Bits + Bips: Why the Drift Hack Is an ‘Embarrassment for the Industry’

Key Takeaways

• •

  A crypto Buffett indicator measures network health - by dividing market cap by trailing one-year fees, investors can treat smart contract platforms like decentralized micro-economies to determine relative value.

  “And if you sum up the trailing one-year fees, that's an equivalent of GDP, right? GDP is the total output of all goods and services produced... and then you can look at the market cap of ether at any time and see, is this expensive or cheap relative to where the rest historically has been?”

• •

  The industry is plagued by billion-dollar zombie protocols - many legacy tokens maintain massive market caps despite having almost no users or fee generation because crypto protocols rarely die even after losing relevance.

  “The biggest issue with the crypto market is like, protocols don't die. They're always just kind of like floating around forever, even if no one uses them.”

• •

  Tokenization provides an escape from speculative cycles - while network fees are currently tied to volatile trading and staking, moving real-world assets on-chain allows blockchains to generate revenue independent of the broader crypto market's price action.

  “It's a speculative market. Things are going well, you want to be in there trading different cryptocurrencies. But tokenization is the interesting thing because it changes that... it shouldn't matter about what the rest of the crypto market is doing.”

Episode Description

The crew gather to discuss how nation-state bad actors like North Korea and Iran are using crypto in two very different wars – with USDC and USDT figuring prominently in both. They also discuss the crisis in token fundamentals, and Chris’s new gig as CEO of 250 Digital. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices