Elon Musk and Mark Cuban Send 'Doja-coin' Barking

What you need to know today in crypto and beyond

April 28, 2021

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Today's must-reads

Top Shelf

JUMP, BOY: Mark Cuban spoke on Ellen DeGeneres' daytime talkshow about "doja-coin," and Elon Musk tweeted about dogecoin ahead of his upcoming "Saturday Night Live" appearance this weekend, sending the meme cryptocurrency soaring. DOGE is up some 15% day over day at press time. Meanwhile, dogecoin miners are seeing daily revenues well above $3 million.

BTC BUY: A South Korean-Japanese video game publisher, Nexon, said it bought $100 million in bitcoin using corporate reserves. The company spent less than 2% of its cash on hands to buy coins at an average price of $58,226. Separately, Goldman Sachs identified 19 blockchain and cryptocurrency-related stocks that have outperformed the S&P 500 this year.

MIXING IT UP: U.S. officials have arrested the alleged operator of Bitcoin Fog, a transaction concealer, on allegations of laundering nearly $336 million in bitcoin over 10 years. This is reportedly the first time prosecutors have moved against a bitcoin mixing service.

DEFI DEMAND: Ether (ETH) now makes up 27% of Genesis' loan book, up from 15.5% last quester, as clients deploy capital into decentralized finance protocols. Though total loans grew, the company reduced lending rates for bitcoin citing "lackluster demand." (Genesis and CoinDesk share a parent company.)

– Daniel Kuhn

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Overheard on CoinDesk TV

Sound Bite

"We're trying to invent this bicycle while we're riding it."

– Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo, on the Financial Innovation Caucus looking to educate regulators and legislators on digital assets, on CoinDesk TV's "First Mover."

A message from CoinDesk

CoinDesk Research: Does Bitcoin Have an Energy Problem?

Is Bitcoin bad for the environment? This CoinDesk Research report looks at the data behind the most common critiques and shows that, while Bitcoin uses a lot of energy, the mix is evolving toward renewables. Bitcoin also incentivizes investment in clean energy sources, can convert pollution into value, and redistributes wasted power production. Download the free report.

What others are writing...

Off-Chain Signals

Musk Says Tesla Sold Bitcoin to Prove Liquidity as Cash Alternative (Bloomberg)
Crypto Climate Accord: Bitcoin greenwashing or game-changer? (Al Jazeera)
Brian Brooks plots ambitious path to take Binance.US out of the Asian crypto giant's shadow (The Block)
Opera Browser Integrates Unstoppable Domains (Decrypt)

- D.K.

A message from NEAR Protocol

NEAR is an open source platform that accelerates the development of decentralized applications. Developers can overcome high fees and slow speeds by building on NEAR's fast, scalable and low-cost blockchain protocol. With a suite of climate neutral solutions, creators and communities can now thrive. NEAR.org - Infrastructure for innovation.

Introducing Unlocked 101 at Consensus by CoinDesk 2021

New to crypto? Here's a crash course. Unlocked 101 is a free educational series of sessions designed to give you the tools to navigate crypto. Sessions will be hosted May 4–20 to prepare you for Consensus by CoinDesk 2021, our virtual big-tent event.

Introducing CoinDesk Indexes

TradeBlock, the leader in providing crypto asset indexes to financial institutions, will now assume the CoinDesk name.

Introducing CoinDesk Indexes: the industry standard for institutional-grade digital currency price references with billions of dollars in monthly trading volume quoted against them.

Underlying new brand names, TradeBlock's index methodology will continue to adhere to the standards of integrity and reliability that have always differentiated its indexes.

Read more about CoinDesk Indexes, the industry standard in crypto benchmarks.

Putting the news in perspective

The Takeaway

The Mental Health Closet

Reinventing money, the financial system, the internet and the enterprise is fun. But sometimes the workload can take its toll.

I was reminded of this yesterday reading Dan Kuhn's interview with Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, a hot Ethereum scaling startup. Nailwal, who lives in India, described a grueling routine of 16 or 17 calls a day, little sleep and no vacation, even for Christmas.

"My life is always spending. Personal life gets affected a lot. And this is not only for me," he said. "Everybody who is doing anything significant in crypto is going through the same situation."

To crypto-outsiders, the response to this may be some version of cry me a river. Polygon's own token, matic, is up 35-fold this year. And anyone who invested in bitcoin more than a few weeks ago is sitting on impressive gains, perhaps even life-changing fortunes. A little hard work is worth it.

But there are reasons why working in crypto comes with special strains and why Nailwal says that "there will be studies on mental health on the people in crypto." The market is 24/7. Volatility is baked in. And any successful project has lots of stakeholders who need looking after. That's the nature of these decentralized, commonly owned, commonly governed initiatives.

Nailwal spoke of running a startup that faces the scrutiny of a listed company.

"When you are building your own token startup, basically you are a public company, you have similar obligations as being a public company because everything is on view. Plus, you have to handle all of the pressure of being a startup. You have to build your product, find your customers and all that. The pressure is multifold."

"You are working in the finance industry and you are working in a startup – both are extremely excruciating things, but together in one job. It has been very taxing. On a personal level and professional level, I feel like I have aged a lot."

Marc Hochstein and I recently interviewed a psychotherapist in Southern California about crypto's hidden mental health issues (full write-up coming soon). She has several clients who are at their wits' end, unable to cope with the dual challenges of pandemic work and an always-on industry.

"This is really different. If you are in middle management in any other industry, you're not experiencing so many highs and lows. It's very intensely stressful yet exciting. But because it's new, we still don't even know what the impacts of mental health are on for those individuals in this industry."

There's a lot more to say here. But, for now, the takeaways are these:

One, look after yourself. Jeff Wilser wrote an easy 15-point guide to staying sane while trading crypto here.

Two, look out for your work colleagues. They may be less happy than their emojis and Slack comments suggest.

And three, if you are a manager, think about ways to offer extra help and time off, and even in-house counseling. The therapist we spoke to said the crypto industry can lead the way on mental health in the workplace, ending stigmas for good.

"In my opinion, I think the whole stigma to mental health is kind of disappearing," she said. "And I'm hoping that, with the new crypto industry, mental health can grow with it."

– Ben Schiller

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