Vitalik's Predictions 🔮

In Today's Email:

Bored Apes are Pumping
Vitalik Updates His Predictions
The Airbnb Founder Trolls Web3

Bored Apes Are Pumping 📈

NFTs overall are off to a scorching hot start in 2022 ($400m+ in volume already 🤑)

And Bored Apes are the biggest winner:

They are onboarding celebs like crazy (Dave Chapelle & Eminem both bought one in the last 72 hours!)
Mutant apes are surging in price (5x in last month)

The most valuable project in the NFT world has been Cryptopunks for the past few years. But Apes just surpassed Punks for the first time ever, and are the new king of the hill.

Chart Source: The Block

I was eyeballing mutant apes a month ago at the ~6 ETH price but didn’t pull the trigger.

Now, the price has run up to 16 ETH (~$60k USD).

Brb, going to go light myself on fire.

Vitalik Updates His Predictions

Vitalik (co-creator of Ethereum, aka my lanky lord and saviour) did an awesome twitter thread checking in on his old predictions dating back from 2013. Very cool to see him reflect on what he was right/wrong about.

Here’s a rapid-fire summary of his predictions:

1 - He thought Bitcoin & stablecoins would help people in countries like Iran & Argentina (2013)

Today: Mostly true! He was just in argentina last week, and says crypto adoption is high and stablecoin usage is very high (specifically, USDT)

2 - He thought that governments couldn’t really regulate Bitcoin. Yes you can regulate exchanges, but once you have bitcoin you’re in the clear

Today: Changed his views. He thinks if governments try to regulate it heavily, bitcoin can “survive” but not “thrive”

3 - He thought Ethereum would upgrade to “Proof of Stake” in ~12 months

Today: So wrong it’s laughable. We’re 6 years later and still not released haha. He says he underestimated the complexity, and also they were trying to do too much. Now much simpler and more realistic.

4 - He thought Bitcoin Cash was a good idea and supported it

Today: Bitcoin Cash is mostly a failure. He learned that when a group forms around a rebellion, even if they have a good cause, it will have a hard time long term because they value bravery over competence and are united around resistance rather than a coherent way forward.

5 - He thought someone should build a simple swapping interface for tokens

Today: Clearly this was right and that someone was Hayden Adams. Uniswap generates over $5m per day and has $8B+ total value locked on the network.

6- He predicted several use cases in the original Ethereum whitepaper (tokens, stablecoins, DAOs, domain name systems, etc)

Today: A lot was correct (basically predicted “defi”) but he totally missed NFTs, and some things (like decentralized file storage) haven’t taken off yet.

The Airbnb & Box Founders Troll Web3

Hmmm...They sound a little defensive to me.

Historically, winners/incumbents are slow to understand/believe in new games.

On one hand, they make some good points. Users don’t really care about what database you use. They care about what benefits they get. And tokens aren’t some magic cure all for usage.

But still - they seem a little salty, especially considering that if they were 21 years old again, I bet they would be building something in web3.