In a Q&A article published by Foresight, the author addressed Curve’s development, the reasoning behind a weekday-only publishing routine, and Machi’s path through the crypto market.
Curve still leads in stablecoins, but the competitive field is changing
On Curve, the author said that if team issues are set aside and the ecosystem is viewed on its own, the protocol still holds a leading position in the stablecoin sector. Even so, with Uniswap and Spark expanding products through V4 Hook-driven innovation, Curve has now run into strong competitors. In the author’s telling, that is not a situation Curve had faced in earlier stages of its development.
Once team factors are included, the author said the outlook becomes harder to trust.
The article argues that most projects do not have an unbreakable moat. Even where an advantage has been built, it can weaken over time if nobody keeps maintaining and reinforcing it. That kind of upkeep, the author wrote, depends on having a reliable team, which is why any long-term assessment of a project has to include the people running it.
Curve had a strong start, according to the piece, but without continued work and careful management from a dependable team, its existing edge can be chipped away bit by bit.
The author also offered one reason Curve has managed to stay near the top of the stablecoin market over the past several years: most of the existing stablecoins appeared before Curve did. When Curve arrived, it targeted those assets and served them well, which helped it build a strong position in the market that already existed.
That setup may not hold indefinitely. The article says that, especially if the “Clarity Act” passes, a large batch of new off-exchange stablecoins could enter the market. In the author’s view, that would create new openings and could also give Curve’s competitors a chance to reverse the balance in the stablecoin market.
As an example, the author pointed to a platform launched by Spark and Uniswap. At this stage, the platform does not support many stablecoins, the piece said, but one clearly visible listing is a stablecoin issued by Paypal. The author described that as a signal that the two are aiming at a new market and new categories of assets.
Under those conditions, whoever captures the new opening may be able to secure share in that next market. The article says that outcome, too, would depend on having a strong team.
Why the author no longer updates on weekends and holidays
Responding to a question about why updates are largely limited to Monday through Friday, with breaks on weekends and public holidays, the author said that before 2023, or perhaps before 2022, the goal had generally been to publish every day whenever possible.
That later changed. The reason for taking weekends and holidays off, the author said, was to leave more time for thinking about longer-term pictures and to reduce the negative effect of short-term market swings, especially price fluctuations.
After making that adjustment, the author wrote, there was much less focus on short-term market moves, and it became more natural to look at issues, development, and patterns from a longer-term perspective.
On Machi: project launches, Bored Apes, and losses in trading
When asked whether Machi had made a great deal of money during the 2017 ICO wave, the author replied that Machi did launch projects during that boom and also launched Cream during the DeFi wave. Those projects, the article said, later saw little follow-through.
The piece describes Machi’s most successful and best-known move in crypto as buying a large amount of Bored Ape NFTs during the peak of market momentum. According to the author, that trade built substantial wealth, brought him unusual visibility, and turned him into a figure who broke beyond the usual crypto circle.
Still, the article says that the accumulated gains were ultimately all lost in trading. Looking back at Machi’s later decisions, outsiders may easily imagine that if he had stopped then and avoided more speculation, he could have simply lived off that fortune.
The author rejected that line of thinking and paraphrased a remark attributed to Duan Yongping: “In the end, everyone becomes the kind of person he was bound to become.”
Disclaimer
The article closes with a standard warning that markets carry risk and investors should act with caution. It says the piece does not constitute investment advice, and readers should judge whether any opinions, views, or conclusions fit their own circumstances and bear responsibility for decisions made on that basis.