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How in the world does crypto get its value? Can we seriously create any real value by solving equations?

Published: 03 May 2023, 5:32 PM IST

What do you think? Would it be possible to buy a piping hot pizza using crypto in the future?

This episode is a part of Think.NXT with Raghav a peek into the future through India's eyes! On this podcast, our editor-in-chief, Raghav Bahl, chats about cryptocurrency, which is more than a fintech buzzword. To that effect, Raghav's got a few fundamental questions How in the world does crypto get its value? Is it just a funky math problem? Can we seriously create any real value by solving equations?

He sits down with some amazing experts like Tanvi Ratna, the founder & CEO of Policy 4.0; Siddharth Menon, the co-founder of WazirX; Punit Agarwal, the founder of KoinX; and Praveen Chakravarty, who is not only a politician but also a public intellectual.

What do you think? Would it be possible to buy a piping hot pizza using crypto in the future? Let us know your thoughts on this episode.

Listen to more episodes of News and Views here.

To listen to episodes of our review podcast'Do I Like It',click here.

Listen to the second season of The Big Story, our award-winning series,here.

To check out 'Urdunama', a podcast where we talk about everyday Urdu words that you hear in movies and songs,click here.

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Podcast | How Does Cryptocurrency Get Its Value? | Think.NXT With Raghav - The Quint

Marc Andreessen is an Optimism investor. (Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for Fortune)

Ethereum is big and clunky. New layer 2 solutions promise to fix it. One is called Optimism, created ... [+] by Ethereum developers. It hasn't helped investors one bit. But crypto exchanges, others, say its a needed tool for making Web3 work.

When three ex-Ethereum ETH developers who built the Optimism OP blockchain in 2019 launched its own native token OP in May 2022, it was definitely no get rich quick scheme. If you could have shorted the OP token, you would have done well. OP fell 70% in its first 24 hours and is down 46% ever since. But OP is not for investors. This is for developers working on the Ethereum blockchain, creating decentralized apps for a Web3 future everyone is still waiting for and still being built. Word is that Optimism, the Layer 2 (L2) solution for Ethereum, is a hit with its target audience.

Moreover, crypto investors welcome it. They think it makes Ethereum better. Which was Optimisms goal all along.

"By making Ethereum more approachable and user-friendly, L2 solutions are cutting transaction costs and speeding up processing times, says From Zach Profeta, Senior Portfolio Manager for Sarson Funds in Indianapolis. Since Layer 2 networks still use ETH (the Ethereum token) for gas fees, increased adoption means higher demand for ETH. For those reasons and more, we are active in both Ethereum and emerging Layer 2 solutions like Base," he says, naming Coinbases own Layer 2 solution launched this year. Other L2s include Arbitrum ARB and Starkware (not tradeable).

L2 solutions provide faster smart contracts. Speed means less transaction fees, as well. Developers ... [+] are benefiting.

First, a brief explainer for those with Coinbase accounts who just invest in cryptocurrency but arent building dapps, or even know what a dapp is. (It stands for decentralized applications.)

L2 is needed to make Ethereum faster, and that keeps investors in ETH rather than selling for alternative blockchains like Hong Kong based Cardano ADA . The better L2s get, the more attractive Ethereum becomes. Better yet, Web3s future looks more attractive.

Optimism was built by Ethereum developers Jinglan Wang, Karl Floersch, and Kevin Ho. It is a roll-up scalable solution for Ethereum, which is a Layer 1 blockchain.

In short, Layer 1 blockchains are hard to build out so they are slower, expandable universes while Layer 2 blockchains are faster and more expandable and sit on top of the main chain, in this case Ethereum. There are two types of roll-ups. Optimism is one. Zero-knowledge rollups like Stark are the other ones.

These L2 chains store transaction data on the mainchain but move transaction activity to a sidechain. L2 chains take transactions out of the main network (mainnet) and process them off-chain, convert them into one single piece of data, and submit them back to the Ethereum mainnet. This makes them faster, and cheaper.

We have been using Optimism to build since it is hard to make derivatives-based financial products which require high throughput on Ethereum. We want faster transactions, says Gautham Santhosh, Co-founder of Dubai-based Polynomial Protocol, a decentralized crypto-derivatives trading exchange using the Synthetix protocol on Optimism.

Santhosh says Ethereum needs at least 13 seconds for transactions to settle. But using Optimism allows us to do it faster for our products and provide cheaper transactions with the same security of Ethereum, Santhosh says.

Optimisms open mainnet launched in December 2021. It is built on top of Ethereum.

Since then, Optimism has deployed over 7,000 contracts, on-boarded well over 300 thousand unique addresses, secured nearly $1 billion in value and facilitated nearly $20 billion in transactions, with around $24.5 million in revenue, the company said.

Aziz Kenjaev, former head of partnerships for the GammaX cryptocurrency exchange in Dubai (he left shortly after interview), said that the challenge for crypto exchanges is to offer a fast and cheap trading environment to users.

GammaXs business model and design was to go zero fee. For us, Arbitrum had a huge edge. Their transaction costs are lower than Optimism's. However, the Optimist's transaction fraud proof is faster than Arbitrum's. Both are optimistic rollups. Both of here to stay, and help dApp developers. The future of blockchain is fast execution with the lowest to imperceptible fees.

Marc Andreessen is an Optimism investor. (Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for Fortune)

Optimism stemmed from complaints about Ethereums slowness, which sort of came to a head in 2019. Optimisms developers created their first rollup design at that time.

They raised $3.5 million from Web3 investment firm Paradigm and IDEO CoLab Ventures.

Two years later, they have over $175 million in funding from Paradigm, and now from the Andreessen Horowitz a16z venture fund. That is run by internet pioneer and Forbes listed billionaire Marc Andreessen and investor Ben Horowitz out of Menlo Park, Calif.

Optimism has cumulatively saved users $2.69 billion in fees, 15.8 years of waiting for transaction confirmations, and currently secures $2.8 billion in onchain value, the company says.

They still are hard on themselves, saying on their blog page that no one has truly scaled Ethereum. And that includes us.

If Ethereum is ever to rival Google GOOG , for example, and take dapps to the masses, it needs internet-level scale and speed. No single blockchain today can offer that.

Optimism is dedicated to scaling Ethereum's technology and expanding its ability to coordinate people from across the world to build effective decentralized power structures, says Binji Pande, Developer Advocate at OP Labs, a global group of developers that work on Optimism that seem as dedicated to taking it to The Man as they are playing with computer code. We are building best-in-class software for running L2 blockchains.

Optimisms Ethereum Virtual Machine-like (EVM) architecture scales Ethereum applications without surprises, says Pande, meaning any developer who is familiar with building on Ethereum can build with Optimism's modular codebase, called the OP Stack, without needing to learn any new coding languages or have new technology requirements.

We have been developing products and applications on the Ethereum network since 2016, so we have seen the history of L2 implementation with our own eyes, says Ihor Kubalskyi, founder of QBEin, a blockchain development company in Tbilisi, Georgia.

What matters about L2 is the ability to group transactions the network bandwidth has increased with L2, and the cost of commissions for an individual user has decreased. Due to L2, Ethereum has become much more convenient and stable for real business processes. By moving some of our transactions to L2s, we can significantly reduce fees and improve transaction speed for our users.

Since Optimism launched its mainnet at the end of December 2021, Ethereums price in dollars has fallen 59.7%. L2 hasnt helped ETH enthusiasm among crytpo investors.

On April 22, Forbes cryptocurrency specialist Billy Bambrough predicted that bitcoin and cryptocurrencys in general were ready for a parabolic price move. Bitcoin BTC is up 7.6% since. Ethereum is up a little over 3%. Both are beating the Nasdaq.

On April 26, Bambrough called the end to the crypto winter. Both ETH and BTC rocketed on Sunday morning, but has since fallen down to April 9 levels.

*The writer of this article invests in bitcoin and Cardano.

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For Cryptocurrency Investors, Optimism's Token Is A Bust, Yet Its Ethereum L2 Solution Is Not - Forbes

The top 5 new cryptocurrency trading books to read in 2023 are fantastic resources

Everyone who is still learning about cryptos has access to several fantastic resources. Although the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, entered the market in 2009, the industry has evolved into a global payment solution with enormous potential. Here are some of the best books on cryptocurrencies to read if you want to learn more about them and what they can do for our planet in 2023.

How blockchain transforms money and financial transactions is examined in The Business Blockchain. The framework for explaining the blockchains what, why, and how is provided in this book by William Mougayar. By dissecting the blockchains components in a way that has never been done before, The Business Blockchain advances our knowledge of the technology.

The Cryptocurrency Investing Bible examines how cryptocurrencies are changing the way that people handle their money and do business. Alan T. Norman, the author, ensures that you understand the fundamentals. And this one is for you if you are new to cryptocurrencies, want to learn more before you start investing, and want to save time by doing less internet research.

As author Andrew Johnson correctly demonstrates the approach, this book will wow you in the most traditional way. Secrets are made public. You may learn about cryptocurrencies in this book, as well as how to trade and invest your way to financial success.

The Internet of Money digs into the why of Bitcoin whereas many books focus on its how. Andreas M. Antonopoulos, a renowned information security expert and the author of Mastering Bitcoin, explores and contextualizes the significance of Bitcoin via a series of articles that cover the thrilling development of this technology.

Wikinomics best-selling author Don Tapscott and his son, blockchain specialist Alex Tapscott, have written a book about the future of the modern economy that is thoroughly researched, comprehensible, and fundamental. The Blockchain Revolution is the corporate worlds guidebook for the foreseeable future.

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Top 5 New Cryptocurrency Trading Books to Read in 2023 - Analytics Insight

In the past five years, cryptocurrency has gone from a rare and seldom-used form of currency to a headline-grabbing monetary instrument that has the potential to change the way business is conducted. Misunderstood and often misvalued, cryptocurrency has been the cause of major and minor financial frauds and the collapse of financial institutions trading, or even just holding, cryptocurrency.

Most recently, several prominent banks have announced they are closing shop after experiencing losses directly or indirectly related to the cryptocurrency industry. Silvergate Bank bet heavily on the cryptocurrency industry, eventually becoming known as the "Crypto Bank" and dependent largely on its digital asset deposits. When FTX, the crypto exchange and an important client of the bank, collapsed last November due, in part, to a massive misvaluation of crypto assets, Silvergate found itself facing a bank run. To make matters worse, because of rising interest rates, the bank was forced to liquidate, at a loss, securities held as reserves to fulfill the influx of withdrawals.

When failures like this occur, auditors and accountants are often looked to for answers and for their "deep pockets." This begs the question, what standards should accountants and auditors employ in valuing cryptocurrencies?

Until recently, some accountants may have been inclined to treat cryptocurrency as a cash equivalent; however, under GAAP, cash equivalents are defined as "short-term, highly liquid investments that are readily convertible to known amounts of cash and that are so near their maturity that they present insignificant risk of changes in value because of changes in interest rates." Cryptocurrency, however, can be subject to major price volatility that is inconsistent with cash or a cash-equivalent treatment.

Cryptocurrency should also not be considered a financial asset (for fair value through profit or loss) for accounting purposes. A financial asset is defined as cash, evidence of an ownership interest in an entity, or a contractual right to receive cash or another financial instrument from another entity. Digital assets are not cash or debt securities and do not provide an ownership interest in an entity. Further, digital assets do not represent any contractual right to cash or some other financial instrument.

A final alternative is to treat cryptocurrency as an intangible asset. Intangible assets are defined as "assets (not including financial assets) that lack physical substance."

These types of assets must be tested for impairment, which requires entities to write off as an impairment loss any loss in value of the cryptocurrency at the end of the reporting period. However, if the value of the cryptocurrency increases again, the entity cannot mark up the value. This can cause a huge discrepancy in the representation of cryptocurrency value. In some circumstances it may be acceptable to account for intangibles as inventory. If an entity mines and holds cryptocurrencies for sale in the ordinary course of its primary business, it may, in theory, be appropriate to treat them as inventory.

To date, there are still no final U.S. GAAP rules on cryptocurrency; however, the Financial Accounting Standards Board has recently issued a proposal for the valuation of cryptocurrency. The proposal would require holders of digital assets that fall within the scope of the guidance to measure them at fair value at each reporting period, with changes to fair value reflected in net income.

Specifically, those crypto assets would be presented separately from other intangible assets on the balance sheet, and gains and losses would be recorded as net income each period, separately from changes to carried amounts of other intangible assets. The scope of the proposal includes digital assets that:

This proposal was issued on March 23, 2023, and comments on the proposal are due on June 6, 2023.Although FASB is currently working hard on standards for the accounting of cryptocurrency, without any final U.S. GAAP rules on cryptocurrency, accountants should be mindful of ensuring proper disclosure of the valuation principles being employed and ensuring the financial statements are not misleading.

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Valuing and accounting for cryptocurrency assets and liabilities - Accounting Today

BRUSSELS, April 27 (Reuters) - The first and only Belgian cryptocurrency lending platform, Bit4You, said it was suspending its activities after CoinLoan, one of its main service providers, was declared insolvent by an Estonian court.

CoinLoan, a crypto lending company based in the Baltic state, also no longer has the required registration as a custodian of virtual currencies, Bit4You said in a statement on its website.

"To date, we have no indication that the virtual currencies held on behalf of our customers with CoinLoan cannot be recovered," Bit4You added.

As proportions of Bit4You's customers' investments, CoinLoan holds around 85.66% of Ripple (XRP) coin, around 81.45% of top cryptocurrency bitcoin and 67.32% of Ethereum, according to the statement.

A court in Estonia unexpectedly ordered CoinLoan to halt all operations, including withdrawals, on April 24. The company had limited user withdrawals in July 2022 to $5,000 per 24-hour period to stave off a run on its funds.

Reporting by Marine StraussEditing by GV De Clercq

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Belgium's only cryptocurrency platform suspends activities - Reuters