👉 What Happened on Crypto Twitter in Early December

Wrapping the decade, censorship resistance vs mainstream, products to protocols, Polo savage AF, and more!

Dec 18, 2019

Hey everyone welcome back to Crypto Twitter TLDR, I’m Colin Goltra and here’s what happened on Crypto Twitter in early December.

The financial story of the decade 🚀📈

As the 2010s come to a close, Crypto Twitter reflected on the meteoric progress that Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies have made this decade. Bitcoin’s arc maps almost perfectly to the decade, growing from a fringe online project to an expanded ecosystem worth hundreds-of-billions of dollars. The story of the decade for sure.

Erik Voorhees @ErikVoorhees

Bitcoin must be considered the financial story of the decade.

Balaji S. Srinivasan @balajis

As the decade ends, the biggest unicorn of the 2010s wasn’t Uber, Airbnb, or Snap. It was Bitcoin.

lawson : baker @lwsnbaker

Top 10 cryptocurrency innovations/events of the decade? 2010 Satoshi leaves Bitcoin '11 BitcoinTalk, SilkRoad '12 LocalBitcoins '13 BIP39 mnemonics '14 Gox-not your🔑, not your coins '15 Ethereum '16 The DAO, ETC🍴 '17 📈, ERC20/ICOs, SegWit '18 FOMO3D 🤯 2019 MakerDAO, DeFi 🚀

Ryan Sean Adams - rsa.eth @RyanSAdams

Quick! 2014: everybody launch a BTC fork 2015: everybody launch a sidechain 2016: everybody launch a blockchain 2017: everybody launch a token 2018: everybody launch a stablecoin 2019: everybody launch a SC platform 2020: everybody launch a DeFi app

mutatrum @mutatrum

3 years, 4 months and 1 day. This is the hodl line: no matter when in the history of #bitcoin you bought, after 1220 days you would be in profit. Low time preference, can you feel it?

Is Censorship Resistance at Odds with Mainstream Adoption? 🔇🔇🔇

A major discussion took place on CT after @jillruthcarlson posted her Year in Review article to CoinDesk stating that “By design, cryptocurrency does not solve mainstream problems” - that the nature of censorship resistance at the fringe is inherently inconsistent with mainstream usage. This of course drew the ire of many on crypto twitter who equated this to criminality, but the discussion actually served as an excellent litmus test on where crypto is today.

Jill Carlson @jillruthcarlson

I can spot a subtweet when I see one @VladZamfir 😇 1. I specifically say *cryptocurrency* is for *censored* activity 2. Censored != illegal 3. Illegal != badp

Vlad Zamfir @VladZamfir

Please don't embarrass yourself and at the same time put your peers at legal risk by taking a stance that "blockchain is for illegal activity" lol

Jeremy Gardner @Disruptepreneur

I love this tear @jillruthcarlson is on. Each year, I give a talk on “The Evolution of the Cryptoasset Economy” and an early slide is on the importance of the Silk Road and dark markets to Bitcoin’s rise. I always get gasps. But Bitcoin was *made for* censorship resistance.

Jill Carlson @jillruthcarlson

I can spot a subtweet when I see one @VladZamfir 😇 1. I specifically say *cryptocurrency* is for *censored* activity 2. Censored != illegal 3. Illegal != bad https://t.co/2eu99Jvltp

Linda Xie @ljxie

I agree w/ @jillruthcarlson that a huge value prop for crypto is censorship resistance, but I want & believe it'll go mainstream. Digital store of value, people earning interest with DeFi, marketplaces for tokenized items (e.g. video games) are just a few use cases I'm excited by

CoinDesk @coindesk

Cryptocurrency isn't designed for mainstream acceptance says @jillruthcarlson: https://t.co/QiLIu2jV84 #yearinreview2019

Converting products into protocols 🌐

@balajis advanced an excellent discussion at the beginning of the month about how the upcoming decade will involve expanding products into protocols, with Binance being the most notable early leader in this trend.

Balaji S. Srinivasan @balajis

The goal of every massive hit in the 2000-2019 timeframe was to go from product to platform. The goal of every massive hit in the 2020+ timeframe will be to go from product to protocol.

𝗔𝗻𝗶𝗿𝘂𝗱𝗵 𝗣𝗮𝗶 @ani_pai

@balajis Web 2.0 calls it a platform Web 3.0 calls it a protocol

Nischal (WazirX) ⚡️ @NischalShetty

Binance's ongoing journey towards decentralization: 1. Created a centralised version 2. Attracted the right customers 3. Refined the product 4. Built Infrastructure for DEX More steps will unravel over time WazirX & other Binance products can replicate the playbook 👌S

Balaji S. Srinivasan @balajis

Binance is a pioneer here with BNB. It’s the best example of launching a protocol in a scrappy startup style. BNB initially only had value server-side at https://t.co/ARSpuXJZgj. So they could iterate fast on features like a typical web app. Then they launched their own chain.

A week later, @jack himself went public with the plan that Twitter itself could be converted into a participant client of a decentralized protocol, which drew huge praise from the venture establishment.

jack 🌍🌏🌎 @jack

Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard. 🧵

Fred Wilson @fredwilson

I am so pleased that @jack and the Twitter team are looking into this. Having been there when "we took a different path for reasons that were reasonable at the time", I have long wished that Twitter had been built after Bitcoin not before it

jack 🌍🌏🌎 @jack

twitter was so open early on that many saw its potential to be a decentralized internet standard, like SMTP (email protocol). For a variety of reasons, all reasonable at the time, we took a different path and increasingly centralized Twitter. But a lot’s changed over the years…

Eric Weinstein @EricRWeinstein

Do not ignore this quoted tweet. There are layers and layers with this. I think @jack is likely moves ahead here. Don’t let your frustrations with current Twitter and it’s Terms of Service or Trust & Safety issues blind you to what is likely to be the fate of social media.

jack 🌍🌏🌎 @jack

Did Polo really fucking do that? 🤯💩

Alright, the first few topics were a bit too civil, so let’s change gears here and cover an absolute shitshow of an ordeal. Jared Tate, the founder of the DigiByte project took to Twitter to voice serious concerns with Tron and Justin Sun’s growing involvement with Poloniex and, as if on-cue, the Poloniex Twitter account jumps into a direct threaded comment to tell him they are delisting DigiByte. Honestly, what an awful look for the ecosystem.

Rob "Crypto Bobby" Paone @crypto_bobby

DigiByte founder yells at Poloniex on Twitter. Polo says nahhhh and drops the hammer with a delist in 4 hours lmaoooo

Cool Mental Models for ETH-based DeFi 🧠🔷

Matthew Vernon @dApp_boi

$USDC and $DAI are file formats for dollars just like .jpeg and .gif are file formats for images

@MrBUIDL is Looking for Ethereal NY 2020 Sponsors! @MrBUIDL

"The best money protocols eat money and spit out something valuable. 🔷Maker eats ETH and spits out stability. 🔷Compound eats ETH and spits out interest. 🔷Uniswap eats ETH and spits out liquidity." @RyanSAdams brining the heat! @MakerDAO @compoundfinance @UniswapExchange

Crypto Culture 👏👏👏

Ending this one as we always do with random crypto tweets. Hit me with feedback on this week’s letter (@goltra), I’ll catch you all at the end of December and Happy Holidays Crypto Twitter!