The Crypto Insider Report #10: $STANDARD - The best bet is the one on yourself
Disclaimer: Everything we write in "The Crypto Insider Report" is an x-ray of the industry as we see it, through the lens of publicly available information. We are not financial advisors.
First of all, please go here and UPVOTE. It's important for the Stakeborg DAO story to be listed on Zapper. I wish there were a few hundred of us so that everybody can see the army we have behind.
Around this time last year, the team behind Swingby announced me as an adviser. I had made the investment a few weeks before, but I preferred not to accept the proposal until I had clear visibility over the launch of the mainnet. It was my first trip inside the industry where I could see what front-end means, what back-end helps with, how contracts are structured, and especially what crypto marketing means.
I later had a few appearances with Jacob, including at George Buhnici, thus stamping myself as a "Swingby shiller." Razvan, for the stories he posted on Instagram, although he never appeared like me in videos with them, was stamped even more noticeably. It's more interesting to pick on the one who is better known :)
You know what happened next... 4-5 weeks in which, now I can tell you, a supply squeeze occurred. Because in the first week after all the fuss caused in Romania, the price increased significantly, and more Romanians came in the second week and so on. The market maker and the Foundation have, literally, run out of tokens to sell. Because that’s how many they had vested. From the point where everyone thought that the price would reach 40, maximum 50 cents at the end of March, it was $1.3 in the middle of February.
The listing on Kucoin took place, several influencers jumped in, the listing on Binance had been discussed before the launch of the BSC bridge. The market as a whole began to grow and prices rose, just like the arrogance of the players in the market, directly proportional to the market cap of the industry. In addition, the "we build, the rest comes naturally" mentality intervened.
Without going into details, because it's not in my nature to throw mud post-factum to save my skin, subsequently, a circuit of “something good is going to happen, stay tuned” started. We couldn't come forward and say "hey, something's wrong" because there was NOTHING BLATANT and unnecessary FUD could be generated; people would have sold, and if Swingby then made one of the moves they were talking about, it would have seemed like we had gone on the opposite side of the road.
We realized that our power was limited. We were investors with a community behind waiting for us to do something without us having the necessary levers to do it. We tried every way (Razvan even went to London and met with Jacob; yes, I know, I told you he didn’t, sorry, but again, I couldn’t encourage FUD or FOMO) to make it work for everyone. Even for ourselves, I’m not holding back from taking responsibility.
From a technical point of view, I have no reproach for Swingby. They executed everything they promised, and from what I know, they will throw Skybridge into the world. It's no small thing. They have a better product than REN, and it seems that safer than BadgerDAO (which recently lost, after a hack, 100+m).
We created the Swingby pool (which I left only for 5 weeks just to avoid the people there coming with a lot of tokens; it happened), and we extended the node until January 31st. We won’t renew it, all the more so as the latest decisions (lowering the APY at node runners and bringing the Foundation's nodes with millions of tokens) are at least hasty. It's the opposite of what should be done.
It was a lesson for me: not to stamp myself with anything I can't control. I prefer to keep my heart at peace knowing that I did the right thing in my own backyard, no matter how small it is or seems to be. We don't have, neither I nor Razvan, a problem with being sworn at, but if that does happen, we’d like it to be as a result of something that we really could have changed.
I don't know what will happen with Swingby. Skypools could be a home run, but I know what Stakeborg DAO will be: we will do everything in our power to make the project an industry standard. With staking rewards at about 8% per week and liquidity at 11%+, those who have invested in Swingby can recover, amid the rise of the $STANDARD price, a good part of their initial investment.
I didn't write this text to excuse ourselves because, in crypto, you always have to be responsible for your own investments. Moreover, most of you, the ones reading these lines, don't need "I'm sorry's" but things that happen at Stakeborg DAO.
And that's precisely what's coming next!
Take care,
Vlad
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The first steps in crypto: What Is a Seed Phrase?
A seed phrase is a list of words generated by a crypto wallet that enables the wallet user to access the crypto funds associated with that wallet.
It is also known as a seed recovery phrase or a backup seed phrase, and it includes 12 to 24 simple words, such as open, road, forget, achieve, energy, again, feed, etc.
These words are pulled from a list of 2,048 words, and they are not similar. So, there won’t be pairs such as “road” and “roads,” - plural versus singular in the same seed phrase, and the reason for this is to avoid errors.
This type of phrase was introduced with the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 39 in 2013 and was widely adopted after that. The BIP39 established a standard for deterministic wallets. In the case of such a wallet, it will control all the private keys held associated with it.
How Do Seed Phrases Work?
When setting up a crypto wallet, a seed phrase will be automatically generated, and the user will be required to keep and store it safely.
The seed phrase is a representation of a long string of random numbers, but what the user gets is a series of simple words, and that’s because it is easier to remember.
We could say that a crypto wallet is a password manager and a seed phrase is a master password. Since private keys are algorithmically derived from the long string of numbers represented by the phrase, this phrase will help you access all the private keys and crypto funds in your wallet.
One of the great advantages of the standard established by the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 39 is that it makes major wallets mutually compatible. This means that if you want to switch wallets or lose access to your wallet, you can load the seed phrase into a new BIP39-compatible wallet in order to recover your funds.
Storing the Seed Phrase Safely
Since this is the one that enables a wallet user to access the funds associated with the wallet, it is of utmost importance to be stored safely. That’s because anyone who has the phrase can access your crypto funds.
Then, if you lose it, you also lose access to your crypto. In the unfortunate event that you lose it, but your seed phrase remains undiscovered and unused, your cryptocurrencies will remain stored on the blockchain. However, you won’t be able to access them. So, keeping it somewhere safe is essential, and there are several ways to do that.
One of the classic ways to store it is by simply writing it down on a piece of paper. Some crypto wallet users also engrave the seed phrase into durable materials, such as stainless steel.
Even though some users may resort to encrypting it and storing it on a device, physical storage methods are considered to be the safest. Still, it is best to have multiple safe deposit boxes if you prefer to use the paper method and thus several copies. This way, you can make sure that if something happens with one of these boxes or the paper, you can resort to the others to get your seed phrase.
If you do opt for encrypting and storing it on a device, it is always best to also have it physically stored somewhere.
Conclusions
Seed phrases are the most critical aspect of a crypto wallet. The series of words generated when setting up a crypto wallet provides access to the cryptocurrency associated with that wallet.
As long as you have them, you have access to your crypto, and even if you lose access to your wallet, you can enter the seed phrase into another wallet to access your funds.
Animation of the day: Solana simply explained
For more animations: Cryptomatics
Tania
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The Altcoin Pulse
1. CME Group offers micro Ether futures contracts for trading.
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/12/06/cme-group-introduces-micro-ether-futures/
2. Polygon is in talks with several VCs for a $50-150m funding. Also, the Polygon team organizes a "zk Day" conference on December 9th that will focus on discussions about the future and applicabilities of zero-knowledge proof technology. Free registration here.
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/12/06/vcs-in-talks-to-invest-50-150m-in-polygon-report
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Interesting Headlines
1. The last week stood out by net flows of $184m in the digital asset funds tracked by CoinShares. Most volumes went into Bitcoin funds ($145m). Ethereum and Solana continue the series of positive net flows: $25m and $5m, respectively. On Friday, there were minor withdrawals of $42m from Bitcoin funds and of $5m from Ethereum funds.
MTD=month-to-date (November), YTD=year-to-date, AUM=total assets
2. In an analysis, Glassnode notes that the decline from the past days led to: (1) the third-largest on-chain capitulation in history ($2.18bn in realized losses); (2) the supply of coins held by long-term holders (addresses with coins bought >155 days) has remained constant in the last week (in principle, they did not sell); (3) significant losses recorded by short-term holders; (4) BTC inflows on exchanges were small and decreased (the trend returning to net outflows) compared to the sell-off of May 2021.
3. Visa creates a crypto consulting department that will work with banks to implement products and services in this segment.
4. OpenSea's IPO plan is met with a wave of dissatisfaction on the part of the community.
https://cryptobriefing.com/opensea-ipo-plans-met-with-criticism-from-nft-community/
5. The volumes on DEX aggregators are on a strong growth trajectory.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/decentralized-exchange-aggregator-trading-volumes-surge-to-new-highs
6. The BitMart exchange will compensate the victims of the $196m hack with their own funds.
https://decrypt.co/87637/bitmart-compensate-victims-196m-hack-funds
7. A quarter of U.S. retail investors own Bitcoin, and more than half of them made the purchase this year. Most of them made the investments through trading apps like eToro or Coinbase (study here).
https://blockworks.co/a-quarter-of-us-investors-own-bitcoin-more-than-half-bought-this-year/
8. Binance plans to obtain its operating license in the UK and expand its services in the Kingdom in the next 6-18 months.
9. Ubisoft is the first major gaming company to introduce in-game NFTs; the platform on which they will be traded (Quartz) runs on Tezos.
https://decrypt.co/87752/ubisoft-first-major-gaming-company-launch-in-game-nfts
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Article of the week:
An article that I've talked about in Crypto after Dark as well, but which always feels up-to-date after a flush and a dead cat bounce.
https://medium.com/the-capital/how-whales-manipulate-prices-in-cryptocurrency-markets-c6c9a547dbc7
Business book of the week: The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh. Most high-performers in sports have a life system behind them. Some manage to put it on paper and share it with others, others live it in the form of automatism. Crypto, like sports performance, takes time and endurance.
My favorite quote: "Winners act like winners before they're winners... The culture precedes positive results."
Youtube clip of the week: Scott Melker with Dragonfly Capital's Haseeb Qureshi. From PRO Poker player to successful VC in crypto.