Saturday, June 25, 2022

Wealth Formula Episode 321: Bitcoin Ecosystem and Infinite Fleet

Catch the full episode: https://www.wealthformula.com/podcast/321-bitcoin-ecosystem-and-infinite-fleet/

Buck: Welcome back to the show, everyone. Today, my guest on Wealth Formula podcast, I should say my guests on Wealth Formula podcast are Samson Mow and Chris Wood. Now, Samson and Chris, both have been on the show before. Samson, as you may recall, is a former chief strategy officer of Blockstream. He's taken on a new role in a company he started called JAN3, which we will talk about. And Chris Wood is CEO of Pixelmatic. And for those of you who participated in an offering for a game that is known as Infinite Fleet, he is the guy sort of on the ground watching that every day. And of course, Samson is the CEO of that company as well. So we're going to cover a lot today. We're going to talk a little bit about bitcoin markets and future of that and then ultimately into this game. So, guys, welcome back to the show. It's been a while, and I know you guys have been traveling the world in the meantime.

Samson: Yeah, thanks, Buck. It's been great to come back again. It's a routine now.

Buck: Yeah, it is good. It's great. Because, Samson, I want to start with you. You're kind of at ground zero a bitcoin as it develops. You left Blockstream and started JAN3. Do you want to just give us a quick review what Blockstream was doing and what you decided to leave there to do and what your vision is?

Samson: Right, so Blockstream is a bitcoin infrastructure company. It's really focused on building up protocols, building out bitcoin side chains, the lightning network, things that expand bitcoin's ability to do more and transact more and offer things like security tokens. I think the difference is for JAN3 we built ourselves as a bitcoin technology company. So our focus is more about getting adoption. So the plan is that we will work with governments, with companies that want to integrate bitcoin into their existing systems and infrastructure, and we want to also roll out our mobile wallet aqua into the hands of more people so that they can receive bitcoin, buy bitcoin, and transact. So it's a bit of a different angle. We're more about gaining adoption and mass adoption, nation state adoption, whereas Block Stream is more about infrastructure and development of the underlying protocols.

Buck: Talk a little bit about that because I follow you on Facebook and all that, and I'm seeing you around the world near volcanoes with governments. You want to tell us a little bit about what you've been up to specifically?

Samson: Sure. So I guess a lot of my work is focused around El Salvador. So last year, El Salvador made bitcoin legal tender, as you remember, and that caused a big stir around the world. And this year, actually, the Central African Republic made it legal tender as well. So we're seeing more and more nation states adopt it, as well as cities and autonomous regions like Madeira, Prospera, and plenty more down the road. But there's this wave of nation stated option kicking off. But while I was at Blockchain, I helped the seller design a bitcoin bond. So it is essentially a bond offering with a bitcoin component. So the plan is to raise $1 billion, and it will be tokenized on the liquid side chain so that it's really tradable and you can custom it yourself in your mobile phone. But the difference here with the normal bond aside from the tokenization model is that there is half of the bond raised going into bitcoin, buying bitcoin on the market. So they'll have 500 million in cash, which they will deploy for mining operations and expanding their power generation facilities, expanding their geothermal plants, and then half of it is buying bitcoin. Now, after a five year mark, they're going to start selling off that bitcoin. They'll first recoup their initial 500 million investment, but then they'll start selling it month by month or quarter by quarter and sharing that upside with the investors in the bond. So it's a very novel instrument, and hopefully more and more countries will start to look at that model for financing. But, yeah, that's something. I worked with them before, and I'm still doing a lot of advisory to the government of alcohol or when they have requests or questions about bitcoin.

Buck: Are the countries that are interested right now primarily those that have some issues of instability with their own currency?

Samson: I would say it has to do with more, to do with dollarization. So osavo is dollarized, right? They used to have their own currency called the colon, but then that was actually phased out, I think legally still exists, but they don't use it anymore. And now they have US. Dollars and bitcoin as eagle tender in Africa. For the central African republic, they are using the colonial Swiss franc, the CFA franc. So that's like a fiat currency created from France to effectively control their colonies previously. And unfortunately, it's still a legacy that's still in play in Africa. So they are also trying to extract themselves from that system and looking to adopt a bitcoin standard. But like you're saying, it's probably countries that are dollarized or using someone else's money. And that is a problem for them because they suffer from inflation. There's no benefit. So typically the money supply is inflated, say, in the US. And there's infrastructure projects, there's money going around. But for them, they're not seeing that money, but they're suffering from the inflated supply because their purchasing power is going down. So it makes sense for these countries to try to go onto a bitcoin standard, onto a money that is not controlled by anyone and is apolitical.

Buck: When you look at Ecuador in particular, they obviously made a big move last year, as you mentioned. How does that look on the ground right now? Like day to day transactions changed? Are people walking around exchanging bitcoin or a bitcoin derivative? Or how is that working right now? Or is that really just in its infancy?

Samson: I would say it's still rolling out. So they've launched their achievable wallet. That's their government custodial wallet. It supports bitcoin and lightning transfers. They've got a lot of installs, but I don't see the daily usage at a high level yet. It's still more or less in the early phases of adoption. And I think that's normal because you can't just overnight flip the switch and have a country of 6 million people using bitcoin. So there's going to be a gradual ramp up. But you do see a lot of businesses supporting bitcoin, accepting bitcoin for payments. And I think the biggest boon has been to the economy. So they've seen a massive uptick in tourism and people going to El Salvador. A lot of people in my circles in the bitcoin industry and crypto industry, they made the pilgrimage to El Salvador to see elvante, to see what's going on there. And I think their tourism numbers are up like 30, 40% this year.

Buck: Sort of like the new Puerto Rico or something, except the benefit of having some adoption. As you work with these countries, what is like the response? I don't know if there's a pushback or whatever from other countries around the world that are clearly not interested right now in having bitcoin play any significant legitimized role in their economies. Are you seeing anything like that? Are you experiencing anything like that? Or are you just not really in that loop?

Samson: Well, I guess the biggest opposition to bitcoin adoption, it seems to be the IMF. They definitely don't like that countries are trying to move off the dollar standard. And I think they've incentivized Argentina to not adopt bitcoin. So they've made some loans contingent upon rejection of bitcoin as the money and adopting like a central bank, digital currency or whatnot. But there is pressure and there is a lot of political force being deployed to make sure that people don't adopt bitcoin.

Buck: Do you feel like right now, if you compare where bitcoin was like, I don't know, 2017, obviously, like the last time everybody was talking about bitcoin when your barber was talking about bitcoin compared to now development in terms of its use, can you talk like, where we've come during that period of time?

Samson: Well, I would say we've come a long way and the ecosystem has developed a lot since then. And I think it mostly has to do with layer two tech, like lightning and like liquid. So we're seeing adoption of both of these. There are two technologies accelerate very fast. So lightning I think, has about 4000 bitcoin locked into it and that means they're using these bitcoins for payments and whatnot. The liquid ecosystem, I think, has 3000 something bitcoin locked in, and that's for trading and arbitrage and moving funds between exchanges, etcetera. As well as stable coins issued on liquid as well. But I'd say overall we're in a very different place than we were in 20 17, 20 18. We're at the cusp of nation state adoption, so we had a number of cities and autonomous regions start to express interest in adopting it or making it legal tender. And then we have two countries now, and possibly more along the way. If you're paying attention to the politics in Latin America, there's more and more politicians, like potential presidential candidates standing up and saying that's part of my platform. And even in Canada we have Pierre Pollyv, he's running for leadership of the Conservative Party. And part of his platform is also being accepting of bitcoin and trying to push bitcoin as a standard for money. I would say we're in a pretty good place. And we also have Michael Sailor. Now, he's the best proponent we could have asked for. And I would expect there will be more Michael Sailors to come.

Buck: Before we move on from bitcoin. Just to comment, obviously we had a big bull run. Maybe we're still in a bull run, I don't know. And maybe we're just flatlining for a little bit. But I know the price of it. When you have a vision like you have is almost sort of pointless to talk about. But what do you think is going on? Is it just natural volatility? There is this idea, or there was this idea from bitcoin purist before, that somehow bitcoin would be immune to the other markets, but it really doesn't seem like it has been so far. It sort of has tracked in a more volatile way some of the tech equity markets. Do you think that just continues to be a transitional volatility that tracks tech rather than something bigger than that?

Samson: Well, yeah, there's lots to unpack in that question, but let's address the volatility first. I would say volatility is important. Volatility is the lifeblood of markets, right? Things should go up and down if equal or trading. And bitcoin trades twenty four seven and it's borderless. So everyone is accessing the bitcoin market and that leads to what people like or dislike, which is volatility. For example, yesterday or today, depending on what time zone you're in. But we had a drop, we were at 31,500 and then we dropped really suddenly to under 30,000. And the cause for that, I believe, was actually some ethereum holder dumping 100,000 ether. And because all these markets are linked together, there are eastern BTC trading pairs, it can impact other markets. But now, of course, we've rebounded right back up because that has nothing to do with bitcoin. It was just the markets evening out the spread. But the part about the tech stock behavior of bitcoin has a lot to do with the fact that there's a lot of Wall Street money in bitcoin right now. So Michael Sailor has broken this down before and I think his explanation is the best. There are traders, there's Wall Street players, and then there are huddlers. So the hoddlers are just buying and stacking. Ideally they're taking their coins off of the exchange. So that means the price action right now is largely driven not by hodlers, but by the people that are actively trading it. And a large chunk of that is Wall Street. So if their thesis is bitcoin as a tech stock, then we'll track like a tech stock, or will track like a risk on asset. But bitcoin is not a risk on asset, it's a risk off asset. And if you actually zoom out of it and look at the correlation, if you map out the bitcoin price to stocks and equities, actually it goes up. So bitcoin is not correlated. It's correlated in short time frames quite tightly, but on a longer time horizon, like years, it actually is not correlated. Bitcoin is always going up, and I think we'll see that over some time because that segment of the bitcoin ecosystem, the hoddlers, they're taking more and more coins off exchange. So there is actually not that many bitcoin on exchanges now. So when the supply dries up, and we're getting close to the next having next year, where the supply of bitcoin will have again from six point 25 to half of that, then we're going to see a massive supply shock, and that could drive the price even higher. But I don't believe we're in a bear market. I think we're sort of in this weird sideways market now. And it has a lot to do with black swan events like war, all these crazy things that we're not really expecting. But the trend for bitcoin is to go up just because it's been designed to go up. It's been designed to absorb all the value in the world. So the destiny is for bitcoin to keep appreciating.

Buck: Samson is the CEO of Pixelmatic, and as I mentioned, Chris, who's also on chris, we haven't had a chance to hear from you, the COO pixel matic. So I want to kind of talk a little bit about why don't you start with this, because some people, the audience, is constantly growing here and may not know exactly what infinite fleet is, what the idea was and when it all started. And why don't you start with that?

Chris: Sounds great. Well, yeah, it's good to be back on, but it's always good to chat with you. Yeah. So infinite fleet is what we call a massively multiplayer online game, MMO. So that means hundreds of thousands of players playing together. These are like second lives that people immerse themselves in

Buck: Like fortnite. Right? Isn't that like the most that everybody knows?

Chris: Right. That's certainly one of the big ones, for sure, because that really rocked the gaming industry. They made I think it was close to 3 billion in their first year or something. It was a really incredible phenomenon. And the games industry is just growing at an unbelievable rate. Right. In 2021, I believe it was 190,000,000,000, 98 billion, and in 2007 it's projected to hit 340. So it's really just an incredible growth market because when I was a kid, being a gamer was kind of a quote unquote nerdy thing. And now it's mainstream. It's bigger than movies and music combined. It's just an incredible industry. But to go back specifically to infinite fleet, so we are, like I say, an MMO game. Hundreds of thousands of players playing together. You are the commander of a fleet. So if you're thinking like Star Trek, you're essentially a card going out into the galaxy, exploring, fighting these Atrox aliens that are threatening humanity and players, it's a very community driven game. Players play together, they cooperate, they build space stations, they colonize planets, they pool their resources to fight the enemy in a big sort of cooperative sandbox. So it's a very, as I say, immersive game where players can really live the second life online, which is very common. I know you've got kids book, I don't know if they play games, but it's very common for young folks to really jump into these kind of virtual environments.

Buck: Infinite Fleet specifically remind people what the premise of this game was.

Chris: Yes, the idea for us with Infinite Fleet was, as I say, to make something really massive that players could jump into. So they're a commander of in the USF the United Seoul Federation, they fight with other players to attack the Atrox aliens. And the thing that makes it quite unique, well, there's a few things that we're innovating here, really, but one thing that's quite interesting is that we also have this crypto tow, this currency that goes through the game as well. So when you play infinitely, when you take part in the special events like these big events, the players that really interact and really take part, they earn a reward of INF currency. Now, INF currency actually isn't all that different from a lot of currencies that are in other games. Like you mentioned, Fortnite, right? They have V books, world of Warcraft has just gold. There's a whole bunch of these massive games that have economies running through them, essentially. But the difference is that our currency has possibilities. So as a cryptocurrency, you can actually take that onto other platforms. And also the spaceships in our game are NFTs. So NFT is obviously this big. There's been a real buzzword recently. There's a lot of interesting things going on there, whether you love it or hate it. But for us, the NFC allows for an open market of trading digital goods so players can take them out of the game and trade them wherever they like. So this really opens a lot of opportunity for players.

Buck: So one of the things just for some of us Gen X reminds me of when you used to go the old fashioned arcade and then you have to put your dollar into get your four tokens out, and then you use those four tokens, but you could only use them at that arcade. It's not like you could go to another arcade. And this is a situation where you're saying, well, hey, those tokens might be worth something somewhere else as well. So if you're earning some tokens, you don't have to use them just at this arcade. You can actually trade them, they have value. Is that a fair comparison?

Chris: Yes, so a lot of players, they spend a lot of time in these games. Some people put literally thousands of hours, right, building customizing these avatars, these spaceships and things. And so the idea is that you could kind of liquidate that value, that time that you've put in, and then take it onto another platform, take it to another game, or trade it with some other digital assets. So for us, for me and Samson both, when we're very free market people, we believe in this very much, and we believe that for the players, they should be able to extract that value. They should be able to take the time and effort that they put in and then apply that into other platforms too.

Buck: Yeah, sure. And then from the standpoint of those who are investors in the background, I'll give on this real quick, is that Chris and Samson actually, initially I had been introduced to Samson when they were doing the initial, I guess the friends and family round, mutual friend, and I was like, well, hey, I'm interested, but hey, I have this group, which is our investor club, and we got an opportunity to be in on that initial round. I think it was like twenty five cents a token, and then there was a second round. Fifty cents a token. At any rate, by the way, for those of you wondering, I'm talking about this is a regd 506 C, so I can speak openly about this. I'm not breaking any rules, I promise. We've done two rounds through our group and kind of maybe help us understand from the investor side, how do investors make money in this game.

Samson: Okay, maybe I'll do this one, Chris.

Buck: I should point out that the game is not live yet either. Right? So Beta is coming out like a month.

Samson: Well, it was live. Alpha was live for Alpha six months or something like that. But we just shut down Alpha recently in preparation for Beta, which is end of July, july 27 or 28th. Which one was it, Chris? July july 28. Okay, 28th. Yeah, the game was live. It is playable unlike a lot of the other blockchain games going back to the token. It is a security token, and there is a profit share of 20% for the holders of the token. So if the game makes money, then all the holders essentially get an upside too. But we are a little bit different than all the projects that you probably see in the space. Like there's tons of blockchain or cryptocurrency games. For us, the capital raise was always meant to be firewalled from the game. So you do have similar types of projects where they're selling their utility token and it could be a security but not registered. But we didn't want to deal with that. So the EXO token is completely a security. It's registered in Europe. It's done through a Luxembourg Securitization vehicle, much like the BMN and the game part when Chris was talking about NFCs for the ships and the game currency as a crypto asset, that is all done on the liquid side chain. Now the ships are sold, but the game currency is not, it is earned. So we're just trying to create a mechanism for players to freely trade. So because both assets are issued on the liquid side chain, players can do an atomic swap. And what that means is they can do a trade where there's no counterparty risk. So someone does not need to send the ship first you and then you send the money later or the infl later. It happens all at once or none at all. So the goal here was to empower the players and let them freely trade and not get scammed. Because there's a lot of secondary markets in the game industry where people do get scammed, right? They go and try to sell something and buy something and they don't get the item. But we're trying to use the technology to improve that experience and also make it so that we're not a bottleneck to it. Because when you earn your game currency in Infinite Fleet, it actually goes through a wallet that is created for you when you install the game. So it's non custodial we don't actually have access to your INF currency, unlike World Warcraft where it's in their database. Right? And I think this is really important because our whole kind of line of thinking is that we want to empower the players. A lot of games, they don't want secondary markets to exist, they don't want players to trade up items and whatnot. But our thinking is you invest the time to make that ship or level up that ship, you should be able to do whatever you want with this ship. So it's kind of the east of the company and the thinking, it's more like bitcoin free market and free trade.

Buck: So from the investor side, there's a dividend or a profit share, so to speak. And then there's also the value of the security token itself. As it gains value, you gain value as sort of capital appreciation on that end as well. Is that right?

Samson: Yes. Chris, do you want to talk about the publishing model?

Chris: Yeah. So Infinite Fleet in the first place, it's really the first step in a kind of a long plan. So Exhortion is our publisher, which is publishing Infinite Fleet. Pixelmatic is the developer and we have a development contract between the companies, essentially. So the long term plan for Exorbitant is for us to actually be publishing a wide range of games that kind of share the ethos that we were speaking about, this free market, this empowering the players method. So as we continue to onboard other developers, other games on our platform, of course the EXO holders will also get dividend from that revenue as well. So all the revenues that come from the Exordium publisher will be part of that dividend. And also in terms of Xwing as well, it's not just that, but there's also capital rights upon liquidation as well. So if there is an M and A, if we do get bought out or something like that, that does equally go to all the EXO holders. So we are building a publishing platform. We also intend to acquire some licenses for other games too and really drive it. We've been developing some products for Exodus at the moment. We are developing something called Exodium Pay for example, which is going to be giving the opportunity for purchase players to use a wide variety of payment methods for Bitcoin and others to buy digital items and things across the platform of any game that's published from that.

Buck: What was the experience of the Alpha launch? What kind of feedback did you get? What kinds of interest did you get from that?

Chris: Sure, well at the time of the Alpha launch and just before actually, just to clarify, our NFC technology hasn't actually been rolled out yet, but the players bought the ships, they loved the ships that we were selling. They're really cool, they've got this kind of 80s style, really poor and those nostalgia strings and our community of players have been very supportive indeed throughout what we have this community on a platform called Discord, they're always talking about the game and we had a very positive feedback on that because as Samson was touching on before, a lot of the blockchain games, if you go on Google and just type in blockchain game or something like that, you'll see these early naughties kind of HTML really lame games. But we've got this incredible development team.

Buck: Talk a little bit about that because I think that all is really important when we always talk about the reason I ultimately invested in one of those rounds and one of the reasons I did it is because the team right? So talk about that team because I think that's important.

Chris: No problem at all. Well, first, just Samson here, obviously, as he's a bitcoin luminary, but previously he was Ex Ubisoft, right? So Samson was in a very high position in one of the largest video gaming companies in the world and along with our two directors, Steve and Keith are pretty much responsible for our Ubisoft's East Asian success publishing games like Smurfs and Co. Which I think was one of the biggest Facebook games that Ubisoft had launched. Also our Chief Creative Officer, Jason, he was previously the senior Gameplay Designer at Relic, which is a large studio which developed games such as Age of Empires Four, which is a massive IP in the industry. And he also worked on Company of Heroes, which is the highest critically acclaimed game on Metacritic for strategy in the strategy genre that we're in. So in terms of the design, we've got great hands on the wheel there and also the art style as well. Like I said, we've got this really kickass sort of anime style art, which has been driven by Wayne Wong Chong. He's been in the industry like 25 years, at the forefront of 3D digital art. He actually worked previously at Sony as well, released, worked on one of the earliest 3D rendered Spiderman shows, and worked on FIFA and a whole bunch of other awesome games as well. So we're really being headed up by some top people. The technical team as well have been working on. They've made so many A games. There's one called Siberia and many more. So really, we're being headed up by some of the top people in this industry. And right now, since we last spoke, we've grown quite a lot. So I think last time we spoke, we had about 30 people on the team, maybe if I recall correctly. And now we're globally distributed team of 80 and expecting to scale from there. So we've been going from strength to strength over the past year or two, I would say. And to go back to your original question, our fans have been loving this game so far. We've sold thousands of ships pre release, right? We said the game isn't even base, is coming soon, it's not fully live yet, and we sold thousands and thousands of the ships on our online store. So people are really excited for this thing and we can't wait for the bases.

Samson: We've also auctioned off one of one, and we have an auction currently running for another one of one. But players are buying the ships because they're playing the game and they like the ships, and they're not just speculating because it's NFT, because they're not NFTs yet. So I don't know if you picked this up, but we tried to do everything by the book. So the reason why we haven't released the INF currency or the NFCs yet is because we're looking for the right jurisdiction. So we're actually waiting for Osama to pass their new digital securities laws, which would actually clearly specify that NFTs are not securities. And then we would issue it from a Salvadoran entity that we're in the process of setting up. So we're trying to make sure everything is kosher. We're not over promising things, we're not trying to do overhyped NXT aspects of the game or even the crypto aspect. In fact, a lot of our design methodology is to hide all of that. So a player coming into the fleet will just see they're playing a game, and if they really dig into it and they figure it out, they can understand, okay, this is actually a crypto token, and I can move it to a mobile wallet or something like that. But the goal is to hide all that complexity, whereas other games, they're like, go buy some of this, some Altcoin, buy some salona, buy some Ethereum, and then you can buy the NFT. And then you can farm and make more money in the game because those structures are not sustainable. Right. They're not really good games first of all. And then second, they're just a grind like you're playing to grind and farm money. So for us, game first, that's why we built up that team. It's all game developers, whereas other projects, they're just trying to sell the NFT like they sell the NFPs before they release a playable build another game project. I won't name names, but they're selling NFT pictures of their ships. Right. That's kind of embarrassing. Yeah, you're selling them to a bunch of guys like me but for us, when we sell the ship, you actually can load up the game client. It's alpha, it's rough, but you play with the ship you bought in the game itself. So I'm really excited for beta. The game has improved by leaps and the graphic quality is much higher. We can support a higher number of concurrent users. So you're going to see these epic space battles and it's only going to keep getting better from there.

Buck: Seems like with these types of things, so much of it, you've got a good product and you've got a great team behind it. The next thing, you just got to get a lot of people to know about it. I know you have and you don't have to talk about who, but a lot of high profile investors. Is that part of the plan to help utilize some of those influencers to try to get the word out?

Mmm Probably. There's definitely a lot of highprofile investors and we haven't really pushed that angle yet, but once we're into beta, we iron out all the bugs and we're ready to go wider to open beta, we'll probably leverage a lot of that.

Buck: Yeah, that makes sense. The next step as I understand it well, first we've got the game going to Beta in two months from now, but then there's also trying to get this thing onto a Securitized token platform for trading purposes. Right, the Token. Can you talk a little bit about how that's going and what the plan is there?

Chris: Sure. So one thing that maybe we didn't clarify in the first place is that we actually have kind of a jurisdictional split with the token, with the security tokens. So we have the Exodus, which is specifically for us investors because obviously there's quite a tight regulatory framework that we have to work with, with the SEC and then we have the EXO EU which is registered from a Luxembourg entity and that's kind of for basically the rest of the world. We've essentially carved out the US and the rest of the world. So on the EU side we're working with BitFenix, so obviously a massive exchange and they launched the Bitfinex Securities platform. So we're working to do a primary listing on there and we have been working on the regulation there. It's taken some time working with the regulators. So there has been a little bit of delay on there and we're still working really fervently on getting it on that side and then the EXO US side. As you said, we are reg 506 C right now. Regd 506 C but we're working with INX which is quite a large security token platform as well to list the token there, which obviously should give access to liquidity for investors. So that's the plan. And obviously the security tokens, it's kind of a fresh, it's a very innovative new technology having equity on the blockchain, essentially having securities on the blockchain and so we expect massive acceleration over the coming years and obviously lots of opportunities for security tokens to grow and more platforms to exist and list the EXO token. So it's very early days at the moment and we're really excited to see where this goes because security tokens have a lot of benefits like 24/7 trading, it could set a lot of the intermediaries because of all the compliance can be quite baked into the token itself and it's going to be quite innovative and disruptive to try to traditional finance structure as such. So we're very bullish on this. But as a trailblazer, of course there's a lot of challenges you have to work with regulators and it just takes time.

Buck: Sure, yeah, of course. From the investor standpoint, I think it's useful to point out first round a number of people in our group actually did participate at then I think more people even participated at $0.50. Do you know what the initial offering price will be at different securities?

Chris: Yeah, so actually because it has been a little bit of time since our 50 cent offering went live and obviously things have grown, as I said, the company has grown. We've started to make some good revenues and things. The price has increased or will increase to $0.80 when it goes live on bitfinex and we estimate that will be within a month or two but we can't give a firm date. As I say, we're still working with regulators and we are making some progress but within a couple of months we expect to be listing at that time the price.

Buck: Yes. And this is actually potentially an opportunity because there's still an opportunity to potentially get in for credit investors at that 50 cent mark, is that correct?

Chris: Correct. Absolutely. Yes indeed.

Buck: Got it. Well great. What am I missing here? Tell me what else we need to know about progress with this? Anything that we didn't cover, something?

Chris: Samson can you think of anything? Maybe? We want to talk about the global macroeconomic situation right now because I think that it's quite an interesting time obviously for various investments and things. But one thing that I will say is that it seems that the gaming market certainly is quite robust when it comes to the wider issues.

Buck: So obviously when Covid hit there were a lot of people playing games.

Chris: Well, yeah, there were a lot of people playing games and obviously as a remote working studio, we were kind of used to it. We were poised our production schedule didn't get knocked back really at all due to Covid.

Samson: Well, the war knocked us back a bit by a month.

Chris: Yes, that's right, because we did have some Ukrainian staff members. So that certainly did have a bit of an effect on us. I can imagine. But for sure, I think the gaming market is very robust when it comes to investments and things like that and sort of global economic situations.

Buck: Chris so if anyone is interested in potentially participating in that current 50 cent round, how did they get in touch with you?

Chris: I think the best way is to hit me up directly so it's just chris the normal spelling. Wood. W-O-O-D not woods. Some people say woods. Chriswood@pixelmatic.com. Pixelmatic.com.

Buck: Again, that's only open to accredited investors, so you're going to need to have a third party verification and all that stuff. So if you're in a credit investor, you're used to that already with other stuff, but just keep that in mind. And by the way, if you can't understand Chris's accent or whatever, you could certainly just email me and I will be happy to forward that email on to Chris as well at its bucketwealth formula.com. Chris and Samson, thanks guys, so much for being on the show again. It's always learn a lot and it's great to get an update.

Samson: Yeah, thanks for having us.

Chris: It's a real pleasure Buck. Thank you.

Buck: We'll be right back.


Crypto Currency: What It Is As Well As Why You Need To Care

Cryptocurrencies are digital or virtual symbols that utilize cryptography to secure their transactions and to manage the creation of new systems. Cryptocurrencies are decentralized, implying they are not subject to federal government or banks control. Bitcoin, the first and also most popular cryptocurrency, was created in 2009. Cryptocurrencies are often traded on decentralized exchanges and can likewise be made use of to acquire products and services.

Cryptocurrencies are improved an innovation called blockchain. Blockchain is a distributed database that enables safe, transparent and also tamper-proof purchases. Each purchase is validated by numerous participants in the blockchain network, which stops any one celebration from adjusting the data. This makes blockchain a suitable platform for recording and validating purchases related to cryptocurrencies.

Ethereum is a second-generation cryptocurrency that builds on the functions of bitcoin.

Cryptocurrency has a mystical past. Its beginnings are still unknown to many people, and also it is often shrouded in privacy. Nevertheless, there are some things that we do understand about cryptocurrency. We know that it was created in 2009, by an anonymous person or team of individuals who go by the name Satoshi Nakamoto.

We additionally know that it was made to be an electronic money, which might be made use of to buy items as well as solutions online, without the requirement for a third party such as a financial institution. Cryptocurrency is based on blockchain modern technology, which is a dispersed journal that permits purchases to happen between 2 events without the demand for an intermediary. This makes it an optimal payment system for on the internet purchases, as there is no danger of scams or burglary.

Cryptocurrencies are electronic or online symbols that make use of cryptography to secure their deals and also to manage the production of new systems. Cryptocurrencies are decentralized, indicating they are not subject to government or financial institution control. Bitcoin, the very first as well as most popular cryptocurrency, was produced in 2009.

Cryptocurrencies can be made use of Cryptocurrency Newsto purchase items as well as solutions online or can be exchanged for other money. Bitcoin can be exchanged standard currency like United States dollars or Euros, or it can be used to buy goods and also solutions from suppliers that accept it as repayment.

Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs wise contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed with no possibility of scams or 3rd party disturbance. Ethereum is powered by ether, a cryptocurrency whose blockchain is safeguarded by the Ether protocol.

Developed in 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum was established to allow the development of decentralized applications (DApps). DApps are applications that can be run on a blockchain as well as do not need a middleman to operate. As an example, a DApp might enable the straight peer-to-peer sale of items and also solutions without the requirement for a 3rd party to mediate the purchase.

Ethereum's blockchain utilizes an unique strategy to protection called Proof of Work (PoW). PoW requires miners to address intricate cryptographic puzzles in order to include blocks to the blockchain.

Cryptocurrencies are digital or digital tokens that use cryptography to safeguard their purchases and to regulate the creation of brand-new units. Cryptocurrencies are decentralized, suggesting they are not subject to federal government or financial institution control. Bitcoin, the very first and most popular cryptocurrency, was produced in 2009.

Cryptocurrencies can be dealt on exchanges. Exchanges are on-line platforms where customers as well as sellers meet to exchange cryptocurrencies for other properties, such as standard money or various other cryptocurrencies. One of the most popular exchanges consist of Coinbase, Sea serpent, Bitstamp, and Poloniex.

To get cryptocurrencies on an exchange, you first require to create an account as well as down payment funds. After that you can look for the currency you wish to purchase as well as put a buy order. When the order is filled, your money will certainly be deposited in your account.

Cryptocurrencies are right here to remain. Despite the volatility of the marketplaces, the underlying blockchain technology is showing to be a game changer. In the future, we can anticipate to see more widespread use cryptocurrencies for daily deals. The openness as well as safety and security of the blockchain will certainly continue to make it an attractive option for organizations and also consumers alike.

In addition, brand-new cryptocurrencies will remain to be established, offering even more choices for capitalists. While there is certainly run the risk of associated with purchasing cryptocurrencies, the possible incentives are significant. For those ready to take the danger, now is a great time to get associated with the crypto market.


I want to reinvest what I pulled out a month ago. What should I know about the current state of crypto?

I sold my Bitcoin and Eth (about 15kish) when market started to tank. I want to buy back by dialing in my dca amount.

What major events should I be aware about to help me determine how much?

I know celcius has ghosted everyone. I have read about a a large pool of margin calls reportedly expiring on Monday. Some billionaire (don’t recall name) also pulled loans against his massive Bitcoin reserves that could need to be covered soon, causing a margin call and flooding the market with Bitcoin.

Are there any other items I should be aware to help tweak how much to buy in over the next couple of months


[Sat, Jun 25 2022] TL;DR — Crypto news you missed in the last 24 hours on Reddit

r/Bitcoin

Nasdaq: Bitcoin Uses 50 Times Less Energy Than Traditional Banking

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Think bigger.

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Number of nodes has exploded the last few days, what is going on?

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r/ethereum

Vitalik Buterin Clarifies Ethereum Centralization Concerns Following Merger

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What's a good tool to create a network architecture diagram for a whitepaper?

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Latest Week in Ethereum News

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r/CryptoCurrency

Bitcoin Uses 50 Times Less Energy Than Traditional Banking, New Study Shows

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If 20 years from now they make a movie about Crypto, they would need to tone it down in order to be believable for audiences

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And just like that Harmony one to be Harmony Done!

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r/btc

recent suspicious chain of events involving CoinFlex, BCH, and FlexUSD. did $90M worth of BCH go missing?

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Please stop using centralized bridges to smartBCH for any amounts of money that you are not willing to lose entirely

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Coinbase to require (due to regulation) private information when sending money to off-platform wallets, making it impossible to keep the recipient anonymous (In the Netherlands)

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r/SatoshiStreetBets

SatoshiSwap Friday Update - 24th June 2022

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Bitcoin network power demand falls to 10.65GW as hash rate sees 14% drop

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I recall a few weeks ago when DEI depeged, with large amounts deposited as collateral on Screamdotsh which had hardcoded 1$ value for all stables. Would you say AAVE is facing similar complications because of Harmony?

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r/CryptoMarkets

Goldman Sachs might be raising $2B to buy Celsius Assets in case of Bankruptcy

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Ladies and gentlemen... The power of Polygon on Coinbase

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The market is in my favor. It's LONG time!

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r/CryptoCurrencies

Any crypto exchanges that offer EUR pairs with a reasonable amount of alts (save for Binance and Kraken)?

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place your bets, whos up next after harmony one?

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r/CoinBase

5 Ways You Can Make A Difference Joining Apollo

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Been trying to get some Coinbase Customer Service for over a year

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Coinbase Will Make Modifications To Comply With Netherlands Rules

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r/binance

Cristiano Ronaldo Joins With Binance For New NFT Era

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I want to use Binance as a US citizen

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Institutional Investors Get a New Platform on Binance

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r/Ripple

Garlinghouse: "If we lose our lawsuit with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), we will leave the United States entirely.”

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06/25/22 [Join FlareXRP Discord] - discord.com/invite/FlareXRP

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r/litecoin

Litecoin is Best For Onchain Payments

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Create NFTs and Tokens With Litecoin OmniLite

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New Peer to Peer Zero Trust Exchange

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r/Monero

Elizabeth completes final milestone for ETH-XMR atomic swaps CCS proposal

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The MAGIC Monero Fund received an anonymous 50 XMR donation yesterday! Thank you kind person!

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I did it guys! Running full node behind a VPN

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r/Stellar

Listen In: Denelle Joins Bloomberg Businessweek to Chat Moneygram

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Phishing Emails for Fake Staking Services

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Which Stellar wallet(s) have MoneyGram feature?

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r/cardano

Dadaelus takes way too long

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Maybe this is a dumb question, but if not merely a coincidence, what factors might cause the run on the right to have a nearly identical (besides scale) pattern to the one in the left?

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My Wallet Security Concerns and Other questions.

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r/NFT

Meme made by me, sorry if done before

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What it's like to work in Web3:

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Tell me you didn't DYOR without telling me you didn't DYOR

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event rewards not distributed

Hi there, I won a couple lucky prizes in the Bitcoin prediction event. The rules state that rewards will be distributed 1 day after winning. From my 350 usdt only 100 usdt is actually in my account. Does any know how this works?


Celsius recent events, whats next?

Let me start of by saying I have funds on Celsius myself and the current events came as a shock to me.

Celsius has stopped withdrawals, transfers & trades for almost 2 weeks now.

  • Over the past days the STeth price is getting closer to 1:1 for ETH again.
  • The Celsius wallets are also increasing in value.
  • Price of bitcoin managed maintain previous bull-run top and 200Week MA.

Can we be optimistic, what is your take?


🚨 BIG BITCOIN CPI EVENT!!!! Live Bitcoin Analysis

https://cryptogemtokens.com/🚨-big-bitcoin-cpi-event-live-bitcoin-analysis-price-prediction-today-livestream/

The Collapse of Three Arrows Capital

By now you’ve probably heard of the collapse of the multi-billion-dollar VC firm Three Arrows Capital (3AC). For a fund that once held over $10 billion under management, nobody predicted its demise to happen so quickly. In this piece, we will break down what went wrong for 3AC and discuss its effect on the entire crypto market.

What Is 3AC?

Founded in 2012 by high school classmates Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, 3AC started small with around $1 million in capital as they worked out of an apartment together in San Francisco. Since that time, they grew to manage billions of dollars, but how did they get there?

For starters, they only managed their own money, rather than the money of others. This would make them more of a trading firm than a VC, as VCs manage the capital of other investors. 3AC was able to dominate trading in the bull and bear cycle, making lots of money by trading Bitcoin and Ethereum derivatives. In addition to becoming successful with trading, 3AC was also able to correctly predict the end of crypto winter around 2019, with Zhu predicting a quick growth curve the second the market flipped from bear to bull. Combine successful trading and timing the bottom, and 3AC profited tremendously.

In addition to their Bitcoin and Ethereum trades, 3AC was also able to gain access to some incredible cryptocurrency project seed rounds. Seed rounds are funding periods that are only accessible by the wealthiest investors, and often lead to buying assets at insanely cheap prices before the public has a chance to buy. The tradeoff with seed rounds is that investments are locked for periods of time (also known as vesting schedules). These vesting schedules are set up to help prevent quick selloffs from these investors who hold a large number of tokens. For example, a company may buy 1000 tokens at the price of $1, but by the time the token is available for public trading, the token is trading at $25. This would be an instant x25, where many would be tempted to sell. Vesting schedules would force this company to only be available to sell a portion of their 1000 tokens over periods of time rather than all at once (more on this later). By investing a multitude of seed rounds, 3AC was now additionally making insane money on these ground floor investments. As the community saw the success of 3AC, many investors started to feel comfortable giving them money to invest (turning them into a VC), while exchanges felt comfortable loaning out large sums of money.

What Went Wrong?

Many tend to see past success as a predictor of future success. Unfortunately for 3AC and those connected to them, that is not the case. 3AC experienced a storm of events that turned the once flourishing firm into a firm on the brink of insolvency.

The first of many blows can be traced back to the Luna Foundation. 3AC participated in a token purchase of Luna to help fund the Luna Foundation Guard who would then go on to buy Bitcoin with the money. This reserve was created to defend the peg of UST. As things played out, Luna and UST entered the dreaded “death spiral". 3AC had approximately $560 million invested in Luna, most of which was locked as part of the agreement with LFG. This forced 3AC to helplessly watch their investment crumble to less than $1000. Regardless of how big a company is, turning that sum of money into vapor will hurt business operations by also forcing the company to have much less cash on hand. Being illiquid poses a risk!

In addition to the Luna catastrophe, 3AC was also involved in another investment that would hurt them tremendously. In 2020 and 2021, 3AC was the largest holder of GBTC (Grayscale Bitcoin Trust). This trust held a large amount of Bitcoin, and it was largely considered the best option for institutions and the older generation to gain exposure to BTC in their 401ks and IRAs. When Grayscale was the main way for big money funds to gain exposure to BTC, GBTC traded at a high premium. This means that the value of the GBTC stock price was trading at a market capitalization that was higher than the market capitalization of the physical Bitcoin held by Grayscale. For example, GBTC could hold 100 bitcoins at $5. The value of the BTC on hand is $500. If GBTC was trading at a premium, the market cap of GBTC could be trading at $600, even though it only held $500. Once other BTC exposure alternatives rose, the GBTC premium fell because institutions could gain exposure through other trusts that offered lower management fees. This eventually flipped the premium to a discount. Here is why this caused a problem for 3AC.

Three Arrows Capital was partaking in a GBTC arbitrage trade. Arbitrage is the buying of an asset at a price, and then selling that same asset for a higher price. With Grayscale, they allow institutional investors to buy GBTC shares at a price directly correlated to the value of the physical bitcoin it held, even if GBTC was trading at a premium. Institutions would then have a 6-month lock-up period of their shares. Once the period ended, they were able to sell their shares at the premium that retail investors were paying.

For example, the price of the physical Bitcoin held by GBTC could correlate to GBTC being worth a “true” value of $20 a share. If Grayscale was trading at a 25% premium, the GBTC price on the open market would be $25 a share. Groups like 3AC could then buy a share for $20, wait 6 months, and then sell for $25. By repeating this process over and over they made a great deal of easy money. The problem is if the premium collapsed and flipped to a discount, the price on the open market would be less than $20. This meant the arbitrage trade was no longer feasible because all the shares bought at $20 could not be sold at a higher value. With the easy money pipeline running dry, 3AC was now in even more trouble. Surprisingly, only days prior to rumors of a collapse, 3AC was rumored to be pitching the idea of a new GBTC trade to potential investors in hopes that GBTC switched to a spot ETF. What may be even more surprising is as things stand now, 3AC no longer owns any GBTC. Could this be forced liquidation to pay off debt? Only time will tell.

On top of the Luna collapse and GBTC arbitrage ending, 3AC traded with leverage. Leverage rarely ends well for most, 3AC included. On top of using leverage, most positions were long (bets that prices will go up). In a bear market, leveraged longs are the fastest way to lose money. To use this level of leverage, 3AC borrowed money from some big lenders. An example of one of their loans is from the popular company known as Voyager. Voyager lent out 15,250 BTC and 350 million USDC, a value of approximately $660 million.

As of today, Voyager has been unable to contact 3AC to pay more collateral, and if requests are not met by June 27th, Voyager will be forced to liquidate the loan and seize what it can. Unfortunately for Voyager, they are not guaranteed a full return and could take a big loss. 3AC has taken loans out in varying sizes from other lenders like BlockFi, Genesis Trading, Bitmex, and Finblox. By most accounts, 3AC was getting liquidated left and right, often ghosting the lenders when they tried to get in contact.

What is the effect?

With the implosion of 3AC, there will be a lot to be learned for the future of the crypto market. Lessons were learned from previous monumental moments in crypto history, and the last few months will be a teaching moment for many. The first effect seen from 3AC is the ripple effect on those with close ties to the firm. These lenders either took on big losses or are still trying to recoup losses. With these large crypto entities paying the price of 3AC, they have fallen under financial stress and are in talks with bailouts from exchanges like FTX. Whenever bailouts are being discussed, it shows how bearish the market truly is.

With the cascading effect of 3AC liquidations, it is expected to see a large amount of sell pressure enter the markets. As mentioned earlier, projects allowed 3AC to become a ground-floor investor, with many of 3AC’s assets being locked in vesting schedules. With 3AC currently in a deep hole, it would not be surprising to see these assets sold the second they become unlocked. Also, if 3AC is unable to repay its debts, it could be expected to have those assets seized. Here are some of the assets 3AC invested in that are now intertwined in the whole situation.

Conclusion

In the end, 3AC acted in an irresponsible way, and many people are paying for it. 3AC confused past success with a feeling of invincibility. Once the wheels started to fall off due to the Luna crash and the easy money of GBTC arbitrage stopped, 3AC tried to dig themselves out of a hole only to make it deeper. For those who gave money to 3AC, they learned a valuable lesson in getting a better view into current operations prior to lending out large sums of money. In the future, many hope the transparency that blockchains allow can find its way into VCs like 3AC to prevent time bombs from lurking in the market. Crypto markets have always been volatile and will likely remain that way for some time. If VCs and exchanges are to operate in the long-term, they need to mitigate risk levels that are sustainable in bear markets, not only bull markets. The Luna crash is exposing the business operations of many high-value entities, with many being disappointed in what has been discovered. 3AC built itself up to be worth $10 billion at the height of the bull cycle, only to walk away with potentially nothing in the end.


Terra Luna Fiasco: 3 Lessons We Learnt

https://preview.redd.it/ca63ypwmmp791.png?width=700&format=png&auto=webp&s=1e4f261ef0346578ee369c4c31ab9eeb38747a92

The sudden rise of Terra to prominence was as spectacular as its collapse. No one saw it coming as LUNA — the platform’s native token — fell from an all-time high of nearly $119 USD to $0 USD within days, wiping out the entire savings of its investors. Last month, Mike Novogratz — CEO of Galaxy Digital — spoke for the first time, penning an open, warning letter to the crypto community.

Galaxy Digital — an investment management firm — alongside other “all-star roster” of venture capital (VC) firms such as Pantera Capital, Arrington Capital, and Lightspeed Ventures, to name a few, had backed Terraform Labs (TFL) to the tune of US$ 150 million back in July 2021.

Novogratz had such a strong belief in the project that he had a LUNA tattoo done some weeks before the implosion. The billionaire now says the tattoo is a constant reminder that VCs should undertake thorough due diligence before investing in a crypto-based project. As the crypto community continues to lament over the Terra fiasco — and understandably so — here are three important lessons that we can learn from it:

Algorithmic Stablecoins Are Inherently Fragile

Unlike other typical cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) or Ether (ETH) that have high volatility rates, stablecoins are pegged to more sturdy assets such as the U.S. dollar, gold, or commodities. They are designed to allow users to derive the benefits of paying with cryptocurrencies without the typical wild price swings that are associated with volatile virtual currencies.

The problem arises when the price drastically deviates from the peg. Under such circumstances, investors panic and there is essentially a run on the bank which sets the coin’s price on a downward spiral. This is what happened with Terra USD (UST). Unlike other stablecoins such as USD Coin (USDC) or Tether (USDT) that are pegged to cash and less risky assets, UST relied on a fragile algorithm and LUNA — a sister cryptocurrency — to maintain its price.

For every UST that the network minted, an equivalent of US$ 1 worth of LUNA was burned and vice versa. Whenever the UST price fell below US$ 1, users could burn it, essentially decreasing UST supply and theoretically pushing up the price to equilibrium. And whenever UST price surged past US$ 1, users could take advantage of it and mint more UST while burning LUNA. This would increase the UST supply and pull the price back to US$ 1.

An architectural design that UST/LUNA leveraged can only work when the cryptocurrency market is mostly up and investor confidence is high. In a bear market, this model cannot work. Once the stablecoin loses its peg to the US dollar, it sets in a vicious cycle with traders rushing to redeem their stablecoin for cash. This results in an increased supply of the stablecoin leading to a drop in price. This is what happened to UST which lost nearly 100% of its value in about 24 hours.

The problems that plagued UST are unique to algorithmic stablecoins, which differ from fiat-backed stablecoins such as USDC and USDT that have mostly worked so far. These coins are pegged to non-crypto assets which equate to the value of all the outstanding tokens. In the case of USDC, Grant Thornton — an accounting firm — reviews the USDC’s holdings every month to ensure that the peg is held while USDT’s reserves are reviewed by independent accountants.

Proof of Stake Has Weak Decentralization and Security Assumptions

The Terra network was essentially a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain that ran atop the Cosmos ecosystem and utilized Tendermint Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) for consensus. In a PoS-based network, consensus occurs in a two-round process where one validator proposes a block while other validators vote on it.

If the block receives a supermajority of votes, it is committed to the ledger and the validators are incentivized for their efforts with the validator that proposed the block earning more. However, to become a validator, you must stake more tokens in the network, and the more coins you lock in the system, the greater the chances of being chosen to propose and confirm blocks.

In the case of Terra, the consensus method used is called delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) where a few validators’ large concentration of staked LUNA tokens raises serious issues about decentralization and security. If a malicious actor were to enforce its rules over the network, it would only need to coerce a few validators.

Perhaps, this was one of Terra’s biggest architectural flaws, as Terraform Labs — the organization that created the network — held more than 50% of staked LUNA, with its founder holding a significant amount. Before the implosion, the network allowed only 130 validators — stakeholders with the most significant staked LUNA — to participate in the consensus process.

Under such an environment, a “51%” attack would be easy to launch since it only requires two-thirds of the staked LUNA. And if more than one-third of validators misbehave, it causes instability problems on the network. While DPoS is scalable, it has high barriers to entry which inhibits decentralization.

It is due to the inherent weaknesses with DPoS that pundits have been wondering whether Do Kwon — CEO and founder of Terra — had been forthright about his involvement in the fiasco. For example, were the DPoS validators the same ones that controlled the Bitcoin collateral? What happened to the US$ 3.5 billion in BTC that the company bought to steady the ship?

It has also emerged that Do Kwon closed Terraform Labs and liquidated two South Korean offices just a few days before the collapse of the network, further raising transparency issues about the network’s governance model.

Hub and Spoke Model Is the Best Blockchain Interoperation Strategy

The knock-on effect of the downfall of the Terra network was felt across the entire blockchain space because most protocols had integrated the protocol into their ecosystems. At the time, the projects that took the greatest hit were those hosted on the Blockchain, including Anchor Protocol (ANC), Mars Protocol (MARS), and Astroport (ASTRO).
All these protocols were decentralized finance (DeFi)-focused. As such, they had integrated heavily with UST as the primary stablecoin and LUNA as the major source of total value locked (TVL) on their smart contracts.
Being a Cosmos-based network, virtually all the assets in the entire Cosmos ecosystem were also hard hit by the collapse of UST. For example, Cosmos (ATOM), Osmosis (OSMO), and Kava (KAVA) rely on the inter-blockchain communication (IBC) protocol, and Tendermint BFT were affected due to their integration with Terra.
However, because of the Cosmos’s hub and spoke model, the cumulative effect of Terra’s collapse was not as dire as it could have been with point-to-point connections. In a hub and spoke model, message transfer and inter-blockchain communication occur via a hub. The hub allows the network to be cognizant of every transaction since it translates virtually everything into a canonical language. In case a particular blockchain fails, it can quickly be unplugged from the interoperable network.

What Analog Envisions for Web3 Ecosystem

The downfall of Terra is an epiphany moment in every sense of the word. While we empathize with investors that lost their investments, it also serves as a reminder that blockchains — and any other technology out there — that are not built on sound principles are bound to break at some time.

It is now time to pick up valuable life lessons from the Terra fiasco and build solid foundations for blockchain ecosystems. After all, learning is a continuous process and what does not kill you only makes you stronger! At Analog, we believe that blockchain provides a tremendous promise to unlocking opportunities in a digital era.

However, despite the promise, there are still significant challenges that we have to tackle such as a lack of interoperability framework, weak consensus protocols, and absence of privacy-preserving mechanisms. It is these challenges that have made the sector vulnerable to issues that have befallen the Terra network.

That is why we have a strong research and development (R&D) team that undertakes research activities on omnichain interoperability to help developers build a solid network, one that delivers cross-chain capabilities. The network we are building at Analog leverages a proof-of-time (PoT) consensus protocol — built from the ground up — to allow decentralized applications (dApps) to communicate seamlessly through validated event data.

By allowing current and new dApps to communicate frictionlessly across heterogenous blockchains, Analog unlocks a range of real-world use cases in decentralized finance (DeFi) and the metaverse.