Categories
Bitcoin Cryptocurrencies Ethereum

What’s Happening in the Cryptoverse #3

Welcome to this week’s crypto update.

It’s been an interesting week in the crypto and NFT worlds. Bitcoin just broke the all time high this morning getting close to $67,000 as of this writing. Bitcoin is up around 20% in the last week, largely on the heels of the first Bitcoin Futures ETF launching in the US on Monday. More on that below. 

One NFT collector turned down almost $10 million for an NFT. Younger people are getting more into crypto building, mining and creating. Check out this very inspiring video by young, Teresa Melvin but don’t worry. Older billionaires and old school corporate-types are also jumping on the bandwagon.

News

  1. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn thinks Bitcoin may be the best hedge for inflation
    Billionaire investor Carl Icahn warned Tuesday that the next market crisis may be on the horizon, and Bitcoin (BTC) could be the best hedge against inflation.“In the long run, we are certainly going to hit the wall. I really think there will be a crisis the way we are going, the way we are printing money, the way we are going into inflation. If you look around you, you see inflation all around you, and I don’t know how you deal with that in the long term,” Icahn said on Monday with CNBC.
  2. Bitcoin futures ETF debuts with highest-ever first day ‘natural’ volume of $1BProShares’ Bitcoin Strategy ETF saw around $1 billion in volume on its opening day, with 24.313 million BITO shares changing hands.
  3. Mariah Carey buys Bitcoin, hopes to empower fans through educationPop icon Mariah Carey is the latest celebrity to embrace Bitcoin (BTC) through the Winklevoss-led Gemini cryptocurrency exchange, offering another sign that digital assets are becoming mainstream.
  4. Chicago Board Options Exchange to aquire cryptocurrency market ErisX
    The news of institutional interest in the crypto market continues to gather steam with the announcement of the CBOE acquiring ErisX. The CBOE looks like they’re going to continue iterating on the Bitcoin futures product they launched in 2017 with this acquisition.
  5. Morgan Stanley CEO says he respects cryptocurrencies and praised blockchain
    Morgan Stanley CEO says he respects cryptocurrencies and praised blockchain
    “I don’t think cryptocurrencies are a fad. I don’t think that goes away,” he said on the bank’s third-quarter earnings conference call with analysts yesterday morning.
    “I don’t know what the value of bitcoin should or shouldn’t be, but these things aren’t going away. And the blockchain technology supporting is obviously very real and powerful.”

Meme / Tweet of the Moment

Some of you may have been hearing about DeFi lately. “DeFi” is short for “decentralized finance”. It threatens to upend how banks, money lenders and many other aspects of the financial system around the world works. If you would like a quick primer on DeFi, check out this article on Investopedia.

This post also appears on my Invest Stream Substack

Related Posts:

Categories
Bitcoin Cryptocurrencies Ethereum

What’s Happening in the Cryptoverse #2

Intro

It’s been another exciting few days in crypto. I was planning to send this on Fridays but as is the case with the crypto world, things move fast so here’s some midweek news.

El Salvador recently launched Bitcoin services across the country. In just a few short weeks, 50% of the country has a Bitcoin wallet. Preliminary anecdotal reports suggest that people are actually using Bitcoin for transactions in the country of a little more than 6 million people. Satoshi Nakamoto’s use case for Bitcoin is finally seeing a real world scenario play out. Keep a close eye on this “sovereign beta test”.

News

  1. Google Partners With Bakkt to Bring Google Pay to Crypto Users 
    Digital asset marketplace Bakkt has partnered with Google to expand the usability of cryptocurrency. Thus, users will soon be able to add their Bakkt Visa Debit Card directly into Google Pay. Bakkt will also be using Google Cloud as its preferred cloud provider to market its services to leading US retailers and merchants.
  2. Wyoming’s Senator Lummis Discloses Apparent Bitcoin Buy of up to $100,000
    The senator’s purchase was from bitcoin brokerage River Financial. Lummis was a supporter of an amendment in Congress’s infrastructure bill in August that would exempt hardware wallet makers, cryptocurrency transaction validators, node operators and other non-brokers from tax regulations.
  3. Top 10 Upcoming NFT Drops According To Survey Of 500 NFT Experts
    We asked 500 NFT analysts to rate the attractiveness of 100 upcoming NFT drops. Here’s a rundown of the top 10 NFT collections based on the rating of these analysts. These projects are only just gaining momentum and therefore have the potential to yield some impressive ROI in the future.
  4. Bitcoin for beginners: Here’s what to know before you invest in cryptoHad you bought bitcoin in early April 2017, for example, you could have seen a 3,700% return in just four years. 

    But there also have been plenty of price plunges along the way. If you’d bought in mid-April of this year, you would have lost more than half your investment in just four months.So if you’re tempted to invest, here’s some thoughts on what to consider before taking the leap.
  5. The U.S. Replaces China as World’s Biggest Bitcoin Miner
    Mining is the process by which transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain are executed. It uses a “Proof of Work” algorithm. The U.S. has become the world’s epicenter for Bitcoin mining after a crackdown in China effectively eliminated the practice in the former cradle of the industry. 
  6. Reese Witherspoon Gets Into Ethereum NFTs, Snoop Dogg Gives Advice
    Actress Reese Witherspoon tweeted on Monday that she bought her first NFTs and rapper Snoop Dogg, an avid NFT collector, offered advice on one of the “most influential women” to follow in the space.

Meme / Tweet of the Moment

This isn’t just a meme. It’s a tweet – check out the thread if you have time to kill.

Related Posts:

Categories
Bitcoin Cryptocurrencies Ethereum

What’s Happening in the Cryptoverse: 2021-10-08

I thought you might like a short, curated list of interesting headlines from the crypto world. For now, on a weekly basis, I will include links to the original stories but I figure a lot of people just want a paragraph or two of the news of the day so here’s a start. Let me know what you think, e.g. “This is awesome”, “This is nice but I don’t understand”, “This is interesting but too time consuming”, “This is utterly useless and I’m unsubscribing”

The past week has been quite exciting for crypto “hodlers”. Bitcoin and Ether have both run up quite a bit and NFT projects continue to be hot. My Twitter Spaces is probably 95% NFT and Crypto.

  1. Ethereum Outpaces Bitcoin in Derivatives Open Interest: CryptoCompare Report
    The second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has, throughout September, outpaced the flagship cryptocurrency in terms of open interest across cryptocurrency derivatives products. aggregate open interest in Ethereum-based derivatives products grew 4.7% to $5.8 billion last month, while open interest in bitcoin derivatives fell 3.7% since August to $11.9 billion. 
  2. Institutions buying Bitcoin rather than gold as inflation cranks up: JPMorgan
    According to a note shared by JPMorgan with clients on Thursday, the recent increase in price for BTC was predominantly attributed to institutional investors looking for a hedge to inflation. “The re-emergence of inflation concerns among investors has renewed interest in the usage of Bitcoin as an inflation hedge,” the analysts said, arguing there has been a shift in perception as to the merits of BTC in relation to gold.
  3. NFT sales surge to $10.7 bln in Q3 as crypto asset frenzy hits new highsSales volumes of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) surged to $10.7 billion in the third quarter of 2021, up more than eightfold from the previous quarter, according to data from market tracker DappRadar, as the frenzy for crypto assets reached new highs.
  4. AMC Theaters’ acceptance of Dogecoin follows viral community appeal
    Following an overwhelmingly positive response to a Twitter poll on Sept. 21, CEO of AMC Theater Adam Aron announced Wednesday that the chain would officially accept Dogecoin payments for digital gift cards via BitPay Wallet.The Dogecoin community — notoriously passionate for adoption initiatives — tweeted in droves to advocate for the asset’s integration within the theater’s payment options.
  5. Someone Bought $1.6 Billion Worth Of Bitcoin
    Bitcoin could officially be out of the woods after an unidentified buyer purchased a whopping $1.6 billion worth of the asset on Wednesday, leading to price spiking by over 8% in just under 15 minutes.
  6. Bitcoin beats stocks, commodities to become the best-performing asset of 2021
    Despite Bitcoin’s wild ride throughout the year, downside has failed to grip the market, with a 60% retracement from highs in May now all but cancelled out. The largest cryptocurrency is thus at least 13% ahead of commodities for the year, figures show this week, and 17% ahead of United States micro-cap companies.

Though not incredibly important news, definitely, very cool news: CoinDCX brings in Amitabh Bachchan as brand ambassador

Related Posts:

Categories
Apple Gadgets & Tech Misc. Products

My Favorite Work from Home Products for 2020

2020 is the year of “Work from Home” and has propelled the conversation around the “Future of Work” to the forefront. In February 2019, I did a short video about my favorite productivity apps. In 2020, a lot changed for me, personally and professionally. For all of us, it has meant adapting schedules, tools and figuring out different ways of working. I thought it would be a good opportunity to share a list of my favorite work from home products in 2020.

Productivity Tools

1. Airtable – Airtable is one of my favorite work from home apps! It has been a cornerstone of my work from home toolkit for a long time. In 2020, I started using Airtable a lot more. I’ve been using it for managing and tracking Invest Streamrelated things like possible speakers, artwork, bios, etc. as well as using it to get startup pitches. Airtable is a great cross between a spreadsheet and lightweight SQL database. If you’re working with any sort of structured data or want to structure your data, Airtable is a great tool.

2. Notion – I started dabbling with Notion in late 2018 but I really started using it more heavily at the end of 2019. I love the flexibility of Notion and it’s definitely one of my favorite WFH products. I love that they added “Scribble” support to their iPad app. In 2020, it’s been my de facto tool for all kinds of notes, information and data. I haven’t been using the web-clipping extension but I have been using the iOS/iPadOS/macOS apps on a daily basis for scribbling on the iPad, writing up a document to be shared as a PDF with clients, collaborating on the Workomo content calendar and working with others on all kinds of content.

Notion helps me structure my thoughts a little better. It is a little complex to get started but once you commit to using it, you realize you have your own personal wiki for pretty much everything. The one thing I don’t like about Notion is the import and export functionality. 

3. Workomo – Everyone who used Rapportive years ago, will know how useful it was to have a tool that gave you a summary of people that you were connecting with. However, the problem has become quite acute with the move to online meetings / webinars / networking events / etc. I’ve been an active Workomo user since the early betas and I also do meetings with a lot of people I don’t already know. Workomo has been an invaluable tool in helping me get quick summaries about these people as well as learn a few new things about people I already know.

Conversations (audio, video, podcasting)

1. Clubhouse – I got on Clubhouse in September and, now, I use it all the time while working from home. Clubhouse is my watercooler / coffee machine at the office. If you need to take a break, chat with someone during lunch or join a discussion about almost anything, Clubhouse is the place to be. Most rooms are well moderated and people are polite and friendly. If you need an invite, I *may* be able to help so try DM’ing me and if I have any invites left, I will send you one.

2. StreamYard – 2020 might just be the year where podcasting and online video tipped. I started Invest Stream at the end of 2018 but 2020 is when I started live streaming. StreamYard is a really awesome product for doing livestreams. My friend, Gregarious Narain, found it when we were doing The Raise. It made it so simple to start streaming on multiple platforms. I’ve been using StreamYard a lot in 2020 and I love the simplicity. It’s super easy to join a livestream off your phone or iPad. Hosting a livestream is still Chrome specific, however. The free version is good enough for most people who want to get started.

Entertainment / Relaxation

1. Digital Assistants / Smart Speakers – Listen to a podcast, check the weather, play some music or talk to someone all over a smart speaker. I’ve ditched Alexa and Google Home Mini in 2020 and gone all in with the HomePod and HomePod Mini. However, whatever your choice is, I’ve found the smart speaker to be an invaluable accessory to use as a speaker phone, a stereo system, listening to the news (I like to keep Bloomberg Radio going in the background), etc. 

2. Streaming – We can all use a break after a long day of working from home. What better way to spend some of that free time than with loved ones watching Netflix, Apple TV+, HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video or Disney+ and YouTube? It’s definitely the golden age of content with fabulous shows like The Queens Gambit or The Expanse available at our fingertips along with blockbuster movies like Wonder Woman 1984! BTW, pairing the HomePod with an AppleTV 4K gives you amazing Dolby Atmos sound. There are many videos on YouTube discussing this.

As much as we’re all suffering Zoom fatigue, without Zoom, Google Meet or FaceTime, working from home over an extended period of time would have been almost impossible. They aren’t my favorite apps but they are most definitely necessary.

This post first appeared on the Workomo Blog.

Related Posts:

  • No Related Posts
Categories
Advice Entrepreneurship Startups Venture Capital

Founders Doing Due Diligence On Investors

photo of people doing handshakes
Photo by fauxels on Pexels.com

Doing due diligence on investors is something that should be discussed more frequently. It’s important for founders to take the time to understand who the investors are, how do they help and support the companies they invest in, how do they react when things aren’t going as well as hoped for.

Spending some time doing due diligence on potential investors can save you lots of grief in the long run. I’ve talked about this often and it’s great in theory but it’s not as easy to do in person. Now that I’m back on the operating side of a startup, here are some tips on how to diligence possible investors:

  • Start with making a list of the investors you think would be interested in your startup keeping a few broad things in mind (use a spreadsheet or a CRM)
    • Vertical the company is in and is the VC firm + partner interested in the space
    • Stage of the company and does the firm invest at this stage
    • Check size that you’re looking for and what the firm writes
    • Any existing competing investments that the firm has made
  • Find people you know that may be connected to these individuals
    • Have a prepared email that you can send to the people you know who can possibly connect you to these investors. The email should be a very short email that explains why you would like to connect to the investor, a summary of your startup and have a teaser deck attached. Some people like to use DocSend but I prefer a PDF.

Once you’ve exhausted your personal network, find 5-10 founders that the firm and the partner have invested in (ideally should include failed startups).

  • Reach out to them on social media, via common contact or a cold email to see if they will chat with you about your startup and provide some advice on your round as well as share some info about the investor(s). If they say yes to a meeting, do some research on them, e.g. understand what their startup does, maybe check out the product, use Crunchbase to get an idea of some of their investors, how many rounds they’ve raised, you can use tools like Workomo (shameless plug) to get some background about them and common interests you might have.
  • Founders can be very open with other founders. Do what you have to in order to maintain that trust. Use the meeting to do your due diligence on the investor. Ask the founder about the firm on your list and how they were to work with through the ups and downs. Make sure you are clear that this is confidential and DO NOT repeat it to anyone, even in conversation. Don’t be shy about getting into details as long as the founders are comfortable sharing. Don’t pry but don’t hold back on asking the questions you think will help you get an understanding of who the investor is and how they work.

In short, make sure you take the time to do your due diligence on investors. It’s critical to know who you’re potentially partnering with for the duration of your startup.

Related Posts:

  • No Related Posts