Tag Archives: Ethereum

Business, Technology

Solana Is the Most Popular Crypto of 2022

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In what’s begun as a tough year for cryptocurrencies, Solana has attracted more investors than any other coin. The high speed network landed $6 million in inflows so far this year.

Larger competitors like Bitcoin and Ethereum have seen outflows in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.

What I find particularly striking is that Solana’s market cap is only a fraction the size of its larger peers. Bitcoin has a total value around $800 billion, and Ethereum nearly $400 billion.

Meanwhile, Solana is worth just $44 billion. Nonetheless, it managed to beat these much larger protocols in attracting investors.

This is a pattern I expect to continue long term. Solana can process tens of thousands of transactions per second for virtually nothing.

Compare that to Ethereum, where completing a single transaction costs about $46!

Would merchants accept a credit card that cost them $46 in transaction fees every time someone used it? Of course not.

Ethereum’s high fees will severely limit its use cases until the fees come down.

Bitcoin looks better at about $2 a transaction. But Solana charges mere fractions of a cent.

A new technology that’s dramatically faster and cheaper will win, regardless of the market. I expect Solana to continue to gain value relative to the older protocols.

At least until a swifter competitor enters the ring!

More on tech:

How Solana Could Wipe Out Visa and MasterCard

A Day in the Life of an Angel Investor

Is Fathom the Future of Blockchain?

Photo: “Solana Beach, CA Neon Sign” by JoeInSouthernCA is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

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Business, Technology

Is Fathom the Future of Blockchain?

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I was blown away when I read how fast Solana can process transactions. But there’s a new kid on the block: Fathom.

Fathom is even faster than Solana on one important metric:

Solana averages 50,000 transactions per second, versus 14 per second on Ethereum. Fantom is not as fast as Solana, but it’s still way ahead of Ethereum; in a test run back in 2018, its blockchain processed 25,000 transactions per second. But Fantom has a pretty solid claim to being the fastest blockchain if you look at time to finality. This is arguably the most important statistic, as that’s the moment when a transaction has been fully validated on the chain. Fantom’s time to finality is about a second, versus 13 seconds on Solana and more than a minute on Ethereum.

To me, the metrics that matter are:

1) How long until my transaction is done?
2) How much does it cost?

Both Solana and Fathom are very cheap to run, and Fathom seems a little faster in finalizing transactions.

Both are light years ahead of Ethereum. I would expect to see Ethereum slowly fade unless there’s a major update to leapfrog the newer protocols.

Fathom is worth about $7 billion today. Could it one day be worth 100 times that, my bar for highly speculative investments?

I think it’s possible. Visa and Mastercard together are worth $830 billion. Add in American Express, and you’re at almost $1 trillion.

And that doesn’t cover banks that charge tons of wire fees. A protocol that could replace these high fees with near-zero ones could be worth $1 trillion or more.

The question is, which blockchain will dominate? I don’t know.

I would favor backing a lot of promising tokens early in the hope that one of them returns 100 or 1000 times one’s initial investment.

This is the same approach I take investing in startups. It can work well when there are numerous small, promising competitors and the likelihood of a winner-take-all outcome.

But buying all those tokens is a lot of work! An ideal investment vehicle would be an ETF that owns all the major coins (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, etc.) and another that owns high speed smaller coins (Fathom, Near, etc.).

The SEC does not allow ETFs to directly hold cryptocurrency. Like so much of what the SEC does, this policy is counterproductive.

It should should approve crypto ETFs so that investors can spread their bets. If the government’s goal is protecting people’s savings, anything that aids diversification is a plus.

I’m excited to see what the future of finance will look like!

We may soon be living in a world where you can send anyone money in seconds for (almost) free. A world in which politicians can’t devalue your savings on a whim.

That’s a future worth building for!

More on tech:

A Day in the Life of an Angel Investor

How Solana Could Wipe Out Visa and MasterCard

This Week in the Venture Bubble

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This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

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Business, Technology

The Hamster Crypto Trader That’s Outperforming Me

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I’ve got a fun one for you today: a German hamster is trading cryptocurrencies. And he’s blowing away the S&P 500:

The livestreamed hamster, named Mr. Goxx, has been independently trading a portfolio of various cryptocurrencies since June 12, and so far its* performance has been impressive. As of Friday, the portfolio was up nearly 24%, according to the @mrgoxx twitter feed that documents daily performance, along with every trade made by the hamster. Mr. Goxx’s performance outpaces bitcoin and the S&P 500 over the same time period.

Here’s a short video of this financial titan at Goxx Capital headquarters:

First, Goxx runs on the “intention wheel” to pick which one of about 30 cryptocurrencies to trade. Once the crypto is chosen, the hamster runs through one of two “decision tunnels” that trigger either a buy or sell trade of the chosen cryptocurrency.

As someone who invests for a living, I’m okay with being outperformed by a rodent. He earned it, and he’s also much cuter.

Whimsical as this example is, we attribute skill to fund managers who have a good run, only to forget them when they underperform. Bill Miller of Legg Mason was lionized for beating the S&P 500 15 years in a row. Shortly thereafter, his fund lost two thirds of its value in the financial crisis and he was out of a job.

I, for one, will be a supporter of Mr. Goxx even if his hot streak runs out.

Follow Mr. Goxx on Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, or Twitch!

Note: I object to the term “it” for this adorable little man!

More on markets:

How Solana Could Wipe Out Visa and MasterCard

China’s Crypto Ban and the Road to Total Control

Where Can We Hide in a Financial Crisis?

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Amazon Business American Express Card

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If you’re approved for this card, you get a $100 Amazon gift card. You also get up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, 2% on restaurants/gas stations/cell phone bills, and 1% everywhere else.

Best of all: No fee!

Fundrise

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

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Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order.

Business, Technology

Bitcoin Is Worth More than the GDP of Switzerland

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Ah, Switzerland. Home of fine chocolate, discreet bankers and pharma giants. It’s one of the richest countries on earth per capita, and home to world-leading companies like Nestle and Novartis.

But this entire nation of nearly 9 million people with a history going back to the year 1300 has a GDP smaller than the total value of bitcoin, which has existed for just 13 years. The IMF pegs Swiss GDP at $824 billion, versus $921 billion for bitcoin.

The total value of all cryptocurrencies is over $2 trillion, comparable to the GDP of Italy, the number 8 economy worldwide.

These stats show just how accepted cryptocurrencies have become. They’ve gone from a fringe technology to a size comparable to the entire economy of major countries.

Will they someday pass the biggest GDP heavyweight, the United States?

Dig into these posts for more on bitcoin:

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Business, Podcasts, Technology

“Everybody Thought I Was Crazy”: How Brian Armstrong Built Coinbase

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“Everybody thought I was crazy.”

That’s Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase. When he started the company in 2012, it was a small and quirky startup. Bitcoin had only been in use for three years and remained relatively obscure.

But now, it’s safe to say not many people think Armstrong is crazy. His company just went public yesterday and its valuation currently sits at $66 billion. Coinbase holds $200 billion in cryptocurrencies, around 11% of all crypto in existence. So how did Armstrong go from lunatic to visionary?

Armstrong had to build interest in his new product. He settled on a cost effective and attention getting marketing tool: send people free money. But not just any money; bitcoin, of course! He sent tiny amounts of the cryptocurrency to countless people. One of them was angel investor Garry Tan, who became one of Coinbase’s first backers. His $300,000 bet turned into $2.4 billion yesterday.

In an interview with Jason Calacanis on This Week in Startups, Armstrong emphasized the importance of entrepreneurs being scrappy and doing whatever it takes to get the job done. His original approach to investors, repeated countless times, paid off in a major way and Coinbase was accepted to Y Combinator, the most prestigious startup accelerator in Silicon Valley. Armstrong’s resourcefulness and persistence definitely inspire me.

To build a major business, Armstrong had to make sure not to run afoul of regulators. Unlike, for example, a social media app, finance is heavily regulated. Armstrong ditched the anonymity most people expect from cryptocurrencies, abiding by “know your customer laws.” In turn, he offered users a much more secure way to store their cryptocurrencies:

The selling proposition here is security—security conspicuously lacking at some of the exchanges with which Coinbase has competed. The Mt. Gox exchange in Japan went bust in 2014 after hackers spirited away coins worth $480 million. Customers of QuadrigaCX, which was one of Canada’s largest exchanges, have been unable to retrieve $150 million in crypto since the founder supposedly died suddenly in December 2018, holding the only set of keys to unlock their money. They now want the body exhumed.

Armstrong wasn’t afraid to reimagine the crypto business in a way that could grow big, and he doggedly pursued anyone who he thought could help him do it. I find his extraordinary career quite instructive.

For more on Coinbase and crytocurrencies, check out these posts:

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Business, Technology

The First Stock Trades On the Blockchain Just Happened

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Credit Suisse and Nomura just did the first stock trades settled via blockchain technology:

This week Credit Suisse cut some US equities trades with the Nomura-owned broker Instinet, using blockchain. This technology has been used before to verify other kinds of transactions. But these trades were a “first” because settlement occurred in hours and not the two days needed with America’s Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, the industry-owned utility that normally settles stock trades.

This long settlement period is inefficient and costly:

“This is an incredibly inefficient way to operate,” Charles Cascarilla, Paxos’s chief executive tells me, pointing out that $15bn to $30bn of industry capital and twice as much liquidity are tied up in DTCC systems.

The two day settlement period was the key factor behind Robinhood stopping buy orders for GameStop shares earlier this year. The price had become so volatile that it could move against Robinhood a great deal in those two days. Given that, brokers insisted Robinhood post a large amount of colatteral. That expense was too great, so instead, Robinhood blocked buy orders for the stock. In a world where trades settled in hours via the blockchain, this would be much less likely.

However, blockchain technology is incredibly energy hungry. If we moved the massive volume of stock trading onto it, I suspect the energy needed might be prohibitive. I think instant, or at the very least faster, trade settlement is likely. But I expect that to happen via more standard computer systems, rather than blockchain technology.

I think instant, or at the very least faster, trade settlement is likely. But I expect that to happen via more standard computer systems, rather than blockchain technology.

For more on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, check out these posts:

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Photo: “Crypto Kitties on Blockchain” by marcoverch is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Business, Technology

Major Financial Firms Start a Bitcoin Lobby

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Fidelity Investments, Square Inc. SQ +1.30% and several other financial firms are forming a new trade group that aims to shape the way bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are regulated.

The Crypto Council for Innovation will lobby policy makers, take up research projects and serve as the burgeoning industry’s voice in championing the economic benefits of digital currencies and related technologies. Crypto investor Paradigm and Coinbase Global Inc., which operates a cryptocurrency exchange, also signed on as initial members of the group.

More here.

These companies are serious financial heavyweights. Fidelity has $10 trillion in assets under management. Square’s market cap is over $100 billion. And Coinbase expects to IPO soon as a valuation of nearly $70 billion.

I suspect these corporate giants are trying avoid the possible banning of bitcoin anonymity that I wrote about here on March 5. A proposed regulation from the last days of the Trump administration could have removed one of bitcoin’s most appealing features, its untraceability.

A major lobbying group, a Fidelity ETF…bitcoin is really becoming institutionalized. Although I don’t trade cryptocurrencies myself, I view this is a significant positive for the technology. Every step towards establishment adoption and away from crippling regulation helps.

For more on bitcoin, check out these posts:

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Photo: Coinbase CEO “Brian Armstrong – Caricature” by DonkeyHotey is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Business

The Stimulus is Headed into Bitcoin

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Even as Bitcoin sits near record highs, a new survey by Mizuho Securities finds that many Americans plan to put their stimulus check into the hot cryptocurrency:

…the Mizuho survey found around 20% of check recipients expected to allocate as much as 20% of their checks to bitcoin and/or stocks, while 13% expected to allocate 20% to 80%, and 2% expected to put 80% or more into the markets.

Bitcoin even outranked stocks, another popular choice:

“Bitcoin is the preferred investment choice among check recipients. It comprises nearly 60% of the incremental spend, which may imply $25 billion of incremental spend on bitcoin from stimulus checks,” wrote Mizuho analysts Dan Dolev and Ryan Coyne, in a Monday note (see chart above). “This represents 2-3% of Bitcoin’s current $1.1 trillion market cap.”

The graph below shows the extent to which bitcoin is favored over stocks as a home for stimulus funds:

This survey was small, so we shouldn’t put too much stock into it, but this could be a major shot in the arm for the cryptocurrency. I also expect a pop in other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Dogecoin, along with meme stocks like GameStop and AMC. But I’d advise my fellow Americans to buy stock/bond index funds instead.

For more on cryptocurrencies, check out these posts:

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Photo: “Bitcoin, bitcoin coin, physical bitcoin, bitcoin photo” by antanacoins is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Business

Who Is the Secret Dogecoin Billionaire?

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Someone owns $2.1 billion worth of dogecoin. And no one knows who it is:

Records show that a person, or entity, owns about 28% of all of the cryptocurrency in circulation—a stake worth about $2.1 billion at current prices. The holder’s identity isn’t known, which is common in the opaque world of digital currencies.

The account could belong to an exchange on which dogecoin is traded, or to the individuals and groups who run the software that keep the digital currency’s network going, researchers say.

There is some speculation that the secret dogecoin billionaire could be the not-so-secret Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, but the evidence is thin:

The address also offers an intriguing “Easter egg” for people trying to decipher the identity of the owner: the account has on multiple occasions received 28.061971 dogecoins. Mr. Musk’s birthday is on June 28, 1971.

Despite his interest in dogecoin, the major holder’s address is unlikely to belong to Mr. Musk, said Elias Ahonen, author of “Blockland.” Anyone can send dogecoin to a publicly listed address, which could explain the amounts linked to Mr. Musk’s birthday.

Having 28% of the currency in the hands of a single, unknown person makes dogecoin very susceptible to wild swings in price. If that holder sells suddenly, it could crash the currency. One has to balance that against a major positive for dogecoin: it uses the same technology as bitcoin but is a tiny fraction of the price.

Any guesses on who it is? Leave them in the comments!

For more on dogecoin and cryptocurrencies, check out these posts:

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Photo: “Doge Meme: Japanische Hunderasse Shiba und Vorbild für den DogeCoin” by marcoverch is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Business, News

How Alex Jones Lost Bitcoin Worth $563 Million

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Ten years ago, when bitcoin was worth only $5 each, cryptocurrency proponent Max Keiser gave conspiracy theorist Alex Jones a laptop. It contained 10,000 bitcoin, which would now be worth over $500 million.

That laptop has gone missing:

Alex Jones, the founder of the right-wing media group Infowars, has revealed that he has lost the laptop containing 10,000 bitcoins given to him by television personality and bitcoin proponent Max Keiser. During the Flagrant 2 show with Andrew Schulz and Akaash Singh on Tuesday, he said that Keiser gave him 10K BTC on a laptop 10 years ago.

This highlights a real problem with cryptocurrencies. Unless you use an application to manage and store your crypto, you can lose the USB or laptop, forget the password, etc. Do that and the money is gone forever.

Better starting looking, Alex!

For more on the latest in cryptocurrencies, check out these posts:

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Photo: “Alex Jones” by seanpanderson is licensed under CC BY 2.0