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COINBASE DEPARTURE: Coinbase's chief product officer, Jeremy Henrickson, has left the company, CoinDesk has learned. The executive, who started working at the exchange in July 2016, departed on November 2.
He served as vice president of product and engineering before taking his C-suite level role last year. A spokesperson for the exchange said his contributions "were invaluable," and that he "was an inspirational leader within the organization."
The Stanford grad began his career at Apple in the 1990s. Henrickson spoke at an event at the Palo Alto school as recently as last month. Full Story
UNCERTAIN FUTURE: Employees are still grappling with ethereum development studio ConsenSys' announcement of layoffs from last week, internal chat logs from an all-hands town hall show.
The town hall, held last Friday, shows that ConsenSys employees largely remain uncertain about the studio's financial future. One employee wrote that "Joe [Lubin] earlier today said at the current price [around $85 per ETH] we have many months of runway. Wanted to clarify if that was correct? Thought runway was previously stated as years."
However, other employees seemed optimistic about ConsenSys' new direction, dubbed ConsenSys 2.0. One anonymous user said they were "glad" that the company is undergoing its reorganization, while others acknowledged that its previous rate of growth was unsustainable.
With ConsenSys employees generally declining to discuss the ongoing situation, the logs present the clearest picture yet of the questions surrounding firm. Full Story
WINTER WARMER: The crypto winter is looking a little bleak for investors, but some are not deterred. Revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, David Johnston, one of the earliest bitcoin investors, has launched a new crypto fund called Yeoman's Growth Capital that is seeking to raise $200 million to support startups, despite the tough market conditions.
Johnston – chairman of the Factom blockchain project and also co-founder of BitAngels, one of the earliest crypto investment funds in 2013 – told CoinDesk he has been able to raise an undisclosed amount from his personal family office, Yeoman’s Capital, and is now bringing in co-investors. The fund has also brought onboard Henry Liu, a former growth strategist at Facebook, who joined in January of this year as chief investment officer.
The launch comes at a time when the market has seen the prices of most tokens plummet as much as 80 percent, leading to the expectation that many crypto funds could eventually close.
“We honestly think this is the perfect time to launch a growth capital firm,” Johnston said. Full Story
ETF UNEASE: While many traders eagerly await a potential bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) and Twitter is flush with users like crypto entrepreneur Jonathan Hamel posting about how an ETF would bring an “epic” inflow of institutional capital to the ecosystem – that is, “billions” of dollars in new investments.
But if you talk to early adopters and veteran technologists in the bitcoin community, you’ll hear resounding indifference, if not queasiness, over the prospect of such an instrument.
“I don’t think an ETF is going to be some kind of massive magnet,” Pierre Rochard, founder of the Brooklyn-based Bitcoin Advisory LLC, told CoinDesk. “Demand will continue to be driven by sentiment, rather than the availability of specific products.”
Last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange postponed plans to reevaluate ETF proposals from financial institutions such as VanEck and SolidX to as late as February 27, 2019. This means two more months of nail-biting for those who believe the ETF would be a huge boon to bitcoin or the savior of the overall crypto marketplace.
Yet, some crypto veterans went as far as to say an ETF could actually be harmful to the broader ecosystem. “It’s kind of a centralizing force and the value proposition of bitcoin is it’s decentralized, global,” Lightning Labs developer Alex Bosworth told CoinDesk. Full Story |
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 While the cryptocurrency bear market may be disappointing, individuals surveyed by CoinDesk seem to think that development will be undeterred. In one such poll, more than half of all respondents believed that new cryptocurrencies will be launched over the next year, with only 31 percent seeing fewer cryptocurrencies still operating at the end of that period. In contrast, the 10-year view was much bleaker, with the majority of respondents believing that there will be fewer cryptocurrencies at the end of that period. Learn more about the crypto market in Q3 across price, network, exchange, developer, and social fundamental metrics in our recently released State of Blockchains report here. |
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| OVERSOLD WEEKLY: Bitcoin has become oversold on the weekly price chart for the first time in four years. Considering bitcoin bottomed out in 2015 after registering a value this low on the relative strength index (RSI), bitcoin may hold ground once again as crucial supports like the 200-week moving average and $3,000 level are right around the corner. Full Story |
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BEST OF THE BEST
BLOOMBERG: Former Goldman Sachs partner and founder of crypto merchant bank Galaxy Digital Mike Novogratz has conceded that this year's bear market has been anything but good for business. In an interview with Bloomberg, he said that while he expected a bear market, the depth of the losses caught him by surprise. “What you forget is that a market like bitcoin that’s down 84 percent has dropped 60 percent – and then another 60 percent. That’s where the pain happens,” he said. And while the firm should “100 percent” have made money even on the way down, the crash in bitcoin prices, the fork of bitcoin cash and the SEC actions against ICOs (that “scared the heck out of a lot of people”) fueled the continued sell-off, he said. But despite all this, Novogratz is unfazed, saying Galaxy Digital's strategy is largely unchanged, and that it's just getting in shape like a surfer "for when the next wave comes." THE REST ENTREPRENEUR: The upcoming year “will be a landmark” one for the blockchain space, writes this Entrepreneur contributor. A number of governments are moving from outright banning or questioning the technology to launching programs using it, or at least looking more deeply into how it may be leveraged. Lawmakers are even differentiating between blockchain and cryptocurrencies, “a progressive sign of maturity.” The piece recommends that lawmakers pay attention to four “critical” sectors where blockchain technology can best aid others: government to citizen, government to business, business to consumer and business to business. Projects in each of these sectors have already begun, and may even be able to solve such issues such as scalability in the coming months. Governments should likewise explore these use cases, the piece says. THE NEXT WEB: University College London has launched a branch specifically dedicated to researching blockchain, called the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies. The team behind the project spoke to The Next Web about their current focuses and future goals, highlighting the facility's educational nature. In particular, the group is looking at distributed ledger technology from business, technical and legal/regulatory perspectives, as part of their efforts to educate students on the space. Going forward, the team is looking to grow its public and government engagement and education efforts, as part of a broader effort to streamline the adoption of distributed ledger technology. |
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