Author: CoinDesk

That’s a wrap! The World Economic Forum is over, and the key ideas coming out of Davos for our industry are: 1) a continued ‘blockchain, not crypto’ narrative; 2) a believe in the inevitability of cashless futures (without much concern about the negative implications); and 3) the rise of CBDCs. 

On the CBDC front, the WEF put out a toolkit for governments that are considering their own currency; Japan announced a project to explore a digital currency as a counterweight to the influence a digital yuan might bring China; and a BIS study says 1 in 10 governments anticipate having a digital currency within 3 years. 

Finally, we close asking prolific bitcoiner and artist Brekkie von Bitcoin about the state of bitcoin art and why even the hardcore financially-minded folks in the space should care. 

Topics Discussed

The WEF wraps up and it’s all ‘blockchain not crypto’ and cashless futures

https://www.coindesk.com/notes-from-the-wef-cash-is-dead-long-live-digital-cash

1 in 10 central banks planning CBDCs in the next 3 years

https://www.wsj.com/articles/central-banks-warm-to-issuing-digital-currencies-11579796156

Japan floats idea of digital currency to counteract influence of China

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-digital/japan-ruling-party-lawmakers-to-float-idea-of-issuing-digital-currency-idUSKBN1ZN0OU

Brekkie’s Bitcoin Art Newsletter

https://www.vonbitcoinart.com/newsletter

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There is an ongoing debate in the crypto community about where mainstream adoption. One point of view is that it will be the slow steady acceptance of digital assets. On that front, Bakkt president Adam White said in Davos yesterday that the company is on track to launch their app this year. 

Another perspective is that the main use case of crypto is to enable otherwise censored transactions. Lending credence to this perspective is the case of Pornhub, which saw payouts to its more than 100,000 performers blocked unexpectedly by PayPal in November, and which announced cash outs via Tether (USDT) today. 

In this episode, @nlw breaks down these two arguments and asks whether they’re mutually exclusive. 

Also discussed is the new BCH mining group (cartel?) insisting on a 12.5% block reward dev fund, as well as interesting insights and data from research from CoinDesk and The Block today. 

Topics discussed 

Bakkt's consumer app is coming in 2020, and it'll look more like PayPal than Coinbase

Pornhub Now Lets Models Get Paid With the Tether Stablecoin

Bitcoin Cash Miners Propose Controversial Soft Fork for Zcash-Style Development Fund

CoinDesk Q4 2019 Review: A Year in Suspended Animation

Research report - employment trends in the digital asset industry commissioned by the Blockchain Association

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News broke yesterday that the Libra Association had seen it’s eighth high-profile defection, this time from the telecom giant Vodafone. In today’s episode of The Breakdown, @nlw argues that Association members are far less of a factor in Libra’s success than key regulatory questions around domiciling, the value peg and the US’s fear of a Chinese digital currency.

Also in this episode, Square Crypto announces its plans for a 'Lightning Development Kit' while Square also announced a new patent that could make crypto easier to use. In regulatory battles, meanwhile, both the Blockchain Association and the Chamber of Digital Commerce have filed amicus briefs around the SEC-Telegram lawsuit. 

Topics Discussed

Vodafone Is the Latest Big Company to Quit Facebook-Founded Libra Association

Square Crypto Is Creating a 'Lightning Development Kit' for Bitcoin Wallets

Jack Dorsey's Square Wins Patent for Fiat-to-Crypto Payments Network

Blockchain Association Sides With Telegram Against SEC, Says Grams Are Not Securities

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Ever since announcing their fourth round of grants, Gitcoin has been a major subject of conversation across the Twittersphere. In addition to all the excited buzz from both technical projects and media creators vying for grants matched based on E. Glen Weyl and Vitalik Buterin’s quadratic funding model, there has been controversy. Some of that controversy has been from outside the Ethereum community, pointing to Consensys and Ethereum Foundation support as an example of centralization. Some of the controversy has come from within, as debates rage about what is or isn’t an acceptable use of “public” resources. 

No matter what one’s position, it’s hard to deny that Gitcoin is one of the most interesting experiments in open source funding to date. Listen as @nlw askes the projects founder Kevin Owocki about the history of the project, the controversy, and what makes this round of grants such a big jump forward.

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The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. Earlier this week, the Let's Talk Bitcoin! Show gathered to discuss decentralization in blockchain projects, the historical context of decentralized organizations, the robustness it conveys but also the difficulties it engenders.

On today's podcast we apply concepts and stories from "The Spider and the Starfish: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations", a formational book on pre-blockchain decentralization written in the early 2000's, as the centralized US military struggled to effectively dispatch a much smaller decentralized force in Afghanistan. While the battlefield is different, the insight is perhaps even more relevant to the world of blockchain projects, their decentralized origins and ambitions.

Later, we discuss the similarities between decentralized organizations and the Buddha's concept of self.

Want more? Catch up on 7 years of Let's Talk Bitcoin!

This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by Brave.com and eToro.com.

Original Photo by Ubaidhulla Adam on Unsplash

This episode featured Adam B. Levine, Stephanie Murphy, and Jonathan Mohan

Music for today's episode was provided by Jared Rubens, and general fuzz, with editing by Jonas. 

Would you like to Sponsor a future episode of the Let's Talk Bitcoin! show? Do you have any questions or comments? Email adam@ltbshow.com

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One man. Three piping hot takes. In this special interview episode of The Breakdown, financial advisor and crypto advocate Tyrone Ross shares his thoughts on:

• Why Financial Advisors are the key to bringing in the next wave of crypto investors
• Why DeFi is an even bigger deal than you think - and not just to the hackers and entrepreneurs building on it
• Why Square’s CashApp - not Binance, not Coinbase, not any one else - is the most important company in Crypto

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As Libra continues to spur discussions among regulators around the world, and China’s digital yuan comes ever closer to fruition, the U.S. Federal Reserve seems disinclined to look seriously at a digital dollar. Ex-CFTC Chair Chris Giancarlo - aka “Crypto Dad” - isn’t waiting around. He has teamed with Accenture to launch the nonprofit Digital Dollar Foundation.

As crypto continues to evolve, it does so in sometimes divergent directions. Gemini announced a new insurance company designed to make big institutions more comfortable with the space. Zcash, meanwhile, released an updated SDK to make it easier to shield transactions via mobile. Can the privacy-preserving side of crypto co-exist, ultimately, with the sanguine institutional side? 

Finally, we revisit our discussion of personal tokens and ISAs, as well as look at the latest research from Coinmetrics on whether bitcoin is behaving like a safe haven asset. 

Topics discussed:

Former CFTC head Giancarlo launches Digital Dollar Foundation 

Gemini creates an insurance company with $200m limit to protect clients

Coinmetrics examines bitcoin safe haven narrative

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Crypto tokens weren’t the only thing that saw a major pump yesterday. The total value locked in DeFi ascended to new heights. While part of this can be explained simply by the rise in ETH price, it also reflected traders turning to DeFi platforms as a way to get more exposure to the market action without selling their core assets. 

For all the exciting price action, not everything is pointing in a positive direction. These market moves don’t seem to reflect new market participants, for example, and anecdotally, times remain tough for projects trying to fundraise. 

In our final segment, we look at a blockchain conference in North Korea that the UN suggests simply attending may violate international sanctions, an Iran-focused hedge fund that uses cryptocurrency to work around international restrictions, and ask whether this sort of activity presents a narrative risk to the industry as a whole?

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Bitcoin is up more than 8% in the last 24 hours. BSV, meanwhile, is up nearly a whopping 100%. The question is, of course, why? Is it some larger macro context? A pump-and-dump? Or just the crypto markets being as crazy as they are. The Breakdown invited guest Mati Greenspan, former e-Toro analyst and now founder of Quantum Economics to give his take. 

We also look at two stories around the growing crypto derivative markets: the launch of the CME’s options on bitcoin futures and CFTC Chair Heath Tarbert’s comments yesterday that regulated derivatives will bring legitimacy to the space. Finally, we look at a just-released Investor Alert from the SEC on IEOs.

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Starting today, accredited investors will be able to part of $13.5m in tokenized bonds connected to the contract of Brooklyn Nets Point Guard Spencer Dinwiddie. The first-of-its-kind offering took months of negotiation with the NBA but marks a seminal moment for both crypto and the larger idea of Income Share Agreements. 

In this podcast, we discuss how big a deal Dinwiddie’s offering is and whether Income Share Agreements could be a breakout use case for crypto. We also discuss other contenders for “crypto killer app,” including undercollateralized DeFi loans and NFT-based games. Finally, we discuss whether crypto’s actual killer app has already arrived - in the form of using bitcoin to escape local political and economic controls. 

Topics Discussed:

Spencer Dinwiddie tokenizes $13.5m NBA contract

What Income Share Agreements have to do with crypto 

Bitcoin’s mainstream use case isn’t mainstream

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