Messari Daily Brief Feb. 12, 2021 - Bigger than Too-Big-To-Fail

I’m still not sure anyone truly appreciates just how crazy this bull market is about to get. The only real remaining constraint on crypto growth will be from political headwinds and aggressive negative incumbent lobbying efforts. I’ve written this before, but we’ve already entered the “then they fight you” period.

Three things stood out to me in the past couple of days, in particular. They are notable because they (inexplicably) weren’t even on my radar until I saw them hiding in plain site.

1. BTC-ETH is now bigger than a) the top five U.S. banks combined, b) the top five Chinese banks combined, c) the top 10 rest of the world banks combined, and d) all public companies except for the MAGAs (Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon) and Saudi Aramco. As a former JPM banking pee-on, it is pure bliss to see BTC at 2x JPM market cap and climbing. I like this site.
2. At current volumes, Binance is bigger than NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange in terms of both revenue & profitability. With a 10bp blended trading fee (this is just spot volumes, not to mention all other revenue lines), Binance does $10bn++ in run-rate revenue with insane margins. (We have a clean spot volume filter here.) It’s likely that Coinbase will come out of the gates trading north of ICE in terms of market cap, too, and yet that business is still significantly smaller than Binance and Huobi. ICE and its brethren may have to buy itBit or Gemini or Bittrex in order to catch up, as they are the only exchanges ICE could afford if they don’t end up being content riding Bakkt all the way.
3. And finally, bitcoin just tipped into the $1 trillion market cap club on a "fully diluted" basis. There are now thirty $5 billion+ networks on a fully-diluted basis, and sixty liquid unicorn networks, which is twice as many as we saw in the previous peak in January 2018. And climbing rapidly. (Check out this screener to keep tabs on the three comma club.)

My sense is that the hot ball of money is just picking up speed. There will be corrections along the way, but from what heights?

Have a nice weekend, and 新年快乐!

Headlines that matter:

• INTEL: ALPHA, CRV, KNC, AVAX, COMP, 0X, FET, KIN, YFI (+ 20 updates)
• Jack Dorsey & Jay-Z fund bitcoin development with 500 BTC (The Block)
• JPMorgan employees are clamoring for crypto (CoinDesk)
• Valiu raises $5.25 million to expand LatAm crypto remittances (Decrypt)
• Reflexer Labs raises $4mm to scale RAI stablecoin (CoinDesk)
• Kraken launches investment arm to keep up with rivals (The Block)
• Jed McCaleb sold $69 million of XRP in a week (Decrypt)
• Polkamarket prediction market plans initial DEX offering
• UMA launches KPI options and a proposed airdrop (UMA)
• Daily Shade: Bitcoin is for money makers, not losers like Uber