Two Degens (resources, interviews, on all things crypto and some AI)

5 Minute Crypto ⏳ - Tether BTC buys, Ledger controversy, Miladies alfa, ERC-6155, Solana 📱, Pudgy 🐧

Two Degens - Crypto and web3 investing and building from Asia

Howdy everyone — this is the 5 minute crypto update for Friday May 19th

Let’s get it on!



As of this recording...

Bitcoin is still ranging at $26830
ETH is holding at $1800
Ups this week include a Pepe bounce and liquid staking derivatives



What’s going on in crypto land…

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/05/17/tether-says-it-will-buy-bitcoin-for-stablecoin-reserves-using-realized-profits/
Well now it turns out it’s part of a larger strategy
Tether has now publicly stated they’ll use up to 15% of their realized profits to buy the corn — and they make a LOT of dough

https://twitter.com/magusdevon/status/1658467068117655552?s=46
This time, the issue is a new feature, shared security, where your seed phrase, essentially the key to your device, is separated into 3 pieces, encrypted, and sent to 3 different companies: Ledger itself, Coincover, & EscrowTech.

https://twitter.com/0xjaypeg/status/1658279708310802432?s=46
Some highlights from 0xjaypeg’s thread
I’ve found that when unique holders go up over time in accordance with the floor price, that is a sure-tell sign of a STRONG nft community

https://twitter.com/zakaimill/status/1658110118288916490?s=46
It’s the ERC-6155 standard
It lets NFTs act like crypto wallets, so you can receive, store, and send tokens
They’re called “Token Bound Accounts” or TBAs for short

https://www.theblock.co/post/230049/abu-dhabi-bitcoin-mining-marathon-digital-zero-two
Abu Dhabi developing a giant bitcoin mining operation in partnership with Marathon Digital and Zero Two
Capacity of 250MW

https://www.theblock.co/post/230002/paypal-ether-bitcoin-holdings
In a small but notable milestone, the total value of customer’s crypto holdings on PayPal and Venmo nears $1B
About 50% or $500M is bitcoin, and 36% is Ether

Thread from actual user of Solana’s new phone
https://twitter.com/notashenone/status/1653813361631539213
I can honestly say that if you gave this to an Android user, they wouldn't even notice a difference.
There’s a Solana dApp store
It costs $1K

https://newsletter.blockwareintelligence.com/p/blockware-intelligence-newsletter-8db
Some interesting Bitcoin stats from Blockware Intelligence
-67.5% of BTC has not moved in 1 or more years
-At a typical hosting rate today, new-gen Bitcoin ASICs require ~$14,925 worth of energy to produce 1 BTC

https://blockworks.co/news/pudgy-penguins-ip-raise
Everyone’s favorite NFT penguins have raised $9M led by 1kx, Big Brain, and Kronos Research
The Penguins launched in 2021 and were acquired in April 2022 by serial entrepreneur Luca Netz for 750e

https://blockworks.co/news/doj-claws-back-ftx-donations
In an amusing development in the FTX bankruptcy case, the US Department of Justice, has now told politicians that any donations they received from FTX or SBF himself are to be returned, to pay back customers and creditors

https://blog.bitmex.com/the-bitcoin-forum/
Based on the current spot Bitcoin price of US$27,000, this Bitcoin is worth around US$34 million. As far as we can tell, this 1,250 BTC balance has remained pretty much unchanged since 2017.



That’s it for today! All the links are in the show notes. You can follow @twodegenspod on Twitter and subscribe for more!

For our outro clip… 

We’ve got the 1000x podcast - a new favorite of mine - talking about institutional interest in ETH’s revenue and deflation narrative
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2afnJQjblA

People on this episode