#Web3 Weekly: Dec. 13–19, 2020
Bitcoin hits new records, the gold market loses a legend, and more
Re-sharing below the latest edition of #Web3 Weekly, my regular newsletter about decentralization. If you’d like to get it in your inbox every Sunday, subscribe here.
Let’s talk “digital gold” and “gold gold.”
Bitcoin, sometimes called “digital gold” because of its finite supply, has been the big story in tech by far lately. It jumped almost 25% for the week and hit several new records, topping $24,000 for the first time on Saturday.
The big catalyst continues to be fresh buying by big Wall Street firms warming to cryptocurrency. The hedge fund One River Asset Management emerged as a new bitcoin whale, having quietly accumulated $600 million of the token already. And it intends to grow its crypto holdings to $1 billion in the New Year.
Meanwhile, Scott Minerd of Guggenheim Investments projected that bitcoin could climb to $400,000. And JPMorgan analysts projected that bitcoin purchases by traditional players like Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. could lead to an additional $600 billion in bitcoin buying as MassMutual’s peers and sovereign investors pile in with copycat allocations over time.
In the world of “gold gold,” the news hasn’t been as sunny lately, with speculation increasing about whether bitcoin might supplant the yellow metal’s traditional role as a safe haven asset. The crypto firm Grayscale Investments, a bitcoin whale in its own right, has even begun airing cheeky TV ads openly trying to woo gold investors away.
There has also been sad personal news as the gold industry mourns the passing of legendary trader George Gero last Monday at 84. As someone who got to know George when I covered the Wall Street Journal’s commodities beat in the early 2000s, I must say this loss is hard to take.
First the nitty-gritty: George recently served as a managing director for Royal Bank of Canada. As a younger man, he helped pioneer exchange-based trading of gold on New York’s Commodity Exchange, handling orders in the trading pits alongside other rising stars, including a certain economics grad student named Alan Greenspan.
George became a longtime board member of New York’s several commodity exchanges, which went through a series of mergers until consolidating recently under the umbrella of Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He helped usher the New York commodity floors through all this change, as well as the recovery from the 9/11 attacks which claimed several members’ lives literally right next door.
Which brings us to the truly important point: As New Yorkers would say, George was a mensch. Plain and simple.
He was a happy ambassador for organizations that frankly often seemed unaware they needed one. (For example, I can vouch firsthand that a competitor once privately likened the management of Comex’s parent the New York Mercantile Exchange to Hamas, only half-jokingly.)
But George was an exception, a genuinely warm-hearted soul in a world with its share of sharks. He was the sort that, when he asked you how you were doing, you knew he actually cared about the answer, every time.
Conversely, as Bloomberg News correctly reported in its excellent obit of him this week, if you asked him the same question, he’d breezily reply: “I can’t complain. No one will listen!”
I’ll miss him sorely. And, as we build this new world of “digital gold,” I hope we’ll remember to emulate the humanity and decency of people like George.
On to the rest of the news:
- CME Group announced plans to list an Ethereum futures contract next year. (The Block) Link: https://tinyurl.com/y9bmk4wm
- Coinbase registered with U.S. regulators to do an initial public offering of stock. (CNBC) Link: https://tinyurl.com/y8ltu74l
- A new crop of U.S. bitcoin miners are springing up, with an eye toward challenging China’s hegemony in mining. Many are based in heartland communities sorely in need of new industries. (Forgune) Link: https://tinyurl.com/yc532nay
- Details are still emerging about a massive hack of the U.S. government by Russia. The breach covered a number of agencies, including the U.S. Treasury and the National Nuclear Security Administration, although it’s as yet unclear exactly what information the attackers harvested. (Fortune) Link: https://tinyurl.com/ybtck5ya
- Apple CEO Tim Cook personally squelched a series about the defunct gossip website Gawker that was in the works for Apple’s streaming service. The move underscores the increasing control that a few Silicon Valley makers have over media. (The New York Times) Link: https://tinyurl.com/y6qj9lkj
- The Salvation Army now accepts contributions of bitcoin and ether. The venerable charity has partnered with crypto giving platform Engiven to offer the new donation options, just in time for the Christmas season. (CoinDesk) Link: https://tinyurl.com/ychrtr35
That’s it for now. Thanks for spending some time with the newsletter today! Best wishes for a healthy and productive week ahead.
— Peter A. McKay
