In 2017, cryptocurrency exchange Binance created the first of a new kind of blockchain-minted digital asset: BNB coin, designed to reward customer behavior such as trading or referring friends to its own platform. “A model for building a scalable, and impactful cryptocurrency business,” heralded CoinDesk editor Pete Rizzo in 2019, after Binance moved the coin to its own proprietary blockchain. “Unbelievable brilliance.”
Today, the only unbelievable thing about the whole cloth of crypto inventions known as exchange tokens, like BNB, is that they have inflated to tens of billions of dollars in value and in large part have become the foundation upon which the fast-growing digital-assets markets rest.
The weakest link in former billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire was FTX’s own exchange token, which traded under the symbol FTT. According to Reuters, Bankman-Fried had lent his trading company, Alameda, billions of dollars in FTX customer funds, collateralized by these FTT tokens, which were essentially invented as a way to offer trading discounts and other perks.
“The way that FTT works,” said Bankman-Fried in an August 2022 interview with Forbes, “It is not that you get free FTT for doing things. The way to think about it is that you get free shit for having FTT. So, there’s a bunch of doo-hickeys.”
At the peak in 2021 FTT had a market value of $9.6 billion, but unlike a common stock, which represents legal ownership in the assets of a corporation, FTT does not represent any equity ownership in the FTX company. If FTT had any intrinsic value, it was in the form of discounts that FTX customers using these tokens could get trading on the exchange–as much as 60% for active traders.
You can think of these exchange tokens as being akin to loyalty or reward points you might get as a frequent customer of Starbucks or the UnitedMiles by flying on that airline. They have value, but it’s unlikely that a bank would allow you to use them as collateral if you wanted to purchase a home.
However, in the highly speculative and often bizarre world of digital assets, these loyalty tokens trade on numerous crypto exchanges just as stocks do on the New York Stock Exchange, and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried reportedly used them as collateral for the loans his company made. Up until a week ago FTT traded at $26 and had a market capitalization of $3.5 billion.
But after Bankman-Fried’s rival Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s billionaire founder, went on Twitter to say he was planning to sell over $500 million of FTT, it sparked the crypto equivalent of a bank run. Today FTT sells for $2.70, and given FTX’s recent bankruptcy filing, it is likely headed to zero.
But the story of exchange tokens in cryptoland is far from over. Forbes counts more than 16 global crypto and DeFi (decentralized finance) exchanges currently using these tokens for a combined market value of no less than $62 billion.
In fact, so-called exchange tokens are an important underpinning to the crypto exchange ecosystem because they are effective in creating customer loyalty–especially when token prices are rising. Virtually all such tokens offer holders exchange-specific perks such as trading fee discounts, preferential margin loan terms, enhanced rewards for staking (lending) and exchange-branded cashback Visa cards.
Exchange tokens are also awarded to customers that refer new traders to a platform, in a system similar to multi-level marketing organizations like Amway. Exchange tokens function as the fuel for crypto’s self-fulfilling bubbles.
Binance–the largest crypto exchange in the world–has its own token, BNB, which by itself has a market capitalization of $45.9 billion, though it does not represent any equity in Changpeng Zhao’s company nor has it been registered as a security with the U.S. SEC.
Anyone who opens an account on Binance and starts trading can buy or earn these BNB tokens, which offer 25% discounts on spot and margin transaction fees and 10% on futures. If you refer friends, you can get up to 40% commission every time they make a trade on Binance. Also, because Binance has created its own blockchain that mints BNB coins, you can use BNB to pay for goods and services, book airfare and hotels on sites like Travala for instance, participate in exclusive token sales and even earn free tokens by completing surveys and tasks.
You can also put BNB to use by staking, earn a flexible percentage yield by depositing it on BNB Chain-based projects and apply for crypto loans. Notably, these digital assets are also essential for anyone who want to use Binance’s decentralized exchange (DEX), which theoretically can’t be shut down by U.S. regulators.
Unlike bitcoin, which is mined every ten minutes, all of the 350 million FTT tokens that would ever exist were created in what is known as a pre-mine. “There will never be any more minted,” said Bankman-Fried recently. In fact, over a period of about three months starting around June of 2019 almost all of FTT’s premined tokens were sold prior to getting listed on crypto exchanges. “Effectively, all of the FTT tokens were owned by a collection of people and entities,” said Bankman-Fried.
In order to create scarcity and essentially bolster the value of its exchange tokens, FTX and Binance conduct what are known as token burns. Periodically both exchanges send tokens to irretrievable addresses reducing the float, similarly to a share buyback, and thus increasing the value of the exchange tokens outstanding. Since 2019 FTX has burned 21 million FTT tokens.
In total, Binance has burned more than 42 million BNB, which would be worth $11.6 billion at today’s prices. CZ has said Binance doesn’t borrow money and has never used BNB as collateral on loans. He recently began advocating that exchanges undergo a “proof” of funds.
In terms of governance, exchange tokens, like loyalty reward programs, are completely under the control of the entity that issues or redeems them, even if they profess to stick to pre-arranged schedules for issuance or burning. DeFi tokens, by contrast, claim to offer holders the ability to propose and vote on platform changes. But in reality, many large DeFi platforms concentrate governance in the hands of big investors and founding teams.
Additionally, just as FTT did not give holders stakes in FTX, purchasing a DeFi token does not necessarily convey ownership rights into the underlying platform. The table below offers details on some 16 different cryptocurrency and DeFi-platform exchange tokens representing more than $60 billion in market value.
Conspicuously absent are Coinbase and Kraken, which are U.S.-based and have avoided issuing exchange tokens, presumably because they would likely be deemed securities by the SEC. All of the tokens listed trade on exchanges daily like stocks–most of them have plummeted in value in the last year—but not a single one offers any ownership in the companies that they are affiliated with. Buyer beware.
TOKEN VALUES
The 16 crypto and DeFi exchanges below created exchange tokens to attract and retain customers. Though they trade like stocks and have a value of over $60 billion, none represent ownership in their affiliated platforms.
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Slack off on your daily Spanish lesson and a cellphone alert will auto-generate at the same time you used the app the day before. Duo appears on your screen as an emoji, nagging you to keep up with your drills.
Millions obey Duo’s commands. Created seven years ago by MacArthur “genius” computer geek Luis von Ahn, 40, Duolingo has hooked everyone from Bill Gates, Khloe Kardashian and Jack Dorsey to Syrian refugees in Turkey.
“The moment I felt proudest was when I realized, Wow, the richest man in the world is using the same system as the lowest people on the economic scale,” says Von Ahn. “That is for me really special and pretty big.”
Duolingo has lots of room to grow bigger still. More than 2 billion people worldwide are studying a foreign language, and increasingly they are doing it online. Digital language-learning generates $6 billion in revenue, and that number is projected to rise to $8.7 billion by 2025. But it’s a highly fragmented market with dozens of players scattered around the globe, and it’s begging for a dominant one.
Von Ahn certainly knows how to execute on a grand scale. When he was a 21-year-old grad student he gave the world CAPTCHA—better known to billions of internet users as those annoying squiggly letters that you have to transcribe to prove that you are not a bot. Later he sold two inventions to Google, netting more than $20 million.
He splurged on a Lamborghini and a Tesla Model S but otherwise leads a modest life, remaining in the six-bedroom house he bought with his ex-wife in Pittsburgh’s Point Breeze neighborhood, close to Duolingo’s offices. “I could have gone to Guatemala to live in a villa, but I didn’t want to,” he says. Instead, he has thrown himself into building the world’s most downloaded education app.
Duolingo already offers more languages than its competitors do, 36 at last count. They include little-spoken tongues like Hawaiian, Navajo and Gaelic and the fictional language High Valyrian from the HBO blockbuster Game of Thrones (1.2 million users are studying it). À la Wikipedia, Duolingo enlists volunteers to help create its more obscure courses.
Seven years after its launch, it has nearly 30 million active monthly users, according to its own figures. Venture capitalists have pumped in $108 million, ballooning Duolingo’s valuation to $700 million in 2017, $150 million more than the market capitalization of Rosetta Stone, its 27-year-old publicly traded rival.
Along with teaching more languages (Rosetta Stone offers 25), Duolingo attracts users because its basic ad-supported version is free, compared with the $120 a year Rosetta Stone charges its 500,000 subscribers. Another competitor, Berlin-based Babbel, says its revenue of more than $115 million comes from the $85-a-year subscription fee it charges its million-plus subscribers.
Only 1.75% of Duolingo’s users pay for its ad-free version ($84 a year), but because its base is so huge, revenue hit $36 million last year. Von Ahn says that will climb to $86 million in 2019 and $160 million in 2020 as more users sign on and pay for the premium app, which will attract them with new features. Employee head count will rise from 170 to 200 by year’s end.
Duolingo’s headquarters, in a converted furniture store in East Liberty, a gentrifying neighborhood not far from Google’s Pittsburgh office, is set to expand to a second floor. The company isn’t profitable, but Von Ahn says it will be cash-flow positive this year. He is planning an IPO by 2021.
He likes to say that the money he forfeits giving away the app is equivalent to the cost of his rivals’ bloated marketing budgets. He also boasts that users are less likely to quit Duolingo than they are to bail out of competing language apps. “Our retention is comparable to games,” he says.
The comparison is apt. Duolingo grabs users with gamification tricks like points, treasure chests and “streaks” for continuous use. The app’s three-minute lessons are designed with a simple interface. In a typical exercise, the sentence “I eat bread” appears above seven bubbled words. Drag the words onto a line, hit “check” and “You are correct” appears at the bottom of the screen with a satisfying chime. Fans tweet about funny sentences generated by the software, like “I am selling my mother-in-law for a euro.”
Duolingo has gotten bad press from writers who try the app and don’t learn much. But Von Ahn promises only to get users to a level between advanced beginner and early intermediate. “A significant portion of our users use it because it’s fun and it’s not a complete waste of time,” he says….Read more
The bitcoin price’s mammoth 2021 bull run catapulted its market capitalization to over $1.2 trillion last year. It’s since crashed back to a mere $400 billion. Meanwhile, ethereum’s own huge price rally saw it climb to over $500 billion before dropping to just over $200 billion. Now, some traders and investors are predicting the ethereum price will surge following its long-awaited, radical upgrade—potentially making ethereum more valuable than bitcoin for the first time, an event known as “the flippening.”
“Investor interest in ethereum has remained resilient as it nears the merge, its once-in-a-lifetime event that will see the whole network migrate onto proof-of-stake,” Gabriel Selby, lead research analyst at cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks, said via Twitter. “Some have suggested it could be the catalyst for ethereum to overtake bitcoin as the world’s largest coin by market capitalization.”
This week, ethereum is expected to complete its transition from the energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus mechanism used by bitcoin to the more power-efficient proof-of-stake, removing ethereum’s reliance on miners and handing control to those that “stake” their ether on the network. The switch is expected to reduce ethereum’s carbon emissions by 99%, according to the Ethereum Foundation.
Bitcoin’s dominance, a measure of its value compared to other cryptocurrencies, has in recent weeks dipped under 40%, down from a peak of almost 50% earlier this year, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Ethereum has seen its share of the market climb to over 20%, up from lows of under 15%. “Since the start of the year, the market cap ratio between bitcoin and ethereum has converged to its narrowest differential since May 2021.
If the current trend persists, ethereum could reach the top of the league tables by the end of 2023, or sooner,” Selby said. While bitcoin has developed a reputation as digital gold due to its immutability and resistance to both change and censorship, ethereum is designed to be used as the foundation of a decentralized, blockchain-based internet—an idea that’s become known as web3.
“With the proliferation of financial products that have enabled a much broader range of investors to express their price view in the crypto markets—such as the recently launched ethereum options contract by CME—the mechanisms are very much in place for ethereum’s market cap to overtake bitcoin, should there be buy-in from a sufficient number of investors,” Selby added.
“We believe that ethereum has great utility and once the purge phase of pruning the code starts in 2023 it will be a very good blockchain with even greater adoption,” Martin Hiesboeck, head of blockchain and crypto research at crypto trading platform Uphold, said via email, adding: “The [ethereum] price could well skyrocket.”
Over the last year, ethereum has seen a demand boom due to the soaring popularity of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), digital art and media that’s tokenized on the ethereum blockchain. “Ethereum has already surpassed bitcoin in terms of the number of transactions executed,” Daniel Kostecki, a senior financial analyst at the investment company Conotoxia. “However, it is still far behind bitcoin in the volume of transactions on the blockchain or trading on exchanges.”
Kostecki warned it will be “hard to overtake a coin that was first in the world and whose issuance is limited.” Though others are more confident the flippening will eventually happen. “The merge will help global sentiment towards crypto and [the blockchain-based third iteration of the internet] web3 because the second biggest blockchain is becoming greener,” Max Kordek, chief executive of decentralized applications platform Lisk, said in emailed comments. “This is also a necessary step for ethereum to flip bitcoin, which I foresee happening in the next major bull run.”
I am a journalist with significant experience covering technology, finance, economics, and business around the world. As the founding editor of Verdict.co.uk I reported on..
When the Ethereum (ETH) merge occurs in September, it will mark the end of its PoW system and begin its status as a PoS coin. The Merge will supposedly decrease ETH’s total supply. A decreased supply should help lift the price of ETH. This could assist its rise to #1. However, BTC will always be seen as “digital gold” within the digital universe, while Ethereum is known as “digital oil.”
A rapid increase in the ETH price, a decrease in BTC’s price, or a combination of these two could lead to the Flippening. The ETH merge will not reduce gas fees for transactions (at least not immediately), a primary sticking point that could prevent ETH from growing. By contrast, Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA) have cheaper fees due primarily to their PoS consensus mechanism. Could one of them overtake ETH?
Many believe the fees on the Ethereum platform will decline gradually. Instead, the ETH blockchain plans to scale its users’ activity and secure its Mainnet through a decentralized layer. This method could allow for cheaper transactions within the network (eventually). For those unaware, market cap for cryptocurrencies works the same way as that of the stock market.
Replace the word “share” with “coin or token” so that “total shares outstanding multiplied by price per share” becomes total altcoins/tokens outstanding multiplied by the price per altcoin/token equals the assets’ market cap. Market cap is one of the vital indicators of an altcoin’s value. Many newcomers (including me) to the cryptocurrency market considered only an altcoin’s price to determine its value without considering how many are circulating and how many will be produced.
However, scarcity is only one part of the Law of Supply and Demand. Between ETH and BTC, the value or market cap gap is more than $200 billion. BTC’s market cap on 19 AUG is $408,567,909,013, while ETH’s is $206,487,299,810. That’s more than double. However, many are looking at it like the “glass is half-full,” or ETH is almost halfway to the Flippening.
ETH is almost triple its next closest competitor a “stablecoin,” Tether (USDT) valued at $67,554,732,043. In fact, BTC owns more than 55% of the total value within the cryptocurrency industry. These valuations were genuine at the time of my research, though market valuations in the highly volatile cryptocurrency market change rapidly. Conversely, ETH owns just a little more than 12% of the value. This gap may be a hard one to close for ETH.
Plus, other factors may make it challenging for ETH to top BTC in the near future. Let’s explore those so you can form an opinion about the “flippening.” Some “whales” believe ETH has the presence in the crypto universe but not the asset liquidity of BTC, though some Ether watchers and owners would say “…we’re halfway there.” Most crypto enthusiasts understand that the BTC halving creates a bull run.
Well, imagine that times three. The Merge will cut emissions by 90 percent, daily block compensation will diminish from 12800 to 1280 ETH, and inflation will drop from 4.3% to 0.43%, which could be seen as a 3X halving. Many investors do not understand the difference between circulating supply, total supply, and maximum supply. It can be complicated. Of course, circulating supply refers to the number of coins in circulation.
However, total supply doesn’t necessarily refer to the total supply that will ever be produced; that is maximum supply. As opposed to government-produced and regulated fiat currencies, the maximum supply of BTC is set at 21,000,000, which it is predicted to reach by 2040. Yet the price can move quickly due to its small number compared to ETH, which has an announced total/circulating supply of 122,027,066 coins. The maximum supply is not currently known.
Although the number of coins in circulation and price will drive market cap, inflation can stifle growth. Although the Merge will help fight inflation and quell circulating supply, ETH has nearly 100 million coins in circulation than BTC ever will. Regardless of the number of coins in circulation, the demand for either will drive the price. BTC has always led the way, but it has no real project outside of its decentralized nature, limited anonymity, and stored value.
Those functions often lead to ETH being referred to as “digital oil” because it “greases the skids” for so many operations across the crypto universe. While ETH is set to complete the Merge to PoS in September, many believe it will flip BTC and become number one. However, we must wait and see how the ETH blockchain will function once the Merge is complete.
Suppose, as predicted, the gas fees remain high. What is the advantage beyond the apparent but not visible benefit to the environment? If developers and creators must pay the same high fees, what will stop them from using another platform that performs the same function for less?
Shares of Tesla sank to an 11-month low on Tuesday after a bearish analyst note tacked on to a flurry of concerns for the electric-vehicle maker and high-profile chief Elon Musk—even as one of the firm’s staunchest bulls doubled down on its massive investment.
Tesla stock fell 7% to $628 on Tuesday, pushing the stock down nearly 49% from its all-time high in November and wiping over $30 billion from Tesla’s market capitalization, which has fallen to $650 billion from a peak of more than $1.2 trillion.
Prompting the steep decline, Daiwa analyst Jairam Nathan on Tuesday morning lowered his price target for Tesla shares to $800 from $1,150—telling clients Covid lockdowns in Shanghai, where the electric-vehicle maker operates its so-called Gigafactory, as well as supply issues impacting its Austin and Berlin plants, will cut deeper into earnings than previously expected.
Nathan forecasts the headwinds will push deliveries this year down by 180,000 vehicles, meaning Tesla will deliver 1.2 million vehicles this year, as opposed to the 1.4 million units previously expected.
The note comes one day after Wedbush analyst Dan Ives cautioned Twitter’s shareholder meeting this week will “surely kick off some more fireworks” between Musk and the social media firm’s board, adding to the “major overhang” as investors worry the proposed takeover could divert his attention from Tesla.
“Tesla investor patience is wearing very thin,” Ives said about the resulting back and forth, with Musk suggesting he’ll lower his offer due to concerns about bots on Twitter, while the company’s board says it won’t alter the deal.
Despite the bearishness, Ark Invest, the New York City investment firm helmed by famed stock-picker Cathie Wood, disclosed it bought $10 million in Tesla shares on Tuesday—adding to its stake for the first time since February less than a week after the stock lost its top spot on Ark’s flagship fund to streaming giant Roku.
“This [takeover] circus show has been a major overhang on Tesla’s stock and has been a black eye for Musk so far,” Ives said Monday, adding that “major market pressure for tech stocks” has only added to the uncertainty.
Shares of Tesla have racked up big losses since Musk suggested he would sell about 10% of his stake in November, with prices only collapsing further as the broader market struggles in the face of rising interest rates. Adding to concerns for Tesla, however, “the worst supply chain crisis seen in modern history” has threatened the firm’s production in highly profitable China, notes Ives.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq has plummeted 29% this year. Tesla, meanwhile, has plunged 47%. Even though its stock has struggled, Tesla reported its most profitable quarter in company history last month, posting $3.3 billion in first-quarter income fueled by record deliveries. $199 billion. That’s how much 50-year-old Musk, the world’s richest person, is worth, according to Forbes.
Taking over Twitter may be good for Elon Musk, but it hasn’t been good for Tesla’s shares. One day after Twitter announced it had accepted Musk’s $44 billion takeover bid, Tesla shares sank 12.2%, wiping out more than $125 billion off the electric vehicle maker’s market value. The falls come as Wall Street fretted about how the deal could impact the electric vehicle maker and its stock price.
When Musk announced he had secured the money to finance the transaction, he said he would cover $21 billion himself, with banks helping finance the other half. What remains unclear is how he will come up with that money — whether he will sell some of the Tesla shares he owns, borrow against them, bring in additional investors, or all three.
There is also growing concern about whether owning Twitter would bring him into conflict over free speech with the government in China, a key market for Tesla where the auto maker also has significant production. On top of that, there is the risk Musk could become distracted by his latest acquisition. Musk is the CEO of Tesla and Space-X and is involved with other business ventures such as Neuralink, which develops brain implant technology, as well as The Boring Company, which makes tunnels.
If Musk does offload some of those holdings, it could drive Tesla’s share price down further. This is something the company warned investors about in its latest annual report, filed in February with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “If Elon Musk were forced to sell shares of our common stock that he has pledged to secure certain personal loan obligations, such shares could cause our stock price to decline,” the company wrote.
Bitcoin price action might not reflect it, but the leading cryptocurrency by market cap could be massively undervalued, according to a variety of fundamental metrics that focus on coin issuance. Any asset – be it stock, currency, commodity, or otherwise – goes through boom and bust cycles; bull and bear markets. These cycles are more rapid and take place more frequently in crypto than they do in traditional market counterparts.
The reason is both due to the always-on 24/7, global crypto market and the speculative nature of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other top coins. Even with adoption taking place, they’re still far from achieving their potential.When speculative assets reach a peak of a bull cycle, they are typically far more overvalued than they should be, which causes such an extreme correction back down toward the “mean.” During bear cycles, speculative assets tend to overcorrect as things appear worse off than they actually are.
These tools are widely known, but when combined paint a clear picture that backs up any chance that the top coin by market cap is actually undervalued at $40,000 per BTC.
Despite the crypto slump, banking giant JPMorgan says bitcoin is massively undervalued. Maintaining its estimate of bitcoin’s fair value at $38,000, the bank today reiterated the assessment it gave the asset in February when the cryptocurrency was trading around $43,400. This price is approximately 28% higher than its current level of $29,757.
In a note to clients issued Wednesday, the bank has also stated that it is replacing real estate with digital, or crypto, assets as its preferred alternative asset class along with hedge funds, citing “potential lagged repricing” in private equity, private debt and real estate. Alternative assets typically refer to investments that aren’t stocks, bonds or cash.
The appraisal is a nod of confidence to bitcoin, which is currently trading at less than half its all-time high of $68,721, and the broader category in general. In addition to rising interest rates and the fallout from the war in Ukraine, the cryptocurrency market is grappling with the $50 billion collapse of algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD and its sister token LUNA. The total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies currently sits at $1.3 trillion, a dramatic decline from $3 trillion in November.
“The past month’s crypto market correction looks more like capitulation relative to last January/February and going forward we see upside for bitcoin and crypto markets more generally,” the bank’s strategists, led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, noted in the report.
The strategists also believe that “the trajectory for VC funding would be crucial in helping the crypto market to avoid the long winter of 2018/2019”, which followed the initial coin offerings boom. Just today, Ethereum scaling startup Starkware raised $100 million at an $8 billion valuation and venture giant Andreessen Horowitz announced a $1.5 billion allotment for cryptoinvestments as part of its larger $4.5 billion fund.
“Thus far there is little evidence of VC funding drying up post-Terra’s collapse. Of the $25 billion VC funding year-to-date, almost $4 billion came after Terra,” the strategists noted. “Our best guess is the VC funding will continue and a long winter similar to 2018/2019 would be averted.”
I report on cryptocurrencies and other applications of blockchain technology. I also edit the weekly Forbes Crypto Confidential newsletter and contribute to our premium research service
Illustration by Gracelynn Wan for Forbes
