Saturday Sats: Saturday Sats: Goldman, Yearn, and Ledger
We highlight three important stories of the last 24 hours today. An about face from Goldman, Yearn founder’s rant, and the continued disastrous after-effects of the Ledger database hack.
Good morning. We highlight three important stories of the last 24 hours: an about face from Goldman, Yearn founder’s rant, and the continued disastrous after-shocks of the Ledger database hack.
Welcome to Saturday Sats, part of our new series: BitPinas Daily. We will look at the price of Bitcoin, Ethereum and the major cryptocurrencies. Crypto is global, but sometimes news that matters happens while we sleep. So we bring to you what’s happening in our space here and abroad.
Market Price as of January 16, 2021:
| Bitcoin | $36,788 | -6.23% |
| Ethereum | $1,171.86 | -3.7% |
| Tether | $1.00 | 1.01% |
| Polkadot | $13.20 | -8.27% |
| XRP | $0.280337 | -5.28% |
| SLP | $0.012 | -7.69% |
Bitcoin closed January 15, 2021, at $36,788 per BTC. We’re down 9% in the last 7 days and up 35% since the year began. This is 12.28% below the previous all-time high of $41,940, which was hit on Jan. 8, 2021.
Bitcoin’s market capitalization stands today at $730,651,308,099 which is 67.65% of the entire cryptocurrency market. The entire crypto market, by the way, now has a market cap of $1,077,570,167,161.
On the table above, there’s the cryptocurrency SLP. If you wonder what that is, check out this article: Playing Axie Infinity vs Minimum Basic Salary in the Philippines.
Corporate
Goldman Sachs to enter crypto market ‘soon’ via custody play: source
A source inside Goldman Sachs has told Ian Allison of Coindesk that it will soon explore digital asset custody and that this plan would be “evident soon.”
The source said this is part of Goldman’s underlying strategy citing the recent missives from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Goldman, apparently, is talking to JPMorgan, Goldman, and Citi regarding crypto custody.
Why not crypto prime brokerage? The Goldman source said it’s because Anchorage, BitGo, and Coinbase already have big plans in that space so they do not look to duplicate those.
This is significant, considering that in May 2020, just after the Bitcoin halving, Goldman’s analysts said cryptocurrencies are not an asset class, saying “We believe that a security whose appreciation is primarily dependent on whether someone else is willing to pay a higher price for it is not a suitable investment for our clients.”
At that time, Bitcoin was around $10,000. The dominant cryptocurrency almost reached $42,000 last week.
Opinions change.
Ripple Effect
Kraken to halt XRP trading
“Given the recent SEC filing against Ripple Labs Inc., we are halting XRP trading for U.S. residents no later than January 29, 2021 at 5pm PT (January 30, 2021 at 1:00 UTC). We may begin implementing this process at any time on January 29, 2021, so all U.S. clients are strongly encouraged to resolve their positions prior to that day.” (Kraken Post)
DeFi
DeFi founders empathize with Cronje’s “Rant”
Yearn Finance founder continued his rant about why building in DeFi sucks. According to him:
- “Your value is only as good as your token, token go up? You built an amazing protocol, it’s the future of finance, blah blah. Token goes down? You are a scammer, fake project, bad coder, blah blah,”
- Your success belongs to your “community”, but your failure is 100% your own. Token goes up in value? No one is going to be giving profits to you or thanking you for their profits. Some exploit occurs? You are 100% to blame and need to refund or figure out ways to make them whole again. You have 0% of the reward, 100% of the risk.
- When I decided to distribute YFI 100% it was because I believed it would allow me to exit to the community. However, I am still blamed if the price goes down, I am still constantly plagued by “when next release”, “when update”, etc messages. I still have all the responsibility and expectation, except I have 0 of the reward or upside. Don’t do this, I was an idiot.
Check Andre’s post here.
Owen Fernau from The Defiant wrote about other DeFi founders sympathizing with Andre and or offering possible solutions or alternatives.
- Kain Warwick, Synthetix: “You are always going to have pressure from stakeholders. It’s important to filter it though. And one of the best ways is establishing good community norms early.”
- Stani Kulechov, Aave on funding alternatives: “DeFi community should look more into DAICOs, a model that Vitalik Buterin proposed where the governance goes directly to the community without unfair advantage where whales are receiving free tokens.”
Byh the way, there’s a proposal to 1000 more YFI tokens. The current max supply of YFI is 30,000 tokens. This new proposal andthe ensuing community discussion appears to be the motivation for the “rant”
Ledger
Ledger users continue to get phishing phone calls, threats after database leak
Ever since it was revealed that Ledger’s customer database was leaked, these users have received phishing emails, threats to their lives and their families, and now phishing phone calls. To say that this massive data breach is unprecedented is actually an understatement. It is disastrous, more than to Ledger’s reputation, but to the lives of these customers as well.
We have articles on how to stay away from scams here in BitPinas, and here’s another excellent one.
#CryptoPH
Colin Goltra’s Year in Review
“Overall, I think I am just more excited about the home grown PH crypto scene really coming into its own this cycle and having a much more collaborative tone than in prior bull market years. It’s a great community and I think it can do a great job spreading the word about crypto throughout the Philippines.”
Check out Colin’s Year in Review here.
What else is happening
- Cryptocurrencies face greater oversight under Gensler-led U.S. SEC (Olga Kharif, Bloomberg)
- Big institutions are only interested in bitcoin, says NYDIG CEO (Frank Chapparo, The Block)
- On inflation, treasuries, incentive alignment, and fair launches in DeFi (Ryan Watkins, Messari)
This article is published on BitPinas: Saturday Sats: Goldman, Yearn, and Ledger
