Weekend ETH Prices
ETH Friday at 5pm: $3,464
ETH Weekend Low: $3,290
ETH Weekend High: $3,528
ETH Price as of posting: $3,051
Performance YTD: +307.52%
Weekend BTC Prices
BTC Friday at 5pm: $47,629
BTC Weekend Low: $47,055
BTC Weekend High: $48,773
BTC Price as of posting: $43,849
Performance YTD: +46.03%
Welcome back to the weekend round-up and be sure to read all the way until the end with learning opportunities! To the casual observer, it would have seemed like this weekend was a bit quieter than normal in digital assets, thankfully for y’all who follow this, I am not a casual observer. In today’s edition of the round-up we will go into:
- Regulatory pressures continue to mount…
- SushiSwap and an intro to DAO’s
- Solana’s growing pains and more on layer-1 platforms
- Evergrande & other stories…
- Learning Opportunity: DeFi the Future of Fixed Income?
Our stance on the regulatory pressures the SEC and individual states are imposing on companies like BlockFi (https://blockfi.com/), Celsius (https://celsius.network/) and Coinbase (https://www.coinbase.com/) is that this is great for the industry. Further regulation into the yield/interest-bearing products these companies are offering will only legitimize and cement the asset class into financial services. However, we are paying very close attention to the ‘how’. How are these companies offering these products and achieving the rates available to consumers? How are these companies being governed? How are they ensuring safety, security, and stability? Time will tell but all indications are that Brian Armstrong, Zac Prince, and Alex Mashinksy are ready for the task to educated regulators and bring more thoughtful action.
One of the major headlines from this weekend was The Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch of the U.S. Homeland Security giving a $1.36 million contract to Coinbase for “business application” and “application development software”, according to the Federal Procurement Data System. Like it or not regulators need Coinbase and other crypto companies if they are to thoughtfully regulate this space due to the sheer amount of data they collect. It’s not just the data either, it’s that crypto companies have the workforce and knowledge to discern that data into meaningful conclusions. This was a major factor in Mastercard’s decision to acquire Ciphertrace (also because they didn’t want to fall behind Visa).
SushiSwap Co-Founder steps down
SuhsiSwap (SUSHI) the 8th largest decentralized exchange with $4.49 billion in locked value saw it’s co-founder and project leader 0xMaki stepped down citing the toll it was taking on his personal life (Disclaimer: Arbor Digital holds a position in SUSHI via the Arbor Digital Compass portfolio). It is important to make advisors aware of this because, 1. Good for 0xMaki for setting boundaries and doing what it takes to stay healthy and his best self, and 2. The nature of decentralization and pseudonymity. SushiSwap is a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) which means there is no central leadership governing the project. Decisions are made and the blockchain rules are enforced from the bottom-up by the community through proposals.
These are different than the companies you know and love today who have executive leadership structures and board’s of directors governing them. Decisions are made from the top-down and the rules are enforced by central authorities. It will be interesting to see if large reverberations are felt across the protocol due to this. In the traditional world this certainly would have.
For more on SushiSwap and how decentralized governance works we implore you to read and study Arca’s (https://www.ar.ca/) report written by Jeff Dorman back in August, 2021.
.png#keepProtocol)
/https%3A%2F%2Fspecials-images.forbesimg.com%2Fimageserve%2F60b534730a2251f7b94c9ae8%2F0x0.jpg)
Solana’s growing pains…
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Solana is definitely espousing this message as earlier this week the Solana network went down for 17 hours due to bots flooding the network during an IDA (initial DEX offering) for a token called Grape on Raydium, a decentralized exchange built atop the Solana network. Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko has tried to curb concerns over network stability by highlighting these are things that happen on any network in its early stages. See below for a detailed report on what happened on Tuesday, Solana’s response, and how Solana is moving forward.
Our stance is that you should expect these types of events (Cardano had its own issues when testing) moving forward and not to overreact to them. We pay close attention to how these events affect the long-term viability of the network and how the network reacts to them, i.e. how quickly are developers able to work on and provide a solution to the issues. It has been an interesting experience following these communities as they evolve via Discord, Telegram, Reddit, and Twitter. These growing pains create opportunities to strengthen the network. It is all about whether or not they actually do.
See below for a great article summarizing the Solana events as well as an in-depth report from The Block research on Layer-1 Platform comparisons.
Other news stories…
Evergrande, a Chinese real estate developer, is likely to garner more media attention in the coming days/weeks so we wanted to put it on your radar. I am still learning more about it so until I have a firm grasp on all of the elements, I will hold off on writing anything about it. Nonetheless, it will be grabbing headlines. See below for a recent episode from NLW on The Breakdown about it though to get started.
Learning Opportunities
Arca Digital assets is hosting a webinar for institutional investors titled “DeFi – The Future of Fixed Income? What institutional investors need to know.” where managing director, Peter Hans, and CIO, Jeff Dorman, will cover the following:
- Variable yields, and how they change based on active levels of participation
- A comparison to senior and subordinated bonds in a capital structure
- Turning all assets on your balance sheet into productive assets
See you there!
Thank you for reading this all the way through. Be sure to tell someone today you care about them!
Stay safe, healthy and happy!
-Marc
Disclosures: https://bit.ly/3aJcBmw
*all pricing data provided by Messari.io
Last week’s round-up:
Powered by Illuminated Advisors