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We’re keeping things light with some weekend reads.

But the one thing you absolutely must read this weekend is the presentation from Bitwise to the SEC this past week.

The company shows (clearly and thoroughly) how bitcoin market volumes are overstated by some ~95%. It’s an excellent analysis, and we’ve been getting roughly similar figures in recent weeks of our own team’s work. We’ll be updating many of our feeds in OnChainFx in the coming weeks to prioritize data from the following exchanges, and believe it’s incumbent on those whose volumes seem specious to prove otherwise, and open up their full order books to closer public inspection.

We agree with this slide and support these efforts:

-TBI

📚 Messari’s weekend reads:

• Facebook isn’t going after Bitcoin. It’s going after the dollar - Ted Livingston

• Bitcoin is a cult, fiat is a religion - Kay Kurokawa

• Is nuclear war inevitable? - Graham Allison

• Decentralized finance (DeFi) thematic insights - Delphi Digital

• Arbitraging inefficient markets: building a trading strategy on correlations - Alex Woodard

• The Liquidation Preference Effect - AngelList

• Decentraland Lords - Ryan Youngjoon Yi

Have a good weekend, y’all.

- The Messari Team

P.S. Share. Subscribe. Tweet at Messari for feedback, comments, or questions.

Messari Compression Algorithm

Content and thoughts from around the web as summarized by the Messari team.

🎮 [Analysis] Can a crypto-gaming platform compete with BitMEX? - Aenigma Capital

Arthur Hayes, CEO of BitMEX, calls his exchange's account holders degenerate gamblers, and a new gaming studio wants to compete for those customers. In this report, Aenigma Capital profiles Hxro Games, a crypto startup building a gamified trading platform that offers parimutuel betting with a native utility token. Like BitMEX, but with even less pretense, Hxro Games aims to capitalize on the excitement of crypto price volatility. Aenigma Capital identifies the potential market opportunities that give startups like Hxro Games a chance to compete with BitMEX. (share or read more)

📈 [Analysis] Do Fundamentals Drive Cryptocurrency Prices? - Siddharth Bhambhwani, et al.

The relationship between the fundamental value in a digital asset's supporting protocol is tricky and often lost or dismissed almost entirely amidst in the irrational and bizzare behavior seen in certain sectors of nascent crypto-markets. But this analysis identifies two fundamental indicators that appear to consistently track with a cryptocurrency's price: expended computing power and adoption levels. Based on data for the most prominent digital assets determined by age and value, analysis shows a significant long-run relationship between prices and these two fundamental factors. (share or read more)

Quick Bits (Don't read that, I read it for you)

Choke Points (Exchange News)

• 👀According to The Block, Bakkt has a post-series A valuation of $740 million. The high valuation is raising returns concerns for investors and parent company Intercontinental Exchange has agreed to a capital-refund window with external investors, putting pressure on the yet to launch Bitcoin ($BTC) futures platform. (share or read more)

• 🆕 CoinMarketCap has launched two cryptocurrency benchmarks on Nasdaq, Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, and Börse Stuttgart. The indices will be administrated by Solactive and track the top 200 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. (share or read more)

Startup Signals (ICOs, Cryptos, and Startups)

• 🗳️ Tezos ($XTZ) has completed the first round of voting for two protocol amendment procedures, Athens A and B. Athens A won out with 25,855 community votes, although half of the entire community abstained from voting. Athens A incorporates higher gas limits for increased transaction throughput and decreases roll sizes from 10,000 XTZ to 8,000 XTZ. (share or read more)

• ⛏️ An expected abundance of hydroelectric power is drawing Bitmain into China, where the mining manufacturing firm is expected to place some 200,000 units worth $80 million. Bitmain is talking with farmers in China's southwestern provinces to set up the rigs which could earn about $7.7 million per month in total, according to CoinDesk calculations. (share or read more)

The Powers That Be (Legal/Reg/Policy)

• 👨‍⚖️ Jared Rice, the former CEO of AriseBank, has plead guilty to a federal court following his November arrest by the FBI. Rice was charged with securities violations and wire fraud in his scamming of investors out of $4.2 million with claims of offering full banking and cryptocurrency services. He faces up to 20 years in prison and will be sentenced in July. (share or read more)

Did I miss something?

Send me the link, your twitter handle and your best imitation compression algorithm write up. If I like it, I’ll include your bit next issue (with attribution).

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