State of the Market #35
2/1/2020 - 2/8/2020
Max Bibeau, Preston Sledge, Matthew Kimmell
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Market Summary
As I write this, Bitcoin just surpassed $10,000 for the first time since September 23rd, 2019. After a huge rally that started on Wednesday, Bitcoin shot up from $9,300 to over $10,000 at the time of writing. The other big winner this week was Bitcoin SV, which saw a jump from $270 on Wednesday to $335 at the time of writing. The rest of the market saw gains as well, with Ethereum standing out with a 7 day change of over 26%.
Top Stories
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce Proposes 3-Year Safe Harbor Period for Crypto Token Sales
An SEC official proposed a crypto-friendly bill that would give token sales some breathing room when dealing with American investors. According to Coindesk, under the proposal, “crypto startups would have a three-year grace period from their first token sale to achieve a level of decentralization sufficient to pass through the agency’s securities evaluations, including the Howey Test, the famous U.S. Supreme Court assessment.” This comes after the SEC deemed Ethereum not a security, citing a sufficient level of decentralization. In other news, the first startup to host an SEC-approved token sale, Blockstack, announced their plans to implement a new consensus mechanism where nodes earn BTC, not STX, the project’s native token.
Lightning Labs funded $10 million in Series A
Lightning Labs, the company behind a popular implementation of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network (LND) received $10 million in a funding round led by Craft Ventures. Along with the investment, the company released their new product called Lightning Loop. According to Lightning Labs CEO Elizabeth Stark, the paid service will help merchants fund their existing payment channels “kind of like a prepaid debit card for a lightning account.” The Lightning Network is a second-layer scaling solution built atop the Bitcoin network where users fund payment channels for speedy transactions with the expectation of settling on the Bitcoin blockchain at a later date. In practice, it works similar to opening a bar tab, ordering drinks throughout the night, and settling the bill with one payment upon leaving. More on Lightning and Loop.
Australia to focus on blockchain potential with new roadmap
The Australian government has confirmed its faith in cryptocurrency through the release of a detailed roadmap that includes 12 steps for the government to accomplish before 2025. The steps include goals relating to education, agriculture, financials, and more. As part of the roadmap, the government looked into 138 seperate businesses that utilize blockchain, analyzing the potential for each to improve security, simplicity, and quality of life in Australia.
Catalonia Is Moving to Achieve Digital Independence Using Blockchain
Catalonia has been fighting for political and financial freedom from Spain for years. Now, the community is turning their focus towards blockchain with hopes that the technology will help them achieve those goals. In an interview with Jordi Puigneró, Minister of Digital Policies and Public Administration, Puigneró revealed that there are many projects in the works, all attempting to “give power to the citizens or empower the citizens in a way in which they can handle better the privacy of their data. It's also good for them to prevent the Big Brother concept. We don't want our citizens to feel like they're living in Big Brother State.”
Chart of the Week
This table, sourced from DappRadar, shows the top 10 most used dapps in the world (on a 24hr timetable). A “dapp,” or decentralized application, is an app that runs on a decentralized, peer-to-peer network as opposed to a centralized, client-server network. Dapps are rising in popularity as blockchain becomes more mainstream, increasing their daily userbase by 118% in 2019. Notice that 5 of the top 10 dapps serve the purpose of gambling. More on dapps.
Tweet of the Week
@jack, CEO of Twitter, releases a Bitcoin emoji to the Twitter community. An avid Bitcoin supporter, Jack Dorsey and his company Square Crypto, recently released a Lightning Development Kit (LDK) to help developers build atop Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. One of us! One of us!
@justinsuntron paid $4.5 million to have lunch with Warren Buffett. Here, Sun shares Buffett’s view on the industry. He takes the classic ‘Blockchain, not Bitcoin’ boomer approach.
Justin Sun, founder of Tron (TRX), attended the Satoshi Roundtable, a private gathering of industry leaders, where he was used by high-profile Bitcoiners to troll Ethereum. Here, Sun can be seen with Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, and Rodolfo Novak, CEO of Coldcard. Novak @nvk tweeted this picture with the caption, “#Ethereum is over. Tron moving to #liquidnetwork on #bitcoin.” Justin Sun: “Buy my shitcoin.”
@sassal0x, an active Etherean, expresses his disgust in Bitcoiners promoting Tron. @fluffypony expresses similar disgust in Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum, promoting Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
@sassal0x challenges Bitcoin’s ability to replace money after @peterktodd challenges Ethereum’s ability to replace financial intermediaries.
@jimmy_wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, is speaking at a Bitcoin SV (BSV) conference, but as a devil’s (angel’s?) advocate. Jimmy said, ‘don’t get it twisted, now.’
@DylanTallchief remixes the song “Take on Me” in Microsoft Excel.
@CarpeNoctom highlights the HODL waves of Bitcoin, a model first conceived by Unchained Capital. Highs in price seem to correspond with red-orange regions (% of recently moved coins) increasing rapidly, while lows in price correspond with blue-green regions (% of coins that haven’t moved in 3-5 years) decreasing rapidly.
Hook ‘em.
@DJEberts highlights the first programming language whose syntax uses Chinese characters.
@cryptonomista shows Joseph Stiglitz, a renowned mainstream economist, praising Venezuela’s economic policies in 2007. As these policies continue to drive Venezuela into an economic apocalypse, Venezuelans have resorted to breaking into zoos to eat the animals in captivity. Meanwhile, we can’t even get an “oops” out of Stiglitz.
Coding in a nutshell. From @nixcraft.
Loading dystopia...
@CryptoHayes, CEO of Bitmex, the biggest crypto derivatives exchange offering up to 100X leverage, clowns the community on Bitmex’s release of their Ripple (XRP) market.
FTX, another crypto derivatives exchange growing in popularity (and offering 101X leverage, lol), launches a TRUMP-2020 market, where users can bet on Trump’s re-election.
Video of the Week
Preethi Kasireddy shares 10 things she wishes she knew before founding TruStory, the debate platform that shut down last week and returned all funds to investors.
Texas Blockchain’s ‘State of the Market’ is a student-led editorial. None of the views expressed by the authors should be taken as the view of the University of Texas at Austin or the Texas Blockchain organization. Furthermore, none of the views expressed should be taken as financial advice in any circumstance.