“People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.” – Thomas Sowell
👀 You’re reading Crypto is Macro Now, which covers the role of crypto in the changing landscapes of finance, economics, politics, culture and markets. 👀
Hello everyone, and happy Friday! The first Friday of September… it feels important, somehow.
Monday is the first Monday of September, which means Labor Day in the US, which means this newsletter will take a short break – back on Tuesday.
PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨
Every onchain analytics product runs the same four layers under the branding: ingestion, decoding, enrichment, and a query surface. Working out which of those a given vendor actually operates explains most of the confusion in the category, and most of the price spread.
Allium Research breaks it down: https://www.allium.so/blog/blockchain-analytics-stack-explained-architecture-layers-and-tools/
And get weekly onchain data and more analysis like this from the Allium Research team on Substack.
IN THIS NEWSLETTER
Russia’s CBDC launches
Macro: what should we be focusing on?
Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.
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WHAT I’M WATCHING:
Russia’s CBDC launches
On Tuesday, Russia kicked off a large-scale rollout of its CBDC, the digital ruble. Individuals and businesses can now download wallets from participating banks (for now, all 12 of Russia’s large financial institutions), convert commercial bank rubles into their central bank digital equivalent, and use them at large retailers and service providers.
The initiative is unlikely to upend traditional finance, for reasons I’ll touch on below.
But it’s worth paying attention to as it highlights the confluence of drivers behind what may look like a payments efficiency but is fundamentally a vanity project (yes, looking at you, ECB).
