Bitcoin Price: US$ 39,671.37 (+5.01%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 2,589.41 (+2.93%)
Yuga Labs Revives NFTs, LUNA Outperforms, & Key Market Levels
- As previously highlighted in our weekly NFT Insights, the general volume and floor prices of NFTs have been on a downtrend for the past few weeks. However, events over the weekend have sparked a renewed interest in the NFT market, most notably Yuga Labs’ big acquisition announcement.
- Yuga Labs, the company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), announced they acquired the IP of the CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT collections. Their first line of business was to give full commercial rights to all their respective NFT holders. Prior to this, Larva Labs had full control over the intellectual property of CryptoPunks and Meebits and had restrictions on what the NFT holders could do. This acquisition could unlock the full potential of branding and commercialization of these NFTs that were previously limited.
- Additionally, Yuga Labs will also be acquiring over 400 CryptoPunks and 1,700 Meebits from Larva Labs as part of the deal. The initial announcement sent prices of CryptoPunks and Meebits soaring by +30% and +55%, respectively, within the first two hours. The frenzy has since cooled and settled today at +13.9% and +23.2%, respectively.
- In other news, Shopify recently partnered with Doodles and had a pop-up event at SXSW 2022 over the weekend. Doodles have since gained +35% since Shopify posted a Doddles NFT last Wednesday.
- BAYC didn’t miss the party given their planned merch drop in 2 weeks, plus the speculation of an $APE token going around. Note: these are unverified with no official sources by BAYC, and should be taken lightly.
- LUNA has been on an absolute rampage over the last two weeks, printing a fresh all-time high as markets continue their moves lower. At the time of this writing, LUNA is once again flirting with a triple-digit price tag after doubling from $50 to $100 in less than three weeks.
- From last week: “Should the market pull back from here, look for LUNA to put in a higher lower around the $65-$75 area, denoted below.”
- This bid zone has done its job and proved to be fruitful. It acted as support around the $75 area and has since yielded a ~30% return.
- Support at $34K: This is a key support level we’ve been tracking the last couple of months. Our justification for this level is during the January hawkish Fed news cycle, we saw markets nuke into $34K support before staging a considerable rally. As Russia invaded Ukraine, the market fell once again, with BTC bouncing off its $34K support level before an even more impressive rally.
- As price has retraced the entirety of last week’s move, $34K isn’t off the table this week. Should we lose this level, look out for another quick leg lower.
- We are delighted to announce our new partnership with MetalCore, an upcoming massive multiplayer, open-world blockbuster game. MetalCore aims to demonstrate that blockchain games can incorporate outstanding graphics with complex gameplay mechanics to form the standard of games that serious gamers have come to expect of the industry. As part of our partnership, Merit Circle has purchased $1,000,000 worth of in-game assets.
- The MetalCore team identified that the gaming community hasn’t engaged with play-to-earn games as much as other casual gamers have, likely due to the games being too simplistic or lacking impressive graphical performance. MetalCore seeks to change this by offering serious gamers what other P2E games are lacking, and further serves to bridge the quality gap between traditional games and blockchain games.
Make the Most of Airdrops: Earnifi and EPNS Collaborate to Bring Airdrop Opportunities to Users
- EPNS and Earnifi, DeFi’s newest airdrop aggregator platform, team up in a pilot collaboration to enable direct communication between users and the platform. As a result of this collaboration, users are poised to receive decentralized push notifications directly to their devices when new airdrops are available to claim.
No crypto for criminals: Coinjoin BTC mixing tool to block illicit transactions
- CoinJoin, a popular Bitcoin (BTC) mixing tool, will block transactions associated or flagged as illegal. The announcement came from the official Wasabi Wallet Twitter account, of which Coinjoin is a part.
- The official announcement noted that CoinJoin services would start blocking certain unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) from registering with CoinJoin using the zkSNACKs coordinator. A zkSNACKs coordinator is a virtual machine used to mix the origin of the transitions.
- As shared in our roadmap, following the latest addition to StarkNet’s functionality and features, our attention shifts towards performance enhancements and protocol design (including fees, account abstraction, decentralization, etc.). StarkNet Alpha 0.8.0 starts the process of adding transaction fees and improving the sequencer’s performance.
- The roadmap for StarkNet includes a fee mechanism, and by progressing with this version we are taking an important step closer to full performance for the platform.
- Adding the fee mechanism is an essential part of StarkNet’s performance design. Without a minimal fee, we risk facing infinite transactions: which would make it impossible for the system to be performant, regardless of sequencer optimizations.
Crypto vs. physical: Musk-Saylor inflation debate boils down to scarcity
- Joining this discussion online, Tesla CEO Elon Musk asked publicly about the probable inflation rate over the next few years to gauge the notion of global investors. Sharing his thoughts on the matter, American billionaire and MicroStrategy CEO Michael J. Saylor opined that with rising inflation, he expects the capital cash flow will move away from traditional fiat into scarce assets such as Bitcoin (BTC).
- In the last six months, major economies including the United Kingdom, Turkey, Russia and the United States have witnessed unprecedented inflationary pressure owing to global uncertainties and disruptions fueled by cross-border conflicts and the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Complimenting Saylor’s general proposition for investing in scarce assets to counter the rising United States dollar inflation, Musk replied that “It is not entirely unpredictable that you would reach that conclusion.”
- While the general public joined in on the discussion, dismissing Saylor’s suggestion of using BTC as a hedge against inflation due to personal investments, Musk acknowledged that predominantly scarce assets such as physical property and company stocks help investors maintain their purchasing power against high inflations.
- As a part of the advice, Musk shared his intent to continue hodling BTC, Ether (ETH) an Dogecoin (DOGE) amid rising inflation “for what it’s worth.”
Environmental sustainability key sticking point in EU MiCA bill
- The legal standing of Bitcoin mining in the European Union hinges on the results of today‘s vote in the European Parliamentary Committee on Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA).
- A controversial line concerning the “minimum environmental sustainability” of crypto mining has been reintroduced to the bill after previously being taken out. The new line would require blockchain operators to submit a rollout plan detailing how they will come into environmental sustainability compliance. Failure to submit a plan may prohibit coins from being mined or traded in the EU.
- Although it is not specifically stated, the bill would directly affect proof-of-work (PoW) chains. PoW is the consensus algorithm used by the Bitcoin network, Ethereum and several other crypto assets.
- Since Bitcoin (BTC) is decentralized, however, no rollout plan can be issued on its behalf. The absence of such a plan may threaten the existence of Bitcoin mining operations across the EU.
- The Polygon team announced that a new Heimdall version containing a hard fork will be released on Mar. 18, 2022. Validators must ensure that nodes are upgraded before the hard fork block. The release is currently being tested on testnet and aims to fix the issues that led to a chain halt on Mar. 10, 2022. The team stated that they will share more updates as they become available.
