CoinDesk Q4 2019 Review: A Year in Suspended Animation

[fillippone]

The quarterly report form Coindesk is Here.
As there are many intresting topics discussed there, please share your views.

CoinDesk Q4 2019 Review: A Year in Suspended Animation

It has been over 10 years since the creation of cryptocurrencies, and while clear narratives have emerged to justify their existence, none are decisively supported by data.

For example, charts suggest bitcoin’s use case as a store of value is taking hold among some new investors, who have been shown to hold the asset through price run-ups. However, other metrics such as bitcoin’s correlation to gold suggest that, across the entire body of bitcoin investors, most are using the asset as something far different from "digital gold."

On ethereum, DeFi has made impressive gains, but the shape of that line and a broader decline in user numbers suggest that the "web 3.0" narrative is still in its infancy.

Released today, the CoinDesk Quarterly Review surfaces the key data, trends and events shaping crypto markets, in a 45-slide presentation format. It evaluates three different use cases for crypto across more than 25 different data sets. The results of this analysis suggest a dominant narrative for bitcoin and alternative cryptocurrencies has yet to emerge.

Readers of this report are introduced to key metrics for tracking shifts in investor interest and global usage of cryptocurrencies. These include bitcoin’s “whale” population, UTXO age distribution, exchange volumes and more.

Direct link to download the report:
CoinDesk Quarterly Review Q4 2019
(no real email required)

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[moviebuff777]

It’s not that different than 2015 which followed the Bitcoin price crash in 2014. There are a lot of parallels to that market cycle and this one that we could use to help us predict what will happen going forward.

[TheUltraElite]

This obsession with DeFi is making me think that it will also have the same fate that ICO had. Although I have used services like bitrefill previously and still use them making them too generalized and showing how good they are performing can have both a good and bad effect from governments' eyes.

Good effect: governments allow cryptocurrencies to be used in their state free of any censorship. That would be bullish but chances are low.
Bad effect: governments decide to crack down the DeFi projects and force KYC on its users making some of them to leave the country or some to close shop.

Anyway lets hope for the best and see how disrupting the DeFi projects become in future.

[davis196]

This topic belongs to the altcoin discussion forum,since it's mostly about ethereum and DeFi.
Decentralized finance is a promising idea,but we can't exclude the human factor.It's impossible to rely on smart contracts only,when we have to deal with peer-to-peer crypto lending platforms.
3% of the global ETH supply isn't that much,but there's room for growth.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

The results of this analysis suggest a dominant narrative for bitcoin and alternative cryptocurrencies has yet to emerge.

Yeah, I'd say that's probably true.  Bitcoin has a bunch of different uses, whether it's as a currency on the dark web or as an investment or anything in between.  There's no one use that probably dominates unless it's as an investment, which is what I think most people hold it as.  I certainly think the largest holders are treating it as a form of digital gold and aren't using it as a currency.

The great thing is that after a decade, bitcoin still exists and is trading above $8k.  That shows that no matter what people are using it for, or what that "dominant narrative" is, it still has great value.  That wasn't what I expected when I first heard of it back in 2013 or so--I thought it was some weird internet money that was a fad and would go to zero within a few months.  How wrong I was.

This topic belongs to the altcoin discussion forum,since it's mostly about ethereum and DeFi.

I disagree, though I see your point.  I look at this thread as more about bitcoin than anything else, and specifically what its place in the world is.  Hell, I don't even know what DeFi is.