Hey, how are you?
This is my third week at home, the virus outbreak is happening in the U.S. now and I kept getting pinged by friends on WeChat - they asked if I need facial masks if I feel safe living in the U.S. and if I ever consider moving back to China for good.
Luckily we are safe and healthy, life is as normal except that we now spend most of the time at home, order groceries online, less productive at work as an energetic toddler requires attention too. I took long walks outside to ease my anxiety, at least spring is not being canceled. It is a good time to re-evaluate a lot of things, thinking about what’s really important in life and taking a break from things that you thought are important and urgent but they are not.
Recent market turmoil for all assets showed how radical central banks could be. This makes me wonder how sooner it would take for the restart button on our fiat currency systems to be pressed. Decades ago, sovereign entities would seek for the most liquid asset - gold for protection, since there is a global consensus on gold over thousands of years, meaning the value of gold could be recognized across the majority global population.
One or several currency systems might be re-created one day, endorsed jointly by sovereign countries. Bitcoin was born during a time monetary radicalism provoked everyone’s anger, but till today it is still challenging to think bitcoin would be used as the alternative for gold in near future given its current level of consensus achieved and its distribution. The consensus among hundreds of thousands of people is not the same as that of billions.
The halving is a good story but was disrupted by recent black swans, and people are talking about how high inflation expectation will be the biggest opportunity for Bitcoin now.
Will there be a comparable Fomo as in 2017?
What’s heat
Sina weibo (Chinese twitter) had a data breach and 538M credentials are being sold for crypto on the dark web. It is surreal that using 0.0138 ETH you can buy some big name’s (e.g Jihan Wu) privacy - phone number, ID information, hotel check-in details etc.
Some well-known names in crypto funds got burnt by the recent market crash - Lou Jiyue of TokenMania says to quit crypto, Will Woo’s Adaptive Capital was reported to shut down.
China’s central bank published an article (in CN) warning people about the crypto exchanges’ tricks (wash trading, manipulative shutdown and money laundering), stating bitcoin has no authentic value support is a high-risk asset of which most transactions are based on speculations.
Something to read
According to research from Chainalysis, the crypto exchanges saw the biggest inflow of BTC since March 9 and 9x the daily average amount of BTC was sent to exchanges to be sold from March 12 to March 13.
What happens to Bitcoin in financial crisis published on tokendaily a year ago. TL;DR: Till today, Bitcoin is still very experimental and its fate in a financial crisis depends on where it sits in the global economy’s Exter’s pyramid (as below), it’s basically a test for all BTC holders: If the majority of them were the short-term speculative type, then bitcoin is likely to be nearer the top of the pyramid. If the demand for Bitcoin is driven by its liquidity and usefulness for international quick payments, then bitcoin can be viewed as being closer to the base of the pyramid.
Events
N/A
Notable conference
*March 31 Zero Knowledge Summit - ZK5 (virtual)
*April 3-6 Noncon (virtual)
April 4-5 Deconomy (Korea)
*April 4-6 ZKProof workshop
*May 1-2 DeFi Discussions Conf with ConsenSys
*May 7-8 Ethereal Virtual Summit 2020
May 9-10 Magical Crypto Conference (New York City)
*May 11-13 Consensus 2020 by CoinDesk
*June 8-10 Mainnet Events by Messari
*June 24-26 Remote Crypto Con
June 15-21 Korea Blockchain Week (Seoul)
July 6-7 M2 Asset Management (Oxford)
July 15-16 Asia Blockchain Summit (Taipei)
July 22-23 Mining Disrupt (Miami)
Sep 11-16 Shanghai Blockchain Week by Wanxiang Blockchain (Shanghai)
Sep 28-30 Hong Kong Blockchain Week 2020
October 7-8 Token2049 (Hong Kong)
Q3 (tbd) Bitcoin2020 (San Francisco)