This Informational Piece Is Intended to Inform Wave Financial's
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DISCLAIMER: This informational piece is intended to inform Wave Financial’s audience of the current status of the crypto industry. Nothing in this material should be interpreted as an offer or recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security or other financial product. Wave Financial, LLC is a registered investment adviser, registered with the state of California. Registration with the SEC or state authority does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Additional information including important disclosures about Wave Financial, LLC also is available on the SEC’s website at www.adviserinfo.sec.gov. Or, learn more information about Wavemaker Financial at www.wavegp.com. I. Market Update (1) Cryptoasset Prices CRYPTOASSET OCT NOV DEC Q4 2018 YTD 2018 Bitcoin (BTC) -4.24% -36.78% -6.54% -43.40% -72.9% Ethereum (ETH) -14.9% -42.95% +18.20% -42.60% -81.92% (1) Bitcoin price declines calculated based on current period and previous period’s close value as per last day of each period, per https://Coinmarketcap.com 2018 was a challenging year for cryptoasset prices and in Q4 we witnessed the acceleration of market declines, followed finally by a rally the last week of December. In sum, the price of Bitcoin (a leading indicator for cryptoasset prices) has declined by 72.9% in 2018. Is This The Bottom? We are not traders and therefore, predictions of near-term market price movements are not our strength. From a fundamental standpoint, we expect to see the market bottom when a substantial amount of pain has begun to impact businesses across the industry. This pain has certainly begun but may continue through 2019. As we have stated before, treasury management has become a major issue in the crypto industry. In 2018, many crypto companies became speculators. Having received the vast majority of their financing in Ether (ETH), they abstained from liquidating ETH in order to manage their operational costs (which are paid in fiat). After the 12- month price of ETH declined 81.9% in 2018, many of these companies (who believed they were holding tens of millions of USD-equivalent in capital) have burned through their runway. Many are still holding ETH in their treasuries, and if the ETH sell-off returns (the price of ETH has rallied over 50% in January), they may be forced to liquidate which could trigger a spiral of further price declines. We have seen a tightening of the belt across the board, as companies reduce headcount to survive a prolonged crypto winter. Substantial layoffs in the industry have affected even some of the largest players. A leading dApp by usage, SteemIt, laid off 70% of their workforce in November 2018. Industry giants like Consensys and Galaxy Digital, both of which expanded rapidly to capitalize on the rising prices in 2017 have not been immune to layoffs, with Consensys expected to cut 13% of its workforce. In Asia, large exchanges and miners have also been impacted. Bitmain, who in June raised $400M in Pre-IPO financing at an estimated $12 billion valuation, is reportedly laying off over 80% of its workforce. Huobi Group, one of the largest exchanges in China, is “optimizing staff” as it cuts workers to manage cash flow. We expect to see a continuation of this downsizing trend, which (given the reflexive nature of markets) could lead to further near term price declines. In sum, we expect “crypto winter” to get worse before it gets better. In spite of this, we remain undeterred by price declines. We understand that market prices are important short- term indicators of market sentiment, risk, and a proxy for new investment into the space; however, as an early- stage venture investor with a long-term view on the industry and at least a 3-5 year time horizon. As such, this update will primarily focus on the fundamentals. Finally, in spite of price declines, 2018 was a year of great innovation in the industry. A few major challenges that blocked mass crypto adoption were tackled head-on by a number of existing market leaders and new entrants. II. Fundamental Improvements to Functionality in 2018 In crypto, we often joke that the industry moves so fast that days can feel like weeks, weeks like months and months like years in other industries. Looking back at the beginning of 2018 feels like looking back nearly a decade. At the start of 2018, there were still two major challenges that needed to be solved at the infrastructure layer: scalability and volatility. Scalability There has been a great deal of writing about the scalability problem facing leading cryptoassets [see here for a review that has informed us on the subject]. In short, scalability refers to the limit to the number of transactions that a network can process and is measured in transactions per second (tps). As of writing, Bitcoin and Ethereum max at around 7 tps and 15 tps, respectively. To put this in context individuals often cite the Visa network’s ability to process 45,000 tps as a benchmark. This is many orders of magnitude greater than that of the Ethereum and Bitcoin protocols. For further context, a simple dApp built on Ethereum, called Crypto Kitties, nearly grinded the Ethereum network to a halt, at the end of 2017. You can understand why this is a major problem: without scalability, these networks cannot function. Delays to the Ethereum Scalability Roadmap Leading Ethereum developers like Vitalik Buterin have been promising scalability solutions since mid-2017, but they have yet to deliver. This may partially explain the drastic decline in ETH prices from all-time highs this year: investors are losing faith in the Ethereum community’s ability to deliver on its development roadmap. ETH scalability proposals include both: 1. Layer 1 / On-chain Solutions: a. Casper: a shift in Ethereum’s consensus mechanism from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake b. Sharding: essentially divides the underlying database into smaller pieces or shards c. Combined these are known as “Shasper”, but most recently named Serenity 2. Layer 2 / Off-chain Solutions: a. Plasma: allows for off-chain transactions while still relying on the underlying security of the Ethereum blockchain b. State Channels: transactions happen off-chain, but the history or “state” of these transactions can periodically be sent on-chain for security and verification purposes. Two dApps currently leading the development of Ethereum state channels are Funfair and SpankChain (as we have seen historically, vice remains a technological bellwether) The initial Casper release date was scheduled for mid-2018 but has since been pushed back to 2019-2021 (a very broad range). For a deeper understanding of the changes to the Ethereum development roadmap, you can read here and here. At DevCon Prague, in November 2018, Ethereum’s leading developer, Vitalik Buterin, announced a new path towards scaling Ethereum called it Ethereum 2.0 / Serenity, but he has yet to release a clear timeline for development. However, in the face of mounting price declines and competition, the Ethereum community is finally shipping a major protocol update via a hard fork: Constantinople. Constantinople makes a few changes that drive scalability and prepare the Ethereum network for Casper and Sharding. With the hard fork scheduled for January 15, 2019, Constantinople offers promising updates for the future of Ethereum and as a result, the price of ETH has surged over 50% from its 12 month lows. Note: since writing this letter, the Constantinople hard fork has been delayed until the end of February due to the discovery of a security vulnerability. Competitive, Scalable Smart Contract Platforms Launch in 2018 While Ethereum was plagued by continued delays and uncertainty on its development roadmap, a number of competitive smart contract platforms with improved on-chain scalability went live in 2018. There were four smart contract platforms that launched a main net in 2018. These platforms use various new consensus mechanisms to solve on-chain scaling issues. 1. Tezos - went live in September 2018. Like Ethereum, Tezos is a smart contract platform created by the Tezos Foundation and founder Arthur Breitman. Tezos offers a new consensus algorithm called Liquid Proof of Stake or LPoS. In LPoS, if a user owns 10,000 Tezos tokens (aka Tezzies or XTZ), he/she can become a delegate (known as a “baker”). The baker must stake at least 8.25% of the total tokens delegated at any time. Other users have the option to delegate their tokens to these “bakers” by voting without giving up custody of their assets. Tezos currently achieves scalability of 40 tps, which is faster than both BTC and ETH, but unlkely to drive real- world adoption. There are a number of scaling proposals in place to improve the Tezos protocol in 2019. 2. EOS - EOS is a smart contract platform developed by Block.One and lead developer Dan Larimer (creator of Steem.it & Bitshares) that relies on a consensus algorithm known as Delegated Proof of Stake or DPoS. DPoS trades decentralization for scalability. The EOS network only has 21 block producers validating transactions at any one time. This reduction in the number of validating nodes increases the speed of the network. These 21 BPs are considered “delegates” because they are voted on by EOS token holders who must stake their tokens to vote. The top 100 block producers by votes are rewarded in EOS tokens based on a 1% annual inflation rate, with the top 21 block producers receiving the majority of these “block rewards”. Unlike Tezos delegators, voters in EOS are not entitled to any rewards earned by the block producers. 3.