Ten31 Timestamp 717,090
The anniversary of the Genesis Block is a great opportunity to demarcate what has happened and planning for the next ~52,560 blocks. 2021 was another banner year for Bitcoin where the bounds were pushed further than any could have predicted. A country made Bitcoin legal tender, Taproot was merged into the protocol and a new all time high was breached just to name a few.
At Ten31 we have brought on a well diversified team and partnered with some of the leading Bitcoin companies progressing towards a Bitcoin infrastructure platform. Grant recently posted A Vision for Supporting the Bitcoin Ecosystem where he dived into his Bitcoin story, professional experiences and reasoning for focusing on Bitcoin infrastructure that have lead him to dedicating his time to helping push Bitcoin forward. The Ten31 Tribe was formed to create an open platform for our LPs and partners to come together and bring a wide range of experiences together allowing for spontaneous collaboration of ideas amongst individuals excited about the future of Bitcoin.
The first Ten31 Tribe event will occur virtually on January 7th at 2pm EST. We are excited to have two special guests join us: Joe Kelly, CEO and Co-founder of Unchained Capital, and Matt Hill, CEO and Co-founder of Start9 Labs. We will host a short conversation with each of them and open up the discussion to Q&A from the group. We look forward to seeing you there!
Fund II New Investments
Statmuse- Building the leading natural language search engine. Statmuse currently has the dominant top line search in the sports domain. Over the past 7 years Statmuse has developed a leading technology platform leveraging natural language search (as opposed to keyword search), which has led to partnerships with Disney and Google within the last few years. Eli Dawson, founder and CEO, is transitioning the company to a Bitcoin Standard and has launched a new vertical (StatmuseMoney), with the intention of creating the leading search and analytics platform for Bitcoin. A Bitcoin domain expertise leveraging natural language search creates a central platform for accessing direct Q&A on Bitcoin and finance, and there are longer-term opportunities to create a more enhanced analytical and market intelligence platform (e.g. alternative to Glassnode) that leverages its natural language search capabilities which existing players will be unable to replicate. This is the decade humans talk to machines, and Statmuse is aiming to be the personal Bitcoin knowledge assistant.
Selected Portfolio News
Unchained Capital IRA- On Dec. 16th Unchained announced open registration for their Retirement product. Now anyone can rollover their IRA/401k/403b etc.. plans into a collaborative custody vault. Jeff Vandrew and team have partnered with a banking custodian to facilitate the IRA which will allow you to hold 2 out of 3 private keys.
Swan Private- Swan Bitcoin has granted access to Swan Private— their premier client services to our Fund LPs. Unlimited access to your personal Swan Advisor, for you and anyone you recommend. Unlimited consulting on custody setup, inheritance planning, portfolio allocation, entry strategy, and market views.
Start9- BitcoinMechanic gives a great overview of the long awaited Embassy 0.3.0 which is currently in beta testing. This latest update is a complete rebuild of the operating system. The Embassy 0.3.0 is an open-permissionless system without walled gardens, and the ability to access other marketplaces is an example. The team at Start9 has lead the way producing Embassy OS giving self-hosted software a permanent home for the sovereign individual.
Giga Energy- Starting the year off with a major announcement on business development: Giga Box and Giga Power. They have built out their in-house capability of building and distributing containerized 350kW-2MW units for on/off grid applications. With their new Texas machine shop they have been able to drop lead times on acquiring 0-hour rebuilt engines for power production of the Giga Box.
Media
Jack Mallers speaks at the IMF Fintech Seminar, giving a brief history of crossborder payments and how the UN, G20, and Strike are aligned with the mandate to lower the barriers and reduce the friction when moving money across the world. In his disarming fashion with complete conviction, Jack, describes how the world of tortilla chips can leverage a “peanut technology”. Even tortillas’ with a peanut allergy can benefit from this great monetary network without having to ever touch the scary peanuts.
Taproot or BIP 340, 341 and 342 was a major upgrade to Bitcoin this year that was first introduced in 2018 by Bitcoin Core contributor Gregory Maxwell. The three main parts are: Schnorr signatures, Tapscript and Taproot. Schnorr signatures provide a new way to generate private-public key pairs. Leveraging key pairs created with Schnorr signatures will make transactions more data efficient and create the conditions for more private multisignature quorums as it will be impossible to distinguish between single signature and multisignature inputs. Tapscript enables Pay-to-Taproot (P2TR) transactions and Taproot holds the scripts required to properly integrate Tapscript and other signature/key changes. For a further in-depth review of Taproot Natalie Brunell of Coin Stories and Jimmy Song provide Bitcoin Taproot Upgrade Explained.
Chaumian Mints on Lightning is discussed in detail on a twitter spaces with P and Eric Sirion. Bringing old ideas like eCash to Bitcoin/Lightning in a federated way to provide privacy and infinite scalability. "Chaumian mints, through the use of blind signatures, have extremely appealing privacy properties. The mint operators do not know the number of users, their identities, account balances, or transaction histories.”
The Lightning network continues to expand at an exponential rate of additional nodes, channels and capacity over 2021. Lnrouter.app provides an interactive visualization of the Lightning network graph. Being able to see the nodes and channels is reminiscent to neuroanatomy; the Lightning nodes are the neurons with the channels representing the dendrites and axons which are the connecting points of nerves. An electrical impulse signaling across the channels passing information from one cell/node to another.
Market Happenings
Lemonade acquires bitcoin vis-a- vis their Metromile acquisition. Lemonade is an insurtech company initially offering homeowners, renters and pet insurance. Lemonade, now, offers digital term life insurance. This acquisition illustrates life insurers desire for a new asset given their low time preference. The CEO also shared Lemonade is pursuing “premium and claims payment in bitcoin”.
December 14th, 2021 – NYDIG announced a growth equity funding round of $1 billion that will value the company at more than $7 billion. Westcap led the round joined by Bessemer Venture Partners and FinTech Collective. Existing Investors and strategic partners include Affirm, FIS, Fiserv, MassMutual, Morgan Stanley, and New York Life. The raise will be used to expand the NYDIG team around the globe.
Marathon Digital (MARA) buys 78,000 Antminer S19 XP miners from Bitmain for ~$900 million. The machines are to be delivered starting from July to December 2022. MARA expects to have 199,000 miners with a total of ~23 EH/s by early 2023. The Bitcoin network currently has 177 EH/s.
Regulatory Update
Hester Peirce recently tweeted about the upcoming 2021 Agenda coming up short on providing more clarity on digital assets. Perhaps no news is good news. The regulators rhetoric is still cuing up defi tokens as securities and bitcoin as property— albeit nothing is yet formal.
December 14th, 2021- A bipartisan letter was addressed to Janet Yellen from six senators outlining their concern on the “broker” definition in the recent Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) signed on Nov. 15, 2021. Their focus was on continuing to document Senator Portman and Senator Warner floor statement on August 9, 2021, “[t]he purpose of this provision is not to impose new reporting requirements on people who do not meet the definition of brokers.” There seems to be bipartisan support “to help ensure that the United States remains a global leader in financial innovation and development, while ensuring that this technology does not become a vector for illicit finance, tax evasion, or other criminal activity.”
Paraguay Bitcoin Bill- The bill approved by the Paraguayan Senate states that individuals or companies interested in bitcoin mining will need to request authorization for industrial energy consumption. Not as friendly of legislation as El Salvador— nonetheless— a recognition of increasing Bitcoin adoption and growth colliding with national politics.
Noteworthy
The World's First Bitcoin Mortgage
The Synergy of the Lighting Network and Algorithmic Traders
Turkey's currency crisis deepens after Erdogan's Latest rate cut
Venture Capital and its Relationship with Bitcoin
Travel
Nashville Bitcoin Meetup Jan. 12th
Chicago Bitcoin Developers Meetup Jan. 13th
Austin Bitcoin Developers Meetup Jan. 20th
Houston Bitcoin Meetup Jan. 27th
Q1 2022 Ten31 Tribe event - in-person (Austin), March (TBD date/logistics)
Miami Bitcoin 2022 April 6-9 (purchase tickets in advance)
BitBlockBoom 2022 (Austin) Aug. 25-28