Hujambo!
I posted a short piece on Medium, please read it. It’s titled “Two Minutes on Crypto - February 3, 2023.”
If you missed my most recent update, get it now. Along with my market analysis, you’ll see there’s a trade idea in there. I don’t trade and rarely post trade ideas but this one’s so easy to execute, even I can do it.
People seem edgy because bitcoin’s price dropped 3% this week. If you’re on the premium subscription, you’re prepared for a range of expectations that include “down 3%” so no worries.
If you’re not on the premium subscription, upgrade to paid.
Scroll down for last week’s poll results, some notes, videos, articles, and job listings.
In last week’s poll, I asked “when do you feel most comfortable buying crypto?
About 2/3 of you said after the price goes down.
Statistically, that is the minority emotion for humanity in general. I guess we are unusual people?
I'll have another poll next week.
What are liquidity pools?
I found a great, brief explanation of how liquidity pools (LPs) work. Read the Thorswap guide to LPs.
That guide also briefly explains impermanent loss. In case you were wondering.
Came across an odd video, below. When I first watched it, I thought it was a spoof on people who are anti-crypto. Simply because of the absurdity of going through this specific process to get bitcoin.
Then I realized it wasn’t satire, it was somebody trying to mock crypto by using Coinstar to convert metal coins into bitcoins.
This is kind of like if I made a video of me buying an empty gas canister from a hardware store, driving to a gas station, filling up my gas canister with gas, putting it back into my car, driving home, using the gas canister to fill my tank, and then telling people how cars, fuel, and gas stations are dumb.
But, if that’s all you knew, you’d believe that how everything works.
Watch the video. You might enjoy it.
You might also be surprised (probably not) about how many people don't know any better and think this is legit content.
A Wall Street Time Bomb
Before you get wrapped up in the whole “soft landing” story, I have another cautionary bit of information to make sure we don't get too complacent.
Bottom line: pension funds investing in private equity may be getting screwed by excessive fees and hidden losses from Wall Street money managers.
My take: Ok, we have $1 trillion in CLOs that may not have proper ratings, $7 trillion in junk bonds for businesses that make no money, hundreds of billions in private real estate funds that don’t have enough money to pay back their investors, and now I have to worry about fraud and insolvency among private equity funds? What kind of clown show is the legacy financial system that I have to worry about this on top of everything else?
Why we care: it’s good to worry about the $1 trillion crypto market. This whole place could go to zero dollars and nobody would blink an eye. Let's just make sure that if we are worrying about losing money with risky investments, that we have a good sense of all the ways we can lose money with “safe” ones.
The 6 Most Important Web3 Trends for 2023
I'm not sure how I missed this Web3 Academy post from November, but it's just as relevant now as it was then. Read the 6 most important Web3 trends for 2023.
Sneak peek? Here’s the list:
Big brands are taking web3 seriously 💪
Tech giants are investing billions and onboarding millions 💰
Crypto payment is
a marketing stuntfor real 💯Token ticketing introduces new experiential models 🤯
The metaverse is… not quite here yet 🐢
The future will be multi-chain (or will it?) ⛓️
Jobs Corner
QuickNode | Data Engineer | Link to position
Coinbase | Communications Senior Manager | Link to position
Nascent | Venture Analyst | Link to position
Binance Labs | Token Investment Associate | Link to position
Subspace Labs | Lead Full Stack Engineer | Link to position
Circle | Senior Counsel | Link to position
Chainalysis | Customer Marketing Manager | Link to position
Glassnode | Senior Data Scientist | Link to position
OpenSea | Strategic Finance Analyst | Link to position
OpenSea | Senior Software Engineer | Link to position
Polygon | Golang Security Auditor | Link to position
Edge & Node | Intern | Link to position
These jobs come from the ToolsForCrypto newsletter. If you’d like to post a vacancy here (for free), email mark@markhelfman.com.
Premium subscribers, an extra note for you is below.
Relax and enjoy the ride!
