3rd February 2022 > > Google is getting involved.

Market Snap (at time of writing)

Market Wrap

That’s a decent stock rally since I last checked. I see that BTC briefly threatened $40k on the upside in the last 48 hours before losing ground again. This is fertile territory for the techies. I came across this absolutely inspired piece of nonsense this morning:

Posted on Twitter by “Decodejar”, his or her verbal imagination knows no bounds:

“… bearish ABC wave 4 expanded flat, ending below last year's lows.”

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Google

It has always been a little surprising to me that some of the tech giants have been content to merely watch cryptos develop from the side-lines. I kind of get that approach up to say 2016, but I think the launch of BTC futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 2017 was a clear signpost that this revolution was just getting underway.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc., has made some comments regarding blockchains and Web 3.0. To be fair the comments are bland, and I suspect his major concern is to find a way to kill Web 3.0, as it will offer the opportunity for users to monetise their own data, rather than behemoths like Google taking all the cash.

I am also convinced that we as users are very close to monetising our own data in a meaningful way by using tools such as Brave Browser and AVG anti-tracking software. If Google does not facilitate that process, it runs the risk of becoming an historically interesting case study alongside such stalwarts as CompuServe and Internet Explorer.

…

Google’s major crypto initiative is to enable users to store crypto currencies on digital cards.

This is no more than the offers available from many other companies, including PayPal.

Oh, and the man put in charge of this rather forlorn and disappointingly limited project? Arnold Goldberg, formerly of PayPal.

…

More interestingly, Google has created a “digital asset team” within their online data storage division. Unfortunately, building this team within the Cloud services business suggests a less than wholesale conviction about cryptos.

A statement of the objectives of this team confirms its very lack of ambition:

“We’re inspired by the work already done in the digital asset space by our customers, and we look forward to providing the infrastructure and technologies to support what’s possible with blockchain technologies in the future.”

Reserve Treasury Protocols (before they all go to zero)

Reminder – Olympus and Wonderland are, to the best of my knowledge, live viable projects. XEUS, FORT and JADE turned out to be scams, though they are still live scams. Scams are not uncommon in these Wild West fringes of Decentralised Finance (DeFi).

Photon appears to have won the prize for being the most extraordinary scam. In under 18 hours it went to zero. And as far as I can tell – and I am no blockchain analytics expert – they walked away with less than $30k.

It is very upsetting we have scumbags like that around.

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