Power law 47. The smaller the group the bigger the secrets. - xh3b4sd
Property rights rule everything around me. And the only thing that truly matters in this world, is what you can or cannot do. We grow up today in the comfort of our homes, far away from kinetic war or any form of military conflict. People grow up in western societies today, thinking that life is meant to be orderly and happy. I think we are meant to reach for the stars in life and grow beyond our own horizons. But none of that process is orderly nor happy all the time. The only reason why people have the safe space to enjoy themselves out there every single day is a form of powerplay, that keeps everyone in check who dares to act outside of some rather artificial societal norm. That powerplay makes everyone believe that life is good and that there is nothing to worry about. And nothing could be further from the truth. Because this portrayed safety hides the fact, that the system underneath is forming an ever stronger grip around your neck. In fact the worst thing that any nation state can do to its citizens, is to take more and more responsibilities away from them. Some might ask why any of this matters anyway. And to that I would say, that people in safe spaces are more like chicken in a cage than competent human beings. Everyone should ask themselves whether they want their lives to be controlled by the rule of law, or by themselves. This is not to say that we do not need laws in our societies. I like it very much that policemen and firefighters and doctors do come running when I need them the most. There definitely must be a force that guarantees property rights to everyone equally. On the geopolitical stage there are no laws and no property rights. Our very own colonial times and the monstrosities of slavery still echo that very sentiment. All there is at the top of all power struggles today, are military assets that have the ability to assure mutual destruction. Up until now human societies literally needed some person with a very big stick in order to ensure the individual right to any form of property. This big stick was traditionally some form of kinetic weapon, representing an input to our global world order. And just as humans enter the information age, kinetic weapons turn into outputs on the world stage, as our economies become more and more secured cryptographically. The decentralization of property rights is already reshaping the world as we know it in many different ways. The entire human knowledge is available with a simple internet connection. We generate productivity from digital products and services, without the need for any specific geographic location. Our moneys became shape shifters, being neither here nor there, while being controlled only by us, and nobody else. Not your keys, not your crypto. Remember that one? The wonderful systems that we have built in the past, the very systems that brought us prosperity for decades and decades on end, those systems slowly but surely turned against us in the warmth of our homes. Once upon a time the overarching principle for our systems was "For The People", which today sounds more like "For The System". In many places on this earth, there isn't much left "for the people" anymore, because all there is at all times are power struggles, as far as the eye can see. So in a way, MEV rules everything around me. And just like energy itself, MEV operates under the law of conservation. You cannot prevent MEV. All you can do is to redefine the power struggle. Public blockchain networks like Ethereum provide credible neutrality and unbreakable property rights, showing us a glimpse of a future in which traditional power struggles get redefined. How we want to define those new challenges of tomorrow is on all the mechanism designers who create the future every single day across our beloved industry. Everyone here can be an architect of their own life. Just as it should be.
Deutsche Bank is reportedly developing an L2 rollup using zero-knowledge technologies. And with that the largest German Bank is following many other industry leading corporate giants like Sony, BlackRock and Coinbase. The reason for all those digitally inclined companies to enter the blockchain space is once again related to the security guarantees that blockchain networks provide in the form of unbreakable property rights. Because those property rights allow corporations to settle any form of economic activity that is relevant to their own users and clients. And I think the reason for all of those businesses to embed themselves into the Ethereum ecosystem is Ethereum's crypto-economic zone of network effects. The largest amounts of stablecoins are on Ethereum. The most diverse user base can be found on Ethereum. The strongest property rights of the digital realm today can be used by paying for Ethereum's high quality blockspace. And so it is no wonder that more and more business interests are expressed on the most dominant smart contract platform. All tech companies that struggle with any form of compliance from a regulatory standpoint are going to have digital asset exposure one way or another. The future of the world economy is onchain. And our chains do only work with our tokens. In the words of Big V. The ticker is ETH.
We are soon going to see the first hybrid Bitcoin-Ethereum ETFs. That is a big deal because those kinds of financial instruments can provide us with inflow parity between the two largest digital assets on this planet. Reportedly, the proportion of BTC and ETH in those trust funds will be based on market capitalizations respectively. Today that means somewhere around 80/20 or 70/30. The coming year will bring all sorts of new financial instruments designed around BTC and ETH, while the world, for the most part, does still not understand the true value for any of those assets. This is the price of making history. We are at the forefront of economic, and frankly societal change in this industry. And I am not here to insinuate that some Exchange Traded Product will change the world. Far from it. The reason why those ETFs are important are the forces that introduce our technologies and capabilities to the world. Those ETFs are one mechanism for outsiders to acquire knowledge about public blockchains, which in itself creates a virtuous cycle. Over time more and more people are going to learn what cryptographically secured property rights actually mean and what you can truly do with smart contract platforms. This knowledge will lead to more adoption of the technologies that already exist, and in turn will bring more curious and brilliant minds into this industry to work on the future that today most cannot imagine. And in due time we are going to look back and realize, that some boring ETFs acted as trojan horses for a technological paradigm that changed everything underneath the face of the earth as we once knew it, once upon a time.
Our number for this week is 200 billion. That is the amount of global stablecoin TVL on top of all public blockchains today. Stablecoins reached escape velocity and represent yet another trojan horse that injects crypto into the lives of ordinary people all around the world. In other news, to me it looks like Solana season is over now. But let me humour you a little bit. Solana has an RWA market share of roughly 2.5% today. That is the share on Real World Assets, like stablecoins and other tokenized assets. Those 2.5% represent about 135 million USD and it doesn't look like there is any meaningful growth happening, for reasons. In comparison, Ethereum is now sitting at almost 80% RWA market share, which means 4 billion USD, and steadily growing. Why the difference of market share between those chains? Solana to this day has liveness and incentive issues. In other words, the Solana network has been unreachable a couple of times this year. And when the chain is down you cannot access your coins. Solana is also far more centralized in validator ownership and token distribution, which increases the risk of theft and manipulation. Ethereum is never down. Nobody can stop Ethereum. And nobody can steal your money over there. That is the reason why Ethereum will attract more L2 rollups. And that is the reason why Ethereum will attract more Real World Assets for tokenization. I say, nothing stops this train.