BlockNovum — January 2019 Update
Remo here from BlockNovum. I hope all of you had a great start into 2019!
I wanted to give you a brief overview about any relevant news around BlockNovum and a short summary of what happened in the crypto markets in January. Furthermore, I’ll share my favorite crypto & investing articles that I’ve read in the last few weeks and I’ll highlight some interesting projects that I came across.
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Let’s get started.
📈BlockNovum & Market Updates
BlockNovum:
In addition to keeping up with all the crypto & blockchain related news, some of BlockNovum’s other activity highlights of the last few weeks include:
- I was invited to attend Protos Asset Management’s Blockchain Summit at the Dolder Grand in Zurich on January 16th. It was a very high-quality event that featured interesting conversations about future trends within crypto. The list of outstanding guests and panelists included names such as Ryan Zurrer (Web3 Foundation, ex-Polychain Capital), Prof. Dr. Philipp Sandner (Frankfurt School Blockchain Center), Dr. Boaz Barack (Numbrs, ex-UBS & CS), Dr. Christian Nagel (Earlybird VC), Fabian Vogelsteller (Ethereum / Lukso), among others.
Security tokens and investment regulations were some of the most trending topics for 2019. - BlockNovum was selected to beta test a high-profile tokenized securities exchange platform. Very exciting stuff. More information to follow.
- I had several interesting discussions with a few banks & corporates in Switzerland/Liechtenstein regarding BlockNovum’s research services and potential future collaborations.
As a result, I might be able to announce some exciting news soon.
Markets:
Crypto markets have been mainly flat for the past month with a slight downward trend nevertheless.
The last-minute postponed Ethereum hard-fork “Constantinople” scheduled for Jan 16th due to security concerns (revealed by Zurich-based blockchain security firm “ChainSecurity”) was one of the biggest news in the past month. The hard fork is now expected around February 27th.
Other handpicked news were:
- The withdrawal and re-submission of VanEck-SolidX Bitcoin ETF in the US.
- Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX reportedly lost $190 million of customers’ money after founder dies.
- Aragon’s “Aracon” conference in Berlin attracted a large audience of over 500+ attendees and was one of the highest quality blockchain conferences lately, which shows that development activity and the enthusiasm in the crypto community is far from over.
- Blockchain project Polkadot (interconnectivity and interoperability of different blockchains and Web 3 technology layers) is seeking to raise up to $60 million through a second token sale later this year.
🔍Recommended Reads
Find below a selection of articles that I recommend to read. Since we’re early in the year a common theme of these articles are predictions and trends for 2019:
- A Crypto Thesis: Open Financial Systems — Pantera Capital
In-depth description of Pantera Capital’s crypto investment thesis for 2019 and beyond. I highly recommend to read this one. It gives a great argument why both tokens and equity are viable investments andwhy strong fundamentals are key in evaluating projects. - Crypto Theses for 2019: My thoughts on the state of crypto in 2018 and where we’re headed — Arjun Balaji
A variety of theses for the state of crypto in 2019 and the major upcoming developments of selected projects/networks. In my opinion this is a great summary of the trends for 2019 and stuff you should look out for. Since this reflects Arjun’s personal opinion, I definitely don’t agree with all of his predictions, but they are thought provoking nevertheless. - What Is Going To Happen In 2019 — Fred Wilson (UVC)
Well-written and personal view of Fred Wilson about developments in economics, politics, startups, and crypto for 2019 (with a major US focus). While he is mainly pessimistic for 2019, he also expects to see meaningful progress and consumer adoption in the areas of stablecoins, NFT/cryptoassets/cryptogaming, and opportunities in the developing world. He is also optimistic that we will see some big name projects ship their product (e.g. Filecoin) and crucial system improvements for the Ethereum open source ecosystem. - Here comes the New Year! Please stop irresponsibly predicting cryptocurrency prices! — Larry Cermak
Worthwhile and entertaining read about all the crypto personas & public figures who loudly announced their cryptoasset price predictions over the last few years. This irresponsible behavior was mainly done for personal attention growth hacking and not based on any thorough analysis or financial models. This (shorter) article ends with an overview of some of these predictions and highlights how wrong most of them were. - Blockchain can wrest the Internet from Corporation’s grasp — Chris Dixon (Wired Magazine)
Short article about the importance of blockchain for the Web 3.0 and how it can help shift the power away from corporations towards community-owned and-operated software / protocols. - Why Bitcoin Matters for Freedom — Time Magazine
A well-written piece by the Time magazine about the importance of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in relation to authoritarian governments (Venezuela, Syria..) and how it can help the people affected by it.
💡Interesting New Projects
Here a few cool projects I came across and that might be worth keeping in mind:
- Veil
Consumer grade front-end for Augur that is now ready for mainnet. I’m personally very interested in the real-world application of prediction markets and oracles, so this is great to see. Furthermore,since UX is often a key obstacle in the way for consumer-adoption, this is a big step forward. - Another noteworthy project is Guesser, which is also another Augur front-end that just launched for a closed round of 1'000 users.
- Staked
A “staking as a service” (I guess another type of “SaaS” ;) ) provider for institutional investors. This US-based service allows staking of selected cryptoassets, such as Decred, Tezos, or Dash. - Ledgy
Not a crypto project per se, but this is a very promising Swiss Fintech startup that I recently came across. Ledgy offers a SaaS accounting software for equity and ESOPs to startups and private companies. While similar solutions exist in the US, to my knowledge this is a very unique offering for the European marketplace. The impressive founding team consists of recent ETH graduates.
🚀Startup Data Entry
Based on the success of BlockNovum’s public Blockchain Startup Newcomer reports (Part 1 & Part 2), I heard some feedback that early-stage startups not yet listed on the map are interested in a way to let BlockNovum know about them & submit a short description.
As a result, if you are a founder of a new exciting startup (preferably Crypto, but I’m also interested in FinTech, Wearables, E-Commerce, Media, Gaming etc.) and would like BlockNovum to know about you / include you in upcoming research, feel free to send me the following at info@blocknovum.com :
- Name of your startup + website
- Industry
- Short description of the company / your mission
- Funding category (bootstrapped, VC, Token sale etc.)
- Location (where are you based)
I will definitely have a look and include you in BlockNovum’s startup database, where you will also be considered for future research reports.
If the demand is big enough, I might also add a form where projects can automatically fill-in their data on BlockNovum’s website.
🙏 Thanks for your interest.
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Best wishes,
Remo / Founder BlockNovum
About BlockNovum
BlockNovum is a Swiss Blockchain and Cryptoasset investment research & consulting firm. We provide professional assessments, fundamental valuations, and market research reports for the emerging asset class of cryptoassets & blockchain startups.
