Opinion

Your weekly dose of crypto news & opinion.

Opinion

Elon-gated FOMO

Tesla owns $1.5 billion bitcoin. Let the corporate FOMO begin Look, I don’t need to tell you what happened: it was covered in pretty much every single news and news-adjacent outlet in the world. But let’s not mince words here. The richest person on Earth announcing that

Opinion

DeFi Revisited

It was a brutal spring for crypto’s darling, but now it looks like DeFi might be ready for primetime. When I wrote about the DeFi phenomenon last August, it was still a space of chaos and enchantment, where new projects were launching and exit scamming on a daily basis

Opinion

The Trillion Dollar Club

Did you see that coming? Because I did not see that coming. Last time we talked I was in absolute disbelief that bitcoin had smashed through its 2017 all-time high, posting a new record at US$23k. Well, if that was absolute disbelief, then you can imagine my response to

Opinion Featured

We Be Moonin’

Bitcoin blasted through US$20k like it was tissue paper. When moon? Now. Now moon. So, where were you on the night of December 17, 2020? Were you out celebrating the festive season with your friends and loved ones? Or were you staring at a screen in utter disbelief as

Opinion

Making the Trade

Crypto has brought trading to the masses. But is that actually a good thing? The language of trading has become so commonplace in the cryptosphere that it’s easy to forget how utterly bizarre it is that regular schmoes like you and me are being given access to such sophisticated

Opinion

Can We Get Much Higher?

Bitcoin’s market cap is at an all-time high. Think the ride is over? Nah, we’re just getting started. I mean, what is there to even say at this point? Bitcoin, as an asset class, has never been worth more – US$340 billion and counting. The price of one

Opinion

The Second Coming

Ethereum 2.0 is launching in December. Is bitcoin’s little sibling about to take charge? One of the things that first attracted me to Ethereum – back in the almost inconceivably primitive year of 2016 – was how certain the project was about what it wanted to achieve. At a time

Opinion

Bitcoin Dominant

PayPal has announced that it’s going to start selling crypto. Let’s not mince words here: this is freaking huge. Over the nine years that I’ve been watching, talking about and trading bitcoin, I’ve seen the outside dialogue around it evolve from “wacky monetary experiment” to “ludicrous

Opinion

On the Margins

The founders of BitMEX have been charged with money laundering. Here’s what that says about the state of the crypto market. If crypto during the 2017 bull run was the Wild West of finance, then Bitmex was Deadwood’s Gem Saloon – a place filled with trolls and gamblers, where

Opinion

Buying the Bitcoin Bubble

We’ve always been told to stay away from bubbles. But in crypto a good bubble is just part of the process. When I first got into crypto, the one thing skeptics loved to throw at our feet was the Dutch tulip mania of 1637. Put simply, this was a

Opinion

All Bundled Up

Variety is the spice of life. In crypto, it’s also a handy way of ensuring that you don’t get rekt. As a field, crypto can be remarkably tribal. Bitcoin maximalists, the XRP Army, LINK Marines – talk to any of them and they’ll likely say the same thing:

Opinion

Beyond DeFi

The DeFi frenzy shows no sign of slowing. But when the hype finally dies down, what will take its place? I last wrote about the DeFi supernova a month ago, but the space is moving at such an absurd velocity that the article already reads like something out of the

Opinion

Bull in a Crypto Shop

Markets are soaring, coins are putting in 50% days and the Lambo memes are back. Is this 2017 all over again? I don’t normally do this, but let’s start with the caveats. This might not be the start of the next bull market. Even after a few good

Opinion

DeFi-ing Gravity

It’s the summer of DeFi! (AKA decentralised finance). But is something revolutionary happening or is it just another crypto bubble? People have been proclaiming alt season from the rooftops recently, but it’s probably more accurate to call it DeFi season instead. From a relatively fringe pursuit whose products

Opinion

It’s… Stock Season?

Penny stocks going 5x, bankrupt companies pumping 700% – why is the share market acting like crypto in 2017? For the better part of two months now, bitcoin has been stalled. At the start of May, a few days before the halving, we pumped into the US$9000 range and have,

Opinion

Bitcoin for the People

Remember when your friends used to ask you about bitcoin? Those days might be back sooner than you think. If you were around during the 2017 crypto bubble, you probably remember the first time someone asked you about bitcoin. How startling it felt to have a real world, flesh-and-blood person

Opinion

The Sacrificial Half

The bitcoin halvening is HERE. We take you through the ins and outs of bitcoin’s biggest event. At 5.23 am (AEST) this morning a seismic shift occurred: the amount of bitcoin produced every time a block is mined was slashed from 12.5 to 6.25 BTC. It’

Opinion

Oils Ain’t Oils

Oil prices are literally through the floor and it’s making crypto look like an oasis of stability. On April 20 you could, for a brief moment, get paid US$40 for buying a barrel of oil. For a sense of how insane that is, try and imagine it happening

Opinion

May the Half Be With You

On May 12 the bitcoin mining reward rate will halve. The only guarantee is that turbulence is on its way. In the crypto universe, no event comes saddled with more unhinged hype, arcane mythology, wild theorising and all-out anxiety than the bitcoin halving. Perhaps bitcoin’s single most defining feature

Opinion

The Decoupling

The coronavirus is pushing the global financial system to the absolute brink. Will this be Bitcoin’s moment? I think it’s fair to say that we’ll always remember March 2020. It was the month that one-third of the world’s population – 2.6 billion people – went into borderline

Opinion

Coronal Mass Ejection

In the space of 24 shocking hours, bitcoin’s price plunged by 50% – and then rebounded by 50%. The black swan has well and truly arrived. When I finished the last newsletter by warning about the risk of “savage and unpredictable” market moves during the #coronapocalypse, I was not in

Opinion

A Case of Corona

Corona is spreading and the markets are freaking out. What does it mean for bitcoin?

Opinion

It’s Alt Season?

Coins soaring 50% in a single hour. Tokens going 3x. Could it actually be *gasp* alt season? Say the words “alt season” in front of anyone who’s been trading crypto since 2017 and you’re likely to be greeted with misty eyed reminiscences about a time when even conservative

Opinion

A Cautionary Tale

Hacks, exit scams and insolvency, oh my. So, how safe is your crypto? Even by the sometimes surreal standards of crypto, the news this week that creditors for bankrupt Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX were seeking to have the body of the founder, Gerald Cotten, exhumed to prove that he was, in

Opinion

Here’s to Being Average

Is Dollar Cost Averaging the solution to all your trading woes? There are times when bitcoin’s daily price gyrations feel like they’ve been specifically designed to induce a state of low-grade insanity. Take the last few weeks, for instance. First, the price flips out of a six-month long