This Week’s Winners and Losers in Crypto
Big week in crypto! Banks going down causing BTC to go up. Alts (sort of) following suit. But who are the biggest winners and losers for the week? Biggest Winner(s): Arbitrum Airdrop Participants Thursday was a big day for those eligible for the coveted Arbitrum airdrop, but there were bumps along the way. The claim site was down from almost moments when it went live, and was nearly inaccessible for hours. However, after the dust settled, the price hovered above what estimates predicted (>$1)...
Post FTX: Bananas In The Bahamas
FTX’s spectacular implosion sent ripples which was felt by all through the cryptoverse, but has also hit the people of the Bahamas, where FTX was headquartered. According to a report in the WSJ, the island nation initially welcomed FTX with it’s lax and favorable crypto laws and eventually the locals became the supporting cast for FTX employees. Catering, security, transportation, event planning, logistics and many more services were required and the locals began taking up these jobs, creatin...
STOCK Act Gets Busted
Nancy Pelosi might not be too keen on the reformation bubbling up in her backyard. On Thursday, a new framework was released to change the policy known as the STOCK Act, aka "Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge", which puts the onus on congressional and government leaders to disclose stock and asset purchases, in order keep transparency with the public. Historically, there have been quite a few calls on leaders to stop purchasing stocks because of the potential of insider knowledge on upc...
<100 subscribers
This Week’s Winners and Losers in Crypto
Big week in crypto! Banks going down causing BTC to go up. Alts (sort of) following suit. But who are the biggest winners and losers for the week? Biggest Winner(s): Arbitrum Airdrop Participants Thursday was a big day for those eligible for the coveted Arbitrum airdrop, but there were bumps along the way. The claim site was down from almost moments when it went live, and was nearly inaccessible for hours. However, after the dust settled, the price hovered above what estimates predicted (>$1)...
Post FTX: Bananas In The Bahamas
FTX’s spectacular implosion sent ripples which was felt by all through the cryptoverse, but has also hit the people of the Bahamas, where FTX was headquartered. According to a report in the WSJ, the island nation initially welcomed FTX with it’s lax and favorable crypto laws and eventually the locals became the supporting cast for FTX employees. Catering, security, transportation, event planning, logistics and many more services were required and the locals began taking up these jobs, creatin...
STOCK Act Gets Busted
Nancy Pelosi might not be too keen on the reformation bubbling up in her backyard. On Thursday, a new framework was released to change the policy known as the STOCK Act, aka "Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge", which puts the onus on congressional and government leaders to disclose stock and asset purchases, in order keep transparency with the public. Historically, there have been quite a few calls on leaders to stop purchasing stocks because of the potential of insider knowledge on upc...
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Let me TL;DR summarize the past weekend’s events:
Mass panic hits SVB.
SVB begins to go down.
Others are next.
Mass panic hits all markets.
USDC de-pegs.
It’s that last italicized item that put me into a panic. I thought of all stablecoins, USDC (USD Coin) should withstand a large bank run like we just saw happen.
But it didn’t. Saturday around 9pm ET, we started seeing USDC begin to de-peg. I honestly was a bit in shock that it was happening, especially after all that we’ve heard about it’s resilience.
I was just at ETHDenver a couple of weeks ago, at the Circle (creators of USDC) booth talking to them about what makes a stablecoin actually stable. The bottom line they made was over-collateralization and transparency as keys to a strong stablecoin.
From the WSJ: “Circle holds $9.7 billion of its USD Coin reserves in cash and $32.4 billion in short-dated government securities — ”.
I believe those numbers are still below what the true number is, however, that should give an idea of how collateralized USDC is.
That is a massive number and it’s worry that the mass panic caused such a de-peg.
Another point Circle made was transparency. And it’s true that Circle discloses where their assets are held. However, which other top stablecoin is not a big fan of transparency and weathered the storm well above USDC? That’s right, USDT (USD Token).
USDT, which is not very transparent and being a European-backed USD stablecoin, they did not have very much exposure to U.S. banking entities and were a safe harbor for USDC-refugees. USDT went up to as much as $1.06 at one point during this time.
Eventually, U.S. officials ensured banking victims will be made whole, Circle ends up having access to their reserves and is able to bring USDC back up to peg, the markets have been favorable since. All is good and life moves on.
However, now I don’t know if my plan of using stablecoins works anymore. The whole point is having an intermediary between volatile tokens, in which I can preserve my gains (or losses) without risk.
So I guess we all will just have to wait and see what happens when the next major panic occurs…
Written by: nikethereum.eth / Medium / Mirror
Let me TL;DR summarize the past weekend’s events:
Mass panic hits SVB.
SVB begins to go down.
Others are next.
Mass panic hits all markets.
USDC de-pegs.
It’s that last italicized item that put me into a panic. I thought of all stablecoins, USDC (USD Coin) should withstand a large bank run like we just saw happen.
But it didn’t. Saturday around 9pm ET, we started seeing USDC begin to de-peg. I honestly was a bit in shock that it was happening, especially after all that we’ve heard about it’s resilience.
I was just at ETHDenver a couple of weeks ago, at the Circle (creators of USDC) booth talking to them about what makes a stablecoin actually stable. The bottom line they made was over-collateralization and transparency as keys to a strong stablecoin.
From the WSJ: “Circle holds $9.7 billion of its USD Coin reserves in cash and $32.4 billion in short-dated government securities — ”.
I believe those numbers are still below what the true number is, however, that should give an idea of how collateralized USDC is.
That is a massive number and it’s worry that the mass panic caused such a de-peg.
Another point Circle made was transparency. And it’s true that Circle discloses where their assets are held. However, which other top stablecoin is not a big fan of transparency and weathered the storm well above USDC? That’s right, USDT (USD Token).
USDT, which is not very transparent and being a European-backed USD stablecoin, they did not have very much exposure to U.S. banking entities and were a safe harbor for USDC-refugees. USDT went up to as much as $1.06 at one point during this time.
Eventually, U.S. officials ensured banking victims will be made whole, Circle ends up having access to their reserves and is able to bring USDC back up to peg, the markets have been favorable since. All is good and life moves on.
However, now I don’t know if my plan of using stablecoins works anymore. The whole point is having an intermediary between volatile tokens, in which I can preserve my gains (or losses) without risk.
So I guess we all will just have to wait and see what happens when the next major panic occurs…
Written by: nikethereum.eth / Medium / Mirror
No comments yet