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#Articles,Market Briefs
What Drives Bitcoin? The Sources of Supply and Demand
For most citizens of the developed world, and many more traditional investors, misunderstandings about the fundamental drivers of bitcoin and other cryptoassets lead to widespread skepticism and doubt, preventing adoption and investment in one of the most revolutionary technological breakthroughs of the 21st century.
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#Articles,Market Briefs
Bitcoin’s Biggest Banes: Valuation, Volatility, and Correlation Oh My!
About 18 months ago, we wrote an article titled “Do Cryptoassets Deserve a Place in Your Portfolio? The Case or Digital Assets as an Asset Class” exploring the textbook features of an “asset class” and concluded that “digital assets offer a differentiated risk-reward profile from more traditional asset classes...there’s a compelling case for readers...
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#Articles,Market Briefs
Digital Payments: Overcoming Technical Hurdles and Empire Protectionism
“The average merican sends about 40 payments a month. It costs 2% every time you swipe your credit card (even if the merchant pays it, you're also paying it in the higher price of the item). …. What will happen when the cost of a payment falls to SMS levels? What about free?”
Brian Armstrong,...
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#Articles,Market Briefs
Blakeley’s Three Bold Crypto Predictions for 2020
In last month’s report, “2019 Year in Review: Green Shoots Galore Heading into 2020”, we reviewed a number of the predictions we made over the course of the last year, ultimately concluding that “2019 was a year of retrenchment” and that in order to be successful in 2020, “developers must create services with strong...
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#Articles,Market Briefs
2019 Year in Review: Green Shoots Galore Heading into 2020
As we noted last December, overall sentiment toward cryptoassets could not have been more dour at the start of 2019: among other issues, the market capitalization of the overall crypto market had cratered from above $800B in early 2018 to just $100B (a nearly -90% decline in just one year), the majority of cryptoassets had...
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#Articles,Market Briefs
Centrality Seeks to “UNf*ck the World”, Rapid Adoption Shows Developers Are Buying In
Anyone perusing a cryptoasset “biggest gainer” list in early October may have noticed an unfamiliar entrant: Centrality’s CENNZ token, which rose by as much as 800% against industry-standard Bitcoin in the first two weeks of October alone:
Source: TradingView, Blakeley
As we’ve all learned, a mid-cap token rocketing higher is a daily occurrence in the cryptoasset...
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#Articles
Libra Update: Zuckerberg Gets Grilled, and Decentralized OpenLibra Announced
For enthusiasts of Facebook’s proposed stablecoin Libra, there’s good news and bad news – which should we discuss first?
Getting the bad news out of the way up front, Libra’s launch has hit both regulatory and partnership speedbumps in the last few weeks. Most notably, the cryptocurrency’s regulatory issues have metastasized since this summer’s grilling...
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#Articles
Is Ethereum’s Status as THE Dominant Smart Contract Platform Under Threat?
Earlier this year, we explored the significant risks threatening Ethereum’s long-held (at least in the fast-moving cryptoasset markets) position as the dominant smart contract platform. In brief, as the original “world supercomputer” continues to work through the hangover of the late 2017 “ICO Mania” and upgrade its blockchain to scale with demand, competitors are...
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#Articles
Libra Hearings: Facebook’s Marcus Excoriated, Other Cryptoassets Could Benefit
In our last newsletter, we shared some of our initial thoughts about Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency, noting that extensive regulatory scrutiny could be a major stumbling block. We concluded that “Libra may have to fight court battles in dozens of countries across the globe, likely delaying the targeted early 2020 global launch date for the...
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#Articles
Three Charts We’ll Be Watching for Signs of Another “Altcoin Spring”?
At roughly $10,000 as we go to press, crypto skeptics are eager to point out that bitcoin is still down nearly 50% from its all-time high hit nearly two years ago.
While they’re technically correct, it’s more reasonable to note that in its 10+ year history, bitcoin has seen a grand total of six weekly...
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#Articles
Why the US-China Trade War Could Tip Us into a Global Recession… And Which Cryptoassets Could Benefit
As we go to press, the financial media is aflutter with news of inverting yield curves in the US and UK, an outright contraction in German economic activity, and China’s slowest growth rate in nearly three decades. These are four of the planet’s seven largest economies (and #3 Japan isn’t seeing much in the...
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#Articles
Facebook’s Libra: Not a “True” Cryptocurrency
For many cryptoasset fans, it was like Christmas in June.
Facebook released the long-awaited white paper for its stablecoin Libra on the 18th of June. While plenty of digital ink has already been spilled both castigating and adulating the tech giants’ first major foray into digital assets, we wanted to provide our first glance takeaways...
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#Articles
Crypto Performance During Regional Financial Crises: Three Case Studies
Given the massive surge in the value of many cryptoassets, investors in the space have generally learned to ignore negative stories and retain their original conviction in their investments. However, as last year’s stories about potential manipulation in the bitcoin market and the surge of ill-conceived Ethereum ICOs has proved, it can be just...
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#Articles
Spreading FUD on the Global Financial System a Decade After the Great Financial Crisis
Given the massive surge in the value of many cryptoassets, investors in the space have generally learned to ignore negative stories and retain their original conviction in their investments. However, as last year’s stories about potential manipulation in the bitcoin market and the surge of ill-conceived Ethereum ICOs has proved, it can be just...
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#Articles
Identifying The Most Influential Crypto Twitter Accounts
In our previous blog we explained why Twitter has become such an influential platform. There is certainly no shortage of lists of the “Top X most influential cryptocurrency accounts on Twitter”. So why did we bother building our own?
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#Articles
Blockchain technologies poised to have significant benefits for the New Zealand economy
In the report, Distributed Ledgers and Blockchains – Opportunities for New Zealand, author Joshua Vial from Enspiral, found that these emerging technologies would likely have a positive impact on high-tech jobs and digital exports for New Zealand.
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#Articles
Bitcoin: A(n Un)Happy 10th Birthday
Much like a 10-year old child who got the wrong color toy at his birthday, Bitcoin bulls are throwing a fit on the eve of the cryptoasset’s decennial anniversary. Unlike an adolescent temper tantrum though, Bitcoin’s current crisis may last for months before a sense of a calm returns to the market.
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#Articles
The Case for Digital Assets as an Asset Class
About 1200 years ago, Chinese alchemists combined salt peter, sulfur, and charcoal in an attempt to create an elixir for eternal life. Needless to say, they failed to accomplish their goal, but they did discover something nearly as useful by accident: gunpowder. Similar stories of accidental inventions abound, from the discovery of the microwave...
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#Articles
Facebook's global currency at first glance
Facebook’s foray into cryptocurrency has a lot of people shaking their heads in unequal parts of confusion, disbelief and misunderstanding. Blockchain technology is an emerging technology, one that I like to think I’ve got a reasonable handle on. So I’m here to tell you the top ten, most important things about what Facebook has...
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#Articles
Do Cryptoassets Deserve a Place in Your Portfolio?
About 1200 years ago, Chinese alchemists combined salt peter, sulfur, and charcoal in an attempt to create an elixir for eternal life. Needless to say, they failed to accomplish their goal, but they did discover something nearly as useful by accident: gunpowder. Similar stories of accidental inventions abound, from the discovery of the microwave...
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