The Breakdown

Much of the Crypto Twitter conversation this weekend was dominated by talk of Twitter’s suspension of ZeroHedge. @nlw explores why the specifics of the infraction or the quality of the publication aren’t the important part of the conversation, and why he thinks we’ll see arguments for social media platforms to be turned into public utilities in the years ahead.  Also on this episode: Debates around Ethereum marketing. Does the community need to spend more resources telling the story and recruiting new users or should the tech speak for itself?  What Brexit means for the crypto community - practically and metaphorically.  The last section features comments from Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier.

The full week's episodes in one (plus a bonus TL;DR on ZeroHedge's deplatforming.  Tuesday | Narrative Watch: The Future of Fud Wednesday | Exclusive Interview with Binance US CEO Catherine Coley announcing staking  Thursday | The Unsolved Mystery of How To Fund Public Protocols Friday | The Founders of Chainlink and Synthetix on DeFi, Derivatives and 25 New Decentralized Price Feeds

Yesterday Chainlink released price reference data for 25 of its decentralized oracle networks which, together, power more than $100m in DeFi.  On this special interview episode, @nlw talks with Sergey Nazarov and Kain Warwick, the founders of Chainlink and Synthetix respectively about:  The evolution and goals of Synthetix, a novel type of derivatives exchange where users can interact with any asset with a price feed.  The challenge Synthetix faced around spinning up their own oracles around price feeds The history of their collaboration and how Synthetix came to work with Chainlink Chainlink approach to building decentralized oracles for data such as price feeds Chainlink’s announcement yesterday about the new published price reference data for 25 oracle networks The state of the idea of decentralization, and how what was previously a concept is becoming operationalized One thing that gives them pause or scares them about DeFi and crypto and one thing that makes them excited for the future 

The best way to fund open source projects remains a question, and one that - in the context of crypto protocols - has never had higher stakes. Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen live action experiments in a number of different approaches.  Gitcoin grants used a quadratic funding program to match grants to technology builders and media creators in Ethereum  After months and months of concerted community debate and conversation, Zcash will implement a new Dev Fund of 20% of the block rewards after the Founders Reward runs out in November, splitting it between the Electric Coin Co (7%), Zcash Foundation (5%) and 3rd party developers (8%) A consortium (cartel?) of the 4 largest BCH mining pools tried to insist upon a 12.5% block reward diversion to a new dev fund, with a threat to orphan blocks that didn’t comply. The plan ran into a barrier when Roger Ver’s bitcoin.com backed away.  Also in this episode, @nlw looks at the latest in CBDCs - including Japan’s continued hedging that they’re preparing for the possibility of needing to move quickly and Cambodia’s announcement that they will be implementing a CBDC this quarter.  Finally, Andrew Yang took a few minutes yesterday to talk about cryptocurrencies and why regulation with the intent to stop them would be doomed to fail.

In a Breakdown exclusive, Binance US CEO announces that the exchange will begin supporting staking, starting with ALGO and ATOMs.  On this episode, Catherine and I discuss: How the company prioritizes both new features and which audiences to build for Why staking is important both for allowing people to do more with their crypto assets as well as help build and secure the networks those assets run on  How staking is part of a much larger mission around education, financial literacy and lowering the barriers to entry for participation in crypto.

We’re over $9,000! That means a lot of good things, of course. But any price increase brings with it increased scrutiny and, yes, increased FUD. The question for this time around is whether the FUD is the same old same old or something new.  In this episode, @nlw looks at three emergent (and continued) areas of FUD, including: 1) accusations that the bitcoin community is rooting for calamity as the safe haven narrative takes hold; 2) an updated “crypto is for criminals” narrative with more emphasis on state-level enemies; 3) a new, more economically vindictive green/energy waste narrative.  Importantly, the question isn’t so much whether these new categories of FUD will come to fruition, but what can be done about them.

A single long-form episode with all the week's content + a TL;DR. This week was all about macro frame-setting coming out of Davos.  Monday - 4 Reasons Crypto Should Care About Davos Tuesday - Gitcoin's Kevin Owocki on Controversy and the Future of Open Source Funding Wednesday - Why Vodafone’s Defection Won't Matter For Libra Thursday - Will Mass Adoption Be More PayPal or Pornhub? Friday - Davos Takeaways, CBDCs & the Rise of Bitcoin Art featuring Brekkie von Bitcoin

That’s a wrap! The World Economic Forum is over, and the key ideas coming out of Davos for our industry are: 1) a continued ‘blockchain, not crypto’ narrative; 2) a believe in the inevitability of cashless futures (without much concern about the negative implications); and 3) the rise of CBDCs.  On the CBDC front, the WEF put out a toolkit for governments that are considering their own currency; Japan announced a project to explore a digital currency as a counterweight to the influence a digital yuan might bring China; and a BIS study says 1 in 10 governments anticipate having a digital currency within 3 years.  Finally, we close asking prolific bitcoiner and artist Brekkie von Bitcoin about the state of bitcoin art and why even the hardcore financially-minded folks in the space should care.

There is an ongoing debate in the crypto community about where mainstream adoption. One point of view is that it will be the slow steady acceptance of digital assets. On that front, Bakkt president Adam White said in Davos yesterday that the company is on track to launch their app this year.  Another perspective is that the main use case of crypto is to enable otherwise censored transactions. Lending credence to this perspective is the case of Pornhub, which saw payouts to its more than 100,000 performers blocked unexpectedly by PayPal in November, and which announced cash outs via Tether (USDT) today.  In this episode, @nlw breaks down these two arguments and asks whether they’re mutually exclusive.  Also discussed is the new BCH mining group (cartel?) insisting on a 12.5% block reward dev fund, as well as interesting insights and data from research from CoinDesk and The Block today.

News broke yesterday that the Libra Association had seen it’s 8th high profile defection, this time from the telecom giant Vodafone. In today’s episode of the breakdown, @nlw argues that Association members are far less of a factor in Libra’s success than key regulatory questions around domiciling, the value peg, and the US’s fear of a Chinese digital currency.  Also in this episode, Square Crypto announces its plans for a Lightning Development Kit while Square also announced a new patent that could make crypto easier to use. In regulatory battles, meanwhile, both the Blockchain Association and the Chamber of Digital Commerce have filed amicus briefs around the SEC-Telegram lawsuit.