Your daily snapshot from our OnChainFX markets dashboard.
It was a huge week for our subscribers who got a deep dive into true XRP inflation…
thoughts on why halvings aren’t bullish signals…
and a full history of the relationship between Bitfinex and Tether.
Sign up now to access our historical archive of research and get our daily briefs.
Yesterday we announced our participation in the Multicoin Capital Crypto Archives as a launch partner. Along with Binance Research and Circle Research we plan to help grow this incredible collection of resources.
Take a look and if you see anything that is missing submit a pull request and we will get it added.
There have also been some big announcements from participants in the Messari registry over the past week. Among them:
Ocean protocol released a cool Developer's Guide to Uniswap.
Fantom published its last technical update.
LTO game of nodes launched.
Aion published its Q1 financial report.
Melon implemented new features on its monitoring tool.
AirSwap Instant 2.0 is now live.
Want to have your project added? Head over to our registry page and drop us a line.
Ok, we’ve held you long enough. Now on to our weekend reads.
📚 Messari’s weekend reads:
Bitcoin is a demographic mega-trend: Data analysis - Spencer Bogart
How governments could kill Bitcoin - Kyle Torpey
Dalio says something like MMT is coming, whether we like it or not - Ben Holland
The productivity pit: how Slack is ruining work - Rani Molla
Does America still need the nuclear triad? - Kyle Mizokami
Bitcoin - The unseizable asset - Rayne Steinberg
Have a good weekend y’all.
- The Messari Team
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Messari Compression Algorithm
Content and thoughts from around the web as summarized by the Messari team.
🌎 [Analysis] Bitcoin can’t fix Venezuela: I should know - Diana Aguilar
A week removed from fleeing Venezuela, Diana Aguilar says the crypto industry needs to stop using Venezuela as an adoption showcase. Most crypto media reports coming out of Venezuela fail to understand the situation but proceed to announce solutions anyways: a random blockchain or crypto scheme is never going to solve a failed state. The country is hardly crypto ready: tech literacy is low, not to mention a lack of the capital and infrastructure needed to launch what more advanced countries don't have themselves. Adoption of crypto to date is also misrepresented; at best it serves as freelance income but has yet to take on any semblance of mainstream value regardless of transaction volume. Aguilar herself worked for a crypto initiative, Coinbase's GiveCrypto, and witnessed ignorance undercut good intentions time after time. To Aguilar, Venezuela is not a regulatory sandbox, so stop treating it as such. (share or read more)
📚 [Messari Research] Tethered to Risk: A History of Realcoin
Tether, originally called Realcoin, represents either the most important liquid reserve in the crypto ecosystem or the largest systemic threat depending on who you talk to. To date, Tether and Bitfinex have experienced a slew of troubled banking relationships and eventually disclosed that tethers are not fully backed by dollar reserves. The saga has come to a head with a recent action by the New York Attorney General’s office over a missing $850 million in reserves.
Read the full historical analysis of Tether here. (share or read more)
Quick Bits (Don't read that, I read it for you)
Choke Points (Exchange News)
✅ Square recorded $65.5 million in Q1 2019 Bitcoin ($BTC) sales, nearly doubling its Q4 2018 sales sitting at just over $34 million. According to a Reddit posting, revenues may have jumped significantly, but net profit only amounted to $832,000. (share or read more)
🏦 The Dutch central bank, De Nederlandsche Bank, has scrapped four blockchain-based prototypes in the last three years. Dutch central bankers see more limited use-cases for the technology such as cross-border payments, but still maintain hope for future developments. Two lagging issues the bank addressed were high energy consumption and lack of validation after money transfers. (share or read more)
Startup Signals (ICOs, Cryptos, and Startups)
🚀 Facebook's rumored stablecoin will back its new payment network, as reported by the Wall Street Journal and corroborated by The Block. Internally called 'Project Libra,' Facebook's stablecoin will operate a full payment network with the social media giant in talks with MasterCard and Visa, payment processors, and e-merchants. (share or read more)
📅 In a bi-weekly Ethereum ($ETH) developer call, Ethereum Foundation's Justin Drake said the launch of Phase Zero of ETH 2.0 is on track for a June 30th launch. With Phase Zero, Ethereum will migrate to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus system, totally altering validation and mining structures. According to CoinDesk, an in-person Ethereum developers meeting has been scheduled for May 16th in New York City to assist the transition. (share or read more)
The Powers That Be (Legal/Reg/Policy)
👮 The U.S. Attorney's Office has requested detention and issued a flight risk notice for Reginald Fowler, a defendant accused of withholding Crypto Capital's Bitifinex funds. The USAO alleges Fowler was committing bank fraud and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business which carries a mandatory 30-year sentence. A flight risk warning was issued, as the USAO says Fowler has the means to live outside the U.S. indefinitely with over 60 foreign and domestic bank accounts totaling $345 million as of January. In documents procured by The Block, the USAO says it found a document entitled "Master US Workbook" in Fowler's email, which details his financial exchanges back to the beginning of the year. (share or read more)
🐘 Tipsuda Thavaramara, the Thai Securities and Exchange Commission Deputy Secretary, says that a proposed amendment to April's Securities and Exchange Act would allow the issuance of totally digital shares and tokenized securities on depository platforms, according to the Bangkok Post. If adopted, scripless transactions would be available on the primary market as opposed to just the secondary market for all securities. (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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