On Thursdays we find Moyes on public transport and Mourinho tripping over red tape and slay them. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. We also find samurais with bongs, that fight off wielding bandits. How about boarding a boat with a real bear to accommodate the crypto markets? ‘Nuff said. 🤷🏻♂
You’ll soon start reading news about what happened ten years ago. We’re sure Bitcoin was in the making — as its first web domain was registered on August 18th and the whitepaper was published on the spooky date of October 31st. But, importantly, Lehman Brothers was crumbling — having filed for bankruptcy on September 15th after the US Government announced it wasn’t able to bail it out.
The bank’s demise is considered the main amplifier of the crisis underway. Now, it seems that everyone is trying to find the next catalyst. *Ray Dalio, a famous hedge fund manager, has declared that the US is two years away from the next downturn. However, a fresh paper by *Dean Baker — one of the few economists who foresaw the 2008 crisis — concludes “there are no economy-threatening bubbles on the horizon”.
Why does the above matter? Media and online chatter tends to gravitate towards extremes. In the case of cryptoassets, we’ve seen people calling for Ethereum’s inevitable collapse and conversely, for ether to be more valuablethan bitcoin by the end of 2019. Those who aren’t coping with the selling are buying any scapegoats available — with the latest culprit being BitMEX and its new derivative ether contract.
As Alex Krüger explains, BitMEX has helped to discipline the crypto market as it helps shorters bet against irrational bulls. Meanwhile, despite bitcoin continuing to be trapped in this range, sentiment is improving. Although, if you zoom out it’s clear that selling pressure is increasing since July’s failed break of £6.5k ($8.5k) — as StackinBits shows here. On the bright side, yesterday’s ether sell-out seems to be indicating exhaustion.
▪ The Block analysed Token Data’s numbers and concluded the median and average returns from ICOs since 2014 is very different. Check the full distribution here.
▪ Jeremy Rubin, an advisor to Stellar and author of the viral article about Ethereum’s imminent downfall, just replied to Vitalik Buterin. All arguments here.
▪ Carbon has finally launched its ‘algorithmic, fiat-pegged stablecoin’ on Ethereum. Early access is now available and you can check their 4-page explainer here.
▪ Albert Wenger, partner at USV, a popular VC, launched a podcast on the Internet 3.0. The first episode compares the early days of the internet with today’s crypto-craze.
▪ Tomer Federman, founder of Federman Capital, is tired of a certain Nobel Prize criticisms of blockchain. Here’s “Five things Paul Krugman gets wrong about crypto”.
▪ Nathaniel Whittemore, a cryptoasset analyst, shares his thoughts on this space’s “Complexity Theatre”, a “communications problem” that crowds out “actual complexity”.
Stellar is an open-source, distributed payments infrastructure known for connecting people, payments systems and banks with its leapfrog technology. It’s known for focusing on the developing world. Lumens or better abbreviated to XLM is Stellar’s token, enabling fast transactions for a fraction of a penny.
