2020 Week 9
The ProfitStance TL;DR is a summary of the most important developments in crypto news, along with our thoughts on how they impact the crypto space and the economy at large.
Crypto Volatility / Expiry Friday
Honestly, I could have picked any one of a number of articles to go here. Volatility hit the crypto market this week in a big way. Or, at least, it seems big considering the months of relative calm that preceded it. Anyone who’s be into crypto for even nine months understands that crypto has wild swings. While crypto newcomers might be reeling from the crash this week, I’d like to point something out. The last Friday of the month will see bitcoin futures contracts expire on the CME. This has always led to a drop in price for bitcoin, and subsequently all the altcoins, to the tune of around 10%. Could the Coronavirus have affected bitcoin’s price? Sure. But it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the crypto market dropped this week. View crypto article View Expiry Friday article
IOTA Shut Off
I’ve included this article in this week’s newsletter, but not necessarily because IOTA is one of the most important cryptos, though it is twenty-fourth in terms of market cap. This article does a great job of explaining IOTA’s problematic history, turbulent present and uncertain future while also hitting on a couple of core concept in crypto: what it means to really be decentralized and the after effects of the ICO craze. View article
XRP / MoneyGram
While the news of a XRP seem to coincide with the recent rise in crypto prices, the truth is partnerships between companies take a lot time to develop to the point of consummation and announcement. I’ve said before that announcements about partnerships between crypto companies and major corporations are almost always about three cryptos: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP, leading me to believe that these are three cryptos that will make it to mass adoption. This week, XRP announced that two companies will be using their crypto to facilitate remittances: MoneyGram and Azimo. View MoneyGram article View Azimo article
Libra / Shopify
Back in July, Facebook and Libra were all over the news and in front of congress. Then, citing regulatory problems, a handful of companies backed out of their partnerships with the Libra Association. After the initial flood of reporting tapered off, all has been silent on the Libra news front. That doesn’t mean that project was canceled, or that Libra has gone away. Shopify, a Canadian e-commerce company, announced its partnership with Libra this week, followed shortly by Tagomi, a crypto broker. Everyone should expect Libra to go forward as planned, launching sometime around the summer of 2020. When Libra launches, the landscape of the world economy will change dramatically. View article
Tl;DR stands for Too Long; Didn’t Read. Basically, it’s a summary of an article that you want to read, but for either lack of time, or desire, don’t want to read all the way through the article to get the salient points. In crypto space, there are many articles published every day about many different topics. As I research, I pick the top 5 – 10 articles that represent the most important news and developments over the past week and pass those on to you. I’ll give you the TL;DR and my take.