The evolution and potential of Web 3.0

What is Web 3?

One of the buzzwords that has come out of the crypto and blockchain world is Web 3. To understand what Web 3 is, it is perhaps better to discuss the history of the World Wide Web briefly. Web 1.0: The dawn of the World Wide Web Web 1.0 was the original World Wide Web developed […]

The end of the Crypto Genesis era

Sometimes when you have been involved in something for a long time, you tend to notice when something major has changed or happened in that sector. As someone who has been in crypto for quite a while now, perhaps not in the very beginning in 2008, but long enough this year is perhaps the year […]

Why Bitcoin fixed supply matters

Recently an October 2023 US treasury bond auction for 30-year bonds did not do as well as hoped [see https://finance.yahoo.com/news/treasury-bond-auction-runs-weak-034418412.html]. Many traditional buyers are hesitant for several reasons. One is a long-term but remote credit default risk where the US debt is too large for it to pay off. As fewer buyers show interest, the […]

The FTX crashed more than a year ago

by Zain Jaffer It was more than one year ago in early November 2022 that the crypto exchange FTX crashed, losing most of their investors money in the process. The crash was precipitated by a Coindesk report that stated that the exchange balance sheet was propped up mostly by their own FTT trading token. Subsequent […]

Coinbase releases their Base L2 for Ethereum

by Zain Jaffer In early August 2023, US crypto trading giant Coinbase released their Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum called Base. A Layer 2 scaling solution basically allows users to transact their NFTs, crypto swaps, and other Web 3 applications on a different chain which is faster and cheaper from the users perspective than […]

Relying too much on the tech economy

by Zain Jaffer Recent headlines in late August and early September 2023 were about the price of Nvidia stock, the woes of Apple related to China and US market relative to its iPhone 15 launch, and the much awaited Initial Public Offering (IPO) of ARM, the chip design firm that does much of the chip […]

Grayscale wins Spot Bitcoin ETF case at DC Federal Court of Appeals

by Zain Jaffer A three judge panel of the DC Federal Court of Appeals ruled in late August 2023 that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) did not have a legal basis to reject Grayscale’s proposed spot Bitcoin ETF. Grayscale runs the $16B Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) which they hope to convert it into […]

NY Federal Court decides that Ripple XRP is not a security

Companies and individuals who have been considering the use of cryptotokens for funding, marketing, or even customer rewards programs have been following the SEC vs. Ripple XRP case for some  time. Finally last mid-July 2023, Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York Federal Court released her decision on the case. Basically the […]

Are Ordinal NFTs destroying Bitcoin?

Recently the Bitcoin world has been divided by something called Ordinal NFTs. When the Bitcoin network implemented the Taproot upgrade, a developer found a way to inscribe NFTs on one Satoshi, which is a subunit of Bitcoin. For the uninitiated, one hundred million Satoshis equals one Bitcoin. The NFTs are in a format called Ordinals. […]

Controlling crypto through USD stablecoins

All is not well in the world of crypto stablecoins. In February 2023, the New York Department of Financial Services regulator told stablecoin issuer Paxos to stop minting more of the BUSD stablecoin for Binance. [1] Last year, the hugely popular UST stablecoin from Terraform Labs and its founders Daniel Shin and Do Kwon depegged […]

Making Twitter a payment service is brilliant

In early April 2023, Elon Musk replaced Twitter’s logo with the Doge coin crypto symbol. It seems that dogs can now fly and birds can now bark.  There were many who criticized him for spending $40bn to acquire Twitter, which was not really profitable, had too many bots, and was bloated in terms of employee […]

Will crypto decouple from other markets in the future?

When one variable increases when another also increases or vice versa, the two are said to be correlated. If the opposite happens and the movement is opposite each other, then these are negatively correlated. If the movement of one has nothing to do with the other, then these are not correlated. At the moment, the […]