Coinbase: Dino in a DeFi World?

Photo by Keenan Constance from Pexels

Coinbase’s imminent stock market debut has been a long time coming. It’s a fortuitous time for a crypto exchange to go public; at US$2 trillion (at time of writing), crypto-assets’ total market capitalisation is at an all-time high. The frothy market makes people trade with abandon, bestowing lucrative transaction revenue and custody fees (c. US$1.8 billion in Q1 2021) to Coinbase. In good times, it’s easy to overlook the risk factors listed on Coinbase’s S-1 filing. “No risk, no reward” is the mantra of the day.

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Decentralised Finance (DeFi): The Current State

London, the hub of traditional finance

This is the second of a multi-part series on decentralised finance (DeFi). DeFi is a blockchain use case that is potentially disruptive to the traditional finance industry. The first part of the series explains what it is and the philosophy behind the movement. A primer on blockchain (including examples of insurance use cases) is available in this paper I co-authored.

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Generation TikTok

Quantum physicist and author, Michio Kaku, writes about the Cave Man Principle in his book, Physics of the Future. He argues that modern humans, despite many advances, still think like our caveman ancestors. Whenever there is a conflict between modern technology and our innate preferences, technology loses out and is not fully adopted. Case in point: remote working (in the pre-pandemic world) did not take off because we prefer interacting with our fellow humans in the flesh.

Corollary to the Cave Man Principle… there will be a premium placed on gossip, social networking, and entertainment.

Michio Kaku, Physics of the Future

With an estimated 800 million monthly active users, TikTok has found the secret sauce that appeals to our primitive caveman brain.

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The Tesla Thesis

I’m not a car guy. When I got the Tesla Model S (with the wife’s permission), it was out of my love for tech, and my genuine belief in the environmental ethos of zero-emission electric cars. The love affair started the moment Elon Musk unveiled the Model X. I fell for the car hook, line and sinker when Elon (yes, we’re on first name basis in a parallel simulated universe) promised autonomous driving capabilities.

The Model X was love at first sight. Alas, a car is a financial liability and the Model X, with the then base price of around £95,000, was the epitome of financial folly. So I settled for a modest Model S with a 75 kWh battery pack.

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