7th February 2023 > > Retail.

tl;dr

Let’s talk retail.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Since regaining the $20k handle a total of 620,000 new BTC wallets have been created holding 0.1 BTC or less.

This type of wallet is widely considered to be new retail investor wallets, a view that could be mostly settled by an analysis of the blockchain to see whether the funds transferred came from a wallet known to be a centralised cryptocurrency exchange, or an earlier self-hosted wallet. I have searched for such an analysis without success. My personal blockchain analytic skills fail to provide me with the answer, because frankly, I am not very good at that.

So, if we assume the prevailing narrative is correct – and I do concede that as a proud contrarian in all things financial there is a certain irony to that statement – then new retail investors are getting involved.

This dynamic between new retail and old retail (some of whom are desperate to get out at acquisition cost) will be very interesting to watch.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Revolut

Though I spent most of my working life in TradFi and am currently unemployed (anyone got a job for me??) I do love a bit of disruption to the old order.

Revolut has provided that in spades.

Starting as a mobile app that provided mid-market foreign exchange conversions with zero cost (a facility that any retail banking operation could have done if they had the foresight to forego easy commissions in exchange for loyal and long-term customers) since July 1st, 2015 the founders of Revolut have built a company worth $33bn at the last round of funding in July 2021.

It is undoubtedly worth more now.

As a purely on-line banking operation, I am pleased to report that their customer service – despite expectations to the contrary – is really rather excellent, at least in my experience.

Revolut should be a company at the forefront of crypto adoption.

…

In 2017 Revolut started offering crypto trading services to its retail clients, allowing for simple investment in cryptos in a hosted wallet.

Last year, it introduced a learning programme – quickly disabled as it was so popular and destroyed the marketing budget in no time at all – which has left me as the proud owner of both 1inch and DOT to the tune of $5 or so.

That doesn’t change the dial even for someone who is unemployed, but if I am right that cryptos go 50x or so from here that will be a decent lunch. Keep stacking those sats, as they say.

…

Revolut is upping its game once more.

It has announced a staking facility for ETH, XTZ, DOT and ADA.

Yields are currently reported as 3% to 12% which seems reasonable to me.

Now I am not for one moment suggesting that any CCC readers should move their crypto holdings to Revolut to take advantage of their staking service. There are plenty of other opportunities out there, many of which we have already discussed.

My point is more along these lines.

Revolut is making it so easy for those unfamiliar with some of the nuances involved with self-hosting, DeFi (decentralised finance), and the plethora of other developments growing by the day in the crypto world.

Revolut is helping to drive retail adoption for real world use of cryptos amongst those who have no interest, and rightly so, in the techie side of things.