Category: Blog

How To Make Fuck You Money

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What is ‘fuck you money?‘

While there’s no dictionary definition, the general understanding of ‘fuck you money’ is the amount of money you’d need to live how you want, with the option of saying ‘fuck you’ to any unwelcome demands.

That number varies for everyone. It’s subjective – not because of what it buys, but because of what it represents; fuck you money is not about the money, it’s about freedom.

Bitcoin is fuck you money

“Bitcoin is fuck you money.”

This is not a new idea. There’s some truth to it. Bitcoin is a permissionless, borderless, unconfiscateable, censorship-resistant vehicle for transferring wealth, but it’s not fuck you money – yet.

Disclaimer:

I don’t recommend investments or sell trading strategies, and I’ll spare you the history lessons on how Bitcoin was taken over, as well as any ideological monologues about how Bitcoin has strayed from its original path – this article isn’t about any of that.

No, this article is about how cryptocurrencies can become a universally accepted medium-of-exchange that is resistant to all forms of capture, the ultimate tool for censorship-resistance.

In fact, all of crypto is about that.

Censorship-resistance

"The main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required..."
“…the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required…”

In the first paragraph of the Bitcoin white paper, Satoshi lays out the reasons for Bitcoin, among them: Bitcoin’s ability to disintermediate. Satoshi frames this property in the context of efficiency gains created for users. While Bitcoin provides some cost savings compared to traditional payments infrastructure, the unique value proposition of blockchain-based applications is somewhat emergent: censorship-resistance.

It’s unclear whether Satoshi viewed censorship-resistance as a unique value proposition of Bitcoin, but censorship-resistance is clearly desirable for many of those using cryptocurrencies today. Furthermore, censorship-resistance is the only 10x value proposition of blockchains. All other benefits are achievable with preexisting technologies at a lower cost.

Bitcoin is only partly censorship-resistant

In my talk at Token Engineering Barcamp in July, I described how censorship-resistance comes from the convergence of two properties: permissionlessness and privacy. Bitcoin has one; consequently, its been losing market share as a medium of exchange, a context where both properties are desirable.

Privacy may not at first appear to have much to do with censorship-resistance, but its absence gives rise to an insidious form of censorship – self-censorship.

People are reluctant to take certain actions and positions publicly, as evidenced by the popularity of Twitter anons and alt accounts. People only feel free to share their thoughts given a degree of anonymity.

In smart contracts, this has played out with Tornado Cash.

Tornado Cash

#FreeRoman

Tornado Cash, a privacy protocol, is censorship-resistant by traditional standards, but it’s not fully censorship-resistant because most of its participants still lack privacy.

This is not a criticism of Tornado Cash. For one, that would be in poor taste given the circumstances. More importantly, there is no way for Tornado Cash to achieve this property. Tornado Cash is built on Ethereum, which is not private by default; privacy, like other economic security constraints, is inherited.

Following the OFAC sanctions of August 2022, participants in Tornado Cash were censored by different means.

Seeing Alexey’s imprisonment, countless other developers have self-censored by declining to release their protocols, creating a chilling effect.

Additional factors

Money is unique among physical goods in that its value depends entirely on a counterparty’s willingness to accept it. This is a deficit of Bitcoin and its competitors. For a combination of reasons outside the scope of this article, not everyone is willing to accept cryptocurrencies. Suffice it to say, adoption as a medium of exchange is a necessary step for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to gain wider adoption.

To do that, it needs a combination of supporting applications – basic banking tools, private means of coordination, and perhaps an entirely private financial system, all with good user interfaces. For the purpose of this article, I’ll call these infrastructure. This infrastructure is what’s needed for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to become “fuck you money.”

The path of innovation

There are two ways to interpret this article’s title – both beg the question. To the first interpretation, I offer the second.

How do you get fuck you money?

You make it.

Bitcoin – as a catch-all for cryptocurrency – is not “fuck you money” yet. It requires applications built around it to draw users who will accept it as a censorship-resistant form of payment.

Getting users should not be hard; people follow their natural economic incentives. Faced with a choice between a CBDC and a censorship-resistant analog with a copycat interface, most of them will choose the latter.

99.99999% of money is not censorship-resistant, including Bitcoin. No money in existence is fuck you money. So to answer the question, how do you make fuck you money – you start by building the infrastructure for it.

There are 3 steps:

  1. Build protocols which are useful, valuable, secure, and private
  2. Provide good UIs to those
  3. Onboard users
The Principles of Tokenomics
Token Dynamics is helping builders with the first.

For the second, we’ve seen an explosion of talent in UI design pouring in through “Web3” the last couple of years. It may just take a step across the aisle.

And for the third, there are thousands of OG cypherpunks, crypto fanatics, and aligned influencers waiting for a good crypto product to share with their audience. Build these applications with a clean UI/UX and they will share it relentlessly.

Conclusion

So no one has fuck you money – yet.

What is needed for us to get there is not another VC-funded cash-grab, but censorship-resistance. In a world obsessed with how to get fuck you money, there will be plenty along the way for those who actually make it.

And the thing about fuck you money is, once we make it, all money becomes fuck you money.

Nerds, Normies, And Grifters: Keeping Crypto Weird

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The Twitter thread this article is based on was originally published in 2021 by the now-banned @EatSleepCrypto account.

Geeks, MOPs, and Sociopaths by @meaningness is one of the top 5 pieces I’ve ever read.

If everyone in crypto read it, we would be far wealthier, and would achieve mass adoption within 2 years.

The article describes the evolution of subcultures that ends in their inevitable demise.

The author attributes subculture demise to the dilution of an initial scene of geeks by two groups: MOPs – members of the public, and sociopaths. In this context, sociopath is supposed to mean nihilistic and status/profit-oriented.

Defining subcultures

Subcultures are created and sustained by geeks.

There are two types: creators, and fanatics – sound familiar?

Creators invent a New Thing which fanatics rave about.

The New Thing catches the attention of MOPs who dilute and change it over time.

Sociopaths see MOPs’ affinity for a subculture and come in, posing as geeks in order to extract social and financial capital.

Eventually, the dilution of a subculture by MOPs and its perversion by sociopaths drives geeks away. MOPs follow geeks, and only sociopaths are left.

In this way, a subculture dies.

Quality Control

@meaningness suggests three ways to resist the dilution of a subculture by MOPs and sociopaths:

  • Geeks can refuse to admit MOPs
  • Fanatics can convert MOPs
  • Creators can “be slightly evil,” or profit-oriented

In crypto we are uniquely able to do all three.

The crypto analogs of geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths are nerds, normies, and grifters.

Our New Thing is the blockchain and its novel implications, namely, inalienable individual sovereignty. Crypto, DeFi, and Web3 are the manifestations of the New Thing, but not the New Thing itself.

Gated Communities

Using crypto terminology now, crypto is unique because nerds – builders and fanatics, can refuse to admit normies.

This is enabled by the token-gating of events and discussions through NFTs, decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and verifiable credentials (VCs).

Fanatics in crypto are also uniquely positioned to convert MOPs.

Normies are more closely aligned with the principles of individual sovereignty than ever in history; political fallout is accelerating the trend.

@meaningness’s third suggestion is to “be slightly evil” – a better way to put it might be, be slightly profit-oriented.

Crypto is uniquely positioned to do this, but it’s not a given.

Goal of subcultures

Every subculture’s implied goal is to self-perpetuate.

From Meaningness’s article, we can see that a subculture’s survival depends on the profit-orientation of its early adopters.

Too much, and it alienates members of the subculture, and the subculture becomes a parody of itself.

Too little, and the subculture goes broke as grifters come in and destroy it.

Takeaways

I see three major takeaways from the article.

To preserve crypto culture:

1) We must create our own spaces and support token-gating

2) Fanatics should focus on onboarding normies

3) Builders must be profit-oriented

Token-gating crypto spaces

By the time this debate arises, this position will – by definition – be unpopular, which is why we should support it now.

Token-gating events and discussions should become standard as the tech to facilitate it develops.

There are plenty of ways to do this, from requiring NFTs to attend events, to systems of trust which are being developed in ReFi-adjacent spaces.

Onboarding normies

Due to draconian measures by governments worldwide in 2020-2021, normies have never been more aligned with crypto principles.

All that’s needed is UI/UX improvements, and education.

Builders need to emphasize UI/UX; fanatics can focus on education.

Profit orientation

To be profit-oriented, builders need to get better at value capture.

The cryptocurrency market will not remain speculative forever.

Many tokens are fundamentally worthless; when the market figures this out, they will be priced accordingly.

In order to do this, builders should focus on the demand for their token, rather than supply reductions to generate artificial scarcity.

This is the premise of demand-side tokenomics.

The future of crypto

We have been witnessing the perversion of crypto’s essential cypherpunk subculture through its dilution by normies for the last 10 years.

A few key events in the timeline:

  • Bitcoin’s rebranding from A peer-to-peer electronic cash system to “digital gold”
  • Coinbase and other exchanges’ degeneration into shitcoin casinos
  • The rise of pfp NFTs and “web3” as distinct from cryptocurrency

While these events are disheartening, the intended message of this article is that these trends don’t need to affect the core subculture of crypto.

Because of its ability to exclude and convert MOPs, it’s possible for the crypto subculture to persist, untainted.

But if builders fail to capture value, and fanatics don’t onboard normies, crypto will follow the open-source movement and fail to make an impact outside of itself.

I hope builders and fanatics alike take note and begin to capture value.

It’s for this purpose that the entirety of Tokenomics 101 exists.

The hierarchy of value capture

Posted By under Blog, Tokenomics , , , , , , ,

The hierarchy of value capture is the axis along which protocols and the tokenomic mechanisms they employ can be ordered.

Protocols face a challenge in navigating this hierarchy when designing their value capture: mechanisms in the hierarchy of value capture can be ordered simultaneously as ascending in value capture, and descending in defensibility.

In essence, the more value a protocol captures, the less defensible it is.

This phenomenon epitomizes the tradeoffs between the first two principles of tokenomics: value capture, and utility; it will be helpful to understand a bit about these concepts before reading further.

Utility and value capture have tradeoffs because of their interdependence – the maximum value you can capture is the total value you create. As more value is captured, less is left for consumers.

Value creation, or utility, and value capture in crypto protocols resemble those of traditional companies, but they are not perfect analogs.

In a traditional business, value creation is the total value ascribed by consumers to a product or service; value is most frequently captured through profit, a percentage of the value created.

In crypto, utility is the same – the value created by a protocol, for users, but value capture is often different.

Value can be captured in more ways than in traditional businesses because of the types of tokens that are able to be created, and the underlying utility and flexibility of the blockchain back end.

But for both crypto protocols and traditional companies, the ability to capture value long-term is proportional to two things: value creation and defensibility.

Defensibility

Defensibility is the competitive advantage of a protocol. It describes how much value can be sustainably captured before comparable utility is offered by a competitor.

The more defensible a protocol, the more value it can capture, and the more overtly it can do so.

Maximizing defensibility results in a monopoly.

In Peter Thiel’s famous talk at Stanford, he describes why you want to have a monopoly in your industry – monopolies can capture nearly all of the value they create.

It’s difficult to have a monopoly in crypto, as it’s hard to build defensibility – how do you compete when your competition knows your secrets?

Still, there are various ways to build defensibility, and the more defensibility you have, the more value you can capture.

Tokenomic leverage

The ratio of value captured to value created is called tokenomic leverage. Higher tokenomic leverage in a tokenomic mechanism or protocol overall is analogous to higher profit margins in a traditional business.

Tokenomic mechanisms further up the hierarchy have higher leverage. And it’s possible to have a tokenomic leverage greater than 1 – indicating more value is being captured than created.

Synthetix’s tokenomics are an example of high tokenomic leverage.

Users of Synthetix can create sAssets – synthetic TradFi assets collateralized by several times their dollar value in SNX tokens.

Synthetix governance decides this collateralization requirement, but it generally stays between 300% and 500%.

This means that SNX will necessarily be worth 3-5 times the value of all necessary sAssets.

So the tokenomic leverage of this mechanism in the protocol is between 3 and 5, depending on the current collateral requirement.

Synthetix’s collateralization mechanism introduces economic security issues only mitigated by active management of the c-ratio, and heavy inflation. As a result, Synthetix has begun to pivot its design toward other tokenomic mechanisms with lower value capture – but not for fear of competition.

Synthetix still has a monopoly on synthetic assets in the Ethereum ecosystem. If economic security were not also a concern, SNX could retain its inordinate tokenomic leverage.

This is only possible because the protocol has a monopoly; higher tokenomic leverage requires extreme defensibility.

Capturing value creatively

In traditional businesses, profit comes at the consumer’s expense – there is a direct tradeoff between value creation and value capture.

McDonald’s Corporation, however, is a notable exception.

McDonald’s captures value differently.

McDonald’s share price has grown nearly 1,000,000% in its 58-year history – and they didn’t do it charging $12 a burger.

McDonald’s is a real estate company – it accumulates properties and rents them out to franchisees, selling them when appropriate.

This alternative method of value capture enables McDonald’s to subsidize their actual product – burgers and fries – crippling the competition and making for a defensible business, while still capturing value for shareholders.

McDonald’s alternative means of monetization is a prototype of mechanism design, the most crucial aspect of tokenomics.

Mechanism design is the construction of sets of incentives to create desired outcomes. Good mechanism design follows the principles of tokenomics, which are the focus of the demand-side tokenomics framework.

Curve’s CRV

Curve is an example of a protocol which has captured value creatively.

Curve gets a lot of press, both good and bad for its vote-escrowed or ve tokenomics.

But Curve’s ve tokenomics are only a part of its creative value capture methods.

Like McDonald’s, Curve subsidizes their product, trading, with their alternative method of value capture.

Curve’s captures value through bribes – the more bribes being paid to LP’s, the more demand there is for CRV.

The subsidization of trading fees is also proportional to the value of bribes paid to LP’s.

Systemic consequences

Navigating the hierarchy of value capture is a stumbling block for most protocols designing their tokenomics.

Failing to see the problem clearly, many protocols overcompensate in capturing value.

When a protocol captures too much value, attempting to use their own token as a medium of exchange for example, they alienate users, enabling their competitors to copy their protocol without using a native token, capturing value through fees or another tokenomic mechanism with tokenomic leverage.

If a protocol captures too little, they lose out on the opportunity to capture value at all, and doom any competitors to the same fate.

Uniswap’s failure to capture value from the start led to the need for Curve to capture value creatively in the first place.

But in reality, Curve didn’t only capture value creatively.

Curve had to create additional utility to compete with Uniswap, because Uniswap had set the AMM market’s barrier to entry at zero value capture or less.

Subsequent AMMs capture even less value, issuing evermore inflationary tokens to subsidize their operations; as a result of Uniswap’s initial failure, all future AMMs are forced to capture negative value just to compete.

And while Curve’s innovation of ve tokenomics was clever, Curve would have been able to capture more value, with better margins had Uniswap captured value as well.

Avoid at all FOSS

Arguably the worst fate for crypto would be to follow in the footsteps of the FOSS (free, open-source software) movement.

Linux was built by similarly ideologically motivated developers who believed, as a faction of crypto does, that software should be free.

The result was unsurprising: software with poor UX, which most people hate.

Linux has been relegated to a small percentage of computer users, while competitors Apple and Microsoft were left to capture inordinate amounts of value extractively because of the duopoly they were left with.

Crypto has a unique opportunity to do open-source right; in Linux’s day, the internet had no native currency – no way to transfer value, charge microtransactions, or accrue value to native assets.

Now, there is more opportunity than ever to create valuable, yet open-source software and get paid for it.

The study of that monetization is called tokenomics.

Conclusion

Tokenomics can be hard to get right, and there’s a lot riding on them, both for your protocol and for the broader industry.

We walk founders and developers through these important questions with the Demand-Side Tokenomics framework – a series of questions and worksheets designed to evoke the optimal design for your protocol based on the principles of tokenomics.

If you’re building a protocol and would like help, or a step-by-step guide on how to design for optimal utility, token price, and longevity of the protocol, reach out to us and tell us what you’re building.

Building Valuable Hyperstructures

Posted By under Blog, Tokenomics ,

Hyperstructures are a new type of public good – one which is truly public, and can’t be taken away.

They are built on blockchains, so they inherit blockchains’ properties, and then some.

Hyperstructures are protocols with the following attributes:

taken from Hyperstructures by jacob.eth

I am awed by ‘s Jacob’s articulation of these ideas; Hyperstructures is a masterpiece.

I have one caveat, and it’s about the biggest existential risk to crypto – lack of value capture.

Hyperstructure token value

Hyperstructures are only valuable when designed to capture value.

Almost none are.

Token prices are 99% speculation; their price floor, aka utility value – the price at which the market buys them up – is less than 1% of the price.

Many tokens have no price floor at all.

Most hyperstructures are valuable in the sense that they have utility, but they are not financially valuable – they lack ways to capture or accrue that value to a token.

High prices are temporary, fueled by speculation.

The UNI fee switch

Jacob says the right to turn on Uniswap’s fee switch gives Uniswap’s UNI value.

Not exactly.

If the fee switch is turned on, participants in the Uniswap protocol will leave.

https://twitter.com/EatSleepCrypto/status/1545499168105369602

To capture value, Uniswap need to make a v4 so good that it’s worth the fees.

Hyperstructure valuation

There are other reasons given for high prices of hyperstructure tokens:

  • Governance
  • Use of a token to pay fees
  • Protocol use
  • TVL

These features can be useful and necessary, but they still don’t capture value.

Governance tokens

Pure governance tokens are not valuable, for the reasons given about Uniswap above.

They fail to capture value, and the hyperstructures they govern are their own competition.

Fee tokens

Use of a token to pay fees within a protocol does not capture much value.

Fees are a small part of all value in a protocol.

Each token is used more than once – velocity – so all tokens together only capture an even smaller part of the total value in a protocol.

Protocol use

Just because a protocol is used does not mean its token will have a high price.

A token must be used in a protocol for it to capture value.

Supply and demand for the token must be aligned with protocol use.

Total Value Locked

Total value locked in a protocol, TVL does not merit a high price for the protocol token.

When TVL is not increasing demand for the token, there is no relationship between TVL and token value.

TVL does not capture value unless it is made to.

This is true for L1’s, including ETH.

Hyperstructure value capture

There are two basic ways for hyperstructures to capture value:

1. Charging fees and giving them to tokenholders

2. Requiring the native token as a medium of exchange within the protocol.

The first is a security, the second is a currency.

Charging fees

Charging fees to use a hyperstructure captures value.

Fees can be at a protocol level (SushiSwap), or on top of a protocol (OpenSea).

Note: it’s illegal to give token holders these fees in the US.

That said, hyperstructures are permissionless; this is not legal advice.

Equities vs currencies

Currencies and companies don’t capture value the same way.

Companies capture value by taking profits.

Currencies capture value through use as a medium of exchange.

Hyperstructures can capture value in either way, but the token and protocol must be designed to do so.

Conclusion

Building valuable hyperstructures is hard.

If you want to capture value, you need to include ways to do so from the beginning.

You can’t just do it later.

For this reason:

Excerpt from jacob.eth’s Hyperstructues

Crypto is the only industry where you can create a billion dollars of value from nothing and not see a penny.

Not because someone takes that value, but because you fail to monetize.

Without value capture, builders of hyperstructures will not be compensated.

If you need help with value capture or would like input on your project’s tokenomics, reach out to us for a free consult.

Value Capture and its misconceptions

Posted By under Blog, Tokenomics ,

Value capture describes the way a business, protocol, or cryptocurrency retains a percentage of its revenues.

Misconceptions about value capture abound.

There are two types of mental mistakes people make – biases, utilitarian and teleological.

Utilitarian bias

Peter Thiel summarizes the first in Zero to One:

“Your company could create a lot of value without becoming very valuable itself.”

Thiel compares returns between major airlines, and software companies.

Airlines operate on thin margins. Software companies have marginal cost of replication.

In 2012, airlines’ revenue was $160 billion. Google’s was $50 billion, but at a 21% profit margin, Google was over a hundred times more profitable than the airline industry.

Valuable protocols != valuable tokens

Lack of value capture isn’t unique to TradFi; in fact, it’s more common in free, open-source software.

As an outgrowth of FOSS, cryptocurrency (ironically) also suffers.

Many in crypto assume the tokens of a valuable protocol will necessarily be valuable. Most of the time, developers haven’t considered tokenomics, and there is no relationship.

Teleological bias

Teleological bias reverses causality.

It implies an imaginary force in an incomplete chain of dependencies.

“x is valuable because y depends on it,” where it isn’t a given that y will remain stable.

For example, “BTC must continue to go up because the Bitcoin network’s security depends on it.”

This type of rationalization is a red flag, but quite common.

Financial interest blinds people.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair

Labor Theory of Value

The Labor Theory of Value is another example of teleological bias – which describes the tendency to reverse causality to retrofit a set of beliefs.

Early Bitcoiners said Bitcoin derived value proportional to the electricity spent on it.

Things are valued for what they give, not what they take.

Electricity, required to mine BTC, is a driver of costs, not value.

Conclusion: Systemic Risk

These biases are a problem partly because their premises are true.

Cryptocurrencies need to be valuable to secure protocols.

In most cases, they’re not.

Thought is rarely given to what makes a token valuable. Consequently, protocols behave unexpectedly, collapsing and their tokens dropping 99% in bear markets.

The increasing interdependence of blockchains compounds this issue. The cryptocurrency ecosystem is rife with risk.

Thankfully, builders are beginning to notice these risks, and how to deal with them.

Cryptocurrency often likened to Jenga – one block away from complete collapse.

I see crypto as a pyramid.

We’re building one layer at a time. Sometimes we build too high, without laying the previous foundation. Those who build ahead fall from real heights.

But it doesn’t stop those building at the bottom.

Thankfully, people are starting to tune into this.

Each bull market, the cryptocurrency ecosystem builds another layer.

So far, the approach has been to let it settle, see what falls.

But there is a better way.

In the pyramid analogy, tokenomics are the concrete that hold everything together.

By intentional crafting of tokenomics, cryptocurrency protocols can be made to capture value, giving them the economic security needed for a strong foundation.

If you’d like to learn more about tokenomics and how to design valuable cryptocurrencies, check out Tokenomics 101.

Terra (LUNA) Tokenomic Post Mortem

Posted By under Blog, Tokenomics ,

Terra is a base-layer (L1) blockchain with native asset, LUNA, used primarily to collateralize the Terra ecosystem’s stablecoin, UST.

This week, the UST stablecoin lost its peg to the dollar, causing a “death spiral” that brought LUNA down from $90 to $0.

It was an unprecedented event whose implications are still being worked out in the crypto space.

Takes on the fundamental reason LUNA crashed range from “it was an inside job” to “20% yields are unsustainable,” with “LUNA itself was undercollateralized” and “LFG, the Terra treasury mismanaged funds” falling in between.

Shady dealings not withstanding, it was Terra’s tokenomics that caused its demise.

Examining LUNA’s fundamental value

All currencies get their value from use as a medium of exchange.

Cryptocurrencies are no exception.

In LUNA’s case, this value comes from use as collateral.

LUNA collateralizes UST, and LUNA holders make decisions about the protocol – governance.

Like all pure-governance tokens, LUNA doesn’t derive much value from its ability to make these changes.

Most of LUNA’s value came from the belief that it would be used as collateral for borrowing UST.

Terra: a short summary

Over the past two years, Terra ascended to the top of CoinMarketCap, fueled by “guaranteed” returns on Anchor Protocol.

In March, founder Do Kwon announced Terra would buy $10 billion in reserves, to fortify LUNA.

By May, ~$2.5 billion in BTC had been accumulated by LFG, the Terra treasury, but there were $14 billion UST outstanding, making Terra an easy target since the foundation couldn’t cover deposits.

Taking profits in stablecoins like USDT, DAI, and UST is popular way for traders keep money the ecosystem, and avoid centralized exchanges.

UST holders were attracted for this reason, but the fundamental driver of Terra’s growth was 20% yields on stablecoins deposited into Terra’s Anchor protocol.

On May 12, series of shorts on UST caused it to fall below $1.00.

Over the next few days, a bank run followed.

UST fluctuated wildly, causing Terra to mint new LUNA by design, and prompting LFG to sell its BTC reserves for LUNA, hoping to bring the UST peg back to $1.00.

It didn’t work; the crypto community had lost faith in UST, recognizing Anchor as a pyramid scheme.

After several days, facing a hopeless situation, Terra network validators paused the blockchain to prevent further attacks.

For blockchains, less than 100% uptime is a cardinal sin.

Lessons from Terra (LUNA)

LUNA’s use was rather limited. It was primarily used to create UST.

Irrespective of LUNA’s sizeable Total Addressable Market – a multiplier of demand for stablecoins – LUNA’s TAM is fickle.

Anchor’s 20% yield ultimately depended on LUNA’s continued growth.

A few takeaways:

  1. Cryptocurrencies get their value from use as a medium of exchange.
    1. The resilience of a cryptocurrency depends on the diversity of its economy. LUNA was used for a single purpose; when Anchor failed, LUNA failed.
  2. All value is belief.
    • Once the belief that LUNA could create UST was shaken, the price spiraled.
    • To Terra’s credit, it (still) has lots of supporters, and a vibrant community, but even this isn’t enough to fix bad tokenomics.
  3. Tokenomics must be sustainable. Without sustainable tokenomics, projects risk stagnation or collapse.

The bulk of the implications from Terra’s collapse are likely to play out over the coming weeks and years. In such an interconnected system, these effects are not immediately obvious – tokenomic design can be complex.

If you are creating a token and would like some help with tokenomics, feel free to reach out for a free consult.

The economics of #Monerun and the hidden benefits of rehypothecation

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Monero (XMR) is the best-in-class privacy coin and continues to gain adoption in real-world transactions.

Monero’s relative anonymity makes it ideal for transactions where privacy is required. Recently though, it’s come to the attention of XMR users that this anonymity comes with hidden costs.

According to the Monero community, exchanges are using Monero’s anonymity to conceal their trading of ‘paper contracts’.

A thread in r/cryptocurrency summarizes the issue.

In short, exchanges are accused of selling Monero they don’t have, which suppresses price.

On April 18th, Monero users coordinated to withdraw their XMR from exchanges to create a bank run, forcing exchanges to buy XMR on the market, increasing its price.

This financial sleight of hand happens with cash, too. It’s called fractional reserve banking. Banks are permitted by the Federal Reserve to lend 5 to 10 times more than they hold in cash, thus creating money out of thin air – inflation.

If exchanges are doing the same thing with XMR, inflation doesn’t occur because these paper contracts aren’t circulating in the XMR economy, but speculation is not being priced into the coin.

Hidden benefits of rehypothecation

Caitlin Long warned of this phenomenon as a threat to Bitcoin in 2018, calling it “rehypothecation.”

In #TradFi, rehypothecation is to the reuse of the same underlying collateral in multiple financial contracts.

In the private sector, rehypothecation is illegal, as it can leave its beneficiaries on the hook for more than they’re able to pay.

Proponents in all sectors argue that done carefully, it enables liquidity.

This is ostensibly also the accused exchanges’ argument.

Accusations of rehypothecation may just be a convenient explanation for Monero (XMR)’s stagnant price, but it wouldn’t be the first time exchanges acted unethically to make a buck.

Most coins get their price primarily from speculation, and rehypothecation would decimate many of them.

Monero (XMR), on the other hand, is used primarily for real-world purchases. Because of this, it actually stands to benefit from rehypothecation.

MV = PQ

ESC Investor Series valuation models are based on the equation of exchange.

The Equation of Exchange, MV = PQ is the standard way to value a currency. In short, it says a currency is as valuable as the things it’s used to pay for.

We use it to find cryptocurrency price floors given a set of assumptions.

To use Monero as an example, the price of all circulating XMR must be at least enough to facilitate commerce.

If the price isn’t high enough to meet demand for payments with it, XMR will be bought – and importantly, withdrawn and used to buy things.

Because they’re not circulating, paper contracts don’t affect XMR’s price floor – given Monero’s use profile, it’s unlikely much is sent within exchanges as payment.

“Printing” contracts, though, still suppresses price as speculation is absorbed.

Takeaways

#1) Rehypothecation of XMR has mixed implications.

On the one hand, users miss out on speculative swings due to price suppression.

On the other, XMR gains price stability, arguably Monero’s greatest obstacle in the way of adoption.

#2) Monerun is unlikely to have lasting effects.

5/2/22 editor’s note: XMR’s price is down ~25% since recent highs on 4/18 during Monerun.

Exchanges lose no face by simply refusing withdrawals.

5/2/22 editor’s note 2: Binance withdrawals were suspended on 4/17, ahead of Monerun.

Furthermore, nothing stops exchanges from continuing to rehypothecate XMR.

#3) XMR has major upside.

If the XMR price was purely speculative, rehypothecation would be cause for concern.

But it’s not.

Monero best fits the main use case of cryptocurrencies – private, uncensorable payments.

Regardless of whether Monerun sustainably raises price, XMR has 100x growth ahead of it.

It won’t be long before the world realizes the importance of financial privacy.

For more articles on these valuation methods, read these articles and follow Nate on Twitter @EatSleepCrypto.

The role of Bitcoin in the coming Cashless Society

Posted By under Blog

During the manufactured crisis of 2020, governments worldwide have ramped up the war on cash.

With governments intentionally exacerbating cash’s problems, bureaucrats fanning the flames and Central Bank Digital Currencies being fast-tracked, the thought that crypto might soon come under fire carries a palpable sense of fear in the minds of many.

Under this scenario, agorists, voluntaryists, and crypto-anarchists imagine a technocratic dystopia, in which none are free from the watchful eyes of the government-tech coalition.

Due to their independent-mindedness, dissidents would find themselves excluded from the mainstream financial system, severely limited in their travel, with only a barter economy and perhaps precious metals as a medium of exchange.

It’s a nightmare of a vision, but thankfully, things don’t seem poised to develop that way – at least not to the extent many imagine.

That’s because even a cashless society, cryptocurrencies will still be accessible and liquid.

Even if cryptocurrencies are fully banned, there will be loopholes.

General government incompetence, and the limited will of the state to enforce its laws guarantee necessary space for agorists to operate.

It isn’t entirely likely in a cashless society that cryptocurrencies would receive a full ban. Politicians always leave themselves an out, and cryptocurrencies are second only to cash for preserving financial privacy.

Cash is extremely useful to politicians accepting bribes and laundering their ill-gotten gains. They are simply unlikely to let such a tool go without a suitable replacement.

Bitcoin Cash in a cashless society

Bitcoin – a placeholder for decentralized, scaleable cryptocurrencies – is more than we know.

It will be the rails of the counter-economic underground railroad. This term, borrowed from Derrick Broze describes the infrastructure agorists, voluntaryists and the like will need to transact freely in a cashless society.

Sepia Railroad Tracks V Photograph by Athena Mckinzie

Among the innovations Bitcoin already enables are stablecoins, blockchain-issued equities, trustless communication, decentralized marketplaces, and trustless financial derivatives.

The vast majority of these innovations are happening on Bitcoin Cash, which at present is also the only cryptocurrency with such capabilities that has proven its security model and can actually scale to meet demand.

Today marks Bitcoin Cash’s third anniversary of independence from BTC. So we celebrate all of Bitcoin Cash’s innovations and look forward to its future contributions to the counter-economic underground railroad, and the freedom it enables.

Happy Independence Day, Bitcoin Cash!

Hijacking Bitcoin, narratives, and the nature of truth in cryptocurrency

Posted By under Blog, Valuation Framework

As the first industry to operate in a truly free market, cryptocurrency is by nature the most competitive industry in the world.

There are many competing implementations of the idea of cryptocurrencies, and even more ideas on how cryptocurrencies should and even do operate.

How does one discern truth among all the competing claims?

Everyone on Earth has frameworks, worldviews, lenses through which they see and interpret events.

In crypto, we call these narratives.

Narratives are helpful in contextualizing and integrating information, but when relied upon too heavily, they obscure truth and exclude data from consideration.

Predictive capability

No narrative is perfectly correct; all lack some nuance. Yet narratives are necessary for human comprehension. The key is finding the right one.

But how does one know the narrative they subscribe to is correct?

In statistics, models are judged as useful or “true” according to their predictive ability.

Narratives in line with reality facilitate the correct prediction of future events.

Weekly Newsletter topics

This week, a number of things happened which destroyed the dominant narratives.

These events were explicitly predicted by several of cryptocurrency’s best and brightest.

  • Sept. 30th – The BakktFlop
    • We’ve been saying this investment thesis is just a poorly disguised subscription to the Greater Fool Theory.
    • The narrative here was encapsulated in the meme “Institutional [money] is coming.” Bitcoin speculators have based much of their optimism in the perpetuation of the BTC pyramid scheme on the eventual buy-in of institutions.
    • The Bakkt network – a creation of the Intercontinental Exchange, owner of the NYSE – disappointed investors so hard that JP Morgan said it caused a 25% drop in the price of Bitcoin (BTC).
  • Sept. 28th – Lightning bug
    • Another of BTC speculators’ theories is that the Lightning Network – an perpetually unfinished work – will soon scale and solve all of Bitcoin’s usability issues which were brought on by developers’ refusal to increase the block size limit.
    • A critical bug was “discovered” in the Lightning Network which allowed users to spend bitcoins that didn’t exist. Calling this bug critical is an understatement.
    • There’s nothing wrong with expecting technological advances to solve problems (see Moore’s Law). The issue with the Lightning Network is that a) evidence has been to the contrary since its inception, and b) basically all of BTC’s hopes of scaling in a decentralized manner were gambled on Lightning, which has perpetually fallen short of expectations.
    • In anticipation of this, a few developers created Bitcoin Cash, which is the continuation of Bitcoin as it used to be – fast, reliable, and cheap to use. The Bitcoin Cash community – mostly made up of long-time Bitcoin supporters – has also been predicting very underwhelming institutional interest in BTC.
  • Oct. 1 – UK Crypto regulations
    • As the Bakkt flop showed, “institutional” is probably not coming. Neither is it desirable. With institutions come regulations. This week, CoinShares sent out a request for comments on the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s intent to ban retail access to cryptocurrency derivatives.
    • In short, a healthy derivatives market allows more participants by making it less risky for smaller players. The only reason to ban these is that derivatives would make cryptocurrencies more stable.
    • Retail access to cryptocurrency derivatives is already extremely limited; as the non-events of Bakkt show, the institutional interest barely even exists. Governments are seeking to prevent the creation of such an ecosystem. If cryptocurrencies become stable, government-mandated fiat currencies lose their appeal, and then governments lose their hold on people.
    • This move will confuse those whose narrative suggests that governments will support the growth of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. With few exceptions, the broad swath of politicians and agencies are vehemently opposed to cryptocurrency adoption.

The narrative that’s predicted this holds that governments and other major players in the “money industry” want to shut cryptocurrencies down.

This view is held by a minority in crypto.

Due to their preconceptions, the majority of the cryptocurrency community believes that BTC is the frontrunner for bringing financial freedom, or long-term success to the crypto space.

They’ve missed the obvious:

Conclusion

Bitcoin’s opponents attempt to stop it by twisting the narrative of its supporters.

First, they introduce a perversion of an accepted narrative (e.g. Bitcoin as digital gold rather than electronic cash). Then, they change the protocol once the narrative gains critical momentum.

Luckily, narratives which are out of touch with reality doom those who operate by them to failure.

The expected value of a flawed model is false conclusions.

A subset of people in cryptocurrrency have a staggering history of correct predictions, and it’s these people we subscribe to. Through earnest reflection and examination of ideas, we hope to create more of them.