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EthHub Weekly #151

Reddit partners with the EF, LRC tokenomics revamped, HopProtocol exits stealth, Alpha Homora v2 live and much more!

Anthony Sassano

Feb 1, 2021

Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)

🤔 Going Mainstream

Is it just me or does crypto feel like its going more mainstream lately? We have billionaires talking about it, internet celebrities talking about it, companies putting crypto on their balance sheet and of course the market is starting to feel a lot like 2017 again. I wrote more of my thoughts on this here but generally I believe this is a good thing and a sign that the crypto space is maturing - it’s gone from a joke/fad to something that many people now see real value in. Of course, most of the value is being created on Ethereum so I expect to see many new faces ‘round these parts over the coming months!

In case you missed it - I joined Alex Saunders from Nuggets News to discuss all things Ethereum and you can watch that here.

Have a great week everyone!

- Anthony

News of the Week

💰 Coinbase Officially Announces Bid to Become Public Company via Direct Listing

Coinbase has made official its plan to go public by way of a direct listing, according to a blog post released Thursday by the U.S.-based crypto exchange.

"Coinbase Global, Inc. today announced its intent to become a publicly-traded company pursuant to a proposed direct listing of its Class A common stock. Such proposed listing is expected to be pursuant to a registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”)," Coinbase wrote in the blog post.

Coinbase announced in mid-December that it filed a confidential S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

"The Form S-1 is expected to become effective after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions," Coinbase said Thursday.

As The Block previously reported this month, Coinbase told shareholders that it would launch a secondary market for its private stock on Nasdaq Private Market.

💳 Visa's Q1 Earnings Call Reveals Details About its Crypto Strategy

Visa dedicated a section to crypto during its Q1 2021 earnings call today. In his prepared remarks, CEO Alfred Kelly said Visa is poised to make crypto payments safer and more widely used through its partnership approach.

Kelly said Visa plans to work with wallets and exchanges to enable Visa users to purchase crypto-assets, and to allow users to cash out and make fiat purchases with their crypto.

During the call, Kelly described how the payments giant sees digital assets. At the moment, Visa sees two classes of digital assets, according to Kelly. Those that represent new assets, like bitcoin, Visa views as "digital gold," and those that are fiat-backed, including stablecoins and central bank digital currencies. He called the second category "an emerging payments innovation that could have the potential to be used for global commerce."

Kelly also teased the possibility of Visa enabling crypto as a payment itself, rather than converting crypto to fiat for payments.

"It goes without saying to the extent specific digital currency becomes a recognized means of exchange, there's no reason why we cannot add it to our network, which already supports over 160 currencies today," said Kelly.