Estuvimos hablando con Nacho Goano (@nachogoano) sobre Billeteras Virtuales y el futuro del dinero en Efectivo por el Canal de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.

Link aquí

Para las autoridades, FTX era un "castillo de naipes". Para el nuevo CEO de la empresa, John Ray III, encargado de reacomodar las piezas esta trama de corrupción lejos de ser una sofisticada operación financiera, como dice fue lo que vio cuando asumió el mismo rol en ENRON, se trató de una descarada malversación de fondos.

Ahora Bankman-Fried, fundador y exCEO de FTX, la segunda mayor plataforma de Criptos espera ser extraditado de Bahamas a EE.UU.

¿Qué tan severo es este colapso para el sector cripto? Hablamos de estos temas en DW en Español. Link aquí

2022 has unquestionably been a rough year for cryptocurrencies. A few weeks back, one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges on the planet, FTX, went bust. The crash follows the Terra/Luna crisis in May 2022. According to a recent report by Bank of America, the rise and fall in the price of Bitcoin resulting from these and other events have turned cryptocurrency into the fifth “most important bubble in history.”

Although this is a somewhat apocalyptic claim for a market whose volatility is considered intrinsic, in November, Bitcoin did fall to its lowest value since late 2020. And so far in 2022, Bitcoin has lost almost 70% of its value. But what lessons can we learn from these events?

Firstly, it is important to differentiate what happened at Terra/Luna from what happened at FTX. While the former was effectively an example of poorly designed technology, at FTX it was not the technology that failed. On the contrary, there is emerging (and growing) evidence of a misuse of funds, lack of transparency, and even falsification of information. To give an example, court documents recently showed that FTX’s combined debt to its top 50 unsecured creditors runs to US$3.1 billion, with a couple of clients who owe more than US$200 million each.

The aftershocks from FTX will be as numerous as the interactions the group of firms in its ecosystem had. In fact, FTX, FTX.US, FTX Ventures, Alameda Research, and Sam Bankman-Fried (CEO) himself had invested in or acquired more than 160 companies. When FTX filed for bankruptcy, it claimed to have more than 100,000 creditors. New information has subsequently come to light that the number (apparently) could be more than a million. Bankman-Fried has also invested close to $500 million in funds such as Paradigm and Sequoia Capital, which could damage other major ventures.

Since FTX filed for bankruptcy, entities ranging from BlockFi to Genesis and Gemini have been affected by the fallout. Exchanges all around the world have audited their balance sheets to bring their customers some peace of mind in terms of liquidity. There is no doubt that the FTX crisis has lessons for the entire crypto world.

According to Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, one positive lesson was that the various Blockchain layers and decentralized finance protocols worked “smoothly,” highlighting the need for transparent open source rather than any centralized proposal.

On the other hand, in the short term, the case of FTX has led most exchanges to add the “proof of reserve” system. This system allows an entity to demonstrate the funds it has. The aim is to give users peace of mind by showing that their capital has not been lent to a third party. However, as the last few weeks have demonstrated, proof of reserve is no absolute guarantee by itself, as it does not show how much money the entity should have, i.e., the amount of money its customers have deposited. The latter is known as “proof of liabilities,” which, together with proof of reserve, gives us a true “proofof solvency,” which is not that easy to implement either, for reasons of security and privacy.

Consequently, on November 19, Buterin posted the article Having a safe CEX: proof of solvency and beyond, where he says: “In the longer-term future, my hope is that we move closer and closer to all exchanges being non-custodial…” The document, written with input from Coinbase CTO, Balaji Srinivasan, and staff from Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken, as well as a general partner of 16z, puts forward different methods for bringing security to the centralized exchanges through protocols and validations that will enhance proof of solvency.

In a way we can say that a direct consequence of the FTX crisis is the heated debates being generated from within the crypto world regarding transparency, solvency, and security. We can also add a second trend: the regulations laid down by the European Union (with MiCA) and the United States, which we will see mature in 2023. Lastly, from outside the crypto world, the banks, neobanks, and regulated fintechs will probably see increased demand from consumers who are not sophisticated enough yet to move into non-custodial instruments.

These trends will undoubtedly mark the industry’s performance in what is left of the year and early 2023, encouraging a more secure crypto future and one that caters to the demands of the more traditional and less sophisticated users. Because, at the end of the day, “be your own bank” has not proved to be suitable for everyone.

El BCE aseguró que el bitcoin está condenado a caer en la irrelevancia y Janet Yellen dijo que es importante garantizar que los criptoactivos tengan una protección adecuada para los clientes.

Hablamos sobre estas declaraciones por DW en Español. Link aquí.

Comparto la entrevista completa de módulo espacio de cierre de Ámbito Debate, evento impulsado por Ámbito Financiero dedicado en esta jornada íntegramente a hablar de educación e inclusión financiera.

Link a entrevista completa | Link a nota de prensa

​Comparto la entrevista en DNews, Canal de noticias Latam de DirecTV, sobre el caso de la quiebra de FTX y la caída de las criptomonedas en días pasados.

Link aquí

Comparto la entrevista de ayer en el análisis de Deutsche Welle (@dw_espanol), cadena de noticias alemana, que le dedicó a las Criptomonedas en Argentina para el cuál tuve el honor de ser invitado a opinar.

Link aquí

September 15, 2022, was a historic day for the crypto ecosystem. We saw the successful conclusion of “The Merge”: a significant and revolutionary shift in the way transactions are issued and validated in the database used by Ethereum.

In other words, Ethereum is moving from proof of work (PoW), a consensus mechanism that consumes a lot of energy, to proof of stake (PoS), which consumes less. Through PoW consensus protocols, validations in the blockchains are performed through the familiar mining process. Basically, this consists of thousands of computers competing to resolve a mathematical algorithm by force of iteration, consuming enormous amounts of energy and very often causing network congestion while the price and quantity of transactions increase considerably.

Proof of work therefore requires “miners” to solve a computationally difficult puzzle to earn the right to validate transactions on the network. Miners are rewarded in the form of a Native Token from the network in question that they are mining to solve the puzzle (for example, Bitcoin or ETH). On the other hand, proof of stake requires validators to “stake” a number of tokens for the right to validate transactions. In Ethereum’s case, it is 32 ETHs. If they begin validating transactions that other validators are not, their blocked ETHs will be retained by the network (the miners lose the value of their “stake”).

Although Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, uses proof of work as its transaction validation protocol, many blockchains are currently already using proof of stake. They include, for example, Polkadot, Binance Chain, and Polygon. However, what makes “The Merge” iconic is that Ethereum is the second largest network in the crypto universe. It is a functioning network that performs transactions worth billions of dollars a day, and has successfully switched security algorithms.

Compare this landmark to the migration of a banking core at a single institution, and now imagine an entire network that stores hundreds of projects migrating on the fly, without interrupting it. It is truly amazing. In fact, it was called “The Merge” because in order to do it, Ethereum launched the Beacon Chain, a separate running blockchain that replicated Ethereum with the new security model. The Beacon Chain was launched in December 2020, and the fact of having two networks running in parallel allowed developers plenty of time to do testing before “merging” the two on September 16 last.

However, the Ethereum 2.0 journey is not over. The Ethereum roadmap still has a long way to go to reduce costs and improve scalability, security, and user privacy. “The Merge” is just another stop on this roadmap, as was the launch of the Beacon Chain in 2020, or EIP-1559 implemented in August 2020, which burned ~70% of the transaction fee paid to miners.

So what are the next steps in Ethereum’s transformation? After “The Merge,” Ethereum will launch the “sharding” in 2023, expanding the capacity of the blockchain. Ethereum’s sharding is the next step for the blockchain to upscale its operations.

It refers to a process of partitioning the entire blockchain ecosystem into compact parts called shards. Blockchain developers often run shardings to scale up the comprehension capabilities of their blockchain and give the system a unique ability to process more transactions. The divided pieces or shards function independently after sharding and comprise their own set of protocols (something akin to having many separate blockchains, but which in turn form part of a single proposal).

Ethereum’s sharding will also make it easier for users to become validators by using simple technical tools, such as their laptops and cell phones, to take part in and help run clients on the network. This way, the sharding will finally allow more people to participate in or run projects. It will raise security because the more decentralized the network is, the less surface area of attack there will be.

​We can therefore say that “The Merge” started off a transition to a new era in the Crypto world; however, the final step will be taken in 2023. With the effective reduction in energy consumption and the increase in the scalability of transactions, Ethereum will extend its comparative advantages to become the ecosystem’s main network for the development of crypto solutions, not only among private players, but institutional ones as well.

El grupo Mirgor lanzó el podcast: “Construyendo el futuro”, con la conducción de Maru Duffard (periodista y conductora) y la participación de importantes especialistas en tópicos diversos en las temáticas más innovadoras.

Comparto la participación en el Episodio 3 "Dinero Físico vs. Dinero Virtual" en dónde hablamos de Billeteras Virtuales, Criptomonedas y Fintech en general para comprender mejor el pasado, presente y futuro del dinero.

Link aquí al episodio aquí