Curing My 50 Open Tab Addiction

I have a confession to make:

I can’t keep up with all or even most of the news in crypto. Not only is this more or less my full-time job, but I’ve been doing it for almost seven years (so I understand most context around stories), AND I have the benefit of leveraging a 15 person team to help me filter through daily news, data, and social chatter.

Still, keeping up has become an impossibility. And I’ve heard the same sentiment from other obsessive crypto learners as well.

It seems irrational, then, to expect anyone to have a firm grasp of history and context surrounding all the ongoing ecosystem developments when they tweet something uninformed or ignorant of developments. It strikes me that there are still few trusted aggregators and educators. Lots of information, but no good triaging systems. (Air traffic control for precious attention.)

I wanted to try a very small experiment today, and hope you’ll tell me if you like it / it resonates. If it falls flat, it will be back to regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. If you have systems that work for you, please share them as well!

I’m calling my personal system, Operation Kill 50 - because I’m a bit tired and unoriginal today, and because it sounds more awesome than "the stop getting distracted, loser” system. OK50 is an attempt to force myself to close 50 open tabs each morning, tag / categorize the resources, and temper my browser tab addiction, which keeps swelling in size because I’m a hoarder of crypto content.

As an experiment, I added everything I read / skimmed in 30 min this morning, and dropped annotated points I think seemed meaningful.

If you like this format, then I’ll gradually get to a daily curation system with new content (vs. clearing my old queue. Iterative feedback is welcome)

My scoring system:

0 - Clickbait / trash
1 - Headline is all you need
2 - Add to the quick search library
3 - Good for your situational awareness
4 - I’ve been meaning to study more, add to the deep dive queue
5 - Drop everything, and read now.

A - Messari
B - The Block
C - CoinDesk
D - Decrypt
CT - Twitter Thread

OK50 - Beta Test

Crypto
Nexus Mutual #NXM (4) I LOVE the concept of mutualized insurance, and Nexus uses a continuous token model (aka bonding curve) that makes sense for tough to mutualize risk pools, and seems to be gaining steam as a crypto economics trend. I’ve been meaning to test the product, and write more about it. Who’s done the best analysis of the system so far?

Binance New Year Message #BNB (3) "It is our fundamental belief that fundraising on the blockchain is a killer app...(doubling down on vision)…"All projects apply to Binance first, giving Binance effectively the right of first refusal.” (Cites a Blockchain Capital graph which shows nearly all IEO gains go to Launchpad users)..."We hope to fully open-source Binance Chain and Binance DEX in 2020”…(waxes poetic about decentralization)

River - A bitcoin Financial Institution #BTC (3) I’d love to have Alex Leishman on the podcast if anyone wants to connect me for an intro. "River’s goal is to offer a “brokerage-like experience” (Schwab) with Bitcoin’s latest bleeding-edge technologies: [SegWit, Lightning, Taproot, etc]…River also provides financial tools missing from most mainstream exchanges, like performance reporting, which offers clients insights into unrealized and realized gains and losses for a taxation period (tax optimization!)

Why 2020 Will Be a Big Year for Crypto - B (2) Added because the author is Peter Johnson from Jump Capital, one of the most important global trading firms. Key insight: "I do not expect massive inflows from [institutions this year]. Portfolio manager incentives are not conducive to encouraging large crypto allocations as crypto is a non-consensus investment...If a portfolio manager gets behind investing in crypto, and it does well, they probably get a nice bonus (but not the types of payouts available to those investing their own money or 2/20 hedge funds); however, if it does poorly (or they lose money in an operational issue like an exchange hack), they get fired for losing client funds."

ETH 2.0 Goals - CT # ETH (2) Links to resources on ELI5 design goals.

Wave Financial / Tezos State of Digital Securities #TokenizedSecurities (2) “Digital Securities are regulated securities with a digital token wrapper”…”Underlying shift from issuance to tokenization” for savings on servicing, audit risk and boost to liquidity. Good market maps of issuers, issuance platforms, and exchanges/custodians; global regulatory overview, and early case studies.

General
19 Business Moats That Shaped Massive Companies - (2) Good case studies for entrepreneurs.

Rise of Right Wing Populism - QZ (2) list of world leaders who (might be) labeled populists/nationalists.

How Tim Cook Stared Down the FBI on Privacy (3) In depth look at how Apple resisted the FBI’s demands to create a backdoor to its iPhone encryption. Important if you believe Apple is a critical piece of crypto infrastructure, and needs to hold its ground on privacy. And important if you’re thinking about the PR investments needed to win friends and influence people on scary sounding things like privacy coins, and unstoppable smart contracts.

This won’t replace the analyses we do on the site (and below the fold), but could be an additional feed to incorporate in the future.

If nothing else, it will quietly cure my addiction.

-TBI

Let us know what you loved about the report, what may be missing, or share any other feedback by filling out this short form. All responses are subject to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.