👉 What Happened on Crypto Twitter in November

Hello world, Strong hands, collateralization, Jack in Africa, and more!

Dec 04, 2019

Hey everyone and welcome to the first edition of Crypto Twitter TLDR!

I’m Colin, I have been in the crypto(-twitter) ecosystem since 2013 (back when it was just called the Bitcoin ecosystem) and have participated in the ecosystem from multiple angles, most notably at Coins.ph, the major on-off ramp in the Philippines.

We’ll mostly cover large cap ecosystems like Bitcoin and Ethereum in this newsletter, as well as offshoots of those ecosystems like Lightning and DeFi, but we’ll also try to include updates from exciting smaller projects if they are exciting or rich in drama!

So get ready, HODL on, and let’s dive in!

This is my STRONG HAND 👌

After a huge surge in price at the end of October on favorable Blockchain comments coming out of China, November saw gradual price declines and then ultimately a dramatic tank in price at the end of the month.

Joseph Young @iamjosephyoung

The sell pressure on bitcoins seems to be too intense. Now, most major cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, XRP, etc. are in the negative year-to-date. This will test the heart of investors and entrepreneurs in the space, especially coming down from a big spike to $10,600.

But of course the seasoned veterans have become accustomed to the volatility:

Dan Hedl @danheld

I’ve HODLed Bitcoin through the valley of despair in 2015 when we hit $200. The last week is nothing! Keep a steady hand through these swings and you will be rewarded for your conviction.

Dan Hedl @danheld

Bitcoin selloff continues. HODL!! http://t.co/IDmWcnntwr

DeFi is getting LIT 🔥

Despite the price declines across the ecosystem, Ethereum DeFi (Decentralized Finance) adoption continued to climb.

Ryan Sean Adams dove into the Coinmetrics data on ETH and created a thread that demonstrated the continued adoption data:

Ryan Sean Adams - rsa.eth @RyanSAdams

6/ Next time someone says "no one uses Ethereum" send them data Ethereum contract calls have grown from a couple thousand to a couple million in less than 2 years Ethereum is being used for its intended purpose: settlement for programmable money And we're at peak capacity

Eric Wall had an excellent thread highlighting that DeFi remains underappreciated:

Eric Wall IS RIGHT @ercwl

I believe that some people who are skeptical of DeFi do not appreciate fully just how cumbersome it is to do these things via the traditional financial system. Doing these things without having to sign a single paper or shake a single hand is immensely powerful.

Collateralization Holding Down the Fort 🏰

Haseeb Qureshi and the team at Dragonfly dove into why DeFi, collateralization, and tokenization of off-chain assets would ultimately serve as a mechanism to prevent another ETC style fork of ETH:

Haseeb Qureshi @hosseeb

Ethereum is now unforkable, thanks to DeFi: why there will never be another ETC-like fork. medium.com/dragonfly-rese… A new Dragonfly research piece by @Lsquaredleland and myself. As DeFi becomes increasingly important, this has big implications for smart contract platforms.

medium.comEthereum is now unforkable, thanks to DeFiWhy there will never be another ETH Classic

Haseeb Qureshi @hosseeb

@TusharJain_ @Lsquaredleland Large off-chain assets simply mean that DeFi on the minority chain is untenable. But if Maker or Compound decide to freeze their contracts on a certain chain, they could just as plausibly lead the decision and force asset issuers to follow them.

Chris Burniske had an excellent thread about why collateralization was likely a more useful use case than even medium-of-exchange and discussed the relative position of potential collateral assets:

Chris Burniske @cburniske

1/ Long run, I expect assets that aim to be a store-of-value (eg, $BTC, $DCR, $ETH) to be much more widely used as collateral than as a means-of-exchange.

Chris Burniske @cburniske

@MustStopMurad @saifedean @coinbase 6/ My opinion: $BTC should lean into this, just as $ETH has. The burgeoning "collateral economy" around $ETH is amazing to watch, and allows ETH as a SoV to extend its utility far beyond what it could hope for as a pure MoE.

Chris Burniske @cburniske

@MustStopMurad @saifedean @coinbase 8/ Maybe one-day $BTC as a PoW-based SoV will be considered "off-chain" collateral for the world (exogenously secured). Meanwhile, $ETH as a PoS-based SoV will be the internet's "on-chain" collateral (endogenously secured).

Maker pushes the much awaited MCD 🤖🔧📈

Speaking of both DeFi and collateralization, ETH-based MakerDAO, the darling of the DeFi ecosystem, continued to grow dramatically and made the major transition to its Multi-Collateral DAI (MCD) update:

Ryan Sean Adams - rsa.eth @RyanSAdams

Maker supply cap just increased to $120m! For the first time, a stable, permissionless, crypto money will exceed $100m Making history Made in Ethereum

Ryan Sean Adams - rsa.eth @RyanSAdams

The total supply of DAI just hit $100m This its max supply cap The most DAI ever 🚀 I expect Maker to vote to increase DAI supply cap this Friday Until then the only way to get DAI is on secondary markets

Maker @MakerDAO

Some stats from the first ~24 hours: 7.4 million #Dai supply 96% ETH, 3% BAT, 1 % SAI 623k Dai in Dai Savings Rate (DSR) 826 Vaults opened 4k Dai paid in Stability Fees 364k Dai in @UniswapExchange 10 liquidations!

Jack in Africa! 🌍

Tech icon Jack, who is now also a born-again Bitcoin evangelist made, made a huge tech trek to Africa in November. While not solely for the purpose of promoting Bitcoin, crypto twitter certainly understood the potential implications of having such a high profile and empowered Bitcoin evangelist expanding his focus on the continent.