This is a segment of the Supply Shock Newsletter. Subscribe to read the full edition.
As for Crypto, it’s still early, but that’s clear.
Some are a little faster than others. That applies to investors, users, and to the blockchain network itself if we are generous.
Today’s newsletter remembers one of the most expensive bets in Bitcoin history.
Seven years ago, Bitconner’s Jimmy Song and Ethereum co-founder Jourbin created the famous Gambit on whether the Ethereum app will gain certain traction over the next six months (end date of May 2023).
All things considered, Rubin would have lost. Has anything changed over the past two years?
This day
The bet is now:
If a small number of Ethereum apps have many active users on par with the mildly popular iPhone apps, Song will have to pay Lubin $500,000 ETH.
Otherwise, Lubin will have to pay an equal amount of Bitcoin for the song.
For Lubin to win, at least five Ethereum “Dapps” must reach 10,000 active users every day and At least 100,000 active users per calendar month for at least six calendar months in the 12-month calendar.
However, no one actually uses the term “dapp” so we just call it an app. The real kicker was that the winnings were meant to be locked at ETH and BTC prices at the bet in May 2018.
So, while the song was worth 810.8 ETH, now worth more than $2.1 million, Lubin had to pledge 69.74 BTC, or 7.25 million today.
Certainly, there is no real way to determine the number of active users that a blockchain app actually has, as it is not reliable how much active addresses metrics are unreliable.
As BlockWorks Research states, active address counting It is not a measure of user growthso the bet was truly doomed from the start.
These lines plot the value of both bets over the past seven years. Orange BTC, purple ETH.
Still, let’s pause the mistrust and see how the bet was made.
Rubin already knows he’s probably lost. Coindesk discovered that there were actually five applications on Ethereum, which had the required level of usage at the time: Circle, Opensea, Tether, Uniswap, wrapped ETH.
Are circles, tethers and wrapped ETH really “dapps”? Not so it was safe to say the song was the winner.
Again, the bet was not officially officially from the start. sad!
If BET lasted seven years instead of five, it’s not really the case as to whether Song won. UnisWap still meets the minimum threshold, but apps like Banana Gun, 1inch, and Metamask have not yet been maintained above the minimum of 10,000 active addresses. Artemis data.
Needless to say, Ethereum Layer 2 like Bass, Optimism, and Arbitrum didn’t exist in 2018, so perhaps if it was made today, the bets look different.
In any case, Song’s original paper said that if popular apps exist in Ethereum, they would eventually come along with similar apps on a more centralized platform (“cheaper, faster, more scalable, more maintainable, upgradable, upgradable”) and steal those users.
Seven years later, these threats still exist.