16th March

Vesper Finance looks interesting

Released last month, and already 700 million TVL..

Sitting at only 64 million market cap..

Released last month, looks like a decent entry too.

Comparatively

Alpha Finance, similar TVL, but 8 times the market cap.

Larger market cap, and just a bit over half the TVL of Vesper Finance.

Also some banter..

Lukso staking looks like it’s going to come with mainnet

NFTS ARE A NEW TYPE OF MEDIUM FOR ART ITSELF, NOT JUST A NEW PLACE TO PUT ARTWORK

It’s more complex than just the “paste a picture and mint it” — adding code to artwork allows you to dictate its behaviour across metaspace, and time. It could change, interacting with other NFTs, environments, it could change with time, it could change with the number of owners, it could change in basically any way that code can permit it to. The next artists will also be tech-savvy, some of them programming.

The evolution of NFTs

2D

3D

3D + unique look with unique NFT

3D + unique look + combining with other NFTs

Attention still there too..

Privacy-preserving applications

You could also add Haven to that list.

Cathie Wood invest

Deep Learning

Deep Learning could create more economic value than the internet did.

We have reached a point where computers are training themselves — a feedback loop.

This means that innovation can happen

Training costs are dropping 37% per year. And the models built around deep learning are growing 10x per year.

The market will scale to 30 trillion dollars in opportunity, from 2 trillion now.

The computing power that we’re going to need in the years ahead, will be enormous. The energy requirements will also be enormous.

AI is going to be taking over in terms of growth trajectories. By 2037, the internet will be very mature, and the growth rate.

The real growth is in deep learning, and it will be the next big wave.

Server Processors will transform in the next decade

Intel’s share of the data centre will drop from 92% to 27% by the year 2030.

Here, ARM and RISC-V will displace intel. They together will grow at a 45% annualised rate over the next 10 years.

Virtual Worlds

This has been a long time evolving.

Google glasses — premature — the technology was not ready, and the costs were not low enough. That is still the case.

But we are beginning to see breakthroughs now that could impact the gaming market first.

In the gaming market, Ark expects a 16% compound annual rate of growth during the next 5 years. That’s coming much more from in-game purchases.

Cathie says that after following the gaming sector for the past 25 years, she has seen that “every time a new technology has evolved, the gaming sector has seen an incremental growth”.

That is unlike video and music. With each new technology, they got hit. Gaming has been the only area they’ve seen that has been able to migrate from one technology to another, and the space gets bigger.

They believe this is about to happen once again, with Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. They are looking at a 59% compound annual rate of growth. They do think the technology is almost there.

Facebook with Occulus has been enjoying some good success. Sold out with their latest model. Covid-19 helped to accelerate that, as it helped to accelerate so much in innovation.

“So pay attention to this space, it could be very exciting”.

Digital Wallets

These are the new bank branches in our pockets, or in our handbags. They believe they are going to scale. They are in the process of scaling now. In the United States, it’s Cashapp and Venmo primarily, Wechat Pay and Alipay scale in China.

US have been more developed, and have had good financial rails, which China did not. Again, the Coronavirus has turbo-charged it.

The reason this is happening, is not just because we’re dealing with contactless payments. We don’t have to worry about the virus with digital wallets, whereas we do with credit cards and debit cards — they are actually more virulent than cash.

The cost of customer acquisition is a fraction of that with banks. $20 dollars vs anywhere between $150 -$1500. The reason banks were even willing to pay so much is because their customers were so loyal.

They think that’s about to change, and that banks are in trouble.

Furthermore, the valuation of these digital wallets is going to scale enormously within the next 5–10 years.