Bitcoin Price: US$ 16,672.87(+0.34%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 1,214.00 (+1.14%)
Final Fantasy Maker Square Enix Reaffirms Focus on Blockchain Games
- Even as crypto markets remain down and many video game enthusiasts vocally oppose the potential for NFTs in gaming, one major game publisher remains focused on Web3 gaming: Square Enix, the creator of major franchises like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.
- The Japanese firm has gradually increased its investment and presence in the Web3 space over the last few years, and in President Yosuke Matsuda’s annual new year’s letter for 2023, he explained that Square Enix is “most focused” on blockchain-powered gaming amid its new business development efforts.
- Square Enix is developing “multiple blockchain games” based on original IP, rather than its existing franchises, Matsuda wrote, and the firm plans to announce further games this year. The firm is also still considering investment opportunities around blockchain. “[We] will continue to take stakes in promising businesses whether we find them in Japan or abroad,” he wrote.
The Block Research’s Analysts: 2023 Predictions
- Overall macro environment will continue to put downward pressure on high-risk assets like crypto. However, sideways action over the next year is more likely than a severe slide down.
- Many projects that have been unable to hit the product-market fit will be slowly abandoned courtesy of a lack of funding and demand.
- M&A activity will increase as companies with grim financial standing will seek to be acquired.
- Venture funding will slow down dramatically in 2023, especially during the year’s first half.
- Crypto prices will remain correlated to the monetary policies of central banks.
- The gap between the market caps of Bitcoin and Ethereum will continue to shrink, but “flippening” will not occur in 2023.
- The main narrative in 2023 will shift towards Ethereum layer-2 scaling solutions. TVL for L2s will increase (at least in ETH value), with zk-rollups outperforming optimistic rollups in relative growth. Major L2s like StarkNet, zkSync, and Arbitrum will launch their tokens.
- Modular blockchains like Celestia will see increased attention and could outperform the alternative monolithic blockchains of the previous cycle.
- The fall of centralized crypto entities in the last year will cause regulations to intensify for centralized entities, with Binance becoming the center of attention. Coinbase will benefit from the FUD around Binance.
- DEXs will post the strongest fundamental growth metrics relative to other DeFi use cases.
- The decentralized social ecosystem on Web3 will experience rapid growth as investments and activity in this subsector increase.
- Driven by the accelerating adoption of NFTs among traditional brands, more users will be onboarded to NFTs. In addition, NFTs will continue to serve as a vessel for crypto’s integration with arts and culture.
- Opensea’s market share will further decrease, and the marketplace will lose its monopoly status.
Bitcoin Core Dev Loses At Least $3.6 Million in BTC to Hack
- Luke Dashjr, who claims to be “the longest contributing Bitcoin Core developer,” revealed that an unknown hacker had raided “basically all” of his Bitcoin holdings on New Year’s Day.
- The total sum of Bitcoin stolen is unknown, but in a Twitter thread, Dashjr tracked “some of it” to a wallet address that received a little under 217 Bitcoin, or about $3.6 million at today’s price.
- Dashjr blamed the hack of his Bitcoin wallet on a compromised PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) key and later, in a Reddit discussion, he stated that the attacker’s IP came from a ColoCrossing server. He was at a loss to explain how his cold wallets were compromised, but he said the last time he’d accessed them was in September.
