Keith Asmussen, Joshua Ebedes, Preston Sledge
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UT Professor Sriram Vishwanath is recruiting for internships/research in Blockchain. There are multiple opportunities, with projects in Healthcare, Layer One protocols, Lattice consensuses, and 5G. Fill out this Google form if you are interested! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeS1CJnO2--sE9rmg4QxaxzVvYCf_sLtqdHGKkHlrRce6_jKw/viewform
Market Summary
Dotted lines represent non-trading days (weekends, holidays, etc.)
Top Stories
Bitcoin FOMO Is Back
After months trading sideways, this week Bitcoin surged past $10,000 and up to the $11,000 level. This price boom is the result of an increase in retail trading as exchanges around the world are reporting increase levels of trading volume. This week turned into a “break-out phase”, Bitcoin investors were eager to catch the upswing from the previous week. Coinbase reported a 3x increase in trading volume just this week, while Binance’s US branch reported an all-time high trading volume on its platform.
3 Reasons Why Ethereum Price Rallied 75% to Hit a 2-Year High at $395
Rally from $220 to $390, Ethereum’s price has increased 75% over the past two weeks. The first attribute of this surge is the increasing total value locked into decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. Second, Ethereum developers are expecting to launch the final testnet of ETH 2.0, a powerful price catalyst as each launch is taking us closer to Ethereum’s final state. The price rally is also helped by altseason traders profit-taking.
Austrian Telecom Giant Enables Bitcoin Payment Support
According to a press release Monday, A1 Telekom subsidiary customers will now be able to make crypto payments thanks to a recent collaboration with crypto payments processor, Salamantex. Aimed at giving their customers more alternatives to conduct payment transactions, the solution will give users the ability to use cryptocurrency at over 2,500 stores in Austria. The collaboration will allow merchants to convert the amount paid in crypto to euros in real-time; requiring no additional crypto knowledge or acceptance of exchange fees that could hinder merchant adoption of the payments solution.
Chart of the Week
This pair of graphs, courtesy of @SmartContractor “Benjamin Blunts”, compares Silver and Ethereum prices. A little over a week ago Benjamin used the comparison of Ethereums and Silvers price changes to predict a continued rise for Ethereum. We can now see that he was correct in his prediction. People are often comparing Bitcoin to Gold so it is exciting to see Etherium compared to Silver.
Top Tweets
@woonomic shares his new model in a 3 part thread. He predicts an impending bull run that had been delayed due to Covid.
@Poloniex states that it will be listing the crypto currency Tendies. Trade Alts to make money to buy Bitcoin with.
@SallyMayweather. Based
@CryptoCharles__ fires shots at Ethereums leadership.
Video of the Week
GPT - 3 vs Human Brain - Lex Friedman
This week's video (like last weeks) is from AI researcher Lex Fridman. Lex has recently started a new series of videos called ‘Short Videos about Interesting Concepts” which I would highly recommend. This week's 3 minute video discusses the future of AI in light of the unveiling of GPT-3. GPT-3 is the third in a line of autocomplete tools developed by OpenAI. Lex compares the 175 billion Parameters GPT-3 utilizes to the 100 trillion synapses in the human brain. He then uses price point to predict when a GPT-3 like tool will operate with the same complexity as the human brain.
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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.