January 3, 2022       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

  • Solana-based software wallet Phantom hit 1.8 million monthly active users in December.

  • Grayscale holds $43 billion in crypto assets – down from $60 billion in early November.

  • BTS, one of the most popular K-pop groups in the world, is going forward with plans to mint NFTs despite backlash from fans.

  • WazirX, a Binance-owned exchange operating in India, is under investigation by India’s government regarding alleged tax evasion.

  • Eminem bought a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT for $450K in ETH.

  • Shiba Inu developers are beginning the process of decentralizing the governance of ShibaSwap DEX.

  • A major gaming company, Square Enix, plans to keep a “close eye” on the blockchain space.

  • Mexico plans to have a digital currency in circulation by 2024.

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

Let’s Talk About BTC Dominance

At 39.84%, Bitcoin dominance reached its lowest level since April 2018 on Sunday afternoon, according to data from TradingView. The dip in dominance is just three percentage points off the all-time low in January 2018. (Bitcoin dominance refers to the ratio between Bitcoin’s market capitalization compared to the entire crypto market cap.)

 

The dip below 40% is significant but not especially surprising when looking at the chart from 2021. Bitcoin dominance was sitting at 60%+ for most of 2020 and early 2021. However, in mid-March, BTC dominance started to plunge, dropping about 20 percentage points between March and May. In fact, after April 19th, BTC dominance failed to cross 50% for the rest of the year.

 

The move coincides with a jump in dominance from Ethereum, which now holds 20% of the entire crypto market – a number 43% more than its share to begin 2021, when it made up approximately 14% of the total market. If you notice, the dominance chart of ETH makes a sharp rise starting in mid-April of 2021, just around the same time that BTC dominance fell.

 

Notably, Fred Wilson, a managing partner at Unions Square Ventures, believes this trend, of Ethereum dominance eating into Bitcoin dominance, will continue, and, indeed, accelerate into a flippening, where ether’s market capitalization is greater than bitcoin’s in the grand scheme of the crypto industry. Wrote Wilson in a blog on January 1st, 2022 (!!), “As I predicted back in the spring of 2017 [8:30 into this video], only five years too soon, Ethereum’s market cap will surpass Bitcoin’s in 2022. I hope I get at least as much abuse for this prediction as I did for that one. Ethereum’s merge in 2022, combined with the understanding that productive assets must be worth more than non-productive assets, make this a fairly obvious prediction. But I got it wrong last time, so I surely can get it wrong again.

Recommended Reads

  • Simon Taylor, co-founder of 11:FS, on DeFi and Fintech: https://sytaylor.substack.com/p/fintech-food-jan-2nd-2022-can-defi
  • @punk6529 on making it in crypto: https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1477259809493819393
  • Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin dropped an opinion/idea retrospective: https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1477404671606153218

On The Pod…

Why NFT OG Mitchell Chan Has Released Just One Project This Year

Mitchell F. Chan, who released one of the first NFT projects on Ethereum back in 2017, discusses his projects, making art on a blockchain, how NFTs are transforming the traditional art world, and more. Show topics:

  • Mitchell’s art career before NFTs

  • how Mitchell was inspired by Yves Klein’s 1950’s work ‘Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility’

  • the story behind Mitchell’s OG NFT art project: ‘Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility’

  • what the traditional world thinks about NFTs

  • who is collecting NFT art

  • the story behind Mitchell’s 2021 NFT project: ‘LeWitt Generator Generator’

  • why Mitchell has not minted any more NFTs this year – even though the market has been on fire

  • whether Mitchell thinks NFTs are changing the art world (hint: he thinks yes)

  • NFTs and the financialization of art

  • why Mitchell can empathize with some of the backlash about NFTs coming from the traditional art and gaming industries

Book Update

My book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, is now available for pre-order now.

The book, which is all about Ethereum and the 2017 ICO mania, comes out Feb. 22. Pre-order it today!

You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians