We’re All Crypto People Now
“No one was talking about how to get rich off of this,” Mr. Kenna said.
Over the past few years, the influx of money-seeking hustlers and useless cultural absurdities have soured him on the broader industry. Too many projects are using blockchain technology when a simple database would suffice, he said, and he’s not a fan of NFT art because it seems like a fad. He’s seen friends from the early days get unfathomably rich and lose touch with reality. He also experienced a staggering loss in 2016, when his identity was stolen and almost all of his accounts were hacked.
Now, even as crypto is booming, 20Mission is only half occupied. When the pandemic hit, its techie residents fled to Austin, Miami and Portland, Ore. On a recent visit, the corridors, painted with brightly colored murals, were quiet. Several giant beanbags and old futons lay in a pile in the co-op’s dusty common room.
Mr. Kenna said he sometimes regretted not trying to make money on 20Mission over the years. It could have given his other businesses, a brewery and Spanish-language school in Colombia, a cushion in the pandemic.
That will soon change. In early May, Mr. Kenna plans to auction off digital tokens that represent ownership in each of his hacker house’s unoccupied rooms. The buyers of the tokens will get 75-year leases with rent of $1 a month. It will be, as far as he knows, the first NFT for housing.
He sees the plan as a way to give more people access to homeownership, still believing — deep down, in spite of all the hype and money — that cryptocurrency can have a positive impact on the world.
He also thinks the auction could have a positive impact on day-to-day life at 20Mission, mitigating some of the messiness that comes with communal living. If the hacker hostel’s residents are financially invested in the future of the community, they might be more likely to do the dishes.
Crypto market takes a dive with Bitcoin leading the way – TechCrunch
Cryptocurrency prices continued to tumble Friday with Bitcoin leading the charge, with prices for the internet currency dipping below $50,000 for the first time since early March.
Bitcoin is down roughly 20% week-over-week, around 30% from its all-time high of nearly $65,000 early last week. The market cap of the coin has dipped below $1 trillion. The tumble has been less severe for Ethereum, which hit an all-time high just yesterday but has since dropped 13% as the broader market has crawled back.
Plenty of altcoins have also taken a beating. Dogecoin erased the breakneck gains of the week and then some, nearly halving its price after a meteoric climb last weekend. XRP is down 35% week-over-week, Stellar is down 30% and Polkadot is down 25% since last week.
Overall, Coinmarketcap estimates the global crypto market has shrunk around 10% in the past 24 hours.
Crypto prices have been on a tear for the past several months, but the past week has been the clearest sign of a correction to climbing prices, though many see news of President Biden’s adjustment to the hikes on the capital gains tax as the most apparent reason for the market’s slide as investors cash out hoping their gains won’t be reached by a retroactive application of the rules.
Coinbase, which went public last week via direct listing, shaved about 10% off its share price this week, but was largely unaffected Friday in intraday trading.
Turkey’s Crypto Pain Grows With Second Exchange Collapse
Benzinga
As the big keep getting bigger, the consulting firm offers insights into how smaller crypto exchanges can thrive despite the competition. The number of people trading cryptocurrencies on Robinhood Crypto jumped from just 1.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2020 to a staggering 9.5 million in the first quarter of 2021. Massive rally in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in recent months has grabbed the public interest. People who stayed away from cryptocurrencies until a few months ago are now learning about them and trading crypto assets. It gives crypto exchanges - both big and small - an opportunity to attract hundreds of millions of new customers. In the technology sector, big players keep getting bigger and the small ones often get acquired or get crushed. But if the smaller crypto exchanges learn from the market leaders and play their cards well, they could very well join the big league in a few years. Big lessons for small players Growth marketing and consulting firm BDC Consulting studied the strategies of the world’s top 30 largest crypto exchanges since 2018 to chart out their evolution. It’s a treasure trove for smaller crypto exchanges and other platforms in the same space. According to the study, three of the world’s largest exchanges handled 76.99% of the global crypto trading volume in 2020, up from 55.51% in 2019. The trend looks intimidating. However, a closer look at data suggests it could be a positive sign for the smaller players. The crypto ecosystem is still in its infancy with a long runway for growth. The chart above shows that the players at the top keep changing depending on how aggressively they expand their customer base. Houbi was nowhere on the list in 2018 but became even bigger than Binance in 2020. In contrast, Bitfinex skidded from 14.38% market share in 2018 to just 0.69% in 2020. International expansion According to the study, leading players such as Huobi and Binance offer their services in more than a hundred countries. They haven’t kept themselves restricted to just a few markets. Huobi has aggressively expanded to more than 130 countries while Binance operates in over 180 countries. Focusing on a single market could shut a company out of the other markets. BDC Consulting found that direct traffic accounts for 71% of all visits to the websites of crypto exchanges. Most people bookmark the websites they use or the web browser auto-fills it when people type the first few letters. Since only 11.5% of traffic comes from search engines, it’s imperative for crypto exchanges to quickly acquire as many users as possible and provide them the best experience. That’s how you get the people who join the crypto revolution in the coming months and years to directly visit your site. Speed and search engines The study found that only three out of the top 30 crypto exchange websites had a high loading speed on both mobile and desktop. Since loading speed is a key element of user experience, Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL)boosts rankings for websites that load faster. Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool allows developers to analyze the website load speed. Though search engines account for only 11.5% of traffic to the top 30 crypto exchanges’ websites, it’s still a significant amount considering the total number of crypto-related search queries could be in hundreds of millions. BDC Consulting said that only 34% of crypto exchanges have properly optimized their websites for search engines. The rest are depriving themselves of the opportunity to acquire new customers. Insights on Social Media Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) is the primary channel of communication for all the leading exchanges. On average, a crypto exchange had 196,000 followers on Twitter at the end of 2020. The engagement rate on Twitter increased slightly from 0.07% in 2018 to 0.08% in 2020. The top 30 crypto exchanges were posting 3 times a day on Twitter. Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) was another preferred medium of communication for the exchanges. Binance and KuCoin were posting 7 times a day on Facebook in 2020. Others were posting only once or twice a day. BDC Consulting added that the posting frequency depends on whether you have something newsworthy to say. Bombarding the audience with irrelevant content is a terrible social media strategy. Crypto exchanges have doubled down on YouTube. They were posting only 2.3 videos per month on average in 2018. But the posting frequency has almost doubled to 4.3 videos a month in 2020. Also, only three of the top 30 exchanges had listed their YouTube channels on their website in 2018. Now the number is 16. Here’s the year-on-year growth in their subscribers: However, the engagement rate on YouTube has declined from 0.51% in 2018 to just 0.19% in 2020. You can access the full version of the study report here. About BDC Consulting BDC Consulting is a growth marketing and consulting agency. It has been working with fintech and crypto companies since 2011 to help them with branding, growth, scaling, and public relations. See more from BenzingaClick here for options trades from BenzingaOverview Of Seven Forex Brokers In The U.S.Teslafan Decentralized Crowdfunding Platform Combines Blockchain With AI© 2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.