(₿): Why Cryptocurrency Won't Go Mainstream

Newsletter #25: 20191206 - 20191213

Dec 13, 2019

Hello beautiful - it’s min a while. Here’s what I’ve seen in Bitcoin this week.

If you’ve found the newsletter helpful, hit the ❤ above and please share or leave a comment below.

Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard. 🧵

Last Week’s Most Read:

📩 The Block open-sourced their monthly report - lots of great content, covering topics like: where 42% of the industry’s employees work, deep dives on BitDEX, Silvergate, IEOs, and more.
📉 Ryan Todd (The Block) breaks down 2019 funding trends for the crypto industry.
🍾 Bottle Pay expands beyond social media into chat apps via “gifts”.

Bottle Pay @bottlepay

You can now send sats in any chat app with chat sats 🤯 Simply generate a link in your Bottle Pay account using the shiny new Gift button, and send it to friends and family everywhere. One step closer to sats being the standard across all apps and services ⚡️P

Older Newsletters: 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14

Bitcoin Markets

Stats

XBT: $7275 📉 -2.5% WoW
Market Cap: $131.6 B 📉 -2.5% WoW
Dominance: 70.96% 📉 -0.2% WoW
Hashrate: 94.06 EH/s 📉 -0.6% WoW
Difficulty: 12.88 T 👻 No Change
Block Height: 607,957
Halvening: T-153 Days
Fiat Market Cap: #40 👻 No Change
Global Debt: $60.310 T 📈 +0.1% WoW
US Debt: $23.117 T 📈 +0.1% WoW

Sources: Messari , BTC , BitcoinBlockHalf , FiatMarketCap , Economist , USDebtClock

Bitcoin / Lightning Tech

🗼 Bitcoin Optech #76 covers how watchtowers (fraud protection mechanisms) for eltoo-based (simplified LN update mechanism) Lightning Network payment channels have different data requirements - potentially more scalable ones - than their traditional counterparts.

💰 Square Crypto just offered a grant to ZmnSCPxj, one of the most prolific contributors to Lightning. The recipient will be able to leave his day job to work full time on Lightning and Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Companies / Projects

Wallets

🚨 A flaw was found in the KeepKey hardware wallet, discovered by Kraken Security Labs.

Exchanges

✌️ After a botched futures launch, LedgerX derivatives bitcoin exchange places its co-founders on leave.

⚖️ Frank Amato / RGB Coin Ltd., who claims to have been BitMEX’s first seed investor, sues the exchange for $300 M.

📄 Bakkt goes live with its bitcoins options and cash-settled futures. Its monthly options are the first CFTC-regulated ones, and its cash-settled futures are available on ICE Futures Singapore.

Funds + Asset Managers

⛰ Stone Ridge Bitcoin Futures Fund was approved by SEC. The asset manager currently oversees $15 B AUM.

Custody

🦁 ING is looking into providing crypto custody services.

Bitcoin Insights

Reports

📊 Ryan Todd of The Block publishes: 2019 Venture Funding Trends

🇨🇳 “In its latest report, shared with The Block, CoinShares said 65% of global bitcoin mining happens in China, and the country’s Sichuan province alone produces 54% of global hash rate. The remaining 35% of bitcoin miners are spread from the U.S. to Russia and Kazakhstan.” Yogita Khatri of The Block summarizes the latest Coinshares report on mining.

🥁 Earlier this month, Vertcoin suffered a 51% attack, whereby the attacker replaced the last 603 blocks. Deribit covers the attack and issues with ASIC-resistant networks.

🇳🇬 Bitcoin and gift cards are finding their niche for remittance in West Africa.

Theses

🎱 “It is time to face this potentially uncomfortable reality: cryptocurrency is most useful when breaking laws and social constructs.” Jill Carlson publishes an op-ed on why cryptocurrency won’t go mainstream. Further reading: Eric Voskuil on Bitcoin as Black Market Money.

Podcasts

⛏ Leo Zhang of Iterative Cap joins The Scoop to discuss the impact of miners on the market.