🌪 Crypto Endangered: Confronting An Existential Threat
Hello Defiers! Here’s what we are covering today,
News
Defiant Essay
Video
Podcast
🎙Listen to the interview in this week’s podcast episode here:
Links
Soros Is Cashing Out Of Stocks, Putting Some Capital Into Cryptocurrencies: ZeroHedge
Sky Mavis Series B: Fueling the Play-to-Earn Revolution: The Lunacian
SEC Chair Gensler: A Ban on Crypto Would Be ‘Up to Congress’: CoinDesk
META frens and fam- relive #MCON2021 with this salsa of highlight clips: MetaCartel
We’re excited. We’re getting ready to launch The Defiant Terminal, a platform for investors and analysts to track all DeFi data in one place. Join the waitlist today to be notified as soon as it’s live. You’ll want to be the first to get your eyes on that alpha.
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🙌 Together with:
Balancer, one of the leading DeFi automated market makers (AMM) for multiple tokens. Dive into their pools at this link.
Kraken, consistently rated the best and most secure cryptocurrency exchange, which can get you from fiat to DeFi
Aave, an open-source and non-custodial liquidity protocol where users can earn interest on deposits and borrow assets.
The DeFi Pulse Index, by Index Coop - DPI is the easiest way to capture the upside of DeFi with the benefit of diversification. Buy DPI today on your favorite DEX.
The Defiant Essay
🌪 Crypto Endangered: Confronting An Existential Threat
Call it a manifesto, a warning, or a polemic… The truth is, this remarkable two-part essay by Connor Speliscy and Holmes Wilson is all of those things and more — a cri de coeur as DeFi faces an inflection point and a Cartesian analysis of the challenges, and opportunities, before us…In Part 1 , they argue that DeFi is confronting an existential crisis. The cause: unwise and unjustified regulation that could thwart the promise of the crypto movement.
INFORMATION EMPIRE Smart contracts may be unstoppable, but the crypto industry is not. The U.S. government’s blessing has been crucial to every modern information empire. While states have no master key that can shut down crypto, they can make it so expensive and high-risk for users to interact with crypto that the vast majority of their populations, and all of their institutions, will abandon it.
ROBUST ENFORCEMENT This is particularly true in countries like the U.S., where the government has robust enforcement arms. The implications of an anti-crypto regulatory consensus would be far worse than the value of your entire crypto portfolio dropping through the floor.
ANTAGONISM Don’t let the limited government intervention so far lull you into a false sense of security. While good actors in the crypto industry have had a great run with negligible antagonism from Western governments, that appears to be changing quickly under the new U.S. administration. There is hope for the industry but only if we all take action.
Where we are now: the crypto industry as we know it is on course for destruction
THREAT The crypto industry is facing an existential threat, one that can only be neutralized by collective community action. Western governments are accelerating their regulation of crypto. Recent examples include the expansion of the definition of broker in the U.S. to potentially include many stakeholders in crypto; the ratcheting up of enforcement efforts by US regulatory agencies targeting the crypto industry; and the European Union’s development of the Markets in Crypto-assets (MiCA) proposal.
REDUCE FUD Regulation is not necessarily problematic — governments play an important role in supporting and overseeing most industries. But antagonistic and draconian regulations will slow the development of the industry or much worse, cripple it, while clear and reasonable regulations would reduce FUD and stimulate further innovation. The crypto industry is at an inflection point.
👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈
Soaring NFTs
☄️ Vibe! Cryptoadz Floor Price Soars as Snoop Dogg and Other NFT Buyers Pile In
TURTLES If someone types “!vibe” into Cryptoadz’s Discord, a bot prints out what looks strangely like five turtles bobbing their heads.
ROCKETED Why turtles? Who knows, and maybe who cares for holders of Cryptoadz. The NFTs have rocketed to a 13.5 ETH floor price from a 0.18 one the day after launch, according to Dune Analytics’ floor tracker. NFT marketplace OpenSea, shows a higher floor of 14 ETH, over $45,000 at today’s prices.
FLOOR PRICE Big players are taking notice. Cozomo de Medici, a Twitter account which the rapper Snoop Dogg claimed as his own, cashed out 140 ETH for Cryptoadz #4236 which features a pattern referencing Fidenzas, the 999 Art Blocks pieces with a floor well over 100 ETH.
CONFIDENCE Starry Night Capital, an NFT fund launched in partnership with crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, has also given Cryptoadz a major vote of confidence. Starry Night dropped 135 ETH on Cryptoadz #5634 on Oct. 3. That’s over a $450,000 buy by today’s prices.
👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈
Sponsored Post
PieDAO Staking just went live today! Designed to align incentives with long-term DAO members, the new system encourages participation by rewarding active governance members with monthly cashflows.
Referred to as ‘Governance Mining’, PieDAO distributes its profits (including protocol fees and yield farming with the treasury’s assets) in the form of $SLICE - an index which can include $BAL, $CRV, $SUSHI, and other farmed assets. The longer you stake for, the more voting power you get - and the bigger your $SLICE.
Reserved just for those who stake during the first month, there’s a stacked-up $600k+ worth of rewards, waiting to be distributed at the end of the 30-day period.
Want to participate?
You can! Get some DOUGH, stake it, vote on at least one issue per month, and receive your paycheck. Sounds simple? It is!
https://bit.ly/39Ofd1y (in the form of a button if possible, if not, with ‘Stake now’)
The future of work is here, and it’s driven by DAOs.
Video
📺 The Defiant Guide to Pak - Part II
📺 How to trade GASLESS on Ethereum | Matcha tutorial
🧑💻 🦄 🌈 NYC DeFi Hub: The Defiant has just launched Colony, a co-working space in Dumbo for teams building DeFi and Web3 to join and find a community. There are 20 desks in an open floor plan at a reformed factory building. Fill out this form if you’re interested in working there or sponsoring the space.
Links
🔗 Soros Is Cashing Out Of Stocks, Putting Some Capital Into Cryptocurrencies: ZeroHedge
Despite today's resurgence in stocks, the mood was more downbeat during this morning's Bloomberg Invest Global virtual conference. Take Bruce Flatt, CEO of Brookfield Asset Management, who runs $626 billion in the Toronto-based asset manager, and who said that now is a "good time" to be liquidating assets.
🔗 Sky Mavis Series B: Fueling the Play-to-Earn Revolution: The Lunacian
We’ve raised $152 M USD to create economic freedom for gamers. The funds will fuel the growth and development of Axie Infinity and Ronin, our scaling solution for digital nations.
🔗 StarkNet Alpha is Coming to Mainnet: Medium
We announced our vision for StarkNet at the beginning of the year: to bring massive scalability to Ethereum while preserving L1 security, permissionless interactions, and decentralization.
🔗 SEC Chair Gensler: A Ban on Crypto Would Be ‘Up to Congress’: CoinDesk
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler told Congress on Tuesday that the SEC has no plans to ban crypto. When asked by Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), a longtime crypto supporter and member of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus, if the SEC had any plans to follow China’s lead in banning cryptocurrency in favor of a prospective central bank digital currency (CBDC), Gensler said, “No, that would be up to Congress.”
🔗 Investing in Axie Infinity: a16z
Jeff Bezos famously said “your margin is my opportunity,” referring to the way Amazon grew market share by lowering prices and eating into competitor margins. In the transition from web2 to web3, a similar trend is taking shape, but this time the opportunity for entrepreneurs is the exorbitant take rates imposed by the platforms that dominate web2.
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🧑💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Brady Dale, Owen Fernau, Bailey Reutzel, DeFiDad and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, Bailey Reutzel, and Camila Russo. Videos are produced by Robin Schmidt, Alp Gasimov and Daniel Flynn. Podcast is led by Camila, edited by Alp.
The Defiant is a daily newsletter focusing on decentralized finance, a new financial system that’s being built on top of open blockchains. The space is evolving at breakneck speed and revolutionizing tech and money. Sign up to learn more and keep up on the latest, most interesting developments. Subscribers get full access, while free signups get only part of the content. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button above ($15/mo, $150/yr.