Close encounters of the second kind

Market Report: 9th Jan. 2019 — Subscribe to our newsletter.

Join us on telegram

OUR TWO SATOSHIS

New year, new takes on Britain’s strangest news

Were you one of the thousands unable to swipe right due to Tinder’s downtime? It’s probably for the best as our smartphone usage will supposedly summon the antichrist. What else signals Beelzebub’s reckoning? How about a snake in your kettle or your dry eye ointment swapped for erectile dysfunction cream!

CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE SECOND KIND

Are visual sightings of Unidentified Bullish Objects impacting the market?

Another day of smooth sailing in the crypto markets, even if the shifting winds provide more opportunities now than in the last quarter of 2018. And while it looks like retail skippers aren’t taking advantage, if you look below the surface you’ll notice several submarines riding these fresh currents. We’re talking about over-the-counter demand for cryptoassets, i.e. direct trading between a certain buyer and a seller.

So, what’s happening? Yesterday, Cumberland — a popular North-American OTC exchange — tweeted that “over the last week”, they had seen a 60% increase in demand for cryptoassets that they haven’t been able to meet — whereas “historically, their OTC trading is relatively balanced between buyers and sellers”. The Block’s Frank Chaparro further added that this is also happening across other OTC desks around the world.

DO YOU WANT TO BELIEVE?

If the truth is out there, it’s surely very quiet for the moment

But, remember, such hopeful pieces of anecdotal data might not be aligned with short-term price action. The next few weeks will still be driven by Ethereum’s Constantinople fork — explained by MyCrypto.com — as well as Bakkt’s delayed launch news, and the VanEck/Solid X ruling. Meanwhile, if those events don’t peak your interest, look out for volume — as the Crypto Dog argues, things can only get “exciting when volume arrives”.

WHAT YOU CAN’T MISS TODAY

Don’t leave for the weekend what you should read today

▪ Chris Dixon, a famous VC and partner at Andreessen Horowitz, wrote an op-ed for Wired on “how blockchains can return the internet to its community-governed roots”.

▪ Su Zhu and Hasu are back with their collaborative writing. This time, critically explaining the crown jewel of the Decentralised Finance movement: the Maker Dai stablecoin.

▪ Ryan Selkis, the vocal founder of Messari, has released his “96 crypto theses for 2019” — which are not really 96 if you remember his 95 for 2018 article. Video and preview here.

▪ Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and of ConsenSys, shares more about his “pre-blockchain days, early ETH stories, and plans for the future” in Epicenter’s latest podcast.

▪ Daniel Jeffries, a popular cryptosphere writer also known as “Laughing Monkey”, is writing about how some organisations are “surviving crypto winter”. Long read here.

▪ Lastly, if you’re curious about the implications of yesterday’s 51% attack to Ethereum Classic to the other Proof-of-Work projects, we recommend Haseeb Qureshi’s take.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Have you ever questioned the nature of your industry’s disruption?

“Just like Amazon became the long tail of Internet retail and eventually cornered most the market, crypto will start as the long tail of finance.”

by Joey Krug, Co-CIO of Pantera Capital, in a new post outlining “A Crypto Thesis”.
Great two-page executive summary of the 32-minute read here.