A quick glance at the evolution of PoS currencies and staking yields over the past one year shows that the dominance of PoS currencies has declined from about 7% a year ago to ~5% now. This decline was predominantly driven by the run up in BTC prices despite the launch of new PoS projects such as Algorand. 

For the uninitiated, a majority of cryptocurrencies have metered inflation schedules, which means that the percentage ownership of the project of a HODLer is expected to decline as new coins are released into circulation. For example, a BTC HODLer cannot maintain his percentage of BTC ownership flat without buying or mining regularly. Therefore, owning a fixed percentage of total BTC outstanding would require investors to make capital investment in mining, or in acquiring them from the market, to keep up with inflation.

For PoS coins, it is much easier to maintain or increase the percentage ownership as it requires users to just stake their assets to earn a yield without significant capital investment. However, the penalties for malicious behaviour in PoS could lead to partial or complete slashing of assets staked.  

For those wishing to a deeper dive, we covered staking at PoS in depth a while ago, definitely worth a revisit.

Brave, the company co-founded by ex-Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich after his ouster from the organization in 2014, today launched version 1.0 of its browser for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. In a browser market where users are spoiled for choice, Brave is positioning itself as a fast option that preserves users’ privacy with strong default settings, as well as a crypto currency-centric private ads and payment platform that allows users to reward content creators.

Lending protocol Compound Finance just raised $25 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z crypto fund, marking one of the largest venture capital investments in a decentralized finance (DeFi) startup to date. According to DeFi Pulse, Compound has nearly $103 million worth of crypto locked up in its automated system, which can generate returns for users comparable to interest. Today’s announcement of the Series A follows Compound’s $8.2 million seed round in 2018. Much like MakerDAO’s loans, users can take collateralized loans with ethereum-based tokens, with the locked assets automatically liquidating if an independent “oracle” determines the price has dropped too low.

A Canadian bank, which banned its clients from buying Bitcoin (BTC), could now become the first in the country to launch a cryptocurrency exchange. RBC is the largest bank in Canada by market capitalization, with $661 billion CAD ($499 billion) in assets under management. According to The Logic, the bank is entertaining the possibility for the exchange to function both for investments and allowing clients to make purchases online and in brick-and-mortar stores. The news follows a previous report that Canada’s central bank wanted to use digital currency in order to better track consumer spending habits.

Ledger Vault, the custody arm of hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger, has procured a crime insurance policy developed with broker and risk advisory firm Marsh and insurance company Arch Insurance Limited. According to an announcement on Nov. 14, the Ledger Vault platform now provides its users a customized crime insurance program for cryptocurrencies for up to $150 million. The program applies to third-party theft of the master seed and private keys, secure transmissions of the master seed fragments, and insider Ledger employee theft caused by collusion.

“The Sovereign Individual” Investment Thesis by Phil Bonello

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