🦌 Grandma Got Run Over By Inflation

December 11, 2021

|In Weekend Recap

|By Osprey Team

Inflation Cometh

Yesterday, The Board of Labor Department reported a 6.8% Inflation Rate through November in the US.

This is the biggest print in 40 years. Here’s what that looks like in a chart:

We’re pragmatists, not conspiracists, but that’s a big number and a sharp jab to the jaw of the US Dollar, which remains the world reserve currency.

Still, what matters more than where we are is where we are headed and nobody knows that for sure. We say all this, because 21 million Bitcoin is all there will ever be and so the purchasing power of the US Dollar matters.

What’s New In NFTs?

It was another gnarly week for NFTs.

CryptoPunk #4156 set a record selling for 2,500 ETH ($10.2M). This was the first new high sale since March 11 where Punk #3100 sold for $7.58M. See the CryptoPunk top sales here.

DECAY by XCOPY sold for 345.69E ($1.4M).

White Castle Goes Crypto, Acquires ENS and Seahams NFT — we kinda like this one.

The Grammy’s introduced its own line of NFTs.

Palm NFT Studio raised $27M led by Microsoft’s M12 venture fund.

A 3-Bagger in Seized Bitcoin

The U.S. seized $1B in Bitcoin in November 2020 following the fallout of the Silk Road digital marketplace.

Today, this seized Bitcoin is worth more than $3B.

The IRS says it will auction off the crypto and it got us thinking.

Do some nations HODL Bitcoin anonymously? Maybe we don’t know things. lol.

Just spitballing…

Here’s NBC with more.

Listen To This —

Bill Gurley, general partner at Benchmark and Philip Rosedale, creator of Second Life spoke with Patrick O’Shannessy about building Second Life’s virtual world, their views on today’s metaverse, and what excites them most about the future. It’s a great listen.

Elon Musk spoke with Joanna Stern on Monday about the US infrastructure bill, government innovation, fake titles, and more.

The Tesla CEO mentioned that the US should kill the infrastructure bill and “if we don’t cut government spending something really bad is going to happen.”

Catch the 36-minute conversation here.

Nic Carter, Partner at Castle Island Ventures and co-founder and Chairman of Coin Metrics, joined Peter McCormack to discuss the future of Bitcoin. The two covered Bitcoin’s maturing role within the evolving US and global economy, and it’s role in relation to stable coins, gold, and the US dollar.

Here’s the money quote:

Satoshi had to do so much to win our trust. Everything open source. Everything with fair warning; full disclosure. Create the most auditable monetary system ever, and then leave the project.

Tune in today.

Web3 in Washington

Congress continues to contemplate its Web3 strategy.

This week crypto executives appeared in Washington taking questions for nearly 5 hours.

Here are a few highlights —

The executives warned that tough restrictions could push innovation overseas.

Patrick McHenry of North Carolina shared this sentiment saying,

We don’t need knee-jerk reactions by lawmakers to regulate out of fear of the unknown rather than seeking to understand. That fear of the unknown and the move to regulate before understanding will only stifle American ingenuity and put us at a competitive disadvantage.

SBF stole the show simply stating,

The industry has the potential to improve a lot of people’s lives.

Regulators are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Inflation is at its highest mark in 39-years and Dollars continue to dump into Web3. All eyes are on Washington.

If you like watching paint dry, here’s the full 5-hour hearing.

And here’s a nice write-up from the New York Times.