BlockNovum — July & August 2019 Update
By: Remo Kyburz
Tags: Blockchain, Podcast, Crypto, Bitcoin, Startup

Dear reader,

I hope you had a great summer so far! As always, you’ll find below an overview of recent developments in the crypto markets, my favorite articles of the last few weeks, as well as short profiles of some promising crypto projects.

Let’s get started.

🎧 Stefano Bernardi — Leap Takers Podcast

As announced in the last newsletter, I recently launched the Leap Takers Podcast!

In this podcast for the curious, I’m interviewing daring European entrepreneurs, investors, and shapers, who challenge existing conventions and engage in thematic areas such as innovative consumer products, travel, gaming, and emerging technologies (such as crypto). In each episode, you as a listener will discover how each of these leap takers started their journey, the insights and learnings they gathered, their favorite resources, tactics, and much more, so that — you too — can take the leap!

I recently had Stefano Bernardi (@stefanobernardi) on the show. He is one of the main figures in the European crypto community as the executive director of the AragonProject, as well as an author for the popular token economy newsletter. In this wide-ranging conversation, we talk about how he took the leap to Silicon Valley and how Aragon and blockchain technology can help to govern organizations. Listen to it here!

Another guest you might like is Daniel Naeff, who is disrupting Venture Capital with his startup Oakura that is building a startup ecosystem powered by Blockchain.

To get notified about future episodes, please subscribe here:

📈BlockNovum & Market Updates

Markets & News:

We started off the summer break in July with a Bitcoin price at around $10,200 and — funny enough — today are at a very similar level at around $10,180.

In between, we saw swings from the lows of $9,300 up to highs of almost $13,000.

at around $10,200 and — funny enough — today are at a very similar level at around $10,180. In between, we saw swings from the lows of $9,300 up to highs of almost $13,000. Bitcoin dominance is at almost 70%, which shows that the overall cryptoasset market is still very dependent on Bitcoin and that there is a high correlation among cryptoasset price movements.

Ethereum saw a reversal in its price trend after hitting a local peak on June 26th where it hit $350. The trend has been pointing downwards and one ETH is currently trading at $188.

saw a reversal in its price trend after hitting a local peak on June 26th where it hit $350. The trend has been pointing downwards and one ETH is currently trading at $188. Next to BTC and ETH, I like to keep an eye on Maker, Decred, Tezos, and Binance Coin.

🔍Recommended Reads

Find below a selection of articles that I recommend to read:

DeFi: What it Is and Isn’t — Justine Humenansky:

This is the first of a three part series that dives deep into the topic of decentralized finance (DeFi). The author gathered insights from interviewing various industry professionals at top law firms, investment funds, exchanges, and various decentralized finance (DeFi) projects to outline “the differences between the DeFi dream and the DeFi reality”.

In addition, seven major challenges that are faced by the DeFi industry are explored (e.g. undefined business models, oracles).

I encourage you to read this, if you’re interested in learning more about the exciting new space of completely decentralized financial services.

This is the first of a three part series that dives deep into the topic of decentralized finance (DeFi). The author gathered insights from interviewing various industry professionals at top law firms, investment funds, exchanges, and various decentralized finance (DeFi) projects to outline “the differences between the DeFi dream and the DeFi reality”. In addition, seven major challenges that are faced by the DeFi industry are explored (e.g. undefined business models, oracles). I encourage you to read this, if you’re interested in learning more about the exciting new space of completely decentralized financial services. The most powerful person in Silicon Valley — FastCompany (Katrina Brooker):

Not a crypto-related article per se, but a fascinating read about Billionaire Masayoshi Son and how he is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to realize his vision of an AI-powered utopia where machines control how we live.

The SoftBank vision fund I with its $100bn in size completely changed the venture capital world with its abundance of capital to invest into growth companies.

Be advised this is a long read, but it’s on of the articles I read over this summer that enjoyed the most.

💡Interesting New Projects

Here a few cool projects I came across and that might be worth keeping in mind:

TokenSets

TokenSets provide fully-decentralized and automated crypto investment management strategies (e.g. trend following, range bound). This is achieved through “sets”, which are tokens with built-in asset management strategies — e.g. the “ETH 20 Day Moving Average Crossover” toke, which attempts to capitalize on shorter term trends and accumulate ETH. This is a very cool DeFi application that connects directly to MetaMask and allows you to automatically invest your crypto according to certain strategies without trusting a centralized (asset management) party.

TokenSets provide fully-decentralized and automated crypto investment management strategies (e.g. trend following, range bound). This is achieved through “sets”, which are tokens with built-in asset management strategies — e.g. the “ETH 20 Day Moving Average Crossover” toke, which attempts to capitalize on shorter term trends and accumulate ETH. This is a very cool DeFi application that connects directly to MetaMask and allows you to automatically invest your crypto according to certain strategies without trusting a centralized (asset management) party. Metamask Mobile:

Speaking of MetaMask, they released the public beta for MetaMask mobile on iOS and Android a couple of weeks ago. While still in beta the official release is planned for sometime this fall. As my friends from token economy put it “It comes with InstaPay, a built-in Connext payment channel integration, which lets users send and receive instant and free payments in DAI between each others, and a super simple onboarding including sync with browser wallet option by QR code and access to most defi protocols within it.”

I’ll definitely start using this once released.

Speaking of MetaMask, they released the public beta for MetaMask mobile on iOS and Android a couple of weeks ago. While still in beta the official release is planned for sometime this fall. As my friends from token economy put it “It comes with InstaPay, a built-in Connext payment channel integration, which lets users send and receive instant and free payments in DAI between each others, and a super simple onboarding including sync with browser wallet option by QR code and access to most defi protocols within it.” I’ll definitely start using this once released. Fairdrop:

Fairdrop is a free, decentralised, private and secure file transfer dapp. Fairdrop completely respects your privacy and doesn’t need or collect any personal data. It runs on the Ethereum network and uses Swarm’s decentralised storage system for file storing and sending. This means: No central servers. No tracking. No backdoors.

This seems to be similar to a service like WeTransfer, but Fairdrop is based on Ethereum and is decentralized.

Apparently, Fairdrop users can send files that are bigger than 100GB. Once this is live on mainnet, there will be an ETH cost for transfer fees.

Fairdrop is a free, decentralised, private and secure file transfer dapp. Fairdrop completely respects your privacy and doesn’t need or collect any personal data. It runs on the Ethereum network and uses Swarm’s decentralised storage system for file storing and sending. This means: No central servers. No tracking. No backdoors. This seems to be similar to a service like WeTransfer, but Fairdrop is based on Ethereum and is decentralized. Apparently, Fairdrop users can send files that are bigger than 100GB. Once this is live on mainnet, there will be an ETH cost for transfer fees. PoolTogether:

More of a fun experimental project than anything very serious, but looks quite cool. PoolTogether is a no-loss lottery!

Users “buy” lottery tickets by adding DAI to a pool, which is then invested via Compound.Finance to earn interest.

Once the pool is complete after some time you get all your money back. Additionally, one winner is randomly chosen from among the ticket holders and they receive all the interest that accrued during the lock period.

Sounds like a cool concept if you’re into gambling or just want to play around with spending some DAI.

More of a fun experimental project than anything very serious, but looks quite cool. PoolTogether is a no-loss lottery! Users “buy” lottery tickets by adding DAI to a pool, which is then invested via Compound.Finance to earn interest. Once the pool is complete after some time you get all your money back. Additionally, one winner is randomly chosen from among the ticket holders and they receive all the interest that accrued during the lock period. Sounds like a cool concept if you’re into gambling or just want to play around with spending some DAI. Mythicmarkets:

This marketplace allows you to invest in tokenized fractional shares of rare geeky collectibles. This includes vintage trading cards (like Magic the Gathering), comics, and memorabilia.

For instance, they currently offer the possibility to invest in a Black Lotus card from MTG (seen as the most valuable card of the game) at a current value of $90k.

A sign that tokenization of certain items is especially attractive for the gaming and collectibles market.

This marketplace allows you to invest in tokenized fractional shares of rare geeky collectibles. This includes vintage trading cards (like Magic the Gathering), comics, and memorabilia. For instance, they currently offer the possibility to invest in a Black Lotus card from MTG (seen as the most valuable card of the game) at a current value of $90k. A sign that tokenization of certain items is especially attractive for the gaming and collectibles market. MakerDAO stats:

A nice website that shows in-depth network statistics for the Maker & DAI ecosystem.

A nice website that shows in-depth network statistics for the Maker & DAI ecosystem. Aragon Fundraising:

Aragon introduced the concept of Fundraising earlier this summer and it is scheduled to be released on mainnet soon (so not live yet, but I thought it’s a good time to quickly talk about it).

Here a short description by Aragon itself: “Aragon Fundraising will be a funding platform where people who have projects or organisations can issue tokens on the market and receive money to help them finance their project. This platform will be the materialization of an idea presented one year ago by Vitalik Buterin and known under the acronym of DAICO (Decentralized Autonomous Initial Coin Offering). The general idea behind this model is as follows : A Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) issues tokens that give its owners privileges in the organization or rights on the production of the DAO.”

🙏 Thanks for your interest.

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Remo / Founder BlockNovum

About BlockNovum

BlockNovum is a Swiss Venture Investment Research & Consulting Firm. We provide services around market research, deal flow support, and professional startup assessments for emerging industries such as crypto & blockchain.

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