Welcome to this 30th issue of the Chain Reaction newsletter published on the 8th June 2022.
What you can expect in this newsletter
Editor's Note
In the News
Community Projects
Community Views
What we're reading/watching
Data
Editor's Note (from Captain DeFi)
A fun filled busy week (aren't they all) where we were ablet to put out the recording of our May meetup. Check it out below and sign up to our YouTube page so we can keep doing more in this space. We'll be doing more interviews with other community members and bringing on other guests too so stay tuned.
We also got to attend a few other meetups such as the Metaverse event held by HaymarketHQ - https://twitter.com/AusDeFi/status/1534136655132921858
Our next meetup has also been announced for June 29th so sign up here if you'd like to attend - https://www.meetup.com/australian-defi-association/events/286252628/
In the news
The following comes from BetaShares weekly crypto focused newsletter - check it out in full over here for more data analysis and other insights:
Also check out Justin's latest article on Livewire here:
"Bitcoin: Knowledge and perceptions
Block Inc. the parent company of two prominent Bitcoin businesses, Cash App and Spiral, published a report last week titled Bitcoin: Knowledge and Perceptions 2022. The survey, taken in early 2022, had 9500 participants in 14 countries across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. Key themes from the report were:
People see promise in Bitcoin for a more equitable economy
Education is key: Knowledge feeds optimism and participation
Bitcoin stands out among cryptocurrencies
The survey suggests that people with lower incomes recognise the utility of bitcoin while higher-income respondents tend to see it as an investment and as an opportunity to make money. The trend also holds up on a country-by-country basis. Countries with lower per capita GDP and higher shares of income from remittances have higher rates of people citing ‘purchasing goods and services and sending money’ as good reasons to buy bitcoin. People from these same countries also cite ‘protection against inflation’ as a reason to buy. The higher people rate their level of knowledge, the more optimistic they are about bitcoin’s future. People in Nigeria, India, Vietnam, and Argentina have the highest rates of optimism globally about bitcoin’s future. People around the world are considerably more aware of bitcoin than any other cryptocurrency, with 88% of adults surveyed having heard of bitcoin.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore explores asset tokenisation and decentralised finance
Singapore’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is partnering with DBS Bank Ltd., JP Morgan and Marketnode to launch a project called Project Guardian, described as “a collaborative initiative with the financial industry that seeks to explore the economic potential and value-adding use cases of asset tokenisation” and decentralised finance (Defi). The MAS also said: “The pilot aims to carry out secured borrowing and lending on a public blockchain-based network through execution of smart contracts.” Han Kwee Juan, head of group planning and strategy at DBS, commented: “DBS is pleased to lead the charge to explore potential digital assets and use of defi concepts that will enhance efficiency and scalability in trading, clearing, and settlement; while managing risks to financial stability and integrity.”
ANZ and NAB rule out crypto for retail
Executives at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) and National Australia Bank (NAB) have stated that these banks will not allow retail customers to trade cryptocurrency on their platforms. At the Australian Financial Review Banking Summit, ANZ group executive for Australian retail, Maile Carnegie, told the Summit they do not want to endorse speculation on crypto when “the vast majority of them [retail customers] don’t understand really basic financial well-being concepts.” Angela Mentis, chief digital officer of NAB, was asked if NAB would consider offering crypto trading. She responded: “not in the foreseeable future and not for retail”. Commonwealth Bank (CBA) recently put their second trial on crypto trading on hold in May but could still proceed. At the Summit, CEO Matt Comyn added that if it were to proceed with the offering, the bank would look to restrict trading to those “who understand the risky asset class.”"
Additionally, here are 2 articles highlighted by one of our Community Managers, Matt Hooper, where we saw some amazing news out of Abu Dhabi with women to be offered free crypto, NFT and blockchain domains. Unstoppable Domains is one of the partners here and i's another step towards seeing the empowerment of women globally (more here https://www.arabianbusiness.com/money/wealth/alternative-assets/women-residing-in-abu-dhabi-to-get-free-crypto-nft-and-blockchain-domains).
There's also this piece he highlighted on DeFi bridges and their various pros and cons. It breaks down bridge types and mechanics as well as how they can be attacked. Remember, Nothing is perfect, everything has trade-offs (more here https://ambergroup.medium.com/bridges-designs-trade-offs-and-opportunities-2196b8754e70).
Community Projects
This week we are featuring an Aussie project called WeCryptoEco which taps into the crypto and ESG space. Per their press release on Monday they said
WeCryptoEco, the brainchild of business visionaries James Ross and Roderick Chisholm, is exploding onto the scene. Founded in 2022, WeCryptoEco, the environmentally friendly crypto mining project, is changing the process by lessening the impact on the earth’s resources. At WeCryptoEco, the team is building the world’s largest solar-powered blockchain, AI, and bitcoin mining farm, instead of mining at all costs.
Environmentalists around the world have grave concerns about the regular mining process. Studies show bitcoin mining emits over 37 megatons of carbon dioxide each year. The New Yorker reports that “according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, bitcoin-mining operations worldwide now use energy at the rate of nearly one hundred and twenty terawatt-hours per year. This is about the annual domestic electricity consumption of the entire nation of Sweden.” WeCryptoEco is saving the day with a revolutionary process to stem the tide of destruction and depletion of the earth’s resources in the name of advancement.
You can learn more about the project here in the full press release: https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/wecryptoeco-opens-world-largest-solar-163005298.html?guccounter=1 as well as on their homepage https://www.wecryptoeco.com/
Community Views
This week we asked our community the following question:
Here's some of the responses from our Discord
From Nathan_Zipmex_Aus
Controversial but #WAGMI... It will do nothing for 12 to 18 months except be exit liquidity for Terra C users that got airdrops. (I certainly wont be buying it). The failure of Terra was obviously its mechanism to UST. However, throughout this whole experience what it did seem to prove is that the layer 1 chain was incredibly robust. It essentially facilitated a bank run of hundreds of millions in days without having any issues around scale, gas, outages etc. So if anything it proved the chain is very solid. See what people can do with it now... Especially if Do Kwon is removed from the equation and the decentralised open source network is what is left
from Leorules
NGMI, why would anyone trust anything that Do Kwon says
from Captain DeFi (Mark)
yeh I would be reluctant on anything Terra because a lot of the ideas and effort for project came from the fact that it had money pouring into it with the promise of "safe" 20% returns - with that gone, people, ideas and confidence is gone for me - #NGMI
and from SimonA
#NGMI Terra 1.0 at its most foundational level was the pairing of UST and Luna. Terra 2.0 with just Luna has lost all its point of difference from other fast cheap Layer 1s or ETH layer 2s. What Terra 2.0 has gained is distrust and painful memories Why use Terra2.0 when there are other opportunities that don’t have that downside?
Data as at 7th May 2022 - 2:33pm
Market Moves (from CoinGecko)
NFT Moves (from CoinGecko)
What we've been watching/listening to
[Video] The Bear Market Gift with Bankless and looking across Layer 1s, Layer 2s and the potential competitors to ETH in the future. Worth the watch/listen - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIyxIYd8AzY&ab_channel=Bankless
[Video] As related to the question above is the announcement of a new Terra Blockchain about to be launched on Saturday, without the stablecoin that caused so many issues. We'll see if this improves things or not. The Lunatics may try to hold strong but without the returns that were there to help drive people who would bring innovation, this may not work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exa9h61MwIE&ab_channel=CoinDesk
[Reading] Also in the Discord we've seen folks share this piece on legal DAO wrappers as shared by Matt Hooper in the group - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4123737&t=LS9qY7sxmuzVzsvndK4NNQ&s=09
Get in touch
If you're interested in contributing to these newsletters in future - please join us on Discord or reach out to us on info@defi.org.au
If you would like to dig deeper into why and how is the blockchain relevant to international matters and to get more insights on regulations and Defi knowledge, join us on our Discord: https://discord.com/invite/ZRCTDdsVEF
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