We’ve been around CT for a few years, and while the road still appears curvy, we believe the pieces are moving into place and the destination becomes more clear with each passing day. The following people are all pioneers, when they speak you should listen.

Going to lay out who we think some of the most fascinating thinkers are and some of our favorite podcasts. While these people still differ on some of their viewpoints, they are either the thought leaders of the world we are moving towards or contributing towards building it.

1) Nick Szabo (@NickSzabo4) - Truly one of the pioneers of our space and one of the first podcasts we ever listened to. Still the pod we send to people wanting to dip their toes in the space. Funny listening to nick, @naval, and @tferriss 4 years

2) Naval (@naval) - Clearly a thought leader in the traditional world, but he understands and is dedicating time to bring the future to the present. When this guy speaks the whole world seems to listen. Once again @tferriss does a phenomenal

3) Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin) - The father of Ethereum and when Vitalik speaks we all should listen. He thinks differently than almost every human in this world. Yes...he’s a

What happens to your cryptocurrency when you die??

A thread...

Did you know it’s illegal to log into a dead person’s crypto account?

So if you're a crypto investor and you died today, who reaps your fortune?

No one, technically, unless you name a beneficiary in your will. And it's a big deal as ~3.7M bitcoins, $140B is unrecoverable (excluding the 10k+ other cryptocurrencies) since the investor either lost their password or died intestate.

And you can’t just “reset” the password. This is because, when the cryptocurrency network confirms passwords to allow transactions, it does not see or know the password itself!

This complex algorithm keeps the system decentralized. So a lost password is lost money.

The Sovereign Individual (1999) is a guide for navigating the current transition from Industrial to Information Age.

Remarkably, it predicted the rise of 'digital gold'.

“If our deductions are correct, you stand at the threshold of the most sweeping revolution in history.”

A🧵

1/ "Widespread adoption of public-key/private-key encryption technologies will soon allow many economic activities to be completed anywhere you please."

"Many transactions in the Information Age will not need to be domiciled in any territorial sovereignty at all."

2/ From Monopoly to Competition

"This new economic dynamic directly contradicts the desire of government left over from the industrial era to impose monopoly pricing for its protection services."

3/ The Death of Seignorage

"In the past, megapolitical transitions have been associated with changes in the character of money."

"As cybercommerce begins, it will lead inevitably to cybermoney."

"..this new cybermoney will be denationalized."

4/ "Any individual or firm with access to cyberspace will be able to easily shift out of any currency that appears in danger of depreciation."

The CBN's official reason for its recent cryptocurrency restriction is that cryptocurrencies are anonymous and used for money laundering, terrorism financing, and tax evasion. Let’s dig into what the facts say.

A THREAD #Nigeria #Bitcoin

1/21

We’ll break up the allegation into two. First up, “cryptocurrency is used for money laundering.”
Cryptocurrencies have been used for illicit activities but so too have official currencies. So the CBN's argument must be that cryptocurrencies make the situation worse.

2/21

But as things stand, significantly more illicit activities are conducted with regular money than with cryptocurrencies. According to the UN, between $800 billion and $2 trillion is laundered globally every year, mostly in cash.

3/21

Meanwhile, the entire global value of cryptocurrencies is currently $1.4 trillion. Chainanalysis, the leading crypto-analysis company helping governments track criminals, estimated that 1.1% of all cryptocurrency transactions are illicit.

4/21

So, if the government is trying to clamp down on money laundering and terrorism financing, they are better off spending their energy on their naira accounts.

5/21

[1/13] It may be initially confusing to fully grasp how deposits and withdrawals from L1 to @optimismPBC are actually implemented, and it helps to see the on-chain action of what is happening behind the scenes.

[2/13] Initial setup (simplified): on L1 we have SyntheticBridgeToOptimism from Synthetic and OVM_L1CrossDomainManager from Optimism contracts. On L2 we have SynthetixBridgeToBase and OVM_L2_CrossDomainManager contracts.

[3/13] Additionally we have Sequencer (L2 mining node) that verifies all L2 transactions and submits them in batches to L1 for future reference and Relayer that is responsible for relaying messages from L2 —> L1

[4/13] Step 1 - Alice wants to deposit $SNX to L2. To do that she calls initiateDeposit() method on the L1 SyntheticBridgeToOptimism which takes her $SNX, puts it in the escrow and calls OVM_L1CrossDomainManager sendMessage() method.

[5/13] The CrossDomainManager puts this request to CanonicalTransactionChain (this is an “official” and “unmutable” list of all L2 transactions on L1). As a consequence the Sequencer (L2 mining node) will need to execute this transaction on L2.

1/20 Stablecoin Tweetstorm- I have a fairly unique perspective on stablecoins... I was an "unofficial advisor" to the launch of USDT (Tether) Some of my best friends were CEO/CTO/Founders, etc. I didn't invest at the time (which was a lucky move) as the company sold

2/20 for a loss to Bitfinex within two years of creation. It had very little usage, banking issues, and really no clear path to growth (that is until one of the largest exchanges on earth began using it) So with this short background let me share a bit of my thoughts on

3/20 this category and why I think it is so important... (Full Disclosure: after all these years I finally found a stablecoin project that I thought was worth investing in and i will be shilling it later in this thread:-)

4/20 The community knows all about how important stablecoins are to the overall health and usage of the entire crypto marketplace. With an overall market cap of in excess of $1 Trillion the crypto market is large and growing... No category of crypto is growing faster than

5/20 Stablecoins: With a total category value of just over $33B and over $10B per day in trade volume it is no longer just a "niche" Stablecoins are a major category and I predict this category will increase in value faster then the overall crypto market. (My bet is $100B

[BIG THREAD] BitChute is a video-sharing site growing in size after an exodus of upset conservatives from YouTube. Like similar “anti-censorship” platforms, it also is riddled with a disturbing amount of hateful content and blatant disinformation.

Around the time of the Capitol riot, interest in BitChute skyrocketed. It continued to rise as Donald Trump’s channel had videos removed, was suspended, and then finally banned. Although he has yet to arrive on BitChute himself, his followers have moved on from YouTube.

BitChute founder Ray Vahey has called the platform “pro-free expression”, accusing sites that censor their content as building echo chambers that serve only to exacerbate problems. What he fails to recognize is that his own creation has become one itself.

wo massive trends on BitChute are anti-Covid vaccine and pro-Nazi/anti-Semitic propaganda. Both break the site’s Community Guidelines. Below are examples of easily accessible and highly-viewed videos. Bear in mind the medical advice is harmful and the Nazi content is disturbing.

First, the anti-vax disinformation. “Timmy Learns About COVID Vaccines”. Safety precautions are called “enslavement” and “extortion”. Over 5k views.

#analysis THREAD

Here I'll show that investors already consider BTC a safe haven under on-chain capital flows.

Common wisdom that BTC is "risk-on" is a fallacy; solely a consequence of trader liquidations on derivative exchanges.

During the 2 months of the COVID "correction" BTC price went from $9k to $9k with very quick and deep price rejection below $7k. Even traders rejected sub $7k valuations.

As fears of COVID swept the economy, investors moved into Bitcoin. You can see this in the NVT Price Chart which values BTC according to on-chain investment velocity.

This coincided exactly with coins being scooped off exchanges and locked into long term HODL wallets. The largest by far in BTC's history. It still continues.

While traders were selling Bitcoins, investors were accumulating. It's investors that determine the long term price.

The fundamentals of BTC became visibly bullish over the COVID correction, this was hidden by traders freaking out and being liquidated. Bitcoin is only now reflecting its organic valuation.

# 💹 The effect of Currency Exposure on Shareholders Equity 💹#

When we invest, one important aspect to consider is our portfolio exposure to currencies. It is not important where the company is trading, but where and how is making business ‼️

Keypoints 🗝️:

- In which currency is the company getting paid?

- In which currency is the company paying their costs?

- Are they hedging?

- In which currency is their cash, investments & deposits?

I specially look at them in companies with business in LATAM, Africa or Asia. 🌎

One of the checks you make is looking at the "Other comprehensive income".

I remember that I was very confused the first time I look into a company from a developing country (Pakistan). 🇵🇰

It was a software company (Really good ones in Pakistan) and they seemed to be doing pretty well (Positive Income) but the equity was just decreasing. WTF?

Reason: They were very exposed to Pakistan Rupee!

⬇️Here you go ⬇️

They were collecting most of their cash in Ruppes...

"But have we *earned* it?"

Vitalik famously posed this question in late 2017, when the crypto market cap first reached $500 billion.

We're past $1 trillion now. Let's see what has changed in crypto, especially in Ethereum and DeFi, since then.

A thread. 👇

2017 and 2018 were marked by vaporware.

Projects like Dentacoin, which promised, uhhh, great things but had little to show for it, garnered hundreds of millions in value.

Look where they are now.

Literal billions in market cap reduced to ashes. And that's good.

We've seen the capital allocated to these ghost projects seemingly flood toward quality.

Bitcoin dominance currently sits at 67% after bottoming at 33% in January 2018.

Ethereum dominance is also up from its lows.

Projects with big promises and no execution were flushed out.

Not all of the vaporware has been flushed out.

Many coins in the top 50 have yet to deliver on promises they made years ago.

But this is changing as coins like AAVE and SNX enter the crypto market's top 20.

Not much has changed about bitcoin on a technical basis, but on a fundamental basis, I think it's stronger than ever.

The confluence of money printing, political uncertainty, and more is driving the need for a scarce reserve asset not controlled by any central party.

On the importance of leverage for the crypto ecosystem.
A long time ago, BNP Paribas bought a retail forex exchange, because they thought they'd get an insight into forex trading flows and positions. What they quickly discovered, is that the website was a muppet slaughterhouse.

People would get stopped out ALL THE TIME because they used too much leverage. Over 90% of them lost money in a consistent way. Those are worse than even casino odds.
That's why around 2005, you had so many forex trading websites popping up. They would offer up to 500x leverage.

The higher the leverage, the better (for the website).
This became such a huge trend that regulators stepped in, and introduced maximum leverage rules. Something like x30 for forex, if I remember correctly. All of a sudden, all the ads and Premier League sponsorships vanished.

Forex gambling is still around, but not nearly as profitable, because it takes time for people to lose their money with a pitiful x30 leverage. Currencies usually don't move by 3% in a day. It can take weeks for an amateur trader to lose it all. Plus the adrenaline rush is gone.

Enter crypto.
It's hard to explain how one-sided leveraged crypto trading is. Traders don't stand a chance. With currencies, you could expect to extract SOME money from real world flows. In crypto, there are no real world flows. It's just traders against traders against insiders.

Hodling #Bitcoin as a Company is not easy, over the past year it felt like we were battling an opposing public opinion in our community all the time.
This was resolved by us learning & studying which was crucial
.
Thread 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

2/ The arguments were exhausting especially if you didn't put time into education
1. Too volatile
2. Untrustworthy
3. Will get banned
4. Consumes too much energy
5. Not an investment, its speculation
6. Manipulated market
7. CBDC's
8. Used by criminals

3/ We saw something different, #Bitcoin was the most stable asset in our lives. Block after block it operated with perfection as promised. #Bitcoin hasn't changed at all since we got into it (yes, we verified) but the echo system built on top of it grew immensely

4/ Meanwhile everything else around us was insanely volatile, Our Central Bank printed more money than was ever printed in the country's history. Prices of real estate, commodities, groceries shot through the roof, more importantly the prices of Chicken

5/ Our business is built on the back of fresh high quality Chicken which increased in price by >25%
Nassim Taleb came out on @CNBC and suggested that owning a business should be sufficient to protect you from inflation because you can raise prices,

🚨 @naval @balajis and @shl live on Clubhouse right now🚨

.@naval: I can't imagine working on anything besides crypto. Crypto was the biggest changemaker and biggest wealth maker of 2020.

.@balajis: Crypto is a civilization technology

.@naval: Property rights is one of the hardest problems. That's why we need nation state. Nation states do property rights. #BTC is solving this. #BTC is solving the hardest problem. If we can solve the BTC problem, we can solve everything else (decentralized media, file storage)

.@naval: I think the next big thing we're going to see is decentralize social networks. All the centralized social networks just created the 2008-2009 moment, it's going to change everything.

If you've been following DeFi or Ethereum over the past few months, you've likely heard the term "flash loan" mentioned again and again.

This new DeFi primitive has been at the core of a number of economic exploits and arbitrages.

A thread on the basics of flash loans - 👇

Most DeFi loans take place across days, weeks, or even months.

You can deposit Ethereum into Aave, then withdraw stablecoins for yield farming in Yearn, for instance.

On-chain loans have garnered much traction, with total debt outstanding moving toward $2.5 billion.

While popular, DeFi loans are not capital efficient: to account for custodial risk and volatility risk, you need to put up 130-150% of the value of your loan in collateral.

If your collateral slips below the threshold, you're liquidated, resulting in a fee anywhere from 5-13%.

Flash loans are much different than longer-term DeFi loans.

Flash loans are non-custodial, take place over the course of one block, and require no collateralization.

That's to say, the coins you borrow never appear in your wallet.

When taking a flash loan, you can direct the coins to any protocol and function, as long as you pay back the loan + interest fee within the same transaction.

So what the hell? What are flash loans used for?

More often than not, arbitrage.

0/ Yesterday was my last day as the Rosetta Technical Lead at @coinbase. Starting tomorrow (crypto never sleeps, right?), I’ll join @el33th4xor, @kevinsekniqi, and the rest of the talented team at @avalabsofficial in building @avalancheavax.

1/ When I joined Coinbase out of college, I thought I “knew” blockchain. Boy was I wrong! Standardizing and scaling asset addition at Coinbase while collaborating with the top blockchain engineers at the top projects by market cap flipped my world upside down.

2/ I don’t think there is any other place that ramps you up into the magical moon math of crypto as fast as @coinbase and I firmly believe it is the best place for any crypto engineer to start their career. Good news! They're hiring!

3/ To all my former coworkers, I want to say thank you for everything you’ve taught me. I’ll never forget all the time and energy you spent helping me become a better engineer and a better person. I have no doubt that you’ll continue pushing Rosetta forward for years to come.

4/ For the next few months, I’ll remain an advisor to the Rosetta project. I will lend a hand to asset issuers implementing Rosetta for the first time and chime in on high-level design decisions.

Why is it so difficult to understand what Bitcoin involves?

Because it affects various mental models.

Thread.

Inflection Point / Critical Mass:

The increase in the liquidity of the FED in 2020 due to Covid has generated a turning point in the BTC.

Investors have gone from thinking of BTC as a risky asset to thinking that the risk is not having it, increasing confidence towards it.

Compound Interest / Velocity:

The BTC has gone from $400 to $40k in 5 years, which represents an annual return of 150%, 15 times more than the average stock market return.

This has been one of the largest and fastest creations of wealth in history.

Scarcity / Supply and Demand:

The greater the scarcity of an asset, the greater its value.

As BTC becomes popular, its demand increases, while its supply does not vary. Which makes the price go up.

Cooperation:

The BTC is decentralized.

Their trust is not based on the authority of a central bank, but on the cooperation of the population.

The greater the cooperation, the greater the trust and therefore the greater the value.