gm to everyone zooming out to see the bigger picture
you gonna make it.
Markets
Here are today’s market moves:
Here's what you need to know:
American Express sees crypto as an asset
During the company’s Q4 earnings call on Tuesday, the chairman and CEO of American Express (Amex), Steve Squeri said, “As far as cryptocurrency goes, we watch cryptocurrencies. We think about the spectrum of digital currencies. We think about crypto. We think about stablecoins. We think about central bank digital currency. At this particular point in time, we view cryptocurrency more as an asset class.”
That’s a lot of thinking. Wen building, sers?
Just like Visa and Mastercard, Amex would be jumping on the crypto bandwagon with support to purchase crypto with their cards. The CEO even said that “And as far as blockchain, we’ve got investments in blockchain companies.”
Coinbase hints on listing new class of crypto assets
According to a recent report, the crypto exchange giant will begin allowing withdrawals of coins in the Solana Program Library (SPL), Solana’s smart contract token standard. This would mark the first time Coinbase offers Solana-based coins on its exchange.
Last year, Coinbase CEO and billionaire Brian Armstrong tweeted that the crypto exchange’s goal is to list every digital asset it’s legally allowed to.
Our guess is that Coinbase is trying to become a centralized (ahem..sorry..or decentralised) hub for all things crypto including NFTs, new tokens, DAOs, etc which is a good-bad thing.
LooksRare has generated $8B in Ethereum NFT Wash Trading
Recently, LooksRare announced that any NFT trading activity on their platform would reward users with $LOOKS tokens.
The OpenSea competitor, LooksRare, has reportedly generated a whopping $8 billion dollars in wash trades as users attempt to game the trading rewards model.
A wash trade is a form of market manipulation in which an investor simultaneously sells and buys the same financial instruments to create misleading, artificial activity in the marketplace.
Apparently, they are fine with it!
Facebook might have killed Diem, but it’s not done with crypto
Facebook tried creating a stablecoin called Libra, then renamed it to Diem, and then killed it before it was born. They even created a wallet called Calibra to hold Libra.
For starters, its stablecoin was never really decentralized, despite Facebook insisting Libra was overseen by the Libra Association , a consortium of members based in Switzerland (yeah right). Four months after announcing Libra, the Libra Association lost eight founding members, including MasterCard, PayPal, eBay, and Stripe.
Decentralization is key, frens.
But, they aren’t giving up. Two years and seven months after Facebook announced Libra, they are going all in on the metaverse. Facebook is so desperate to show that it's all in on the metaverse that it changed its name to Meta—the stock is down 5% since the rebrand—and has renamed Oculus to Meta Quest.
A Twitter thread of upcoming crypto trends we find interesting
Frens, before that, some disclaimer: DYOR and not financial advice!
Now dive into some alpha crypto projects/trends 👇
Did you hear?
Steve Aoki is launching an Ethereum NFT membership club called A0K1VERSE. Holders will gain access to various benefits, including live and metaverse concerts and events.
Warner Music Group will open a metaverse concert venue and amusement park within The Sandbox.
More than 80% of NFTs created free on OpenSea are scams says the marketplace.
The team at AfterParty have announced the headliners for their March festival - the first token-gated event of its kind - Kid Laroi and The Chainsmokers!
Crypto lingo of the day
FIAT:
Fiat makes great cars but not money. FIAT is a currency without intrinsic value established as money by government regulation. $,€,¥are all FIAT. Sometimes also called "shitcoins"
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