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2) NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. NOT MATHEMATICAL ADVICE. NOT ADVICE. NEVER BUY, NEVER SELL, NEVER TRADE; THIS IS ALL JUST THEORY.

3) ok so I can't tell you if a token will go up or down, either could happen. sometimes tokens go up and no one knows why; sometimes they go down because of the fucking whales, or idk something like that. this thread isn't about that.

4) this thread is about economics, and volume, and fees, and revenue, and correctly deciding when one number is larger than another number, and when it's not. it's also not about predicting the future, that's hard. this is about predicting the present, which is way easier.

5) so before you read further, take a guess at ranking the following products over the last week by revenue, volume, liquidity, and users: coinbase ftx huobi sushiswap tether uniswap (they're alphabetical that order doesn't mean anything)

6) alright, I know you didn't do (5), even though I said you should. so how about just rank them by revenue.

7:45 AM · Sep 18, 2020Twitter Web App

7) because I'm writing this thread you all probably were like 'oh let's ignore what I think and put what I think Sam thinks' and then put something you didn't think. whatever.

Replying to

8) I don't know the answer here--I don't work at most of these places! and also there are some issues here. for instance, let's say that, hypothetically, ftx or houbi or uniswap had sold $20m of their token over the last week (FTT/HT/UNI). is that 'revenue'?

9) idk, if so then this is just a question of who net sold/bought more of their tokens I guess. let's ignore that and look at the underlying product. what are the models here?

10) coinbase charges fees on trades ftx charges fees on trades houbi charges fees on trades sushi charges fees on trades uniswap charges fees on trades tether charges fees on creations/redemptions and interest

11) coinbase: 0.05% ~ 2% (!!!!) based on public info (have y'all ever tried to use their retail app and checked the price and fees?) ftx: ~0.03% or so based on public info huobi: ~0.03% or so based on public info sushi: 0.05% (30bps taker - 25bps maker rebate) uni: 0 (!!!)

12) tether: ok this one is complicated. maybe 0.10% on 50mm/day of creations, plus 0.01%/year on interest??? so maybe like 100m/year ~ $300k/day? idk making this up. ok so now we have numbers, what's the ranking? idk, something like: huobi coinbase/ftx/tether sushi uni

13) making a lot of assumptions there -- just sort of multiplying estimated average fees by adjusted volume;

@coingecko

is relativley good if *make sure to add up spot + derivatives!* also I think the gecko undercounts some spot volume, e.g. huobi, by a bit

14) sure, alright. so huobi is big, and then... it depends on what metrics you use, really. FWIW liquidity is probably roughly: huobi/ftx uni/coinbase/sushi not really sure how to think about tether here

15) users is probably like: tether huobi coinbase uni ftx sushi

16) volume is something like: huobi: 5b ftx: 1b uni/coinbase: 500m sushi: 100m tether: 50m (creation/redemption; trading way higher)

17) anyway guys there are some rankings. also fwiw in case anyone's interested: Coinbase: no public valuation/token, last $10b??? ftt: 350 circ, 1b full ht: 1b circ, 2.5b full sushi: 150 circ, ~350 (?) full tether: no public valuation/fee token uni: 350 circ, 5.5b full

18) and remember some are newer than others! uni is old but its prominence is newer, and fees are forthcoming. sushi is really new but also in some ways very old :P tether is old, coinbase is old, huobi is old ftx is relatively new

19) anyway none of this was investment advice. but yeah a lot of people seem to be posting stuff on twitter that doesn't exactly line up with the numbers.

20) TL;DR: userbase, volume, revenue, and liquidity all give somewhat different rankings of platforms also we all forgot about huobi but it's still big