Originally published on Efficient Frontiers Substack on January 30th

The Bitcoin markets have been relatively quiet in the last two weeks, Bitcoin’s price sliding from $35,000 to a bit under $29,000 then back to $34,000 before slumping again to $29,000, testing the price floor. Excitement for Bitcoin was definitely lacking while DeFi and Ethereum outperform the digital gold, as the attention of the internet turned to WallStreet and Reddit. But last night that flipped when WallStreetBets’ energy came to Dogecoin and a few hours ago one Tweet by Elon Musk sent Bitcoin’s price straight up to $37,000, now back around…

Originally published on Jan 19 on Efficient Frontier’s Substack

The pace of change, the volatility and other fun factors make following the cryptocurrency world a bit disorienting at times. Lately news at large has been disorientating as well, and adding to this mix, cryptocurrency and the ‘outside world’ are quickly converging. Mainstream acceptance is exploding while the need for inflation and sovereignty hedges seem the most needed they have been in our lifetime.

So here’s a list of themes we made to wrap our head around:

1)Regulators concerned by the borderless freedom of crypto

According to Investor Erik Townsend, Bitcoin poses a serious threat to the government’s monopoly on issuing money. …

Originally published on Jan 5

It’s been an exciting couple of weeks, with mixed news such as a large advisory stating they sold half of their Bitcoin holdings and the OCC who just announced they will allow banks to use and issue stablecoins.

It’s started

If you believe Bitcoin will keep to its parabolic history, the famous Google Trends chart is encouraging: It’s at last showing extra public interest in Bitcoin, at 42% from the 2017 — Bitcoin-mania peak:

With Bitcoin’s price breaking out to all time highs (congrats!) after two weeks of ranging between 16,000 and 19,000, the derivatives markets keep expanding, with record open interest in Bitcoin contracts reaching $8.2 B (seen below). Trading volumes were not as extreme during this breakout.

Trading Tencent stock derivatives for USDT or DAI in a non-custodial environment has a much more wide-ranging appeal than swapping blockchain native $SUSHI tokens for $YAM tokens, and that’s why derivatives built with blockchains are so interesting. Most of the new non-custodial derivatives platforms are quite new, but they might be exactly what gives application type blockchains financial relevance in the long term.

In this series of posts we’ll be reviewing and explaining in detail decentralized derivative, starting with the projects which are live on the Ethereum network and its incumbents subsequently.

Decentralization reality check

Decentralization is removing a central point of control…

Why does it feel like one year in crypto-land is like 5 years of normal life? The news pace is just staggering, and endorsement and news of institutional interest keep piling in while Bitcoin’s price is hovering close to its all time dollar heights.

Though this price run has taken a pause, the bigger picture looks positive for cryptocurrency, not only due to the endorsements by the American establishment, but also because of the dry metrics:

The number of addresses with a non-zero balance, as well as addresses with over 1,000 Bitcoin are both at all-time highs:

Rebooting perspective: almighty realized cap metric

With this massive Bitcoin run up, re-calibrating the long term perspective is called for. To get perceptive, let’s look at MVRV (Market Value to Realized Value), realized value and MVRV Z-score. All these related metrics use on-chain information unique to our industry to create objective sentiment indicators.

Realized value looks at the blockchain and Bitcoin’s price history to check at what dollar price each coin was last transferred on the blockchain. This shows its psychological fiat value, which is often the price it was bought at. A coin which moved on the blockchain yesterday at midnight is valued at $18,400…

Bitcoin’s price touched $16,000 per coin last week, breaking another record for 2020 while regulators around the world keep moving to regulate cryptocurrency exchanges.

Where in the world are Huobi’s executives?

On Monday a 2020 record of 26,000 Bitcoins were withdrawn from Huobi, one of Asia’s most popular exchanges, while rumors circulated of the exchange’s executives being arrested.