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All of the round data referenced below can be downloaded from here. The data is part of a project that downloads round data periodically and uploads the csv.
Economist
I don't have much commentary for the last week. Crypto prices stabilized with 20k and 1k the new normal for Bitcoin and Ethereum.I will note that Economist had an article echoing what I had been saying the last few weeks. Hell, even Wall Street Journal had essentially the same article. It talks about how Bankman-Fried from FTX is setting himself up to become the JP Morgan of crypto. It's not a terrible analogy. There was a huge amount of consolidation in banking over the last 50 years, and its continued into 2008 crisis. Any time there's a crisis, consolidation is a by-product. Either the losers go out of business or combine forces. In 2008 it was a bit different as companies were forced to merge, but the results were the same.
What was the last large national bank that was created in the US? I think the last one was Ally Bank, and that was just a spin-off of General Motors banking division. Since then there has been no new banks or innovation in that field. This is mostly due to onerous regulations. There's been some new stuff on the margin, but that's mostly around robo-investing and brokerages (e.g. Robinhood). And they use the traditional banking network for their financial services (shout out to Citadel).
I also got a kick out of this clip from Marc Andreesen, a well known VC guy from Y-Combinator and heavy investor into crypto. It's from a few weeks ago but I just listened to his interview with Joe Rogan this week and it reminded me of this clip:
Today @pmarca was asked by @tylercowen to explain a Web3 use case.
— Liron Shapira (@liron) June 15, 2022
I clipped this gem from 28:08 of Conversations With Tyler.
Highly recommended... pic.twitter.com/Qe2jlFuqKK
Here he talks about web3 and how it could transform the podcast business model. You see him struggling here a bit because ... it's kind of a dumb idea? Anyone could make a paid podcast today. I think substack makes it easy, or just host the RSS feed personally. You could also do a subscription, have private chats for subscribers or pretty much anything he described. There's nothing that web3 opens up except the 'hip' factor of being on the blockchain. But that may be enough! Who knows. If someone started selling monkey pictures without blockchain, would it really have taken off? I don't know...
Action
Action dropped off a bit this week. It might be because everyone is playing the CAKE/USDT prediction markets... HAHAHA. No that's a joke. Of course no one is playing that. Volumes are a few hundred per round, compared to ~$7k per round on BNB/USDT. To the PancakeSwap admin lurker, no one wants your CAKE coin. Drop it. It doesn't matter what the yield is or how much you promise to burn a week. It's inflationary, centrally controlled and has no real utility. If people want to play the lottery, they should just convert, play and convert back. Enough with the shit-coins.
Winners and Losers
| Place | account | games played | won | won USD | Winnings Even Money | Average bet size |
| 1 | 0xf6152ae9e8d5003cc29856b1ffeb2166317fa30e | 68 | 65.71 | 13,668.0 | 7.59 | 6.32 |
| 2 | 0x35d0cb912c4c37110087f322fb11161a14e5dab6 | 412 | 64.36 | 13,387.0 | 16.49 | 1.24 |
| 3 | 0x2e4c5c4b0b7c6b8c02d3c30cb59629d01ec8f074 | 30 | 39.61 | 8,238.0 | 5.49 | 3.65 |
| 4 | 0x2bb17510976aa3ddb1ba11f1e0ac008be4e58948 | 213 | 38.39 | 7,986.0 | 5.65 | 2.17 |
| 5 | 0x37f9bbd2bd0f2328dfb8c13a22522da2e9c7cc1b | 105 | 38.37 | 7,982.0 | 8.56 | 4.83 |
| 6 | 0xbe88fc5105591f0a41fd6226d55517229ec6d5bf | 49 | 24.99 | 5,199.0 | 11.98 | 0.91 |
| 7 | 0xa10a7ba683d8e5b7dfc5fa0744c15288bdabeba6 | 222 | 24.33 | 5,061.0 | 14.8 | 1.03 |
| 8 | 0x5114e979302965007d5ce7390c7982e7a3488b23 | 6 | 24.19 | 5,032.0 | 2.67 | 8.35 |
| 9 | 0xad483dc8c4482eafdbebbc98ea66a89e461cfbd9 | 874 | 24.19 | 5,031.0 | 21.37 | 1.57 |
| 10 | 0xa6ac9b806162936872a4cc63bea6862c837a75e5 | 10 | 19.84 | 4,128.0 | 2.7 | 5.2 |
The best weekly winners continue to stay depressed, although we have a few strong algo-players this week. #2 sticks out with 412 games played and winnings of 64 BNB but if you look at their total win rate, you'll see they only won 17.7 BNB during the life of the games. So they're having a bit of a comeback this week. But I doubt it'll last.
Let's look at the losers
| Place | from | games played | won | won USD | Winnings Even Money | Average bet size |
| 1 | 0xb6eadca535c104fd159b5e54b28e0df032203d95 | 147 | -167.92 | -34,927.0 | -33.64 | 4.67 |
| 2 | 0x2563e690da0b98d1d3e4d03a99d8b2a75c2a7e32 | 556 | -158.26 | -32,918.0 | -43.62 | 2.98 |
| 3 | 0x75074b7ddd62e73df3eab589d75ecad010c3b4bc | 43 | -154.07 | -32,046.0 | -10.71 | 16.99 |
| 4 | 0xcfdfd0ff36d48287607dfe8839c869356a0dcd18 | 4 | -138.86 | -28,884.0 | -2.75 | 59.32 |
| 5 | 0xab370510c76216b7c7428c9e56b86f25791cfa31 | 247 | -111.39 | -23,170.0 | -23.46 | 4.33 |
| 6 | 0xed3fec88f5360935151f3cf9891be1b0e3e75fc7 | 65 | -96.57 | -20,087.0 | -17.23 | 6.02 |
| 7 | 0xabf2717bf3b6e591e7158c9587ce8fff133c968e | 56 | -64.22 | -13,359.0 | -9.67 | 3.32 |
| 8 | 0x851a390e7a62d909f3a0d0099196152f10403f86 | 177 | -59.28 | -12,330.0 | -19.01 | 2.77 |
| 9 | 0xea43239c4a746f12d635a6b958bbf33d6699616d | 80 | -49.03 | -10,198.0 | -10.64 | 4.47 |
| 10 | 0x53290544913ce391ae0e7776dbc9b07176d38b49 | 71 | -46.66 | -9,706.0 | -17.5 | 2.54 |
Big losers this week! Our top loser is new to the games but came through with had an impressive showing by losing 160+ BNB in a single week with a average bet size of 4.67. I also have to give a special shoutout to our #4 loser, who dropped 98 BNB in a single round!
He was coming in hot from a 78 BNB win which won him... 19 BNB. I'm not an expert, but that seems like of bad in terms of payoffs. But that's what happens when you bet big. It looks like he was betting through a bot as his last bet was 0.6 because he ran out of money! Maybe he mixed up his wei conversion. Who knows... But remember, if you're betting through a bot, always seed your account with very little in case you messed up a decimal point or something. Or don't, I don't care, because we love our losers.
As always, feel free to reach out with questions or comments or want my to highlight anything different on my weekly market recaps. If you like what you read and want to subscribe to receive an email when a new post is published, click here.
Good luck and bet responsibly!