Key Takeaways from the Weekend Roundup
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- Advisors, if you think your clients aren’t interested in crypto — you’re wrong
- Investors are seeking guidance from experienced advisors because they have made substantial gains in digital assets.
- Solana may be Ethereum’s biggest upcoming competition
- We finally got an infrastructure bill passed…now what
- the YDT Performance on ETH is almost 600%
Weekend ETH Prices |
Weekend BTC Prices |
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ETH Friday at 5pm: $4,485 ETH Weekend Low: $4,353 ETH Weekend High: $4,704 ETH Price as of posting: $4,000 Performance YTD: +542.94% |
BTC Friday at 5pm: $60,918 BTC Weekend Low: $60,242 BTC Weekend High: $65,628 BTC Price as of posting: $60.000 Performance YTD: +121.69% |
Welcome back to the weekend round-up and be sure to read all the way until the end with crypto learning opportunities. This round-up is another special one because we had the chance to reflect on two milestones this week: 1. The launch of our podcast Asset ( r )Evolution, and 2. Our first in-person Digital Asset educational event with Leap Wealth Management, an RIA based in Dallas, TX. We are excited to bring education and awareness of digital assets beyond the headlines and price movements that most don’t get to see.
Asset (r)Evolution Podcast
Blockchain technology is already disrupting traditional industries at a faster rate than any other frontier technology in the past. The speed at which this is all happening is one of the main factors to the revolutionary aspect of this technology. Incumbents who have built their wealth and power over decades and centuries are being forced into evolving sooner than they would like. Change is never easy. Belief systems, habits, and behavior become deeply rooted in every action and interaction. Adopting change is usually a slow process and requires intellectual curiosity and honesty.
Our goal of this podcast is to pique that curiosity and give listeners permission to start the process of evolving. We also want this to be an open invitation for anyone to join us on the learning journey. Blockchain, and the assets that accompany them, are scary when you don’t understand them or have trusted people who can put you on a path of disciplined learning. They become less scary though when you know you have a group of supporters doing it with you. Consider us your digital asset spotter at the digital asset learning gym.
Educational Events
This leads me to our educational events. We call them roundtables because we like to let questions drive the content. Questions are the key to progress. We have been hosting virtual events for a few months now but this past Thursday we partnered with Leap Wealth Management, an RIA based in Dallas, TX, to host an in-person event for them and their clients. Turns out a lot of people are interested in the topic, who would have thought?
What was planned for an hour ended up being two hours. Questions were coming in left and right. From those who are just starting to become aware to those that are knee-deep in NFT’s, we had a wide range of crypto enthusiasts. So, what are a few take-aways from the event?
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- Clients are more comfortable asking questions in person than online. One of the reasons why in-person events are so effective for distributing information is because you are protected physically from distraction. You give up the scalability of virtual events for the ability to connect deeper with a smaller crowd. Your clients have questions and it’s important for you to give them the space to ask them.
- Clients have been investing for some time; you just don’t know it. We also learned that clients were more willing to be vulnerable with what they have been doing in digital assets when with a small group who were all interested in learning more about the space. Clients are hesitant to bring up crypto or digital assets to their advisors because they are unsure of how their advisors are going to react. Clients opened up to us (the Arbor Digital team) openly and freely about their deep dives into crypto. You may be thinking to yourself, “Yea but not my clients.” And you would be wrong. The onramp for them? Their kids and grandkids. The younger generations are onboarding their parents and grandparents into the space and it’s causing your older clients to start going down the rabbit hole themselves.
- Because they have been investing for some time, they now need your help in protecting their growth. Clients who have been investing and have experienced exponential gains now want to make sure they protect it and don’t lose it all. Even if you don’t believe in crypto, advisors have a duty to help clients build and protect their wealth. Experienced investors understand this and the benefits of great advice that will help them protect the wealth they have built. Don’t write off or dismiss investors who have made serious gains because you think these are lottery tickets and nothing more. It’s your job to take the investor seriously and help them protect what they have built. Applaud them for taking a risk and coming out on the other end and then discuss with them strategies to help protect it.
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In sharing these learnings, we hope you come to an understanding that regardless of your own stance on digital assets, formulating a position and being educated on all things digital assets is important. It’s increasingly becoming important to your clients. You can be the clarity and discipline they are looking for in a space filled with hyped-up headlines focused on price.
Weekend News
SOL, Solana, becomes the #4 crypto asset by market cap. Why? Many see Solana as the most serious competition for Ethereum. A few more items we can point to come from Yashu Gola at Cointelegraph.com, “SOL received additional bullish cues from Solana’s foray into Web 3.0 gaming development via its venture capital arm. Dubbed Solana Ventures, the firm announced Friday that it, alongside FTX and Lightspeed Venture Partners, would invest $100 million into the game studios and technology sector. In doing so, Solana Ventures aims to attract desktop and mobile video game developers to build their projects atop its public blockchain, thereby raising the prospect of higher SOL adoption. The uptrend surfaced as speculators started treating Solana as one of the most serious challengers to Ethereum, the leading smart contracts platform grappling with higher gas fees and network congestion issues. For instance, Solana claims that it could process 50,000–60,000 transactions per second (TPS) for an average transaction fee of $0.00025. In comparison, Ethereum transacts 15–30 TPS, with its median transaction cost ranging between $4 and $21.”
Congress passes $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Bill and there are still legitimate concerns about it in the digital asset industry. Nikhilesh De writes, “The crypto industry was concerned about a tax reporting requirement within the bill that sought to expand the definition of a broker for Internal Revenue Service purposes. The reporting requirement would see all brokers report transactions under the current tax code. Industry proponents worried the definition would be too broad, capturing entities like miners and other parties that don’t facilitate transactions. Another provision included in the bill to amend tax code section 6050I has also stoked fear in the crypto industry. The law, written nearly 40 years ago to apply to in-person cash transactions over $10,000, essentially requires recipients to verify the sender’s personal information and record his or her Social Security number, the nature of the transaction and other information, and report the transaction to the government within 15 days. Unlike other tax code violations, violations of 6050I are a felony, and some lawyers have pointed out that, applied to cryptocurrencies and other digital assets like non-fungible tokens (NFT), it would be nearly impossible to comply with the law.”
Metaverse is all the rage now that Facebook is rebranding to Meta and announcements from traditional companies like Microsoft and Nike committing resources to establishing a presence. To get a handle on the Metaverse and the opportunity beyond what you are reading in those headlines there was a great piece written by Johnny Lyu, CEO of KuCoin, posted on Cointelegraph.com, “From an investment perspective, we can confidently say that this explosion in virtual reality and metaverses is comparable to the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. What we are witnessing now is the next phase of the internet being created, with metaverses potentially set to overtake and replace the web as it currently exists. Bloomberg has estimated that the size of the metaverse market is worth $800 billion. Even though this is in its formative stage, savvy crypto investors can contribute to the growth of metaverses and trade in the tokens of high-growth startups.”
While you may be hearing the word Metaverse for the first time or scratching your head as to what it means, it’s important to know it has existed in some form or fashion for a long time. I grew up and lived in MMORPG’s (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) since I was 9 years old, starting with Everquest. World of Warcaft became a safe haven for me when I was depressed and could barely function in the real world. I still am engaged in some type of virtual world today. Since late last year, it’s been Decentraland and Axie Infinity. For those that struggle with the concept of value in the virtual world, I urge you to think about what the most valuable commodity is in any world… I think most would agree it’s time. Entire generations have built and continue to build the Metaverse and are willing to put in the time, a lot of us already have. With technology advancements and generational wealth accruing the Metaverse is becoming a real reality. I’m most excited about a future in where the Final Fantasy universe lives and breathes.
Learning Opportunities
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Overcoming Settlement and Counterparty Risk in Crypto, hosted by Blockworks
Thursday, November 11, 2021 12:00 PM ET
“The flow of institutional capital into digital assets has exploded in 2021. As the market continues to mature, investors require more sophisticated infrastructure to manage and mitigate risk. This webinar will discuss secure market access and how to address risks facing the institutional investor base.”
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Permissionless: The builders in crypto deserve an experience in line with the industry’s values: open, community-oriented, and heavy on the degen.
May 17th-19th, 2022, Palm Beach Florida
If you are looking to get a sense of everything happening beyond Bitcoin (NFT’s, DeFi, and Metaverse) then this is a great opportunity. Arbor Digital will be there!
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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
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