On eve of election, half of Americans polled think crypto is the future of finance: According to a recent poll conducted by investment firm Grayscale more than half of Americans surveyed (53%) agree that “cryptocurrencies are the future of finance,” including 59% of Democrats and 52% of Republicans, with 44% of Americans noting that they expect to have crypto as part of their investment portfolio in the future.” The poll comes on the eve of the Midterm elections.

In the Metaverse, nobody can hear you scream (because nobody is there…yet): Decentraland, one of the more well-known metaverse platforms in Web3 is seeing scant adoption so far. DappRadar “estimates about 6,200 unique active wallets in total for the past 30 days, an average of 206 per day, according to an article in The Block. The author does note that “you don’t need a wallet to access Decentraland, though it does limit some functions, including the ability to save your avatar’s appearance.” Decentraland disputes these numbers arguing the figure is closer to 8,000 a day which is better but still tiny by Web2 standards. To be sure, in the future we may all spend more time online in an immersive digital world, but at least today it appears only the most hardcore hobbyists are living in the Metaverse.

Bitcoin’s Correlation to Equities Drops from 0.99 to 0.28: The narrative for most of 2022 has been US dollar steamrolling its way across the globe, squashing assets indiscriminately into one giant pancake (metaphorically). To wit, financial conditions in September were as tight as in March 2020 at the height of the Covid-19 scare. Conditions have softened somewhat. While the U.S. dollar still sits near historical highs, we are seeing some variance in asset performance and Bitcoin and other cryptoassets have found some breathing room. Correlations have declined, notably between Bitcoin and US equity gauges.

Finally, October 31, 2022 marked the 14th anniversary of the Bitcoin white paper: In eight pages, Satoshi outlines his design for “an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” Fast forward to today and this $1 trillion asset class is shaking the windows and rattling the walls of finance and other industries. The Bitcoin white paper is a tightly written, clearly laid out and frankly brilliant explanation of one of the most important economic innovations of our time – Read it here.