It’s not all bad news.Crypto faces some major challenges ahead, and I’ve been guilty of expressing frustration and disappointment with increasing regularity in recent weeks.So are we screwed, or what? A good chunk of the news cycle that’s been top of mind happens to be in areas where I’m more bearish on our prospects: US regulatory and tax regime; Libra’s launch viability in the developed world (given FB is a political pariah in all western countries and unavailable in China); the ongoing gradual liquidation of ICOs/IEOs with no real upside catalysts or sticky use cases, the impact of persistent negative headlines, etc.But there are many areas that still excite me and give me hope! I’d love to see BTC reframed as a “speculative store of value” by good marketers in the industry – something that any gold investor should own as part of a two asset basket since they may be perfect digital-analog complements.BTC is also a “swiss bank account in your pocket”, but that’s scary as a marketing meme, and I wish more people would lean into the volatility and use it as a medium-term shield vs.frame BTC as a “crypto-currency” which scares people twice (“shadowy” “threat to dollar”).Zcash is the second most important project in the industry to me, because it’s the only one with close-to-perfect privacy embedded in the core protocol…something we need for both fungibility (for dissidents) and enterprise adoption (for customer privacy).Zcash is also a canary in the coal mine and the front lines for how crypto will be regulated on a global scale.
If Zcash is restricted (as is possible in Japan, Korea, etc.), then I think privacy upgrades to BTC will become all but impossible.I’m thrilled Coin Center has been a major proponent of Zcash, and that there are some smart money, well-networked investors backing the project.The web 3.0 thesis has become relevant surprisingly quickly.I thought it would take years to get excited about these applications, but perhaps it’s sooner than we think.
I’m not too bullish on token-first models, but upstarts that apply token models to applications that already work are more interesting.Even then the most interesting tokens from a utility standpoint probably aren’t traded via a Binance IEO, but earned and slowly liquidated.That would be a welcome change, eh? I’m a bull on decentralized exchange, synthetic assets (how can foreigners own shadow shares of the S&P?), streaming / metered payments, crypto for gaming and virtual goods, and web 3.0 wallets; I’m also a big proponent of the “money legos” method of building smart contract applications because it’s easier to build a reliable library of audited mini-contracts than trust the full smart contract tower of a more convoluted system.I’m cautiously optimistic that the ETH 2.0 crew will avoid breaking composability and shooting itself in the foot.I’m also a mega-bull on non-Libra stablecoins: USDT, Dai, USDC, etc.should power the biggest killer apps of the next cycle.
Dai for DeFi? USDT for emerging market payments? USDC for enterprise settlement? Why not? Now, as two years ago, I think the industry can avoid self-inflicted wounds with common sense transparency around basic practices – governance, contributors, token economics and distribution, etc.We’re glad to be working towards a solution with great teams on our transparency registry.I hope it helps put us in the right direction in the U.S.
and globally.Should you be bullish, too? Don’t take my word for it.Better to listen and re-listen to this interview last week with Andreas Antonopoulos on the Defiance podcast.Andreas continues to be the clearest and most inspiring teacher incrypto.The full episode is available as a transcript as well, and it’s pure gold.My favorite excerpt: “So why is privacy and financial affairs so important? The reason is that if you understand that money is the language by which society not only coordinates but also expresses value, and where cash is the last remaining mechanism before cryptocurrencies that allows people to coordinate and express value to each other, without anyone else in the transaction without intermediaries, then it becomes obvious that if you lose the ability to have privacy on those issues, it undermines many of our other fundamental freedoms.” It’s 55 minutes long, and I listened to it three times this holiday weekend.It’s that good, and Andreas is that good.
I needed the pick me up.Maybe you do to.-TBI Subscribe to our free newsletter to get Unqualified Opinions delivered to your inbox each morning.This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://messari.io/article/tell-me-something-good.