PaperImperium

At what point do L2s start waking up to the fact that Circle, Tether, L0 are now their competitors?

At what point do L2s start waking up to the fact that Circle, Tether, L0 are now their competitors?
Further evidence that most have zero business plan to threaten, lack conviction to make hard choices, or both.

Many chains want to become the hub for RWA lending. But most RWAs are illiquid onchain and/or gated redemptions.
Believe it or not, there’s a fix for this, and the first chain to repurpose their incentives budget will have a major differentiator and a lot of market power over lending protocols, asset issuers, and curators.
But it involves more effort than bleeding incentives on a DEX pool 🤷‍♂️

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you’re the easiest person to fool.”
-Richard Feynman, probably to some stablecoin or blockchain or DEX startup that proceeded not to listen to him

I’m not a venture capitalist, but I get asked to angel a fair bit. As someone with a value background, I think there’s a wide open VC niche in crypto by just Moneyballing into the original DeFi promise of improving financial services access to the middle- and low-income countries.
Rather than invest based on speculative potential or liquidity, I think you could make a solid return by investing in the regional lending and stablecoin ventures (maybe others, but those are what I know best) that are “better than replacement.”
Note that Tether is a great example of this! As I harp on constantly, Te

Surprised Kalshi and Polymarket aren’t out here pushing the Olympics more

Remember, BTC could go to zero, and crypto would have mostly the same use cases it has today. Stablecoins and DeFi work just fine.

With all the liquidations, it’s a good time to refresh your understanding of backstop mechanisms if you’re a gov token holder. In particular, I’d recommend checking to see if any first loss buffer is empty, thereby making you the de facto first loss.

One of the difficulties in valuing tokens is that a single project may have multiple tokens that play different roles.An individual token in a capital structure could be apparently cash flowing while the project as whole is not.Or a project as a whole could be solvent while a specific entity or token within it is not.Both of these examples can be found in major projects today.

One of the difficulties in valuing tokens is that a single project may have multiple tokens that play different roles.An individual token in a capital structure could be apparently cash flowing while the project as whole is not.Or a project as a whole could be solvent while a specific entity or token within it is not.

I was asked to do some light diligence on an asset manager and word of advice to anyone starting up: Spend 30 minutes looking into your service providers before using them.You don’t want to use people connected to money laundering networks. And don’t use people who will show your formation documents with half-assed redactions.Relatedly, this is especially important if you’re a Dallas Federal Reserve official where setting up a Panamanian shell company through sketchy characters might give the appearance of impropriety.

I was asked to do some light diligence on an asset manager and word of advice to anyone starting up: Spend 30 minutes looking into your service providers before using them.You don’t want to use people connected to money laundering networks. And don’t use people who will show your formation documents with half-assess redactions.Relatedly, this is especially important if you’re a senior Dallas Federal Reserve official where setting up a Panamanian shell company through sketchy characters might give the appearance of impropriety.

I struggle to understand people who use AI to write emails and other information-sharing content. The whole point is to make your opinions or findings known. If you need to ask the AI for opinions or findings, maybe you don’t need to write anything.

I never know what to think when a prominent founder suddenly stops tweeting for a couple months. Is that good or bad?

If, the gods forbid, US foreign and economic policy continues becoming more aggressive, many crypto teams are going to find out the hard way that they should have decentralized control.
This is especially true in stablecoins, where it’s difficult to see an interventionist US having tolerance for founders in Europe/China running competitors to Circle (domestic), Paxos (domestic), and Tether (easy to reach in a political ally in Central America).

Can someone actually produce a person that moved from “regular bank deposit” to “yield bearing stablecoin” with no additional gymnastics like adding DeFi risk?
Or are all these banks just liars?

All these folks who seem surprised at the weight banks put on fighting stablecoin yield are clearly unfamiliar with the opposition to The Narrow Bank in the 2010s.
TLDR, folks wanted a bank that made no loans, just parked cash at the Fed. Lots of pushback. Didn’t happen.
I’ll leave you with the dark conjecture why.

I’m not sure how many people on here know I was an archaeologist, but crypto is so much less drama.
There’s no Jorge the Cuban dwarf who stole everyone’s girlfriend, no being stung 14 times by hornets and then finding the work truck was towed, no drive by Fabreeze-ings, impromptu rap battles behind the parking lot dumpster at a hotel in Bumblefuck, USA, drunk people falling into undiscovered tombs, or being escorted by the sheriff (from his car) because some ornery landowner said they’d paint the ground with your brains.
Also a lot less drinking, rattlesnakes, and machete injures (correlated?