Tesla, Elon Musk, What's Next?

VeradiVerdict - Issue #123

February 11, 2021

On Monday, Tesla announced that the company would be putting $1.5 Billion of its $19 Billion cash reserve into Bitcoin, which represents about 8% of their treasury. This follows companies like MicroStrategy and Square also putting some of their treasury into Bitcoin recently. Bitcoin Treasuries is a neat website which tracks companies holding Bitcoin in their treasury.

Because of monetary policy, companies are looking at Bitcoin as an alternative to cash for store of value. Another trend that we’re seeing is that employees at companies are looking to get part of their paycheck in Bitcoin. The CFO of Twitter mentioned that the company is looking in this for their employees.

As mentioned earlier this year, corporate treasury, institutions, and on-ramps to cryptocurrencies will drive Bitcoin price. I think we’ll continue to see more corporations going into Bitcoin for their treasury, employees looking to get paid in Bitcoin or stablecoins (for yield), and more interest-bearing products for consumers. One of our portfolio companies, Eco, is going to be tackling the latter.

There is a flood of companies building the infrastructure for these use cases in the United States, but I think there are opportunities internationally for similar type products/offerings, especially by those with strong brands in the emerging markets.

- Paul V

Crypto community predictions

When the year started, I shared some of my 2021 predictions for the blockchain/crypto industry. I thought it might be fun to see what the community thinks as well. Using Kindred, I posed questions about some of the more anticipated topics of this year. I hope you get to check them out and have fun making predictions!

If you have any suggestions for predictions, feel free to DM me on twitter @veradittakit and I’ll update the section with the best ones!

What is Kindred?

Kindred creates community forecasts with its prediction markets platform. Prediction markets have already proven they can outperform political pundits/polls, and they gain popularity with each election cycle, but many have also talked about their broader potential for some time now. However, the accuracy of prediction markets relies on high participation, and most people have traditionally found them confusing to use.

By making prediction markets more accessible and intuitive, Kindred hopes to drive adoption and open up applications beyond political forecasts. The team is getting started with a prediction game where players use a virtual currency to make predictions on a wide range of topics. It’s free to play, and the top performers will win $15,000 in BTC, ETH or USD when the first competition ends on February 15.

The value of prediction markets

In prediction markets, people buy the possibility that a future event will happen. When enough people do this, the market price of that prediction represents how likely it is to occur, measuring probabilities based on the collective beliefs of those making predictions. That data can have tremendous value for business planning and managing risk. For example, being able to forecast demand for shipping containers may have helped e-commerce and logistics companies better prepare for the global shortage that recently happened. As another example, restaurants could better manage the cost of reopening amidst the pandemic if they could better anticipate government lockdowns. One might even imagine novel insurance and risk hedging products if it’s possible to price the risk, but it all starts by making prediction markets more accessible to everyone.

DIGESTS

Origin’s mission is to enable peer-to-peer commerce. To do so, we’ve launched the Origin Platform, an open-source and free decentralized commerce network that enables merchants and buyers of many different verticals and sizes to do business with one another.

NEWS

The payments giant plans to support digital currency transactions directly on network.

The bitcoin paid to a California car dealership in 2013 would now be worth $4.1 million.

REGULATIONS

Cryptocurrencies "challenge the ability of governments to levy taxes and to control capital flows more broadly," the report says.

IN THE TWEETS

NEW PRODUCTS AND HOT DEALS

The blockchain network is raising cash from venture capital firms who see it as a way of facilitating global financial inclusion.

SynFutures will allow any market to launch that draws price data from Chainlink. Assets on the platform will also trade as futures, with users having the ability to trade with leverage. 

0x Labs offers its products without fees because they drive usage of the underlying 0x protocol and its ZRX token. Since version 3.0 of the 0x protocol, the ZRX token has become something market makers can stake in order to earn liquidity rewards. Overall, the protocol has seen $15 billion in trading volume, according to the company.

LETS MEET UP

Walks at the park or Zoom coffee meetings!

ABOUT ME

Hi, I’m Paul Veradittakit, a Partner at Pantera Capital, one of the oldest and largest institutional investors focused on investing in blockchain companies and cryptocurrencies. The firm invests in equity, pre-auction ICOs, and cryptocurrencies on the secondary markets. I focus on early-stage investments and share my thoughts on what’s going on in the industry in this weekly newsletter.