#Web3 Weekly: March 14–20, 2021

Consumers, not institutions, are driving the bitcoin market for now.

Photo by Thought Catalog via Unsplash

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.

The latest headlines about decentralization:

• Consumers are resurgent in the bitcoin market. A new J.P. Morgan analysis shows that retail buying of BTC so far in the first quarter has been outpacing institutional investment. The trend also seems poised to continue as U.S. investors may spend up to $40 billion of their latest stimulus checks on bitcoin, according to a new estimate from Mizuho Securities.
• More crypto exchanges are going public. In the wake of Coinbase’s announced plans to do a traditional initial public offering through Wall Street investment banks, its rivals are apparently scrambling to keep up by alternative means. The Block reports that Kraken is exploring a direct listing of its shares. Meanwhile, eToro announced it will go public by merging with a special-purpose acquisition company.
• A BitMex co-founder surrendered to U.S. authorities. Benjamin Delo traveled to New York from London to face charges that he helped the popular exchange avoid anti-money laundering laws. Delo pleaded not guilty at an arraignment Monday, Bloomberg News reports.
• CoinMarketCap has added a new ICO calendar. Handy!
• Laura Shin has been all over the story of non-fungible tokens. The popular podcaster scored an interview with an art collector who goes by the online handle MetaKovan after he identified himself as the recent buyer of a tokenized work by Beeple for a record $69 million. Shin also did a must-listen episode on the potential environmental impact of the NFT boom.
• China’s Ant Group is racking up blockchain patents. The tech giant founded by Jack Ma retained its number-one ranking in the latest update of the Derwent World Patents Index, which aggregates patents filed for both quantity and quality.
• 2020 was a banner year for cybercrime. The FBI issued its latest Internet Crime Report, which showed that the number of complaints it received about malicious hacking and other online misdeeds jumped 69% in 2020, costing Americans more than $4.1 billion.
• Algorithmic yield farming is now a Thing. Yes, with a capital t.
• Big Macs for 65 cents? Like any hardcore bitcoiner, Saifedean Ammous harbors burning contempt for inflation. No surprise, then, to see him this week retweeting an image of a McDonald’s menu from the 1970s. It’s a powerful but accessible illustration of an otherwise abstract idea for many people.
• A new app will help you fake “technical difficulties” on Zoom. Our brave new world of remote work hasn’t exactly eliminated the old phenomenon of being stuck in unproductive meetings. The problem has just gone remote along with every other aspect of office life during the pandemic. Enter Zoom Escaper, which will purposefully make your audio intolerably “glitchy” to other particiants, highlight the baby “crying” in the background, or create other distractions to necessitate your getting off an unwanted video conference.

That’s it for now. Thanks for spending some time with the newsletter today! A full revision history of it, including earlier drafts, is available here if you’re interested. If you’d like to get updates like this in your inbox every Sunday, please join our email list here.