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Mind Of Mav

10 Important Crypto Theses For 2022

Clocking in at 165 pages (a 23% increase from 2021’s masterpiece), Messari’s annual “Crypto Theses 2022” remains (in my humble opinion) the industry’s most impressive overview of the crypto ecosystem, and a must read for any crypto enthusiast.

While Ryan Selkis was supported by the ~100-person Messari team (up 4 times over 2020), the report was written in the first person by Selkis, co-founder and CEO of Messari.

The longest chapter in his report is on “NFT & Web3 Plumbing,” but each chapter is strewn with insight. The report’s a comprehensive state-of-the-state coupled with thought provoking predictions about 2022 and beyond:

As amazing as the report is, few will read all 165 pages, even though I strongly suggest you do. So below are my view of the most intriguing points in each of the 10 awesome chapters of the epic report:

Chapter #1 “Top 10 Narratives” Highlight—Crypto/Web3 is Inevitable

Undoubtedly, the major theme of the report is that “,” increasingly referred to as Web3:

And Ryan believes we have all the necessary ingredients for Web3 to succeed, notably brilliant talent, staggering levels of capital, and the critical infrastructure built during the last bear market.

Chapter #2 “People To Watch” Highlight — WAGMI

Of the 14 people Ryan highlighted, I would have chosen Do Kwon and Terra’s 170X 2021 return, as the most notable.

But Ryan started with WAGMI (“We All Going To Make It”) as his (and my) favorite crypto meme in years as it embodies the mission alignment and altruism crypto represent.

Ryan sees WAGMI including both the “” crowd, as well as the “l” crowd. I see it as the best tagline for “community.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Chapter # 3 “Top 10 Thoughts on Bitcoin” Highlight —The Great Fall of China’s Bitcoin Industry

To me, one of the highlights of 2021, was the resilience the crypto industry showed in response to the shutdown of mining in China. The ecosystem drove a a complete retracement of the hashing power lost in less than five months:

Blockchain.com

As other countries, most notably the U.S., picked up the slack”

And the “” narrative faded to the ash heap of FUD history.

Chapter # 4“America Crypto Policy” Highlight —Setting the Stage: FSOC & SEC Dominance

It’s not surprising that this is the second longest section of the report. Any fanboy of Ryan Selkis has been following his relentless attack on SEC head Gary Gensler.

Ryan also provides the community with thoughtful Twitter threads on all that is wrong with the current American regulatory regimes and the laws currently hamstringing the entire U.S. crypto ecosystem. The result is that U.S. investors are often excluded from the most attractive investment opportunities(e.g. Solana), and the “grey areas” that have allowed many of crypto companies to thrive (e.g. Circle and Blockfi), while those that ask for clarity about the grey areas (e.g. Coinbase) have been thwarted. This regulatory uncertainty has caused many innovative projects to move outside the U.S. to friendlier regulatory ecosystems like Singapore or Lisbon.

In “Setting the Stage”, Ryan highlights that the U.S. crypto ecosystem is “” of the hot mess known as Financial Services Oversight Council (FSOC) and its 10 voting members. The members include the Fed, the Treasury, the CFTC, the SEC, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the FDIC, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and a couple of others. As a byproduct of Dodd-Frank, the FSOC has responsibility for identifying risks and emerging threats to the financial system. And as such, the FSOC has oversight of emerging tech like crypto. But given the disparate views of its members, and the misalignment of member goals, the result is, potentially, a regulatory environment leading to the demise of U.S. economic dominance:

 

Twitter

Ryan is more optimistic, aligning himself with the views of Punk6529:

 

Twitter

Chapter # 5 “Market Infrastructure” Highlight — CeFi vs. TradFi

While “TradFi” refers to tradition financial services companies, “CeFi” refers to firms like Coinbase and FTX that offer some of the yield benefits of DeFi with some of the ease of use and security of traditional financial-services products. With CeFi, you can earn interest on savings, borrow money, spend with a crypto debit card, and more.

Ryan opens this section with the simple but powerful statement that “”. Ryan highlights that “CeFi” firms have won, and will not cede their leads back to Wall Street. Most notably, Ryan states that “”.

Ryan ends this section with some advice for those still trying to bring crypto to TradFi “”.

I’d also highlight page 82 of the theses, which includes Ryan’s list of the top 10 reasons that FTX became the fastest growing company of all time.

Chapter #6 ”NFTs & Web 3 Plumbing” Highlight —PFPs: Punks vs. Apes

Ryan’s opening premise is that people should “”. Ryan goes on to note that “”.

While Ryan highlights Beepie’s “”, he points out that the bigger thing happening in NFTs is “” as they “”. Messari’s Apes as an Asset Class gives some great context to the phenomena. The NYT article “I Joined a Penguin NFT Club Because Apparently That’s What We Do Now” is another good primer.

Chapter #7 ”DeFi 2.0” Highlight —The Algorithmic Stablecoins Renaissance

Stablecoins are one of the fastest growing  elements of the crypto ecosystem. In particular, DAI remains the dominant decentralized stablecoin, even though there have been numerous attempts to challenge that supremacy. But there are now new algorithmic primitives challenging DAI.

Ryan does highlight the renaissance of algorithmic stablecoins in 2021 driven by fractional reserve models (pioneered by FRAX) and protocol controlled value (pioneered by FEI Protocol).

Ryan points out that it’s unclear if those improvements will be enough to challenge DAI for decentralized stablecoin supremacy, but, to me, they’re definitely steps in the right direction of a holy grail for the global crypto ecosystem: a truly algorithmic driven and stable, stablecoin.

Chapter #8 ”ETH, Layers, & Bridges” Highlight —Solana Summer Never Ends

The fact is, as Ryan puts it “”.

There’s obviously something significant going on with Solana, and as Ryan succinctly writes “”.

Chapter #9 ”The DAO of DAOs” Highlight —Working in Web3

Ryan quotes Chris Dixon’s view of Web3 

We’re at the beginning of the new frontier of work. The Web3 ecosystem doesn’t care what city you live in or school you graduated from. The only gatekeeper is the community. It’s the bottoms up model and opt-in membership of DAOs that invert the talent sourcing model. Join a discord server with one click and jump into the fray. Earn bounties and earn reputation points with the community’s decentralized HR. Apply for grants or submit proposals for employment directly to the DAO membership.

Ryan likens most of Web3 to a Hollywood production company that assembles a team for a sprint, and then dissembles. The key difference in the Web3 “Hollywood” model is that each contributor — no matter how small — can retain royalties tied to the product’s ongoing success.

work for a DAO someday. So we might as well get started today while alpha is highest.

Chapter #10 ”Bonus Section: Five Parting Thoughts ” Highlight — Why You Must Write.

Ryan says that “”.

I share that view, which was most eloquently stated by William Faulkner when he said “”.

Crypto is a remarkably dense infinite rabbit hole. I define my 5 years doing crypto 24/7 as a never ending winnowing of what I’m an expert on. But for the pioneers.

The people reading this newsletter . . .  you’re here because you’re curious. You want to learn. You want to understand. So do I. That’s why I write.

Here’s to the new year!

 
 

 
 
 
 
 

The ReadySetCrypto "Three Token Pillars" Community Portfolio (V3)

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What is the goal of this portfolio?

The “Three Token Pillars” portfolio is democratically proportioned between the Three Pillars of the Token Economy & Interchain:

CryptoCurreny – Security Tokens (STO) – Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

With this portfolio, we will identify and take advantage of the opportunities within the Three
Pillars of ReadySetCrypto. We aim to Capitalise on the collective knowledge and experience of the RSC
community & build model portfolios containing the premier companies and projects
in the industry and manage risk allocation suitable for as many people as
possible.

The Second Phase of the RSC Community Portfolio V3 was to give us a general idea of the weightings people desire in each of the three pillars and also member’s risk tolerance. The Third Phase of the RSC Community Portfolio V3 has us closing in on a finalized portfolio allocation before we consolidated onto the highest quality projects.

Our Current Allocation As Of Phase Three:

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The ReadySetCrypto "Top Ten Crypto" Community Portfolio (V4)

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What is the goal of this portfolio? 

The “Top Ten Crypto” portfolio is a democratically proportioned portfolio balanced based on votes from members of the RSC community as to what they believe are the top 10 projects by potential.
This portfolio should be much more useful given the ever-changing market dynamics. In short, you rank the projects you believe deserve a spot in the top 10. It should represent a portfolio and rank that you believe will stand the test of time. Once we have a good cross-section, we can study and make an assessment as to where we see value and perhaps where some diamonds in the rough opportunities exist. In a perfect world, we will end up with a Pareto-style distribution that describes the largest value capture in the market.
To give an update on the position, each one listed in low to high relative risk:
SoV/money == BTC, DCR
Platforms == ETH, XTZ
Private Money == XMR / ZEC / ZEN
DeFi == MKR / SNX and stablecoins
It is the most realistic way for us to distill the entirety of what we have learned (and that includes the RSC community opinion). We have an array of articles that have gradually picked off one by one different projects, some of which end up being many thousands of words to come to this conclusion. It is not capitulation because we all remain in the market. It is simply a consolidation of quality. We seek the cream of the crop as the milk turns sour on aggregate.

Current Top 10 Rankings:

 

 

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