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6 Things that make Crypto interesting right now

 

Without going into a super deep dive, here are 6 discussion points:

 

 1) Store of Value

This was one of the original arguments for Bitcoin, a trustless technology system that allows you to trust the system without having to trust other parties you are transacting with a predetermined finite supply.  Big early advocates are ‘Gold bugs’ and people worried about hyper-inflation as modern governments continually ‘print’ money.  Popular ones include: Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), ZCash (ZEC)

2) Smart Contracts

Beyond a trustless currency, platforms emerged to have censorship resistant software leading to ‘smart contracts’.  Programmatically executed transactions without the need for intermediaries.  Popular ones include: Ethereum (ETH), Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT)

3) Stable Coins

These are digital currencies that are tied to the value of a more or less stable asset like US dollars.  Their main use is to transfer stable value on crypto blockchains.  This is currently faster than using ACH, SWIFT or any other traditional money transferring methods.   Because the marketplace for borrowing these assets command a high interest rate, it has been very popular to lend these out to get a much higher rate than traditional banks.  Eg. you can get 8% interest on BlockFi.com while average money market accounts are currently 0.09% in the US.  You can also do ‘yield farming’ which is basically lending to algorithms instead of institutions for even higher rates.  Popular ones include:  USD Coin (USDC), USDT (Tether), Binance USD (BUSD), Dai (DAI).

4) DEFI (decentralized finance) protocols

These are financial services that are run on decentralized blockchain networks for anyone to use rather than going through middlemen like banks or brokerages. 

Some Popular Services:  

  • Exchanges - Uniswap (UNI), SushiSwap (SUSHI), PancakeSwap (CAKE), Bancor (BNT), 0x (ZRX)
  • Lending - Aave (AAVE), Maker (MKR), Compound (COMP), yearn.fiance (YFI)

5) NFTs (non-fungible tokens) 

These are digital data stored on a blockchain that are associated with physical or digital assets.  The most popular right now is digital art called CryptoPunks found on https://opensea.io and a video game known as Axie Infinity https://axieinfinity.com/.  There is even an NFT Index designed to track token performance within the NFT industry https://nftindex.tech/.

6) MEME tokens

Crypto wouldn’t be complete without MEME tokens.  Top ones include Dogecoin (DOGE) - currently with a Market Cap of $38.6 Billion and SHIBA INU (SHIB) with a market capitalization of $2.8 Billion.

NOTE:

I currently haven't made any Crypto investments but follow developments as it is fascinating to watch this area grow, especially the DEFI protocols as I have been in finance for over 20 years.
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