All Been Crypto — Week 19 Nov 2021
Welcome to this weekly where I’ll put together the major headlines of the week impacting crypto. The focus will be on the bigger picture and connecting the dots for you. We all know the pace at which things are moving is phenomenal and there is certainly no lack of content out there. But while you can get a flood of in-time updates on twitter/telegram/discord ect this publication will help you to filter out the noise and to not lose focus on the bigger picture and trends shaping the industry. Enjoy reading.
HEADLINES:
Taproot adoption what’s next
This was not a surprise, yet it is probably one of the most important events for BTC this year. Here’s a great primer from bitcoin magazine but in a nutshell it makes transactions smaller (cheaper) and adds an extra layer of privacy that is important for lightning adoption. This part is where I get most excited about, post El Salvador adoption lightning network capacity has continued growing to 3,2k BTC. Exchanges will increasingly enable lightning withdrawals. Another example is Tether who announced a new subsidiary Synonym Software that will build software for Bitcoin and the Lightning Network so that instant Tether tokens will be available on the Lightning Network through Blocktank and the company’s mobile wallet. Taproot brings us a big step closer towards mass adoption
DAO bidding for US constitution raised over 40m USD in ETH…and failed
Sotheby’s was auctioning off one rare copy of the original US constitution and a DAO managed to raise ETH worth >40m USD within a few days. Now the auction was not successful as the organizer said in the group’s Discord channel that it lost because it had not raised enough money to establish a reserve required to maintain and care for the document on an ongoing basis. Still the fact that they managed to raise this much money in such a short time completely crowdsourced is mind-blowing. I believe will see many more such headlines and near instant formations of interest groups via DAOs, many legal challenges remain though and if you want to dig deeper there’s “A Legal Framework for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations highlighting some of the major issues and offering solutions sponsored by DAO Research Collective.
First Polkadot Parachain Auction winner Acala had $1.3B DOT committed
Of course need to mention the first Parachain Auctions on DOT. It was a close head-to-head between Acala and Moonbeam and more of a symbolic win as all the 5 winners of this auction batch will go live simultaneously on 17th Dec. Was interesting to see how dynamics played out with projects upping incentives schemes and the candle auction system working. (Acala won despite Moonbeam now having more DOT committed, i.e. will def win 2nd slot). Also I think more interesting is who’s going to get #5 between Clover and Manta. As for Acala they are basically building to be the Curve/AAVE plus Uni on DOT with a few extra features basically infrastructure you’ll def need on-chain. Gemini has good wrap on the project if you not yet familiar.
QUOTES:
Investing some of Twitter Inc.’s corporate cash in crypto assets such as bitcoin doesn’t make sense right now
Twitter CFO Ned Segal
My vision is to use Disney+ as the platform for the metaverse
Disney CEO Bob Chapek
This [opening an embassy in the Metaverse] is a way for Barbados to expand its diplomatic missions beyond the 18 it currently has with 190+ countries around the world. This allows us to open the door, using technology diplomacy, which then extends to cultural diplomacy — the trade of art, music, and culture
Barbados’ ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, H.E. Gabriel Abed
