are still holding their tokens, and many have not sold them at all. Paradigm, for example, increased the capitalization of its investment from $50 million to $130 million. The only exceptions were Alameda Research and 3AC, which had serious issues in 2022 and required funds for liquidity and closing payment gaps. WHAT SHOULD WE DO WITH LDO? The capitalization of all liquid-staking protocols will increase because their product offer alleviates users' pains and makes them more agile. LDO is the locomotive of this trend; compare it to Ethereum in the Layer 1 segment. While LDO may appear to some to be outdated, there are protocols that provide better and more flexible terms to their users. However, betting on the growth of LDO is betting on the growth of the entire segment. If you want to make a lot of money, you should look for protocols that are less well-known by the general public. Smart money believes in LDOs, but you must understand that their margin of safety is greater than that of a single trader. Always assume that your investments will be long-term. Users trust Lido because their ecosystem has been tested in the market, their derivative token stETH has been attacked by other market participants, and the Lido team knows how to deal with it. To summarize, a long in LDO is a bet that the liquid staking protocol segment will expand further, and you choose the market-tested protocol among others. By the way, you can trade $LDO with us. Check the signature. Write your comments abut LDO and don't forget about risk management!
Long
by Samura0x
Staking and the Shanghai upgrade: What expect from Ethereum?Staking has become the primary way to earn profitability for validation and network support since Ethereum switched to a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism. The Shanghai update, which will allow users to withdraw their staked ETH, is scheduled to be released in March 2023. In this idea, we will look at the current state of staking and what to expect in the nearest future. The main disadvantages of native staking are as follows: While your Ethereum is staked, you must keep it locked up and cannot use it for anything else; Staking is inefficient in terms of capital usage because the staking fee is only calculated on 32 locked ETH. This means that if you stake 32 ETH and grow it up to 34 ETH with rewards, the rewards will only be applied to the original 32 ETH. This renders a portion of your capital ineffective; You cannot withdraw your ETH until the Shanghai update is released. To address these concerns, liquid staking protocols have emerged on the market. We will go over these in details below. According to PnL Staker Data, 66.5% of stakers are currently losing money because the price of ETH when they staked it was higher than the current price. The highest peak of staking for users at a loss occurred in the $2500-$3500 price range. Given the minimum staking size of 32 ETH, these users have suffered significant losses, and many may choose to withdraw their ineffective staked ETH to minimize or avoid these losses. There are currently 500,000 active validators working on Ethereum, and the total staked balance is 16 million ETH (13% of the total supply of ETH), with one validator's average balance being around 34 ETH. Some key takeaways from this information are: Currently, there are about 1 million inefficient ETHs worth approximately $1.5 billion; The average daily trading volume of ETH is around $6-7 billion; The ineffective volume of ETH will take 8-10 days to withdraw. Each epoch lasts 6.4 minutes, has 256 withdrawal transactions, and we have 225 epochs per day. So, what can we expect from Ethereum in the future? Based on current market conditions, the Federal Reserve's softer rhetoric, positive CPI data, and a negative news agenda leading up to March 2023 (when the final damages from the FTX collapse will be assessed and Mt. Gox users will receive their payments), Ethereum, like the rest of the market, is likely to experience local growth until March. However, we are likely to see a market decline around March 10-20, which will be influenced by the Shanghai update. The 8-10 days required to restore capital efficiency for Ethereum stakeholders will put downward pressure on the price. If the overall market is positive and investors are willing to buy, we can anticipate further growth following this period of decline. On the other hand, if the market is more negative and traders are driven by greed, we may see cascading liquidations and a new fall in the market. Write in a comment section your opinion whether it will be a further growth or a new fall in the market and also share with us please your thoughts about our ideas. We are a fast-growing derivative exchange and we would like to share our ideas and provide society with a high-quality information to read and to talk about. So that's why we need feedback from you. Check our previous ideas and thanks for your time!
by Samura0x
6
KAVA Analysis and growth potential ( Fundamental + Technical )Hi friends. Lets take a look at this incredible Altcoin and the coming upgrade KAVA 11 ! KAVA is a safe and scalable Layer 1 network and ecosystem built with the Cosmos SDK. Kava Network announced on Twitter that Kava Liquid Staking would begin on September 8th with Kava 11. It aims to help mainstream people see the value of DeFi by offering a trustworthy home for best-in-class DeFi services that can grow to meet global demand. Now... lets take a Technical view: Like you can see in my chart we are in an important support zone. and the price is moving in an ascending channel.we are in the bottom of this channel;' also we are safe on the 50% retracement of the past impulsive wave and the price Bounce from this level i think. if the price Bounce from this level it can reach 2.30 or 2.40 targets; however you should set your stoploss in below of this level and two recent bottoms (1.36 level) the next target is 38.2% of recent correction that landed around 200MA (2.80 level) Hope you have good trades. dont forget to control your risk.
Long
by TraderAmin-KZ
Fixed and Basic Income During Recessionary TimesThe talk of economists these days seem to be "Cash is King" (esp USD) vs "Cash is Trash". While it's true that a lot of people are liquidating their assets now in favor of dollars, given that our economies are interconnected more now than ever before, this might only last for a very short period of time. While the market is likely to go into panic mode soon (the top-earners are finally getting a *tiny* taste of what people below them have been going through for years) it might help to take a step back and look at the bigger picture since most of the problems with the economy right now are existential, not technical. Sort of a throwback to my #YangGang days with Andrew Yang, but UBI would have been pretty nice to have right about now. Yes, UBI does help alleviate poverty, but it also helps stabilize economies and labor markets during difficult transitions as well - that's what it was designed to do originally, and it is a brilliant idea that is literally good for *everyone*. As stock/asset prices start to plummet, everyone is talking about moving their money to "fixed-income" sources now, to help stop the "bleeding". One of the silver linings of the recession is that there seems to be higher demand for labor, which could potentially increase wages and stabilize the economy that way - but people do need time to adjust and learn new skills to find new work. UBI does both in a simple and elegant way. One of the big criticisms of UBI was that it would cause inflation since it would bring up the costs of everything. It's ironic to see how inflation became the talk of the town now despite the opposition coming from both sides of the political spectrum. Purchasing power is relative - the way to look at UBI from a budgeting standpoint is that you're dedicating a % of your total funds toward stabilizing the economy, which - again - should be good for everyone. Hindsight is 20/20 and unfortunately we're now forced to work with what we did (and didn't) do thus far. Many economists - including major ones - have been eyeing cryptocurrencies as a potential "safe haven" during the market crash that's likely to continue well into 2023-24. How likely is it for people to turn to crypto during trying times? Staking rewards are currently outperforming bank interest rates and may become more appealing over time, while crypto projects based around the concept of UBI may start to gain favor as the top-earners realize that these models are in their own interest, too. (It's a big *if*, but UBI-tokens might be the thing that ETH needs to revive its lackluster performance post-merge, imho.) Most investors are running towards cash for safety now but if that fails too, there will be no options left. That's when crypto may finally see its day - time will tell. www.theguardian.com
ULong
by RyanTanaka
ETH Merge - Risk on Market, the Role of Derivatives and ETH PoWDespite the successful ETH merge, the positioning of traders has been fairly one-way since then. Since September 15, ETH has underperformed BTC by 12.43%. This rally to the downside can’t only be attributed to the adverse macro conditions. The Merge is and has been an unequivocally bullish and risky event for Ethereum. If the merge had failed, it would have been catastrophic for the ETH price and the crypto ecosystem in general. Normally, a headline like the Merge would have driven the Market completely risk-on, however, risk was already on. On August 23 ETH/BTC was trading at 0.075 and topped 0.0856 (+14%) on September 7. At the merge snapshot, ETH/BTC was trading at 0.08099 (+7.9%). At the time of writing, its trading at 0.0688 (-12.43%). Interestingly enough, Delta-one traders were trying to get the most out of this event and in this case, they bet on the ETH Proof of Work coin airdrop, in the case that there was a Hard Fork of the Ethereum Blockchain. Derivatives traders entered long positions on spot ETH, and hedged the market exposure via Futures. In normal market conditions, the Basis spread and the funding spread between ETH and BTC tends to zero. While a positive (negative) spread is typically a signal of bullish (bearish) market. As the possibility of having an ETH PoW token materialized, the funding spread between the two pairs became wider and wider, and reached -394.2% annualized in the hour prior the merge. Hedging 1 ETH via a Perpetual Future on FTX for the 24h prior the merge costed $12.18 (or 0.7585% ETH). In the 4 hours following the creation of the ETH PoW market on FTX, the coin was trading at an average of $22.98, that is 88.73% profit excluding fees. FTX was one of the first exchanges to both credit the airdrop and to support trading of ETH PoW. All the market participants who had their Ethereum outside FTX did not receive the token at that time, nor had the possibility to sell it on margin and cover the position at a later date. Indeed, since the airdrop, ETH PoW flow has been skewed to the sell side and it is now trading at $6.167. Now I expect that Basis and Funding spread will find a new equilibrium that will be close to the ETH PoS staking rewards, thus a minus 4-7% annualized spread between the two pairs is reasonable. For ETH PoW I don’t see a long future as most of the Developers, Protocols and Community are not supporting it anymore. Happy Trading! Matteo Bottacini and the Crypto Finance Trading Desk
by mbottacini
The Proof-of-Stake Era is Here. Can ETH Survive the Winter?After Ethereum's "merge" this week, the crypto market continues to sag as a whole, unimpressed. One pattern we see emerging is that coins that have been proof-of-stake since the very beginning (especially ATOM and ALGO this week) have been performing very well relative to the rest of the market. (Coins to keep an eye on in the near future: XTZ, ADA, TRON, MATIC, etc.) As we head further into the recession we're going to start to see some of these patterns get more aggressive. The reason why this is happening should be pretty obvious at this point: people's attentions are switching over to proof-of-stake, and the coins that offer competitive staking rewards (aka interest rates) are starting to attract new customers. Flipping NFTs is too confusing to most people but most people can tell when one rate is higher than another. (Especially since most banks are still stuck in 0-interest rate savings mode at the moment.) The crypto community has largely been down on Ethereum lately as the realization that they've fallen behind the curve starts to settle in. But they're certainly not out of the race yet - the roadmap to make ETH competitive in the proof-of-stake race is pretty clear: 1) Make staking liquid - the fact that it's locked up for an indefinite period of time is pretty ridiculous, possibly illegal. (Probably in their own interest to do so quickly before it turns into a lawsuit, tbh.) As it stands now ETH's staking rewards are too cumbersome and not competitive enough for people to consider. 2) Adopting on-chain governance would make skeptics feel at ease and would quell some of the criticisms coming from the Bitcoin maxis too. The real problem is transparency, not centralization. 3) Fix the issues with scaling to bring gas fees down, finally. They can probably consult people from other chains who have already figured it out. (If they can get over themselves, that is, lol.) They definitely have the resources to do so - that was never in question. Whether they're actually gonna do it, though, that's another story. I didn't exit completely but as a disclaimer I did sell off a pretty big portion of my ETH holdings this year because of concerns over its long-term prospects. Ethereum may be well on its way to becoming Bitcoin 2.0, given that it's now become a deflationary asset. If you're an ETH holder you'll probably be OK since they'll probably continue to burn their supply to make sure that the price doesn't go down too much. Silicon Valley is known for their appeasement of the investor class and we're likely to see the same pattern play out again. But keep in mind that each coin burned just makes it harder for new people to come in - what they've done is basically put an expiration date on their own project since they're actively restricting the platform's growth now. (Crypto NIMBYism, as I like to call it.) Coin supply is a controversial topic in the industry but can be understood in a fairly straight-forward way: The higher the supply, the better it is for newcomers; the lower the supply, the better it is for existing holders. Maxis will repeat whatever marketing slogans they were fed but at the end of the day, it's about who's back you're willing to scratch. Getting returns on your investment requires you to see things as they are and read between the lines of what's being said - are they using that wealth to make genuine improvements on the protocol itself, or are they just hoarding it and promoting the scarcity model behind your backs? More coin supply to attract new talent/investors? Sure, good idea in theory. Just not here - "Not In My Back Yard". NIMBYism is a thing you see in the real-estate markets, and we start to see its ugly head rear in the crypto space, too. I do owe a lot to ETH - it stabilized my finances, paid off my student loans, and gave me the time to do the things I wanted to do, rather than had to do. But it's probably time for me to move on - I'm here for the dream, not just the money. 🔥
Long
by RyanTanaka
The Market Has Spoken - "Liquid Staking" is the FutureFollowing this week's inflation report and the much-anticipated "The Merge" on Ethereum's ecosystem, the crypto markets took a massive dip - in particular, ETH itself. This is the classic "buy the rumor, sell the news" pattern as the hype towards the merge date neared, then the massive-selloff right after. But not all coins were in the red - COSMOS (ATOM) did very well this week, and showed a very strong decoupling pattern from the rest of the pack. Why? Because they currently offer the best staking rewards (15%+!) out there, beating both the banks and its competitors by a very large margin. If you wanted to sell ETH but stay in crypto, it was the most obvious option to go with, at least on paper. ETH2 has the problem of being illiquid (there is no set date for when you can withdraw your funds), as well as expensive - which will likely lead to the coin struggling over the long-term as coins that offer low-fee liquid staking (ADA, XTZ, DOT, MATIC, AVAX, etc.) has had a much longer time. ETH2 "final form" isn't likely to happen any time soon (some say as long as 6 years) so they are currently behind the curve of industry standards, not ahead. Whether they can catch up to the rest is yet to be seen. Now that ETH has de-coupled itself from proof-of-work, we're going to start to see public attention towards different aspects of Web3 and DeFi - and staking rewards is likely to be the talk of the town, especially as we go further into the recession.
Long
by RyanTanaka
Merge to the Splurge - Inflation and Inflated ExpectationsLots of things happening in finance today. US inflation is at 8.3% (higher than expected with no end in sight), which tanked both crypto and the stock market at the same time. Goes to show that there's still a lot of overlap between the two right now. Also coming up is the much anticipated "merge" on Ethereum (going to happen some time this week, according to Vitalik), which will finally migrate their chain from proof-of-work over to proof-of-stake. As interest rates start to get hiked further, crypto coins will likely need some sort of staking mechanism to survive - or at least offer some kind of utility beyond marketing hype. Some things to keep in mind: - The "merge" is not likely to affect ETH's gas prices, since that comes later during the "sharding" phase. Until then, most dApps created on the ETH ecosystem will still largely sit idle/abandoned. - During recessions, cash is king - and the coins that resemble that the most (projects that are used as currency, rather than speculation) is likely to perform better overall. That means coins that leaned into the "store-of-value" idea (and have oversaturated mind-share) may be in big trouble - which includes Bitcoin, as well. - Many Web3 "fintech" startups (including some very big ones) operated under the assumption that BTC/ETH was going to go up forever - some already made headlines this year as they imploded on itself after the downturn, but we're likely to see more of them pop up as we get further into the winter as a whole. - Coins that offer substantial staking rewards (Tezos, Algorand, Cosmos, Solana, TRON, etc.) are outperforming the banks right now by a very large margin, and may be a good position to grow as the banks continue to drag their feet. Holders of coins that were reliant on the "perpetual growth" model in order to offer staking rewards will likely see their rates shrink over time. (If they're desperate enough, it may even go negative. 😨) - ETH2 coins are, by default, "locked up" for an indeterminate length of time - lots of people signed up to be validators during the December launch in 21' but the legality of it will likely be in question. As the market dips further, many will want to liquidate and there will be more pressure put on the ETH team to do so. (If not, a few class-action suits may be in the pipeline.) - What happens to the miners after the "merge"? Up until now, ETH was by far, the most reliable and profitable coin to mine, but that will go away, overnight. Some competitors are trying to use the opportunity to fracture the ETH community by offering their own places to mine, but longer-term, PoW's real value lies in their ability to allocate their processing power to "useful" mining. (e.g. Gridcoin, Golem, etc.) We may start to see a shift in favor of those types of projects after miners start to do more research on their own. Long story short, the projects that were reliant on perpetual fundraising are likely to be out - replaced by projects that have revenue/profits and greater sustainability. The crypto winter may be brutal for some, but the silver lining is that we may finally get to see a crypto ecosystem that prizes utility and sustainability over short-term hype. It's going to be a crazy time either way - good luck, folks.
Long
by RyanTanaka
During Recessions, Cash is King - Where Does Crypto Fit In?During recessionary economies, the money-classes that take the biggest hits are usually assets - stocks, real-estate, speculative assets, which, yes, also includes NFTs. As they say, during tough times, "cash is king". As we get deeper into it, we're going to see a big shift in the way people use and talk about their money. For crypto investors out there (or anyone in general who wants to prepare themselves for the new era that's about to unfold) the things to keep in mind are: - Asset ownership tends to skew upwards in the income bracket, which means that there will be lots of doom-and-gloom narratives coming from the top. For most people a "market crash" will be a good thing (better than getting priced out by inflation, anyway), and the result will be that the top earners will have slightly less money in relation to the bottom, evening the "playing field" so to speak. Take everything you read with a grain of salt, either way. - Cryptocurrencies are in an interesting position where they're able to function both as assets AND cash - even legally, the definition of where the technology lies in regards to the two is still unclear. But we see that some coins tend to "lean" towards one end of the spectrum more than the other. Bitcoin is largely classified as an asset ("store-of-value"), Ethereum is the former trying to move towards the latter (the "merge", "sharding"), though the fate of the latter is still unclear. Dogecoin, on the other hand, may actually see a bump in interest due to the fact that it's currently treated more as cash than an asset. (The chain also has plans on moving towards Proof-of-Stake, though the timeline is still unclear.) If cash is king, the loveable Shiba Inu mascot may, in fact, be the one to dethrone King Bitcoin sitting at the top. - The strategy for most investors during recessionary times will switch from "beating" inflation to "keeping up" with inflation - inflation will naturally drop as interest rates rise, eventually reaching an equilibrium. This presents an opportunity for coins that offer reliable staking rewards since they're currently beating the banks by a very large margin right now. (Some banks are still stuck at 0, for the record.) The average person is likely to benefit from this transition in the long run in the form of cheaper goods. (Especially for essentials, which are obviously out of control right now.) - The 0 interest rate decade-long experiment in the US economy is about to come to an end, having peaked during the COVID era where money-printing and cheap loans became at an all-time-high. (Some would describe it as the "apocalypse economy", but that's for another discussion altogether.) Many "Web3" startups of last year were part of that cash grab, and will likely run out of runway in 2023-24. (If you're having second thoughts about the "investments" you made last year, the time to get out would probably be now, in other words.) - As interest rates rise, it will get exponentially harder to raise money, even for Web3 projects. CEOs and founders will be chosen for their ability to generate revenue and turn a profit, rather than their marketing and fundraising skills. (The current crop of "thought leaders" we see in public today are a result of the low-interest "casino economy" we had over this past decade.) We're likely going to see a dramatic shift in the way people talk about startups in general, cryptocurrency projects included. - Higher interest rates will encourage people to save rather than spend, which will also change the focus of the types of products and services that companies and startups start to offer to the general public. The economy having been in overconsumption mode for so long, this will be a big adjustment for most people out there. -- Long story short, there will still be ways to "come out ahead" even during recessions, but the benefits will be more complex than seeing the numbers in your bank account simply going up. It's more that you're losing less money relative to everything else, which, in turn, increases your purchasing power overall. (If you're making the same money but rent gets cut in half, for example, you're still "winning".) I still do believe that in the long run the recession will be a good thing for most people, and that the economy will come out stronger after the dust eventually settles. The path to getting there, though, will be a rough one no matter how you put it. Good luck folks. 🤞
Editors' picks
BITTREX:DOGEUSDLong
by RyanTanaka
11
Another Dip in the Market. What's the Silver Lining for Crypto?With inflation's end nowhere near in sight, the Federal Reserve this week announced more "tough times" ahead - indicating that they're likely to do more interest hikes for the rest of 2022. Inflation rates in the US right now sits around %8-10 - but since CPI reports exclude food and energy prices by design, the "real" inflation rate is likely a lot higher. Most people see the prices of food and gas rising in their own lives and are probably feeling more than what the "official" numbers say, at least. A lot have been said about what this means for the economy as a whole, but if you're a crypto investor the things to recognize are: - This is the first time in history that the Federal Reserve has increased interest rates during a recession - normally you lower rates as the economy dips to give it a boost, but the Feds have no room to do that since the rate was already at 0 for most of the last decade. The problem is much more severe than it is typically reported, especially in the wake of the COVID lockdown procedures that we have yet to experience the full effects of, yet. Some are predicting a market correction as high as 50-60% in stocks, 30-40% in real-estate. We don't know if it's going to go that high but there's no reason to think that it's going to improve, at this point. ("Brace for impact", as many have been warning for a while - it's finally coming.) - Increases in interest rates generally means borrowing is more expensive, which is likely going to slow down startup investments in the Web3 space, too. Crypto projects, VC/VC firms, and "thought leaders" in the space as we know now are likely to disappear in the next few years as access to cheap money dries out. - Crypto projects that have been heavily reliant on marketing to keep their prices up will likely tank with the fiat markets, because of its increased overlap with the mainstream economy. Even Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, etc. may be in trouble since their notoriety may turn sour when the fiat markets tumbles further. (Being well-known is not an asset in this case, in other words.) - Currently the most popular crypto coins have no means of reacting to inflation rates (except for Ethereum, which will begin its staking services after the "merge" in September, in theory), so they may struggle to justify convincing people to HODL while the banks start to offer higher interest rates for savings accounts overall. Staking coins like Tezos , Algorand (ALGO), Cosmos(ATOM), are in better position to take advantage of these trends since they are, at least for now, outperforming the banks by a very large margin. - When the economy as a whole starts to get unstable the common wisdom is that money will flow into the USD. We don't know if that will happen this time - especially with the USD's credit rating outlooks having deemed "negative" by international agencies since 2013. We know that generally speaking, interest in crypto assets tends to increase in countries where its fiat currencies are less stable - but that often requires a breaking point in which the population loses faith in the banking system as a whole. Are we at that point, yet? - For crypto prices to stay stable, all it needs is about 1% of existing fiat money to maintain its current price. (The general economy is about a 100x bigger than the crypto economy as a whole right now.) But it's allocation, per coin, is not likely to stay even. Crypto will bottom out with the fiat economies, but only a select few coins are likely to make a comeback during the recovery process. Many crypto investors are banking (literally) on the general public losing faith in the fiat system as the market dips further, which will make crypto investments look more appealing. The most obvious "utility" for crypto right now is staking rewards - which are objectively outperforming the banks right now, but the bear market will also be a period for altcoins working on providing real value to its users to come out ahead. It's going to be a wild ride either way - good luck, folks. 🤞
Editors' picks
BITTREX:DOGEUSDLong
by RyanTanaka
16
ETH's "Merge" Coming Sep 19th - The Good, The Bad, The UglySo if you've been paying attention to crypto stuff for a while, you probably heard that Ethereum's big "merge" is coming on Sep 19th. They've been talking about it for a while but there's now at least a definite date. (And they're pretty good at making deadlines once they commit to a date, to be fair.) The switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake should be an improvement to most things for the most part, but there's a few things people should know: - The coin is set to become a deflationary asset, out-scarcity-tizing (is that a word?) the coin it's trying to beat, Bitcoin. This should, in theory, be good for current ETH/ETH2 holders but even according to the team this is something that'll happen over time, not right away. (I think this argument is a strategic one, personally - more explanations later.) - The merge won't solve ETH's scaling problems - the "sharding" improvements are planned to come later, the earliest mid-2023. The idea was for ETH to "burn" its existing supply in order to keep gas fees down but we don't know if this is going to work in practice. - The merge will effectively put all ETH miners out of a job, and many of them will forced to move over into other chains since mining will no longer be profitable on ETH2 as the "difficulty bomb" sets in. If you've noticed ETC going up a lot recently, keep in mind that that project has already been hacked 3+ times at the protocol level and can't be considered legitimate. (The fact that it somehow stays alive is still bizarre to me tbh.) I've been with ETH since 2014 so I've seen a lot of changes happen within the ecosystem over the years - but the community has definitely changed a lot since the NFT craze of last year - with more money comes more attention, and with that, more noise as well. Since there's not much happening on the chain these days most talks online has become more about beating Bitcoin rather than about product/technical achievements. Mid-term, I think ETH will do well financially since that seems to be its primary focus right now. All those big names that got in earlier this year probably are gonna do whatever it takes to make that happen. It's the development and cultural sides long-term that has me concerned since I feel like the more the BTC and ETH folks argue with each other they more they start to sound alike. I made a big leap from ETH to Tezos this year, after doing a lot of research on my end. Folks probably remember me shilling for Ethereum for a long time so the decision wasn't easy, but I felt it was necessary, at least for the things I'm interested in. - Tezos has been proof-of-stake since the very beginning of its launch and it has had time to refine its processes. Technologically, the Tezos stacks is far superior right now and ETH is going to have trouble keeping up, imo.) - The high gas fees basically made a lot of apps built on top of ETH useless and many devs/artists have already fled the scene. I'm skeptical if they're going to come back, even if they manage to fix the issues on the back end. Loss of trust doesn't come back easy. XTZ saw a big leap in chain activity last month while most other chains were still on the decline. - I think that the decision to not give ETH2 stakers a definite date of when they can withdraw their funds (probably the most annoying thing about the project right now especially since you literally can't do anything with ETH2 tokens atm) is probably unhealthy. This holding pattern allows for the project to manipulate economic outcomes artificially (acting as a quasi-government) at the cost of market legibility - which could make the asset more unpredictable long-term. - ETH still doesn't have on-chain governance and as far as I'm aware, has no plans to. You're basically trusting that the projects on top of it are doing things in good faith. Tezos, on the other hand, has voting and governance mechanisms baked in. (This is probably the biggest divergence between the two projects right now, imo.) - With Tezos I can get reliable staking rewards without having to have it locked up for an indefinite period of time, which seems like a much more reasonable deal to me, honestly. And I can actually use the coins for buying things I got caught up in things too, trust me - but as the world heads into a global recession (possibly a depression), everyone's probably going to have to tighten up what and where their money is going. The most obvious thing right now is interest rates - which proof-of-stake coins are well-positioned to take advantage of since the banks are still dragging their feet in regards to what it's offering to people in savings. Bitcoin is probably screwed, ETH is a (?), Tezos and other high-quality chains will probably do well. That's my hunch, anyway. I don't expect everyone to agree, but this is what my gut is telling me right now.
Long
by RyanTanaka
Bear Market = Altcoin Season? BTC and ETH Losing Ground to AltsBoth stocks and crypto markets have been down in most of 2022 (largely due to inflation, rising interest rates, and talks of an upcoming global recession), but in the last month we've seen a few interesting patterns emerge: - Proof-of-Storage coins, particularly Chia Coin (XCH) and STORJ (STORJ) have seen very favorable gains. - The two major crypto coins, Bitcoin and Ethereum, has actually been performing worse than the majority of "altcoins" out there - a sign that crypto investors are reallocating their portfolios towards alts. - Weekends are usually when crypto investors typically make their move - and we see that coins that offer staking rewards (interest rates start to look more favorable during recessionary periods) have been gaining ground. (XTZ +4.5%, ATOM +4.5%, MATIC +3%) This is a PSA but beware of newly minted coins' "staking rewards" because a lot of them are based on the idea of certain assets (BTC, ETH, even fiat) always going up. When that inflow dries up, we're going to see a lot of services and platforms go through a LUNA-style collapse - if you don't DYOR carefully here, you may get caught up in the storm. Many coins that currently offer "staking rewards" have cut a lot of corners to keep up with last year's hype and is living on borrowed time. cobie.substack.com In theory, Layer-2 coins built on top of the EVM network operate independently of ETH's price, but we don't actually know all the details of what goes on behind the scenes - some of them may collapse just as well if their model has been reliant on speculative gains on ETH itself. (Something that the project teams will never admit to, even if true.) Time will tell whether it turns out this way or not, of if the Merge in August will stabilize or destabilize these economies as a whole. A lot of uncertainty in the big-name coins right now, either way - meanwhile, altcoins have been gradually chipping away at their lead.
Long
by RyanTanaka
2022 - Not the Recession We Want, but the Recession We NeedIn response to the Federal Reserve increasing interest rates yet again, the markets - both in stocks and crypto (and housing soon to come) - have been dropping pretty hard lately. For crypto investors out there: this is the sound of mainstream money from the general public leaving the space - they came for the party, then left after the party was over. The craze that we saw in 20’-21’ was really the result of NFT projects targeting people - largely cooped up indoors due to the pandemic - with a hype-based marketing strategy that seemingly resonated very strongly. Out of all the NFT projects that could have reached #1, it was the Bored Apes Yacht Club: it doesn’t take an art expert (although I do like to fancy myself as one at times) to see what BAYC’s success “means” - it’s obviously targeted at people who’s primary ethos is boredom…and exclusivity. In a way, BAYC is the perfect sign of the times - people bored of the lockdown, the rise of digital marketing and remote work, our reliance on artificial scarcity to determine “value”, and Web2 marketing/hype and investing practices all rolled into one. There’s a reason why even the Ethereum team (most visible Vitalik) renounced BAYC as something that ETH “wasn’t intended” to do. Adjective-Animal JPGs basically missed the point of why Web3 was created from the very beginning. Now that the Feds are tightening up their money supply (finally, after having printed endless amounts of it during the last few years) the “casino” market is about to come to an end. But just because the market is in a downturn doesn’t automatically mean that everything will be bad…there are lots of opportunities still there; they just look different from what we’re used to seeing up until now. For some of us out there, we’ve been waiting for this moment for a very long time. If you might have been thinking about changing or trying new things out in your life, now is probably the best time to do it because in a few months the world as we know it will probably get flipped on its head and most things will become unrecognizable anyway. During recessions people’s priorities tend to shift away from speculative assets and into savings; short-term investments into long-term; people shopping for interest rates on savings rather than loan accounts; and so on. Those who adapt will do well - but it will require a shift in mindset that may feel strange and unfamiliar. People say that “everyone” suffers during a recession but I tend to disagree - in any given market there are always winners and losers; money is game of how the idea of “value” compares itself to the price of goods around us. It is always relative to each other, in other words - and there are always ways to get ahead if you’re willing to look at the details close enough. - The Market Itself is a Bubble One thing to keep in mind that 80%+ of people don't own any stocks/crypto, so all the panic, hype, and emotional reactions you see in the media/social media is already a bubble of its own. Most people only see the prices of the things that they interact with every day - thing most people are seeing right now is that they see that inflation is cutting into their ability to survive day to day - and that something needs to be done. Until crypto products address these sorts of “bigger issues” of the public directly, it will always follow the general markets rather than setting the tone. The reality is that most people in living in United States were already used to massive inflation - the costs of living was already on the rise since 12’ onward (especially in housing, education, and healthcare - typically the 3 biggest expenses for the average person out there) and people were already getting squeezed out every year anyway. In the upcoming months there will be a lot of people with lots of money complaining about how “hard” things are for them, but I don’t expect there will be any sympathy for them - in fact, they will probably be the target for the next ridicule cycle if anything, really. What that means is that the economy was already hell for most people during the "good times" - inflation was already well out of control but we simply failed to acknowledge it. On a personal level, I lost more friends (especially artists) than I care to talk about: many were forced to move away from the places they loved because the costs of simply existing in certain areas became untenable. A lot of people I knew gave up on having kids, gave up on their dreams, went back living with their parents - worse case, some of them literally ended up on the streets simply because they were unable to pay their rent. People who have known me long enough know that prior to getting into crypto I was heavily involved with housing politics through the YIMBY movement - though this downturn is hurting my portfolio too, it's hard for me to think that a market crash would be a bad thing long-term, because not only would it would lessen the pearl-clutching incentives/behaviors of NIMBYs, it should also bring down costs of everything as a whole. And that is good for everybody, not just the few who happen to be lucky enough to get their hands on a certain type of ERCs. So while it may be unpleasant to see the numbers in your accounts go down, this is the correction that many have been waiting for - the correction that we need. Once the housing market stops going up, there’s less reason (and ability) for NIMBYs to defend their imaginary gains against the tides of supply and demand - and in the long run, the market should equalize itself to where it should be. What Web3 needs more of is people with a mindset of abundance rather than of scarcity - and this will become more important as the crypto ecosystem starts to mature. Web3 is not only a movement of its own, but it’s also a repudiation of the bad habits of the Wall Street/Web2 model - which has, over time, become a ponzi scheme of its own. Low interest loans allowed startups, politicians, and scammers to “fundraise” their way out of trouble: No money to pay for things we need? No problem - just print more! Company not profitable? No problem - just raise your Series Z to keep it going just a little bit longer! Ponzi schemes do actually “work” on some level, after all - as long as the market keeps on going up.As we’ve seen with what happened with LUNA/3AC - which was entirely backed on the fantasy of Bitcoin going up forever and forever - there’s going to be a backlash against the stock market too, so that’s something to keep an eye out for. How did Bernie Madoff get away with what he did for over 20 years? The market was always going up. Now that the tide is pulling, we’ll get to see who was swimming naked underneath this whole time. - It’s Time for the King (Bitcoin) to Serve its People Bitcoin is obviously the first of its kind and currently the market leader in the crypto space as we speak - but for how long? While Ethereum is moving towards proof-of-stake as its primary economic engine (taking most of its tokens along with it), Bitcoin leaned hard into the proof-of-work + scarcity model in the last few years and never looked back. Given that the store-of-value idea is not unique to any coin - and that the only “value” Bitcoin currently provides is potential speculative gains (which are on its way out as staking rewards start to look more appealing during a recession) and a strange retro-nostalgia aesthetic for the pre-08’ eras (which will gradually fade over time), it’s hard to see it surviving for the long term. More broadly speaking, “it was there first” is exactly the type of NIMBY argument that the market will “correct” in the upcoming recession, taking down a multitude of asset classes that have been relying on that mentality up until this point. Ethereum is attempting to escape that fate through their “merge” (we’ll see if they’re successful in doing that this summer), but Bitcoin has basically signed the pact to go down with the ship. In a few months, it could potentially be the only proof-of-work system left on the charts, quite literally. I’ve always found it odd that a lot of Bitcoin fans aren’t too shy about calling their coin of choice “King” - which is actually a fairly new phenomenon that came during the 16’-18’ run, not before. (The dev community was much purer back then.) This phrase clashes directly with their supposed support for decentralization and democratization of money - the cognitive dissonance there is massive, to say the least. (Since there is no on-chain governance in BTC systems a small group of miners usually end up controlling everything on the protocol level behind closed doors, btw.) There’s something very disturbing about the glint you see in their eyes when they claim that Bitcoin holders (not anyone else, obviously) will become the most “powerful” people in the world in a few years - I don’t think anyone outside of that bubble really believes that - especially now. This is the year 2022 and we don’t really have the time to idolize or fantasize the absolute powers of monarchy, even in imaginary forms. Web3 will rely on the transparency of ledgers to establish partnerships of mutual benefit, enforced by precision and reliability of smart contracts - but this requires us to get better at collaboration, rather than moving unilaterally and monopolistically, as Web2 has typically done. As is the case with modern monarchies - the royalty can either choose to step down or be taken down forcibly - one or the other will happen, either way. BTC has largely been left out of the development talks of Web3 systems as a whole, since they refused to fork out their systems to make compatibility improvements - it will eventually get left behind as the world continues to move without them. Luckily this will happen through the simple process of numbers going up and down - rather than having to deal with the fallout of it in the real-world itself. - What’s Coming Next for Web3? The typical pattern that the economy goes through during periods of recession is that they switch from a speculative to a savings mindset - when both the banks and the government spends all their money and have literally nothing left, what do they do? Raise interest rates to incentivize people to put money back in. As far as anyone can tell, the fundamentals of this relationship hasn’t changed and is not likely to have done so during this cycle either. In crypto this means that there will be less demand for NFT lotteries and higher demand for coins that offer staking rewards as a benefit - undoubtedly there will be more and more people searching for the best rates out there as the Fed starts to raise its rates even further in order to keep inflation under control. Interest rates has been at 0% for so long that most people probably forgot that it was a thing - staking was a hard sell even during last year’s run since news of its developments were largely out-blasted by the NFT mania as a whole. But as we start transitioning into a different phase of the economy, people’s priorities are likely to shift. Some coins that are well positioned to take advantage of this shift are Tezos, Algorand, Cardano, NANO, and many of the other coins that have been proof-of-stake from the very beginning. Ethereum and Dogecoin both have plans on switching over to proof-of-stake in the future (ETH supposedly in August, Dogecoin’s date is unknown), but the elephant in the room that nobody is talking about right now is the fact that Bitcoin doesn’t have the means (nor the plans to) transition into anything that is likely to be relevant in the near future. Time will tell, but we’ll see what happens over the course of the next few months, next few years, since what happens is likely to be a crucial turning point for the industry as a whole. Now that mainstream money has left the space, both whales and HODLers are waiting for the right time to reorganize their portfolios and get back in. With fiat money out of the picture, we’re likely to see more independent movement between coins and clear winners and losers emerge within the ecosystem rather than always moving in parallel as it has up until now. What comes out in the aftermath of all of this will be a very different crypto landscape - possibly with the “flippening” happening during the midst of it as well. As one last reminder, your portfolio going down is not necessarily a bad thing, if the goods that you pay for day-to-day gets, on average, cheaper. So I hope people don’t lose sight of the bigger picture and sees the opportunities and benefits that can come out of this transition as a whole. Money is about to get smarter: something that people have been demanding for a very long time. Well, if that’s what you’re looking for it’s coming right for us - hope people can recognize it when it’s here.
GEMINI:XTZUSDLong
by RyanTanaka