Clubhouse Crypto: Why Everyone Wants an Invite

Clubhouse Crypto: Why Everyone Wants an Invite

At approximately 1 a.m. ET on Jan. 30, somewhere outside New York City, a CoinDesk reporter came across what could be crypto’s next craze. Or perhaps its latest trial. While searching the annals of Clubhouse, the increasingly popular audio-only app, I stumbled across a dark conspiracy: A group of men masquerading as lizards building a new cryptocurrency.

A lounge of men masquerading as lizards had gathered as tokens teleported from an originating contract into their digital wallets. And here, basking in the light of public display, they discussed how to get the word out. A full-on, unfettered conversation.

“Are we on 4chan yet?” one asked, mentioning the pseudo-anonymous messaging board known as a font of memes and anti-social messages. They weren’t, but things apparently had gone awry anyway.

“What do you mean we got rugged again? Did someone add more liquidity?”

“No, no one even sold yet.”

“Don’t say that in the chat.”

“I’ve screenshotted this chat, so if we get rugged I know it’s one of you guys.”

“I still have more questions.”

“I still have no lizard.”

“Only 666,666 lizard. Few understand this.”

That’s not the type of commentary one would imagine coming from, say, Satoshi Nakamoto when unveiling Bitcoin to the world. But it’s the pinnacle of social performativity that has found a home on Clubhouse.

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Clubhouse is a social media platform open to anyone with an invite and an iPhone. It has become the place to be for tech moguls and, more and more, crypto tastemakers looking to chat. Elon Musk pops in from time to time to talk about bitcoin and dogecoin, while other crypto luminaries including Meltem Demirors, Caitlin Long and Neeraj Agrawal appear more regularly.

Like any social media platform, Clubhouse is what you make of it. There’s room enough for genuine discussion alongside scammers and multi-level marketing schemes. Some see it as the next vector for crypto adoption, which could be true; others as a way to replace some of the socialization missing during the pandemic age. It can get pretty weird, pretty quick.

None know this better than Arya Bahmanyar, better known by his alias CoinDaddy, and his coterie of technologists and artists building “Lizard ETH.” Though Bahmanyar would reject being called a Lizard “leader” – there are no “devs,” he said – he was the figure to answer for the group, when a reporter came sniffing around.

In a message he pinned to the group’s public Telegram channel, Bahmanyar said Lizard is a “meme art project” and a “statement on the absurdity of DeFi and the current state of Ethereum.” It has no prescribed value or use, and anyone can claim LZRD for free (except for Ethereum gas fees).

Its main utility, in fact, seems to be as an icon around which a group of like-minded friends can talk and s**tpost. “It is a project of friendship,” Vincent Terracciano, a member of the LZRD Telegram channel, told CoinDesk repeatedly.

In crypto’s decade-long run, the distinction between memes and this novel form of money has become difficult to parse. In 2013, people made sense of bitcoin by calling it “magic internet money.” In 2017, lambos were a shared desire of the nouveau riche. This summer saw the rise of yield farms, where “DeFi degens” would plow ETH into Yams, Sushi and Pickles.

CoinDesk Chief Content Officer Michael Casey went as far as saying money itself has always been a meme. So it makes sense to talk about the “internet’s native money” in terms of a language born on the web. Further, one could expect that anywhere a meme could thrive, crypto would too.

Crypto club

Like all good and decent technologies, Clubhouse is flattening hierarchies among users and providing a space for anyone to be heard – literally. That may sound odd to say about a company that has thrived on hype around its exclusivity – you have to be invited to the club, for now – but the app’s appeal is more than just FOMO or bragging rights.

“It’s not just a phone call,” Steven McKie, a founding partner at the crypto-focused venture firm Amentum Capital, said over Zoom. “Anyone can randomly pop in and out, so everyone maintains this modicum of professionalism by default. It really does feel like a good episode of [National Public Radio] sometimes.”

Others have compared the experience to tuning into a podcast, going to a conference or hanging out at a coffee house. This clubby vibe, bordering on yuppie professionalism, hasn’t been lost as the app grows. December’s 600,000 users has surged to six million. Andreessen Horowitz, which invested $10 million in May, reinvested in January at a $1 billion valuation.

“Everybody loves podcasts in the crypto space. What better than an ephemeral podcast where you just had to be there,” McKie said. “Especially during COVID this past year, we’ve just been glued to our phones, reading things on Twitter, Slack and Telegram. It’s just exhausting.” To the extent that Clubhouse offers something new, it’s by making it easier to engage empathetically with other people, McKie said.

Apart from semi-private lizard lounges, this reporter has tuned in for guitar jams and listened to lawyers debating Twitter bans, all in service of the job. There’s always at least five channels dedicated to self-help and often at least one meta-room focused on Clubhouse moderation and etiquette.

And crypto-specific rooms? There’s investment advice for newbies. Chats about the granularities of bitcoin’s source code. CoinDesk has been experimenting with running rooms focused on news events. Both the number of crypto groups and their relative size are growing along with Clubhouse and CoinMarketCap’s worth.

A club called “Bitcoin” had just over 12,000 followers on Jan. 15. Less than a month later it’s approaching 20,000. While that particular group, which hosts the Weekly Bitcoin Meetup, is led by the closest thing crypto has to public figures – including Brekkie von Bitcoin, Dan Held, Marty Bent, Amanda Fab, Nic Carter, among others – that’s not the case across the board.

Many of the most prominent voices on Crypto Clubhouse are relative unknowns on the “it’s always Blockchain Week somewhere” conference circuit. Few have Twitter clout.

Arya Bahmanyar, aka CoinDaddy (Arya Bahmanyar/YouTube)

“I’ve been educating people on bitcoin since 2013. There’s been nothing like Clubhouse so far,” Lamar Wilson, a crypto startup founder and influencer, told CoinDesk in a video interview.

Wilson is far from unknown among early bitcoin adopters, though he isn’t a name often in the news. He founded Pheeva wallet, an early backdoor to get bitcoin wallets on iPhones (before that portal was slammed shut) and runs the Koinda Facebook group, which boasts about 25,000 followers.

He also runs the Black Bitcoin Billionaires group on Clubhouse, which has grown past 17,000 followers in under two months. The group holds themed discussions on a daily and weekly basis, frequently moderated by Najah Roberts, chief visionary officer of an over-the-counter desk called Crypto Blockchain Plug. They both put in at least four hours a day running rooms or popping into others.

Crypto Virgin Hours is probably the best-known chat room. It attracts approximately 200 participants every afternoon, offering a chance for the interested but unanointed to ask basic questions about wallets and coins.

“Our mission is to onboard the world onto bitcoin,” Wilson said. “People always ask if I have to be Black to be in the group. No – It’s called that just to say it’s run by Black people, but everyone is welcome.” To that end, Black Bitcoin Billionaires partnered with Cash App to get one million satoshis in Black hands during February.

Wilson considers bitcoin to be a tool for Black people to accumulate wealth to pass to the next generation. “Bitcoin is a great equalizer. It’s an asset anyone can have access to without worrying that anyone can take it from you,” he said.

“Clubhouse is the first big social media application that Black people have been an early majority on,” Wilson said. “In every room that you’re in, it’s at least 50% Black. I think it’s because this is what we do as Black people. We go to barber shops, we go to beauty salons and talk. It fits the African American culture.”

The DOGE house

On a day I tuned in, Roberts was fielding a lot of questions about dogecoin, generally steering people away from the meme currency. “It has no purpose, it’s a parody coin. I can’t explain it,” she said, with a laugh. “I have some for fun. But I don’t even know what exchange mine is on. I’ve had it since 2017.”

Although she called it a “pump and dump,” Roberts didn’t put investors off, telling them, “If you made money, be comfortable with your profits.”

While it’d be a mistake to say Clubhouse is a haven of sound investment advice, it seems less scammy than the bowels of Telegram or Discord. In part, that’s from the efforts of people like Roberts, Wilson and others including Cory Klippsten, founder of SwanBitcoin.

If you spend any amount of time on the crypto side of Clubhouse, you’re bound to bump into a couple of people with “SwanBitcoin” in their usernames, the name of the bitcoin startup for which they work. They’re not there to shill their app necessarily, but usually trying to educate users on the good word of bitcoin.

Klippsten joined the app in December and immediately got to work bringing others like him aboard. First he brought his colleagues, then his friends, before ultimately spinning up a Telegram chat to “hack” a way to share invites. (Clubhouse gives out invites to each new person who joins, and additional invites for those most active on the app.) He estimates this scheme brought in more than 1,000 bitcoin proselytizers.

“Now, basically two-thirds of Bitcoin Twitter is on there,” he told me over Zoom. “The purpose is to make sure, if the word ‘bitcoin’ is used, there’s a bitcoiner there in the conversation to explain reality.” This isn’t to say Klippsten is a “toxic maximalist,” an epithet used to describe people who still think of Ethereum as an alt-coin project.

“That’s what’s great about Clubhouse, you’re talking to real humans. It’s not the same as 280 characters on Twitter, where you fire something off and you’re done,” he said. He recalled one room where someone started “going off” on Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, which was quickly moderated.

“Even if you disagree with some things he’s done – I disagree with some things Cash App has done – that’s inappropriate when you’re doing it on audio,” he said.

That said, the self-moderation of Clubhouse can only go so far. Like other social platforms, there have been numerous reports of misogynist, racism, anti-Semitism and outright bullying. Clubhouse’s founders, who declined to be interviewed, has largely been silent on such issues so far.

“You know, the system isn’t perfect, but it’s a beta platform that’s growing. I do think that there are way more pockets of positivity than negativity,” Bomani X, a pseudonymous artist and former face of the app, told CoinDesk.

Bomani said one of the biggest draws has been the connections he made in the crypto community. He works as a digital strategist for musicians such as Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne, and chatting on Clubhouse has gotten him to think about how crypto could expand artists’ rights over their own music.

Nothing is in the works right now, but he’s thinking about how blockchain can refigure broken payment models for artists and create new opportunities for fan engagement. “I definitely would love to see what the music-crypto space has to offer, especially as a creator myself,” Bomani said.

Meanwhile, Ayra Bahmanyar said Lizard “is a completely neutral canvas everyone who feels they want to can paint on.”

Bitcoin Hits $1 Trillion Value as Crypto Jump Tops Other Assets

TipRanks

For an individual investor to beat the market, you need an edge. Investing strategies come in different forms and you can rely on several factors to achieve the end goal of strong returns. Be it following analyst ratings, upcoming catalysts or recognizing the latest market moving trends. There is another option: following the signal from those in the know – the corporate insiders. These are the company officers whose positions give them both access to frequently privileged information on business plans and finances and the experience necessary to translate that into smart stock trades. And better yet – they are not wholly free actors. Being responsible to shareholders and Boards of Directors for company profits, these insiders cannot use their inside knowledge for selfish purposes. Which means that following their stock trades, especially of their own companies, can be a viable investment strategy. Fortunately, federal regulations require that the insiders make their inside trades public – to keep the playing field level. To make that search easier, the TipRanks Insiders’ Hot Stocks tool gets the footwork started – identifying stocks that have seen informative moves by insiders, highlighting several common strategies used by the insiders, and collecting the data all in one place. We’ve picked three stocks with recent informative buys to show how the data works for you. Calix, Inc. (CALX) The first stock we’re looking at is Calix, a cloud computing tech company. Calix follows a subscription model, offering cloud software, systems, platforms, services, and solutions to the communications industry. Calix’s products give the customers real-time data and data insights into their end-users, allowing them to more efficiently monetize their business and customer interactions. Calix, like many high-tech software platform companies, offers a system that can streamline operations – a vital advantage in today’s expanding remote work climate. The company’s revenues reflect the growth-oriented environment: the top line showed year-over-year growth in each quarter of 2020, with the most recent, Q4, coming in at $170 million being the best of the past two years. EPS, at 37 cents, was up 15% from Q3, and was positive for the second quarter in a row – a feat the company had been unable to achieve over the past two years. With a background like that, it’s no wonder that this stock is seeing insider buying. The most recent purchase is from Board member Donald Listwin, who bought up 20,000 shares, shelling out almost $715,000. 5-star analyst Paul Silverstein, of Cowen, notes that Calix has adopted an age-old strategy for beating the forecasts: “4Q20 fuels our view that near- and long-term earnings power and cash flow continue to be significantly greater than what Street has modeled… we respectfully note that CALX has established a clear pattern of appropriately and admirably taking a highly conservative stance as to risk assessment and, concomitantly, under-promising and over-delivering.” Silverstein clearly likes Calix’s approach, and he rates the stock an Outperform (i.e. Buy). On top of this, the analyst gives the stock a $45 price target, which implies a one-year upside of 23%. (To watch Silverstein’s track record, click here) What does the rest of the Street think? Looking at the consensus breakdown, opinions from other analysts are more spread out. 3 Buys and 2 Holds add up to a Moderate Buy consensus. In addition, the $37.40 average price target indicates a modest upside from current levels. (See CALX stock analysis on TipRanks) DXC Technology Company (DXC) Founded in 2017, in part as a spin-off from Hewlett Packard Enterprises, DXC is a leader in the business-to-business (B2B) IT field. The company’s products allow global companies to run their critical systems and ops efficiently, with security and scalability at a variety of levels. DXC’s enterprise tech enhances performance and competitiveness, and therefore the customer experience. The company has been seeing a dropoff in revenues over the past two years. It saw $19.5 billion in revenues for calendar year 2020, but is on track come in at ~$18 billion for fiscal 2021. The most recent quarter reported, fiscal 3Q21, showed $4.29 billion at the top line, falling 14.6% year over year. However, earnings, at $4.29, were far stronger than the 80-cent and 96-cent losses reported in the previous two quarters. Despite the falling revenues, the company has maintained its dividend, paying out 21 cents per common share over the past year, for a current yield of 3.2%. Looking at the recent insider trades, we see that Board member Raul Fernandez made two purchases this month, buying up 11,443. Fernandez paid nearly $300,00 for the new shares. In a comprehensive review of DXC, RBC analyst Daniel Perlin, rated 5-stars at TipRanks, writes: “We believe that FQ3/21’s results provided proof points that DXC’s transformation is progressing. In terms of customer focus, we note that revenue in the quarter increased 3.1% q/q and 1.7%… the second quarter in a row of sequential improvement…” Perlin went on to list several reasons for his bullish thesis: “1) management succeeding on its strategic plan and achieving its FY22 targets; 2) DXC evolving into an at-scale digital / new technology player, which should help offset declines in traditional solutions; and 3) valuation is attractive relative to peers, especially given potential upside to synergy targets.” Perlin uses these comments to support an Outperform (i.e. Buy) rating on DXC, and a $38 price target that indicates room for a robust 46% upside in the next 12 months. (To watch Perlin’s track record, click here) The Wall Street analysts are taking a range of views on this stock, as shown by the 10 recent reviews – which include 4 Buys and 6 Holds. Added up, it comes out to a Moderate Buy analyst consensus rating. The average price target, at $31, implies a 19% one-year upside from the current trading price of $26.06. (See DXC stock analysis on TipRanks) Northern Oil and Gas (NOG) Last but not least is Northern Oil and Gas, a highly localized hydrocarbon explorer, with assets in the states of Montana and North Dakota, specifically, the Williston Basin. NOG owns a large acreage footprint in the region, holding title to the lands on which developers will drill and complete oil and gas wells. This year, NOG has made two moves to increase its operating capital. The second move was announced on February 8 – an offering of senior notes at 8.125%, due in 2028. Proceeds are to be used to repay various outstanding debts and interest obligations, and then to help fund acquisition of new natural gas assets. The new land acquisitions targeted are in the Appalachian region, and will mark a true expansion for Northern Oil and Gas. The first capital move, however, is more interesting for this current article. On February 4, the company announced that it was putting 12.5 million shares of common stock on the market, at a price of $9.75 per share. Capital raised will be used first to fund the Appalachian Basin land buy, and then to repay debt and fund general operations – these are standard conditions on this type of capital drive. Company Board member Stuart Lasher bought 25,000 shares of NOG just a few days after the public stock offering was announced. The recent bloc of shares was picked up for $243,750. RBC’s Scott Hanold is clearly bullish on this company’s expansion to a new region, writing, “NOG’s Appalachian acquisition was strategic by accelerating leverage reduction, balance sheet clean-up, and diversifying its asset and commodity footprints. The move into the Marcellus gas play underpins management’s aptitude to focus on generating the best economic returns…” Hanold rates NOG an Outperform (i.e. Buy), and his $15 price target suggests the stock has room for 37% growth this year. (To watch Hanold’s track record, click here) With 4 recent reviews, all Buys, the Strong Buy analyst consensus rating here is unanimous. Northern’s shares are priced at $10.99 and they have an average price target of $14.75, indicating that the stock has a 34% one-year upside potential. (See NOG stock analysis on TipRanks) To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks’ Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks’ equity insights. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.

Ban talks fail to deter investors, crypto bourses see up to 5x jump in new users

A potential ban on cryptocurrencies has failed to dent investor interest in digital currencies as some of the leading crypto exchanges in India have witnessed up to five times jump in new users during February. According to chief executive officers at some of the leading bourses, the recent sharp rally in bitcoin and endorsement by Tesla Inc chief Elon Musk are behind more-than-usual number subscriber additions on their platforms.

CoinSwitch Kuber, which had launched its India-exclusive crypto platform in June 2020, has seen around 139% increase in new users during the first week of February against the same period last month. The company, which has around 30 lakh users in India, saw a similar jump in trading volumes during the period.

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“We are seeing an increase in new users from the past 15 days or so. Major reasons are the rise in prices and Tesla news creating huge ripples. The excitement has actually renewed," said Ashish Singhal, CEO and co-founder, CoinSwitch Kuber.

The traffic on Indian exchanges had seen a temporary dip for a few days earlier this month after the government on 29 January had listed a bill to ban all private cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ether in India.

“We did saw a selloff during the two days during the Budget, but after that, it’s back to normal," said Nischal Shetty, CEO, WazirX, which has 15 lakh users.

Signups on WazirX have gone up to five times during February compared with January. The crypto exchange, which saw about $1.4 billion in trading volume in January, has already crossed $1 billion in trading volume during the first 10 days of this month. “Overall, February volumes might see three times jump over January’s numbers, and that will be because of the huge rise in the prices," Shetty said.

Prices of bitcoin have surged more than 60% since the start of February, thanks to some of the major corporations such as MasterCard, PayPal, BNY Mellon and Apple adopting the cryptocurrency into their ecosystem. A major push came when Tesla on 8 February disclosed that it had parked $1.5-billion worth of spare cash in bitcoin.

“January was flat, but February has been a great month for us. We peaked around 8 February, when we acquired around 25,000 users in a day," said Shivam Thakral, CEO, BuyUcoin. The crypto exchange, which has around 400,000 users in India, has been adding around 4,000-5,000 daily users in February.

For the first 15 days of this month, BuyUcoin has added 86,827 new users against 29,535 subscribers during the same period last month, witnessing three times jump.

The recent jump in new users notwithstanding, industry professionals are of the opinion that the rise would have been much higher if there was no overhang of crypto ban fears.

“I would be expecting a few thousand users every day, but we are seeing 800-1,000 as of now. Probably, if the bill confusion was not there, we would have seen at least 2.5 times the number of customers," said Sathvik Vishwanath, co-founder and CEO Unocoin, which has around 13 lakh users.

Experts also said that in addition influx of new users, early investors are also holding on to their positions. “Investors are staying put as they are waiting for the final bill, because as media reports even if there is a blanket ban, there will be ample time for long and well as short term investors to exit their positions," said Singhal.

As per industry estimates, around 10 million Indians hold cryptocurrencies worth around ₹10,000 crore currently.

Most industry professionals Mint spoke to are hopeful that there won’t be any blanket ban on cryptocurrencies in India. “There are over 340 startups in India in the crypto space that are employing tens of thousands of people directly or indirectly. It has not happened in the recent history where a government has erased ₹10,000 crore worth of belongings of the people," said Shetty.

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