Overview
- Polkadot’s stand at the World Economic Forum.
- Markets continue to range. Breakout soon?
- No airdrops for Optimistic sybils.
- Sango: Africa’s bitcoin hub.
- NFTS: Seth Green wants his Bored Ape back!
The Small Beacon of Hope at the World Economic Forum
The World Economic Forum kicked off two days ago in Davos, Switzerland. The stage host the most powerful political, business, cultural, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas.
Simply put, the conference gathers the wealthiest mfers on the planet to decide its economic future.
You need to look them up if you haven’t heard of this organization. Especially their plan to reset the world’s economy, “so nobody needs to own anything and be happy.”
But I’m not here to talk about the centralized powers at the forum but rather about a small beacon of hope that came in the form of Polkadot’s Web3 hub in Davos. In the hub, several Web3 organizations are speaking about Web3, decentralization, privacy, and deconsolidation of power. Joining the talks is Ethereum co-founder and Polkadot founder Gavin Wood.
You can tune in to some of the most prominent talks in the Web3 space at Polkadot’s hosting page on Twitter or check out the uploads on Polkadot’s Youtube.
Market update 🌍
BTC
The consolidation range continues in bitcoin (BTC) after the price promptly bounced off the 28.6k support zone late last night. Bitcoin was barely affected by the early morning sell-off in the stock market, tied to the poor earnings released by Snapchat (SNAP). A slight bullish divergence has appeared on the RSI daily chart, increasing the PROBABILITY of an upward breakout. Although, bitcoin price will continue to be closely tied to macroeconomic factors. BTC completed the US session up +1.66% to US$29,590.
Source: Trading View
The US Dollar Index (DXY) continues its march downwards, which bodes well for equities and crypto. However, dropping below the long-term trendline (purple dotted) would place the DXY back into its long-standing downward range. Ideally, it’s where we’d like DXY to end up in the coming weeks.
Source: Trading View
| US markets close | Gain |
| S&P 500 | -0.81% |
| Nasdaq | -0.731% |
| Dow | -0.62% |
| VIX | +3.14% |
| Protocol (Coin) | Price ($) | Gain (%) |
| Tezos (XTZ) | 2.10 | +10 |
| Ethereum Classis (ETC) | 24.10 | +10 |
| Aave (AAVE) | 107.40 | +9 |
| Celo (CELO) | 1.35 | +6.5 |
| Astar (ASTR) | 0.07 | +25 |
| Evmos (EVMOS) | 1.99 | +25 |
| Moonbeam (GLMR) | 1.36 | +16 |
| Kava (KAVA) | 2.87 | +12 |
| Safemoon (SFM) | 00007 | +11 |
| Sushi (SUSHI) | 1.67 | +9.5 |
| DigitalBits (XDB) | 0.18 | +33 |
| Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index | 12 Extreme Fear |
| “Crypto” Google Trends 90d | 23 |
| “Bitcoin” Google Trends 90d | 33 |
Newswatch 📰
No airdrop for sybils! Ethereum’s layer-2 protocol Optimism (OP) cracked down on OP airdrop farmers by removing 17,000 addresses that appeared to be gaming the system for the future OP token airdrop. Optimism Tweeted, “Optimism is for the people, not the sybils,” yesterday. Sybil is a term used to label airdrop token farmers.
African bitcoin hub. Months after making bitcoin legal tender in the Central African Republic, officials have released a basic plan, Sango, to build a bitcoin hub in the African nation. Some of the ideas on the Sango:
- Take Bitcoin legacy to the next level
- Sango: Crypto Island
- A legal framework to include 0% crypto income tax and a digital national bank
- Allocation of resources for crypto projects: digitizing national resources
Coinbase enters the Fortune 500. The first crypto-based company joined the Fortune 500, a list of the largest US companies in terms of revenue, in 2022. At 437, Coinbase’s revenue surpassed the $6.4B limit by $1.4B, although the company revenue continues to struggle during the recent crypto market downturn. According to Coinbase’s quarterly report, Coinbase’s (COIN) revenue has fallen to $1.1b for the quarter, and shares are at all-time lows of $61 per share.
MetaMask + Coinbase Pay. Decentralized wallet provider MetaMask has integrated Coinbase Pay to allow purchasing and selling of cryptocurrencies directly from the wallets.
News Tidbits:
- Venture Capital firm Standard Crypto raises $500m.
- Fidelity’s two-year bitcoin fund surpasses $125m in investments.
- Flowcarbon raises $70m to improve the carbon credit market.
- Decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap (UNI) has surpassed $1 trillion in lifetime volume since 208.
- Across 2.0 is now live.
- Infura partners with Near Protocol (NEAR)
- Brave browser wallet integrates Solana (SOL)
- Immutable X (IMX) announces a cross-rollup liquidity solution.
- Hop Protocol (HOP) to refund bridging cost into Optimism (OP)
NFT & metaverse update 🐵
Seth Green’s former Bored Ape
Seth Green wants his Ape back! Actor Seth Green lost his Bored Yacht Club (BAYC) ape in a phishing scam in early May. To further worsen the situation, The Ape would be the star of Green’s newest animation show. Without the Ape in hand, the actor has lost the commercial rights to that particular Ape’s commercial rights. The Ape is in the hand of a user named DarkWing84 after they purchased the Ape for $200k, but the user is not responding to Green’s request to negotiate.
| Project | Type | Mint price | Date of mint | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mr. Bean NFTs | Collectible | 0.12 ETH | May 25 | 3:00 PM EST |
| Anime Metaverse | PFP | 0.25 ETH | May 25 | 9:30 AM EST |
| Birds of Solis | ART | Unknown | May 26 | 1:00 PM EDT |
| Tigerbob | PFP | 0.25 ETH | May 28 | 12:00 PM EDT |
Banter’s take
Global macro uncertainty continues unabated, pushing the the world economy towards unchartered territory.
The events in Davos this week highlight the fact that crypto is increasingly taking a more prominent role, with the so-called ‘elites’ scrambling to establish a position, either for, or against, increased adoption.
Meanwhile, the crypto market continues to move sideways amidst volatility in the equity markets.
Time to DCA? Perhaps. But at most, small amounts into into QUALITY. When we say quality, we really do mean that. And only if you’re prepared to see more short to mid-term downside. Ensure you have plenty of dry powder, this could go on for some time..
Gabri
