
BlackRock, Google, BNY Mellon
Probably nothing
— Barry Silbert (@BarrySilbert) October 11, 2022
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-6.38%Reading
Crypto is totally dead lately—if you're only looking at the price action.
Yes, Bitcoin is down 72% from its all-time-high price in November 2021, almost one full year ago. Ethereum is down the same, 72% from its own high of $4,878. Woof.
Crypto advocates point out that it's not just crypto, stocks have been hammered too. And they're right: everything is down right now. But that's cold comfort for crypto believers, who—I'll let you in on a little crypto media trade secret—do not care to read any crypto news when crypto prices are down. ConsenSys CEO Joe Lubin put on a brave face last week when talking to me about the technological success of the Ethereum merge, but ETH is down a disheartening 21% since the event.
For a better temperature check on how crypto is doing, look at the major recent signs of mainstream adoption. In the past two months, we got a string of indications that major financial institutions and tech companies believe crypto is here to stay. You'd be excused for having missed these news stories while the global economy was collapsing all around us.
In August, BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, launched a spot Bitcoin private trust to give its customers exposure to the current price of Bitcoin. (As a reminder, the SEC has staunchly refused to greenlight a publicly-traded spot Bitcoin ETF, allowing only Bitcoin futures ETFs; but BlackRock can offer its own clients whatever service it wants.) BlackRock also said it's seeing “substantial interest” in crypto from its institutional clients, and that it's exploring stablecoins and tokenization. Wow. Bitcoin didn't budge on that news, a sign of just how much the economy is weighing on every type of asset.
This past week brought two more big shows of faith.
Google announced it will start accepting crypto as payment for its cloud services early next year by plugging into Coinbase. As part of the deal, Coinbase Commerce will move its "data-related applications" from Amazon Web Services over to Google. So not only is this Google Cloud welcoming crypto, but also a form of tie-up between Google and Coinbase.
Rich Widmann, the Web3 lead at Google Cloud, tells Decrypt's Dan Roberts and Kate Irwin in our Decrypting Mainnet series at Mainnet 2022 how Google Cloud is trying to "build a giant bridge" between Web2 and Web3, and the problem with crypto "purity tests."
On the same day, 239-year-old Bank of New York Mellon launched its own Bitcoin and Ethereum custody service. The bank will hold clients' private keys and provide accounting on their crypto portfolios. This follows BNY Mellon becoming the custodian for the cash reserves that back Circle's USDC stablecoin in March. And last year, BNY Mellon launched a Bitcoin custody service in Ireland.
BlackRock, Google, BNY Mellon
Probably nothing
— Barry Silbert (@BarrySilbert) October 11, 2022
All of this might look to sneering crypto-skeptics like a sad attempt at rationalization. The favored mantra of Web3 builders, "bear markets are for building," gets so oft-repeated at times like these that it has become cliché. That doesn't mean it's untrue.
I first wrote about Bitcoin in 2011. I've witnessed the freezing crypto cycles of 2014, 2018, and now. Some of the best-known crypto companies and platforms were built during those "winters."
Lubin says crypto is "the tail being wagged by a very sick dog" right now and that it won't get better until the economy improves. Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko thinks it could take 12-18 months.
Meanwhile, they're all still building, as signs of future adoption quietly multiply.
On Tuesday, a financial reporter friend texted me to ask if I'd be attending NFT NYC events the next day. "How is it even happening this year when the volume is so low," she asked. I sent her a spreadsheet that listed 180 different events happening in the next three days all around the city—there was plenty to do. By Wednesday afternoon, I was standing outside Samsung's Future+ launch event doing an interview with a radio reporter who asked me whether this year's event felt like a shell of what...
Nearly five years ago, SEC official Bill Himan stood on stage at a Yahoo Finance crypto summit in San Francisco and delivered a prepared speech that concluded that Ethereum (ETH) is not a security. A footnote on the SEC's website clarified that the speech "expresses the author’s views and does not necessarily reflect those of the Commission," but it was nonetheless taken exactly that way. Hinman's speech came just one week after then-SEC chair Jay Clayton said that the SEC does not view Bitcoin...
I was one of the 18,000 people to enter the Grand Palais Éphémère, a huge domed exhibition hall facing the Eiffel Tower, for NFT Paris three weeks ago. The event has stuck with me more than most crypto conferences do—and I attend a lot of crypto conferences. First off, I was blown away by the energy, positivity, and seriousness of the attendees, panel chats, and art displays. I was struck by how many global consumer and luxury brands were on hand—Adidas, Salesforce, Volkswagen, Panerai, Warner...