Deepdive into the crypto markets - September 2021
2021-09-29
The absolute giant of a story is how a nation state has declared bitcoin legal tender in the country. Bitcoin is now legal tender in El Salvador, meaning that you can pay businesses, receive salary or pay your taxes in the world's digital gold. Astounding. As expected from a price perspective it was a typical “buy the rumor sell the news” situation and the price tanked the day of initiation.
The funniest moment this month was when Bitfinex managed to send 100k USDT over the ethereum blockchain but by mistake paid over 23 million USD in fees for it. Even the big boys screw up sometimes it seems.
The crypto market
The past month has been rocky in traditional market terms but relatively stable in crypto terms. Highs of 52k USD / BTC and then at the current low of 42k. If you are not a strong hand then you are afraid right now.
Bitcoin and the traditional industry
The fight continues. We are still above Berkshire but now below Tesla. One day they will most likely be grains of dust beneath the glory that is bitcoin, but today we have to be content that we are growing at an average of about 150% per year. With such a growth rate it is just a matter of time, but it is not today.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
The dominance of bitcoin continues to plummet. If you listen to the typical etherean this is due to the fact that “everything is being built on ethereum”. If you listen to Solana fans it is because “Solana is replacing ethereum”. And if you listen to the “toxic bitcoin maximalists” it is because the dominance index is an irrelevant metric since I can just create a new coin, sell it to myself for 1 billion dollars and suddenly the dominance shrinks without any value being created.
Education
Today's educational content is provided by Satoshi Nakamoto. For those who have yet to read the bitcoin whitepaper it might at first sound like a daunting task. At first glance it looks plain and full of technobabble. However, if you start reading it you will come to find that it is actually quite a short and pleasant read. It really provides good insight into how the industry has formed, why it matters and how it might form in the future. It is the basis for everything we have here, so read it. Bitcoin whitepaper
This month most impactful news
El Salvador buys bitcoin as the digital currency becomes legal tender
China’s Supposed ‘Bitcoin Ban’ Fails To Crash Market As Twitter Adds Crypto Payments In Historic First
Other interesting data
Decentralised exchanges have become a proven business model in the decentralized financial space. In it, Uniswap, which was a lightly founded one man show and one of the first to really manage to provide the user experience that was desired from users, is still king.
However, since a while back a new business model has erupted which is to provide an aggregation of all decentralized exchanges on one platform. For example via the popular Metamask wallet or via aggregators like 1inch exchange.
We see that these aggregators have recently been earning more and more of the market share, so then the natural question becomes, how will this evolve? Will we see a future where aggregators represent a majority of all user actions or will users go directly to the DEXs instead? Only time will tell.
