This post is all about some interesting Crypto happenings that I saw this week and some of my thoughts on them. These happenings include “news”, podcasts, twitter posts, LinkedIn posts etc. There’s not going to be any deep dives here, just some quick thoughts on some things I found interesting.

• Raoul Pal’s LinkedIn article on the “Glorious Days of Yesteryear” is a quick read and includes lots of charts! My takeaway from this article is that it illustrated many examples of how “the way things used to be” aren’t coming back. We are in a new time, which calls for new ways of thinking about and solving problems.
• Adam Blumberg wrote an article on his Mirror blog about Trends Pointing to Crypto Adoption. One thing I hadn’t really thought about before was how the increase in self-sovereignty in many aspects of our lives (freelance work, cord-cutting, financial instruments) is very bullish for long-term Crypto adoption.
• MoonPay launches Hypermint a suite of API’s and SDK’s that allow anyone to create and manage NFT’s. This is incredibly bullish and has been added to my list of “things to learn”. If the API’s and SDK’s are what they say they are, someone will build a UI (hopefully multiple people/services) that will abstract that away from the average person. I’m excited for the time I can easily mint an NFT/POAP/PFP for whatever “special” occasion I want and distribute it and manage it easily.
• Coinbase launches a liquid staking derivate for ETH. Not much to say here other than I think people have more options to stake ETH and access their liquidity is always good.
• There is such a thing as an Emerging Technology Consultant. Not the first time in the last few weeks I have seen something like this from a very large consulting firm. Bullish.
• I’m now through 6.5 lessons of Patrick Collin’s Learn Blockchain, Solidity, and Full Stack Web3 Development with JavaScript – 32-Hour Course and am thoroughly enjoying it and learning A TON.
• Recent “market” events (bankruptcy, fund freezing, hacks, etc.) have increased the purchases of hardware wallets. Not your keys, not your Crypto. I used to think hardware wallets were a bridge to far for the “average” person, now I am not so sure. Even in the 9 months I have had my Ledger the UI and user experience has drastically improved.
• The Merge is still coming. Target date is September 15th. Party time!
• Coinbase’s ENS integration is semi-available (currently not able to use a .eth domain name) and it’s only in the wallet extension and not mobile.
• Polygon is now the 4th largest blockchain as measured by Total Value Locked (TVL). I am hugely bullish on Polygon long term. An incredible amount of building happening in that ecosystem.
• No shock here given recent events, but it appears FTX is awash in cash.
• It appears multi-chain Compound is imminent. I look forward to the day when the average person can use Compound (and anything else) and won’t know or care what chain they are using.
• I love the Pantera Capital Blockchain Letter. That’s all.
• Mirror published an Update on Publishing Tools. It doesn’t really say much other than they are focusing on less updates, more quality, cleaning up the dashboard, and pausing development of plugins. Interesting.