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Blockfolio + Algorand
It’s a good day for the home team.
Earlier today we announced a new addition to our disclosures registry, Algorand. The announcement coincided with the launch of their token sale this morning which raised over $60 million in just a few hours. More on that below.
In addition, as of nine minutes ago, we released an exciting integration with Blockfolio, the industry’s leading crypto portfolio tracking app, which greatly extends the distribution of Messari’s rich cryptoasset profile data.
Messari is, at its foundational level, a public commons for key cryptoasset information. We couldn’t be more excited to work with Blockfolio to provide its users with more seamless, critical information about the industry’s top projects and teams, as it’s one more small, but important incremental step towards an industry driven by common sense and fundamentals.
Blockfolio
Ed and I met for the first time in mid-2018 at Consensus and our annual “crypto data” dinner, which is more fun than it sounds. (Perhaps because we co-host it with another Messari partner, Flipside Crypto.)
Drinks were consumed and good times were had.
When we met again six months later, though, during the depths of crypto winter, the feel was a bit different.
We expressed our mutual admiration for what our teams had accomplished in the bear market. We wanted to work together, but times were tough, so we both got to entrepreneurial second base pretty quickly by answering the only question that mattered at the time: “do you guys, uhh, still have any money?”
“Yes.” “Yes.” “Good.” “Good.”
Sold.
Most anyone who’s been in crypto for any length of time has a Blockfolio account that they obsessively checked in Q4 2017.
They have a beautiful product, a diehard audience, and they’ve been doing right by their users since day 1, actively turning down lucrative (but very shitty for users) ad opportunities in the manic top, and refusing to sell their treasure trove of user data in order to protect their privacy and live by the ethos of the decentralization movement.
We admired the team for that, and shared a number of short and long-term goals.
The most obvious of which: how do we give crypto speculators and key stakeholders better information about the assets they’re invested in?
Blockfolio had been tremendous in helping people track their portfolios, and they continued to push the envelope on how to best help users stay up to date on the key developments associated with their preferred projects via Blockfolio Signal, which we integrated into Messari’s asset pages last month.
Still, we offered a valuable set of additions to their existing data sets: asset overviews, team bios, organizational details, historical private deal terms, asset specific classifications, and more.
That’s why we’ve been feverishly working towards the launch of Blockfolio’s new “profile” pages since early spring.
At first, the top 200 assets on their platform are covered, but our goal is to soon cover 100% of the industry’s coins and tokens.
We encourage you to check out their updated app, and let us know if you have any corrections or suggested additions to these profiles.
It’s a work in progress, but our research team is polishing the entries full-time at this point, and are looking forward to your feedback.
Algorand
MIT Professor and Turing Award winner Sylvio Micali has worked on many core technologies in crypto over his illustrious career.
Things like “Zero-Knowledge Proofs” and “Verifiable Random Functions” have his fingerprints all over them.
His new project, backed by groups like USV, Multicoin, and Pillar VC, uses a pure proof-of-stake consensus algorithm that finalizes blocks in seconds and provides instant finality, while preventing forks.
What differentiates Algorand from many other scalable PoS systems is that it does not reward validators.
This may sound crazy to some, but it instead relies on the game theory that it would be irrational for validators to cheat the system as it devalues their long-term holdings.
The way in which Algorand raised money is also interesting as they did so via a dutch auction. Rather than setting the price for a token and going out to raise money at that valuation, Algorand committed to selling a certain percent of their tokens (0.25%) and let the market decide at each auction.
In this case, the initial bidding started at $10. While you can commit to paying that price, you only end up paying the final price that the last token goes for, which was…gasp…$2.40 in the first auction.
Though Algorand also includes a unique feature in its sales: the foundation will buy tokens back at 90% of the value paid. This caps investors downside, creating a put option for investors (and a new headache for us as we think about “true” market cap).
To put into perspective the ambition of the project, the project’s fully diluted market cap is $24 billion, already putting it just shy of Ethereum.
Of course, this is mainly because of the small float (25 million out of 10 billion tokens) and doesn’t reflect the potential refunds that could be issued from the foundation.
We’re happy to work with the Algorand team to ensure stakeholders have access to better information on this new cryptoeconomic model.
You can stay up to date with all the current details on the project on our asset page, and keep an eye out for future AMA’s with the team!
Of course, you can also check Blockfolio. ;)
-TBI
P.S. Have questions? Want to troll us? Let us know on Twitter.
Messari Compression Algorithm
Content and thoughts from around the web as summarized by the Messari team.
🤔 [Analysis] Thoughts on Libra “Blockchain” - Jameson Lopp (June 2019)
Facebook's Libra shares a lot of commonalities with Ethereum ($ETH) including its problems writes Jameson Lopp in his review of the Libra white paper. Libra is a generic crypto asset protocol with one stablecoin as of now, Libra. Running essentially a proof-of-stake node system, Libra will always have issues of disconnecting from the legacy financial system. Although called a blockchain, the white paper truly describes a series of signed ledger states which still manages to be highly functional. Overall, Libra looks more like Ethereum or XRP ($XRP) than Bitcoin ($BTC). (share or read more)
📉 [Analysis] The $14 million CLAM flash crash - Amy Castor (June 2019)
On May 26th, Circle's Poloniex exchange experienced a flash crash of token Caritas Libertas Aequitas Monetas ($CLAM) to the tune of 1,800 Bitcoin ($BTC) or $14 million. With nothing to repay loans, the exchange decided to socialize losses to all loaners at 16.202% of the principal. In the aftershock, users are wondering not only why such an illiquid coin was trading, but why Poloniex failed to have a stop check in a place like an insurance fund. The coin had even been de-listed before in Nov. 2017. In Amy Castor's view, the CLAM fiasco in context of Poloniex's greater history only adds to a story of buyer beware for the exchange's users. (share or read more)
Quick Bits (Don't read that, I read it for you)
Choke Points (Exchange News)
🛑 In a Twitter announcement on Tuesday morning, Bancor posted that "US citizens, domiciliaries or users from US IPs" will no longer be able to use Bancor's web application. The announcement clarified that users can still hold, access, and transfer tokens though. (share or read more)
Startup Signals (ICOs, Cryptos, and Startups)
💰Proof-of-Stake blockchain platform Algorand closed its first dutch auction after raising $60.4 million. The 25 million allocation of $ALGO tokens sold out over a three and a half hour period pricing each token at $2.40. (share or read more)
📹 Livepeer, a decentralized video encoding platform on the Ethereum, announced an $8 million Series A round lead by Northzone, CoinDesk reports. Currently the company developed by Doug Petkanics and Eric Tang has more than 30 providers of compute power on the platform and more than 100 events have streamed video through Liverpeer. (share or read more)
The Powers That Be (Legal/Reg/Policy)
🏛 Facebook's Calibra has been registered with the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to operate as a money service business (MSB) in all 50 states. Calibra has a digital wallet planned to be compatible with WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. (share or read more)
🔎 Defunct UK crypto scheme Control Finance Limited and director Benjamin Reynolds have received a class action lawsuit from the CTFC over 22,858.822 Bitcoin ($BTC) allegedly laundered by the firm. Some 1,000 individuals lost Bitcoin worth $147 million from May 1st, 2017 till Oct. 31st, 2017. The CTFC alleges that the firm and director committed fraud by deceptive device or contrivance. (share or read more)
Did I miss something?
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