Messari's Weekly Wrap Up 😎 - Unqualified Opinions
self care, sleep, good content, and new features
Your daily snapshot from our OnChainFX markets dashboard.
Missing the daily dose of crypto? Our paid subscribers got short, sweet debriefs on Veil, Grin, and Lightning Network this week. Join them:
It’s Friday!
We’re keeping things light and teeing up our weekend reads and some new site features.
📚 Messari’s weekend reads:
The Year of Ethereum - Josh Stark, Evan Van Ness, and Daniel Zakrisson
New Ethereum dev tools from 0x - Leonid Logvinov
Immutables, invariants, and upgradability - Ethereum Magicians
Whither the Price of Bitcoin? - David Andolfatto and Andrew Spewak
Examining the supply of Maker Dai - Jack Purdy
Digesting ‘Quantification of energy and carbon costs for mining cryptocurrencies’ - Nic Carter
Bitcoin - your money is secured by the laws of the universe - r/bitcoin
🚨 New features on messari.io:
We’ve been hard at work adding features that help bring transparency and smarter decision making to the cryptoasset space.
Here’s what we have rolled out recently:
Day mode
For all of you that missed day mode after the recent OnChainFX upgrade, don’t worry, its back!
Head over to the OnChainFX dashboard and choose “switch to day mode” on the right hand side.
Blockfolio integration
Our curated news feed is now available for all Blockfolio users. Simply click on the explore tab in the app and chose Messari from the RSS feed.
New investor information
We recently integrated a set of over 1,000 new funds and investments in crypto projects. Click on an asset, head to the profile, and get a comprehensive overview of which funds invested.
A special shoutout to Florent Moulin providing the data. Make sure you give him a follow on twitter. The guy’s a grinder.
Let us know what you think of the new features and this newsletter. 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] Handshake is attempting to make the Internet more open - Steven Zheng
Handshake is looking to replace the hierarchical DNS internet infrastructure by taking a page from Bitcoin's book: use a distributed ledger, some light smart contracts, and incentives, and good things could happen. From the basic URL all the way to the root zone file (.com., .net, .gov), the internet revolves around domain name ownership. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) dictates which central authorities control the root services today, but Handshake wants to do away with this power tower, and replace it with a blockchain registry and bidding system called Covenant. All Handshake domains will soon be available via public bidding under the Vickrey Auction system (which seals bids until the auction is over) using Handshake's HNS token. The result could be more transparent control over the internet’s basic navigation. (share or read more)
🔎 [Analysis] December 2018 Exchange Trends Review - CryptoCompare
A short summary from CryptoCompare's December exchange review identifies market concentration (the top 10 exchanges have more than 60% of total spot market volume), regulatory arbitrage (Maltese-registered exchanges represented the majority of trading volume), and the continued move to crypto trading pairs (crypto-to-crypto exchanges represented three quarters of spot volume) as major trends. (share or read more)
Quick Bits (Don't read that, I read it for you)
Choke Points (Exchange News)
🔒 Users of cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX are facing significant delays on withdrawing crypto from their accounts. Some $19 million of funds were frozen by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) only to be recently released after a court dispute. (share or read more)
🤩 Huobi's crypto derivative market has now seen up to $20 billion in total trade volume to date. The mark, met on Jan. 12th, came only two weeks after surpassing the $10 billion on Dec. 28th. Huobi holds derivatives in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and EOS. (share or read more)
Startup Signals (ICOs, Cryptos, and Startups)
👟 Bitpay saw over $1 billion in transactions conducted through its services in 2018. Also, transaction fee revenue hit all time highs. Bitpay boasted new customers Dish Network, HackerOne, and the State of Ohio this year as well. BitPay’s CEO and co-founder Stephen Pair noted the speed and cost of bankwires versus Bitpay make Bitpay a great alternative to mainstream methods. (share or read more)
💰 Ethereum venture company ConsenSys has seeded investments to crypto startups Coinhouse and Tenta. Coinhouse, a trading platform with over 150,000 users, received $1 million while Tenta, a browser with a built in VPN, ad-blocker, and data encryption, received an undisclosed amount. (share or read more)
The Powers That Be (Legal/Reg/Policy)
🇹🇭 The Stock Exchange of Thailand has applied with the Finance Ministry for a digital asset exchange license. In the short run, the exchange is helping out securities firm members who want to become crypto brokers and dealers. In the long run, the exchange is looking to become a full fledged cryptocurrency exchange to compliment its stock exchange. (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).
Podcast Recap
🎧 ICYMI last week Ryan (TBI) and Arjun Balaji sat down for over an hour to discuss what they see happening in the industry during 2019. If you are a subscriber, make sure you have caught up on our two part series and check out Arjun’s theses for 2019.
You can view the full video here and as always you can listen and subscribe to all of our podcasts— on Apple Podcasts here, Spotify here, and Google play here.
Shameless Plugs
We want your feedback!
We know Messari can feel like a couple different products right now, and we're working to unify our features into one overarching whole. Head over to our new feedback tool and let us know what you think!
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Going forward, we’ll be capping new members at 15 each week to keep things running smoothly. If you haven’t heard back, you are probably in the queue.
Like what you read? Share it! Hate what you read? Let me know @MessariCrypto.
