Sup, nerds!

Here’s what you’re getting in today’s edition:

• 💅 This is cool: Did a new crypto company just find product-market fit?

• 🔎 This seems important: Ethereum to $5.6k?

• 🤝Partner: This is what we need to take crypto mainstream​

• 🔪 Let's dissect this: Another option for investing in BTC

Terms used in this edition (click for an explanation, or ask Web(GPT)3!):
Web2/3.

💅 This is cool:

Wait…No…Really? Did a New Crypto Company Just Find Product-Market Fit?

In one sentence: Aethir, the firm developing a decentralized GPU network, reported first-year revenue of $36M (not from token appreciation, but from paying customers).

It’s not just crypto…

A lot of early tech products start out as pipe dreams on a pitch deck.

Most stay that way, some don’t survive first contact with customers, and a veryselect few actually launch successfully.

We’re still in the early days of web3 and crypto development, and the landscape is (mostly) littered with ideas on a page.

So it’s super exciting when we get news like this:

Aethir, the firm developing a decentralized GPU network (for companies to build Gaming and AI products on top of), reported first-year revenue of $36M.

Which — we know, we know — ain’t much when you consider such a return could be matched by a 0.0028% increase in Bitcoin’s price (which actually happened multiple times while we were typing this sentence).

But this revenue didn’t come from speculative token appreciation!

It came from real customers paying Aethir for their service, which allows anyone that meets the right GPU and bandwidth requirements to join the network and sell their compute power to third parties.

(All while competing with web2 giants like Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services on price).

$36M in revenue is the babiest of all baby steps.

But it’s a step nonetheless — and those are rare with new technology products.

🥇 Want the news before anyone else?

🔎 This seems important:

Your Daily Dose of Hopium: Ethereum to $5.6k?

In one sentence: After the BTC ETFs launched, BTC moved up by as much as 65% — new data suggests ETH may get a similar pump, which means we could be seeing ETH at ~$5.6k six months from now.

Alright folks, attach your neck braces, steady your feet, and grab hold of something.

This one’s due to cause some whiplash as we ping-pong between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ news…

Good news:

The Ethereum ETFs (aka: funds traded on the stock market that buy ETH for every share they sell, attracting all sorts of new investors) are expected to gobble up up to $5.4B in the first six months of trading.

Bad news:

Those expected inflows are only 30%-35% of what the Bitcoin ETFs saw in a similar timeframe.

Good news about the bad news:

Ethereum’s total market value is one third of Bitcoin’s ($400B vs. $1.2T), so even though the Ethereum ETFs’ expected inflows are 1/3 lower by dollar values, the difference in total value helps to balance things out.

Meaning the effects these ETFs could have on the ETH price have the potential to mirror that of BTC, by percentage.

For context:

After the BTC ETFs launched, Bitcoin moved up by as much as 65%.

If the same thing were to happen for Ethereum (at today’s prices), we could be seeing ETH at ~$5.6k six months from now.

Not bad!

🤝 Partner:

This Is What We Need To Take Crypto Mainstream

DeFi has a problem:

Risk assessment.

DeFi’s open nature is its greatest strength, but also its greatest vulnerability. 

Anyone can release code on blockchains, and many projects grow before they are fully vetted. 

(E.g. Terra’s UST stablecoin grew tremendously before people looked into its wonky architecture).

This exposes investors to countless risks: 

• Rug pulls (a smart contract is changed after you’ve already invested) 

• Bugs in smart contracts (code isn’t written correctly) 

• Scams (contracts with backdoors to steal your money) 

• Hacks (hackers break into systems and steal funds)

Identifying and keeping track of all these risks is near impossible, even for savvy DeFi investors.

Exponential.fi has tackled DeFi risk head-on by building products that make it easy for investors to assess risk, including:

👉 Rate My Wallet – which instantly analyzes the risk of DeFi portfolios.

and 

👉 Exponential Risk Ratings – which distill thousands of risk vectors into a simple letter grade. 

And it works! 

To date, Exponential.fi has assessed over 1,000 investable DeFi opportunities and identified over $8 billion of funds still invested in high-risk projects.

If you’re ready to start exploring DeFi opportunities via a simplified, all-in-one platform, join Exponential.fi free, by clicking the big red button below 👇

🔪Let's dissect this:

Another Option for Investing in BTC

In one sentence: One way to invest in BTC, without investing in BTC, is to buy publicly listed BTC mining stocks - but that comes with pros and cons.

We love writing about ways to invest in BTC, without investing in BTC.

For example:

We’ve written about BTC ETFs plenty of times in the past (e.g. the last article).

We’ve written about MSTR (aka ‘BTC proxy companies’) which essentially let you invest in BTC because they hold so much BTC in their treasury that their stock price is pretty much pegged to it at this point.

But what we’ve never written about is investing in publicly traded BTC mining operations.

There are 14 different publicly listed BTC mining companies in the US right now.

Of those 14 companies, in a report released yesterday by JPMorgan, the aggregate market cap increased 29% (by $6.4 Billion USD) from June 30th to July 15th.

Meanwhile, in that same period of time, BTC itself rose by just 6%.

So far, the story sounds pretty good - but be warned!

The problem with investing in publicly traded BTC mining stocks is that, unlike BTC, they have way more variables.

For example, if the city simply raises the price of electricity, it cuts directly into a company’s profit margin.

Also, regulatory changes and technological obsolescence are ever present.

So while in the short term BTC mining stocks may outperform the value of BTC itself, there are many factors to consider when deciding which is the best way to get a return on your BTC investment.

Or maybe the trick is a diversified portfolio 🙃

How Bitcoin Miners Are Turning To Lucrative AI Stocks