👴 The Warren and Charlie Show

February 18, 2022

|In Weekend Recap

|By Osprey Team

If we didn’t know better, we might think that Warren Buffett and Charles Munger were putting us on.

You know, like it was all shtick.

On Tuesday, Chairman Buffett announced that Berkshire Hathaway was taking a $1B stake in NuBank, the digital native, crypto friendly, Brazilian challenger bank.

While a billion for these guys is like 100 shares for us mortals, it is still directionally salient.

But then on Thursday, Berkshire Vice-Chairman Munger talked smack about crypto as he does. “I hate it.” he tells Yahoo Finance bluntly.

Don’t let the folksie fool ya. These guys are masterful showmen having a good laugh over their misdirections.

🏦 “The Fed Should Buy Bitcoin”

On Wednesday, Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis spoke at a panel on the Emergence of the Crypto Economy.

The Senator suggested that the Federal Reserve should buy + hodl bitcoin.

Lummis shared,

The fact that [bitcoin] is completely decentralized, is going to make it over time more ubiquitous, and I think it’s going to be something that the Fed should hold on its balance sheet.

Lummis first bought bitcoin in 2013 and has been an advocate during recent years.

Catch the Emergence of the Crypto Economy conversation here.

📈 Hash Rate All-Time High

Hash rate measures the computing power required to mine bitcoin. The higher the number, the more competition among miners.

You can think of it as an indicator of the robustness of the digital asset.

Bitcoin’s hash rate hit a fresh all-time high this week, suggesting the network is thriving and healthier than ever.

Here’s the chart via Blockchain.com:

Meanwhile though, the price of bitcoin fell 5% this week along with other risk-on assets.

The divergence between recent price action and the hash rate is worth noting. We’ll resist interpreting it too much and leave it to readers to make of it what you will.

📸 CryptoPunk New All-Time High

CryptoPunks set another new all-time high for an individual punk sale.

Punk #5822 sold for $24M // 8,000 ETH on February 12th, more than double the previous record of $11M.

Here’s the $24,000,000 jpeg. We love the purple look.

💰 Rainbow’s Series A

The web3 wallet, Rainbow, announced that it raised $18M in its Series A led by Seven Seven Six, the VC fund created by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.

Intuitive consumer wallets will be required for web3 mainstreamification. Rainbow co-founder and CEO Christian Baroni emphasized this sharing,

There’s still a lot of unnecessary complexity in the web3 user experience. Rainbow’s been focused on chipping away at that, simplifying where it’s possible to and educating where it’s not. There’s a lot of work to do, but Rainbow is headed far beyond where wallets are now.

Here’s the Block with details.