From memecoins to accusations of Polymarket manipulation to Michael Saylor’s bizarre custodial comments, last week in crypto was certainly exciting.
This editorial is from last week’s edition of the Week in Review newsletter. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter to get the editorial the second it’s finished.
Memecoins, Market Manipulation, and More
This week I saw yet another sign of the power of memecoins. I listened to several podcasts with many serious traders and builders talk in excited tones about this or that memecoin. It appears memecoins have the ability to make children out of even the most serious of us. Add that to the growing list of valuable memecoin attributes. In Token Narratives, among other things, we speak about two memecoins in the zeitgeist at the moment – FARTCOIN and KWIF. Hilarious and fascinating.
There was a decent amount of Polymarket pushback this week, most likely due to the prediction market showing Trump far ahead compared to polls. A group of skeptics, many from the mainstream media, claim there is market manipulation – the odds are being skewed by deep-pockets with agendas. My response: tell me you don’t understand how an open market works without telling me you don’t understand. Anyone is free to take the other side of those bets. If you think people are using millions of dollars trying to influence an outcome instead of making predictions, you should take the other side!
The second criticism of Polymarket is more legitimate. Polymarket proudly publishes its trading volume while obscuring open interest (OI). It presumably does so to give the perception of robust market depth, while the OI would indicate a relatively shallower market. I used, ‘would,’ because Polymarket doesn’t even reveal OI, another indicator that they are purposefully playing up one metric and hiding the other, more important one. Still, Polymarket has by far the most liquid U.S. presidential election betting market, but the proudly advertised 2 billion in volume (assuming all of that volume is legit, a stretch in crypto) in no way equates to market depth, which is likely more than an order of magnitude lower at around 100 to 200 million USD.
There were two papers released this week from central bank-adjacent people criticizing Bitcoin. The first by ECB lifers claimed Bitcoin was a wealth redistribution mechanism that has exacerbated wealth inequality. The second, by the U.S. Minneapolis Fed, argues that prohibiting bitcoin or imposing specific taxes could help governments implement permanent primary deficits effectively. Which one is crazier: the first, seeming to argue against capitalism, or the second, implicitly advocating for the government to forever get deeper into debt?
Speaking of crazy, Michael Saylor had quite a week. Early in the week he sparked a controversy over comments made during an interview in which he suggested custodial bitcoin was safer from government seizure and insulted those who disagreed as “paranoid crypto anarchists.” The backlash was universal, even getting happy-go-lucky Vitalik to call Saylor’s comments “batshit insane.” In an Op-Ed, I disagreed with Vitalik, pointing out that Saylor’s comments have been consistently self-serving for years, and this latest was no different.
Finally, some bullish news that probably didn’t get enough attention. Payments company Stripe has acquired stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion, marking the largest acquisition in the crypto industry to date. Aside from the obvious, this deal is significant because, as a Silicon Valley darling, Stripe’s actions legitimize crypto to all those Silicon Valley funds and companies who are still on the fence about it.
