‘Crypto-historien’ – En 40.000 ords eksklusiv artikel, der både kritiserer og roser sektoren

Bloomberg Businessweek offentliggjorde en 40.000-ord artikel fokuseret på kryptovalutaer, som blev skrevet af Matt Levine, en populær Bloomberg News kolumnist, der dækker finans- og erhvervsemner. Artiklen, som mere ligner en kryptobog, afspejler den mainstream‑status, som kryptobranchens har opnået.

Det er ikke kun en meningsartikel fra Levine, da han blev udpeget af Bloomberg til at dække kryptomarkedet i et eksklusivt stykke. Artiklen er den eneste historie i den aktuelle udgave af Bloomberg Businessweeks magasin, hvilket tilfældigvis er kun anden gang i magasinets 93‑årige historie, at den indeholder en enkelt historie. Levine var også hovedgæst i denne uges Bloomberg Crypto Full Show for at diskutere sin artikel og sine synspunkter på krypto.

Det er interessant at se, hvordan Bloomberg gradvist har omfavnet kryptoverdenen og nu uddanner trade‑fi‑publikummet. Hvis du havde bladret gennem Bloomberg tilbage i 2013, kunne du have læst overskrifter som “Bitcoin Is a High-Tech Dinosaur Soon to Be Extinct.” Bitcoin‑skepticismen holdt indtil 2018, hvor en feature‑historie i en Businessweek‑udgave fortalte os, at “Bitcoin Is Ridiculous. Blockchain Is Dangerous,” med forfatteren, der spottende sagde, at “on the days when Bitcoin crashes, a holiday atmosphere takes over in my corners of the internet.”

Ironisk nok er Bitcoin midtpunktet i den seneste Businessweek‑udgave, og det kan være et positivt signal, der tyder på, at selv de mest ivrige aktører inden for traditionel finans begynder at tage den stadig fremvoksende kryptoverden alvorligt, med både sine fordele og ulemper.

Even though Matt Levine is “in many ways a crypto skeptic,” as he revealed in his interview with Crypto Full Show hosts, he put the crypto industry in a good light, criticizing what he believes raises concerns, and expressing hope that the blockchain industry will solve problems and is here to stay.

What Can You Learn from Bloomberg’s Crypto Story?

A lot of history and layman’s explanation, which is great for crypto novices and those who want to recall how it all started and what it all means. Matt relies on an encyclopedic approach with his story, breaking the crypto lego into pieces for you to understand “where it came from, what it all means, and why it still matters.”

Artiklen forklarer de vigtigste emner som, hvordan Bitcoin startede, hvordan det fungerer, hvad Ethereum er, hvad en smart contract er osv. Den diskuterer også, hvordan kryptobranchens har lånt mange koncepter fra traditionel finans og givet dem sin egen drejning.

Et af hovedtemaerne i essayet relaterer sig til databaser. Grundlæggende handler vores moderne liv om databaser, hvad enten det er jordregistre, bankkonti eller aktieejerskab. Til sidst flytter alle databaser online, og det betyder, at blockchain er klar til at spille en nøglerolle takket være sin decentraliseringsfunktion.

Matt admitted that he didn’t write about crypto as a ‘deeply embedded crypto expert,’ and he was not a ‘true believer’. He bought his first $100 worth of crypto at the moment of writing the article. Nevertheless, as a finance person, he found that “crypto has a pretty well-developed financial system” that has new things to say about old problems.

Bitcoin and Ethereum Still Dominant

Matt Levine focuses very much on the history of the crypto industry, emphasizing Bitcoin and Ethereum. He doesn’t go further by explaining more recent blockchains and their consensus mechanisms, including Solana, Avalanche, or Algorand. Considering the combined market cap of Bitcoin and Ethereum, the focus on the top two is unsurprising, although some crypto fans criticized the article’s silence on more rapid and scalable blockchains.

Nogle Twitter‑brugere foreslog, at Bloomberg‑artiklen havde overset de seneste fremskridt inden for blockchain, især i lyset af den hurtige vækst i decentraliserede finans‑protokoller (DeFi).

https://twitter.com/rujgev/status/1585173576084094976

For Matt, Bitcoin is interesting because people accepted to consider arbitrary digital units as valuable.

“The wild thing about Bitcoin is not that Satoshi invented a particular way for people to send numbers to one another and call them payments. It’s that people accepted the numbers as payments. […] That social fact, that Bitcoin was accepted by many millions of people as having a lot of value, might be the most impressive thing about Bitcoin, much more than the stuff about hashing,” the article reads.

While many touted Bitcoin’s ability to show no correlation to traditional finance and act as a hedge against inflation, Levine said that it does none of it. He stated:

“In practice, it turns out that the price of Bitcoin is pretty correlated with the stock market, especially tech stocks. Bitcoin hasn’t been a particularly effective inflation hedge: Its price rose during years when US inflation was low, and it’s fallen this year as inflation has increased. The right model of crypto prices might be that they go up during broad speculative bubbles when stock prices go up, and then they go down when those bubbles pop. That’s not a particularly appealing story for investors looking to diversify.”

NFTs Can Get Weird, Stablecoins Can Be Unstable

Levine also touched upon non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and stablecoins. With NFTs, things can get weird as the article suggests the technology is not that strong and it doesn’t address IP issues.

“It’s not all that uncommon for the person selling the NFT series not to own the IP rights. Early in the NFT boom, it was common for people to make NFTs “of” the Mona Lisa or the Brooklyn Bridge,” the article says.

Levine goes further by saying that NFTs may not even represent ownership in a binding sense but they represent a ‘feeling’ of ownership, although “this technical silliness makes NFTs more culturally interesting.”

Speaking about stablecoins, the Bloomberg article categorizes them, stressing that algorithmic stablecoins may become unstable if the algorithm is bad. The author mentioned the crash of TerraUSD as an example.

All in all, Bloomberg’s Crypto Story is an extensive article that discusses everything crypto, mentioning Bitcoin, Ethereum, smart contracts, DeFi, NFTs, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), stablecoins, and metaverse, among others.