The play-to-earn game’s soft launch is planned for Q1 2022, with 400,000 users already pre-registered.
Upcoming NFT based mobile role-playing game Guild of Guardians has sold out two tranches of its native token (GEMS) totaling $5.3 million.
The token sale, held on Coinlist on Nov. 30 was oversubscribed 82 times, with around 808,000 users registering. More than 10,700 new GEM holders from over 100 countries purchased a maximum of $500 worth of tokens. However users from Australian, the U.S.,Canada and China were prohibited from purchasing tokens amid mounting regulatory concerns.
GOG allocated 6% of the total 1 billion total tokens to the CoinList sale, while 63% of the supply will be distributed via community-driven events, activities, and core gameplay.
The play-to-earn game’s soft launch is planned for Q1 2022, with 400,000 users already pre-registered.
The game comes from Ukrainian developer Stepico games in partnership with Australian-based NFT layer 2 scaling solution Immutable X. Immutable X is the first layer 2 scaling solution for NFTs on Ethereum, and is backed by Galaxy Digital and Coinbase.
I'm super bullish on quality Aussie crypto projects and love to support them as I'm sure others do too so I hope the exclusion of Australians being able to invest in $IMX is just an error by @CoinList
The success of GOG’s successful initial DEX offering (IDO) comes as play-to-earn gaming becoming increasingly popular. In GOG, every in-game asset that users own is a tradable and exchangeable NFT.
“I think the concept of in-game asset ownership is a foregone conclusion. And it's a matter of when, not if,” Kelland said, adding that “it goes back to the concept of the content creator economy and people, people basically owning this stuff that they deserve to own.”
This comes after the first Founder NFT sale in June, which raised $3 million in 24 hours. The second wave raised $5 million, and the third and final wave raised over $4 million.
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Those who support him hope he raises enough money to fulfill his personal and charitable needs, while others don’t think he should be selling NFTs at all.
Ross Ulbricht, founder of defunct dark web marketplace Silk Road, has created a stir by announcing he will auction off his series of nonfungible tokens (NFT) starting Dec. 2.
The imprisoned early Bitcoin adopter announced via his supporter operated Twitter account on Dec. 1 his plans to auction the Ross Ulbricht Genesis Collection on Superare NFT marketplace from Dec. 2-8. The collection consists of 11 works of art Ulbricht handmade, then his supporters minted into NFT form.
The art was made in different stages of Ulbricht’s life from childhood up to his time in prison. The early works depict comic book characters and animals, while the later works depicts scenes from his court trial and inner feelings he has had since being imprisoned.
Proceeds from the auction will help fund a trust to support Ulbricht’s efforts to be freed from prison. Funds will also help launch the donor-advised charitable fund Art4Giving, which is “dedicated to relieving the suffering of the incarcerated and their families.”
Ulbricht has been a controversial character in the crypto space since he was sentenced to two life terms in federal prison in Oct. 2015 for operating the Silk Road marketplace. Silk Road opened on the dark web in Feb. 2011 and allowed users to purchase nearly anything with Bitcoin (BTC), including illicit substances.
Ross Ulbricht's Perspective from The Ross Ulbricht Genesis Collection of NFTs.
The announcement sparked a blizzard of conflicting commentary from people on social media, some against Ulbricht’s decision, but most in support of his cause.
One skeptical commenter, founder of bullbitcoin.com @francispouliot said that although he supports Ulbricht, “the fact that the insane and immoral NFT ponzi has now become fully normalized is deeply troubling.” Other Bitcoin maximalists also took exception to the entire concept of NFTs with @vladenhawk writing "I can tolerate the creation of international drug and weapons markets. But NFTS is where I draw the line."
Crypto Cobain, high-profile host of UpOnly TV, pointed out in support that although a few Bitcoin maximalists may be against Ulbricht minting NFTs, he was instrumental in generating early Bitcoin adoption.
There are bitcoin maxis trying to cancel @RealRossU for selling NFTs to raise money to charity for people incarcerated.
One tweet say “way to lose your fanbase”.
This man is in jail for life and did more for bitcoin than all of the laser eye cult combined.
In explaining his decision to leave Meta, David Marcus said that his entrepreneurial DNA had been nudging him “for too many mornings in a row to continue ignoring.”
David Marcus, the head of Meta’s cryptocurrency and fintech unit Novi, will step down from his role by the end of 2021.
Taking over from Marcus will be Stephane Kasriel, the former CEO of Upwork who has been at Meta, formerly known as Facebook, since August 2020.
Marcus announced the decision via a Dec. 1 tweet, noting that he had made the “difficult decision” to leave the firm by the end of this year. The exec didn’t go into detail about what his next move would be, but hinted that it may be something “new and exciting” that he builds himself:
“While there’s still so much to do right on the heels of launching Novi — and I remain as passionate as ever about the need for change in our payments and financial systems — my entrepreneurial DNA has been nudging me for too many mornings in a row to continue ignoring it.”
Marcus has worked at the company since 2014, initially taking up a role in the firm’s messenger service branch before shifting his focus to financial services in 2018 by founding Meta’s digital wallet Novi (which also bears the same name as the fintech unit) along with co-founding the beleaguered Diem stablecoin project which now operates independently.
Marcus joins a list of former execs of the social media giant's crypto unit who have left the firm over the past 12 months, including fellow Diem co-founders Morgan Beller and Kevin Weil who both took up new roles at NFX and Planet respectively.
Novi and Diem have faced intense scrutiny from local and international regulators due to their connections with Facebook, with neither project yet to fully launch during that time frame.
In October, a group of U.S. senators including crypto skeptic Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Facebook calling on the firm to discontinue its wallet project just hours after Novi launched a pilot in the United States and Guatemala in partnership with Coinbase.
Now that the future of Novi is in someone else's hands, Marcus reflected on his time and said that his proudest achievement was assembling a “kickass team” over the past three years.
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Borderless Capital is looking to use its $500 million fund to back projects powering the “next generation” of decentralized projects on the Algorand blockchain.
Capital venture firm Borderless Capital has launched a fund worth $500 million to support projects building on the Algorand blockchain.
According to a Nov. 30 announcement from the Miami-based company, the Borderless ALGO Fund II will aim to back digital assets powering the “next generation” of decentralized applications (DApps) on Algorand.
The firm highlighted nonfungible token (NFT) and decentralized finance (DeFi) projects in particular, noting that it is looking at opportunities to “disrupt the creators economy” with NFTs while accelerating the growth of funding into Algorand’s DeFi ecosystem.
The move from Borderless comes in the same week that former Citi executive Matt Zhang introduced Hivemind Capital Partners on Nov.29, a $1.5 billion multi-strategy fund focused on promising crypto plays such as infrastructure projects, virtual worlds and programmable money. As part of the announcement, it was also revealed that Hivemind’s first technology partner is Algorand.
Algorand is an open-source decentralized blockchain that was launched in mid-2019 by computer scientist Silvio Micali. The blockchain was designed for speed, security and stability and has been touted as an Ethereum competitor amid ALGO’s surging growth in 2021.
“Algorand is the most efficient next-generation blockchain software in the market right now, and it is the next frontier for investment opportunities and disruption," said Arul Murugan, the founding managing partner at Borderless Capital.
The new $500 million fund adds to $400 million worth of Alogrand focused funds that Borderless Capital already manages. Earlier this month the firm closed a $10 million fund focused on PlanetWatch, a decentralized air quality monitoring network built on Algorand.
According to data from DeFi Llama, Algorand is currently ranked as the thirty-sixth largest blockchain in terms of total value locked (TVL) in DeFi at $97.4 million. The top project on the network is Yieldly (YLDY) which offers a suite of DeFi apps and has a total TVL of $68.4 million.
Coingecko shows that the price of ALGO is up 470% over the past 12 months to sit at $1.86 at the time of writing. ALGO’s all-time high was more than two years ago, briefly topping $3.50 in June 2019 before sharply crashing below the $1 mark.
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Market analysts are nonplussed by HOOD stock price as long as it continues to ramp up its presence in the cryptocurrency trading space.
As Robinhood struggles with its declining share price, could ramping up its cryptocurrency offerings help boost the company’s outlook?
Robinhood is a financial services company that also acts as a retail trading platform for ordinary users. It's known for meme stocks and currently offers seven cryptocurrencies for trading.
Since Aug. 4, Robinhood (HOOD) has fallen nearly 70% from its ATH of $70.39 to $25.94, and it’s been below the $38 IPO price for weeks. Several factors are contributing to the fall, such as a drop in crypto and meme stocks day trading as the pandemic era comes to an end and people return to their offices to work.
Robinhood enjoyed big gains in Q2 2021 when Dogecoin (DOGE) trading accounted for 41% of Robinhood’s total revenue, and 62% of the $233 million generated by cryptocurrency trading.
However, cryptocurrency trading fell 79% in Q3 and only accounted for 19% of its total revenue.
Chris MacDonald, a contributor to TipRanks, still believes that cryptocurrency iks the key to Robinhood’s long term success.
“Robinhood appears to continue to ramp up its efforts to become the most-utilized exchange out there. Those who think crypto is real and here for the long haul may want to take a close look at this company right now.”
There is also a big demand for Robinhood to launch its wallet feature, which currently has over 1.6 million users on the waitlist. That’s about 7% of its total user base as of the end of Q3 2021. While some are planning to trade more with the wallet others may simply want to withdraw their existing tokens from Robinhood’s platform.
The brokerage has not said anything definitive about listing Shiba Inu (SHIB). There's a big push on from the community including a petition to list SHIB on Robinhood that currently has 541,000 signatures. Competitor Kraken this week launched SHIB trading which was followed by a 30% increase in the price. Such price action may help convince Robinhood of the merits of listing the memecoin given the potential to repeat the growth it experienced from the DOGE trading frenzy in Q2.
Despite the current price doldrums Wall Street appears to view HOOD favorably for now. Nasdaq has indicated an average price target of $45 from 13 analysts, which represents 73.3% upside potential.
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Bitcoin has fallen just 17% from ATH which makes this correction the shallowest of the year so far.
In previous bull market cycles, there has been a measurable correction before a rally at the end of the year — and if history rhymes it could be on the cards again.
We’ve certainly experienced the correction: Bitcoin hit an all-time high of around $69K on Nov. 10 and has retreated around 17% to current levels.
Some mainstream media outlets such as Forbes have taken the view the current pullback has plunged markets back into bearish territory with the rather salacious headline: “Did Bitcoin Enter A Bear Market After Falling 20% From Its ATH?” on a Nov. 30 article.
But November's dip was actually the weakest correction of 2021, overshadowed by Bitcoin’s whopping 53.4% correction over three months between April and July. The most recent correction in September was the second deepest, reaching 37% from April's ATH.
In its Nov. 29 “Week Onchain” report, analytics provider Glassnode argued that the current correction is just “business as usual for Bitcoin hodlers” hinting that it may soon be over. It also confirmed that this current market correction is “actually the least severe in 2021.”
Barring a stock market plunge due to the Omicron variant situation becoming worse, some believe we may be on track for a Santa Claus rally. It's a term from the stock market when prices rise during the last 5 trading days in December and the first 2 trading days in January, however, it has also been noted in crypto markets in previous years and is often shorthand for price rises throughout December.
Last December, saw a 47% surge in BTC prices throughout the month and December in 2017 witnessed an 80% pump to a new all-time high at the time. Both were in bull markets like today.
At the time of writing, BTC was trading at just over $57K so a Santa Claus rally similar to last year could see prices surge to top $80K before the year is out.
8848 Invest co-founder Nikita Rudenia is also confident about a Santa Claus rally commenting:
“Despite the obvious setbacks thus far, Bitcoin is still on track to close the year at $70,000 per coin and, should this feat be achieved, we may see the coin touch $75,000 in early 2022 before we get a major correction.”
Interestingly Ether is currently outperforming. The ETH/BTC ratio is the highest it has been since mid-May at 0.082 BTC per ETH or around 12 ETH per BTC according to CoinGecko. This could see ETH lead further price gains in December.
After taking a deep dive into the on-chain patterns, Glassnode concluded that Bitcoin investors are in more profitable positions than during September’s correction.
“Both Long and Short-term Holders are holding more profitable supply than September's correction, which can generally be viewed as constructive for price.”
Glassnode reported that the total proportion of profitable supply held by short-term holders has increased by 60% since September. It summarized "in bull market conditions, this combination usually sets out a fairly constructive short-term outlook."
Hopes of a Santa Clause rally, therefore, are starting to grow. Such a spurt at the end of the year can be attributed to a number of factors such as holiday cheer and increased liquidity due to Christmas bonuses.
However, the new Omicron variant could put a dampener on the party if there is a major impact on global financial markets and more lockdowns are enforced or seem likely. According to Nasdaq, investors may be on the sidelines for the time being until more is known about the new viral strain.
On the upside, Bitcoin was trading at just $18,857 this time last year.
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Welcome to the statistically dubious world of cryptocurrency surveys. Here, we'll find out how many Aussies really own crypto, and why there are so many different claims.
When Tony Richards, the Head of Payments Policy at the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), read the recent survey results from Finder’s Crypto Report saying that almost one in five Australians owned crypto, he didn't believe it for a second.
However, the results had already been widely published around the country, gracing headlines for weeks. They even made their way into the recent Senate Committee on Australia as a Technology and Financial Center’s final report in October.
Welcome to the statistically dubious world of cryptocurrency surveys — an easy way for companies to get publicity by hawking survey results, but not necessarily a great way to stay informed.
The Finder survey from August claimed that 17% of Australians own at least one cryptocurrency — 9% own Bitcoin, 8% own Ether and 5% own Dogecoin.
Is the figure plausible?
Richards called these figures into question in his address to the Australia Corporate Treasury Association on Nov. 18, saying that he finds them “somewhat implausible.”
“I cannot help thinking that the online surveys they are based on might be unrepresentative of the population,” he said.
The Reserve Bank of Australia’s head of payments policy Tony Richards said that the growth of crypto in 2021 was “no doubt fuelled by influencers and celebrity tweets.”
He referenced “important segments of the population” including the elderly, people living in regional areas, and those without reliable access to the internet, that online survey panels “do not capture well.”
His point echoes a similar sentiment outlined by Dr. Chittaranjan Andrade in his 2020 report for the Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, where he claims online survey samples are often unrepresentative, regardless of the subject.
Online surveys are completed only by people who are “sufficiently biased to be interested in the subject; why else would they take the time and trouble to respond?” he wrote.
But the Head of Consumer Research at Finder, Graham Cooke defended the methodology, telling Cointelegraph:
“The respondents are selected based on age, gender and location to create a sample which fairly reflects the results that would be expected from a full national survey.”
“We are confident that this produces a trustworthy sample which is representative of the population,” he added.
In the 15-page report summarizing survey results, there are only a few lines at the end to explain methodology. It says: “Finder’s Consumer Sentiment Tracker is an ongoing nationally representative survey of 1,000 Australians each month, with more than 27,400 respondents between May 2019 and July 2021.”
The survey is conducted by Qualtrics, a Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing (SAP) company. Qualtrics’ website boasts, "in just ten weeks Finder lifted brand awareness 23 percent," but there was no additional information regarding survey methodology, and did not provide any on request from Cointelegraph.
A Finder spokesperson was able to confirm to Cointelegraph that: “Qualtrics collects respondents from various panels and can be incentivized in different ways. Some are paid a small fee for their participation, some earn a charity donation, for example.”
Different surveys have estimates 2M people apart
This is not to single out Finder’s survey for particular criticism: There appears to be a new survey every day and often their findings are at odds with one another.
Take the YouGov survey commissioned by Australian crypto exchange Swyftx, which found that the number of Australians who hold crypto is closer to 25%. The July survey collected responses from 2,768 adult Australians, and the figures were weighted using estimates from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This survey was found to be compliant with the Australian Polling Council Code.
Source: Swyftx, Annual Australia cryptocurrency survey
However, both surveys can’t be correct. The population of Australia is 25.69 million. This means that Finder’s 17% of the Australian population equates to roughly 4.37 million people. Meanwhile, Swyftx’s 25% is about 6.42 million people.
The difference between the two estimates translates to just over two million people — that’s more than the entire population of South Australia.
The numbers also don’t appear to be reflected on local platforms. Crypto trading platform Binance Australia told Cointelegraph that it had 700,000 users, Easy Crypto Australia said it had around 15,000 users, Swyftx has 470,000 users (many from overseas). BTC Markets has over 330 000 Australian users and Independent Reserve’s site claims 200,000 users.
Digital Surge, eToro, Coinspot, and Coinmama did not respond with user numbers.
Not all Australians use a local exchange to trade their crypto of course, but on the other hand, a significant proportion of users are signed up to multiple local exchanges. There appears to be a mismatch of hundreds of thousands if not millions between survey results and exchange accounts.
That said, Jonathon Miller, Australian managing director Kraken exchange, said that his platform came up with similar figures to Finder in YouGov market research in May.
The sample in that survey included 1,027 Australians aged 18 years and older, the data weighted by age, gender and region to reflect the latest ABS population estimates.
It found that one in five (19%) Aussies have owned or currently own a cryptocurrency, and 14% (2.78 million) currently have a crypto portfolio.
Speaking to the Finder survey, Miller said: “I don’t think it’s going to be that far off. The point is that these surveys are probably representative.”
“If those numbers aren’t exactly right today, they will be tomorrow. I think it’s true that one in five Australians have crypto.”
How many BTC do I need to pay you to say you trust BTC?
One issue that could be affecting the results of crypto related surveys is that respondents to some of these surveys are actually being paid in crypto.
On Nov. 18, a Premise Data survey of 11,000 participants across 76 countries claimed that 41% of people globally trust Bitcoin (BTC) over local currencies.
The catch was, a separate survey of Premise’s “contributors” two months earlier reported 23% of its contributor base have been paid in BTC, and since 2016, the data collection company has paid out over $1 million in Bitcoin via Coinbase to survey participants in 137 countries globally.
Principal Research Fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research Nicole Watson told Cointelegraph that “paying someone Bitcoin to complete a survey about cryptocurrency would bias the result.”
“People who know what Bitcoin is and want some would be more likely to take part,” she said. In short, they’re not going to be reflective of the wider population.
Cointelegraph reached out to Premise about its survey methodology, but received no response.
What makes a trustworthy survey?
In Watson’s opinion, online-only surveys are not representative of the wider population.
“Recruiting a sample online is likely to bias the sample towards people who spend more time online, visit certain websites, or use certain apps, depending on where the invitation to participate placed and who might see it.”
She explained that someone’s participation in a survey could be influenced by who is running it, what it is about, how long it will take, and what (if any) incentives are offered — all of which may bias the results.
“For a new technology like cryptocurrency, you can see how many of these factors could lead to a biased result.”
For research conducted in Australia, a good way to tell whether the findings are trustworthy is by checking whether it has been issued an “Australian Polling Council Quality Mark.” In the UK, you can look to see whether the polling company is a member of the British Polling Council (BPC), and in the U.S. the National Council on Public Polls.
The Australian Polling Council says that any survey or poll worth its weight should include a “long methodology statement,” including additional information like weighting methods, effective sample size and margin of error.
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As the transition to Eth2 edges closer, Ethereum developers have launched a program for the non-technical users and technical users alike to help test the upcoming Beacon Chain merge.
Ethereum (ETH) developers have put out a call to the community to help test the long awaited Merge between the Ethereum Mainnet and the proof-of-stake (PoS) based Beacon Chain.
The Merge is a major milestone towards the transition to Eth2 as it will see the Ethereum network become a PoS blockchain, decreasing its energy consumption by 99%.
On Nov. 29 Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden announced a new program to get the community involved in Merge testing that caters to three tiers: non-technical users, developers with limited experience in blockchain and highly technical and experienced blockchain developers.
Testing is the best way to contribute to #Ethereum. We are starting a new program to get the community involved in testing the merge.
If you want to do your part in getting Ethereum to Proof of Stake as soon as possible and save the environment, #dm me pic.twitter.com/WIxpRBIDPB
For non-technical users the self-guided program provides them tasks such as setting up consensus layer clients, reporting failures and sending transactions.
For technical users, they can select objectives such as running their own validators, deploying and testing contracts and setting up their own testnets, while highly technically users can review the spec, propose invalid blocks and splittin the network by voting on invalid blocks.
The program calls on all participants to document as much of their work as possible and share it online under the “TestingTheMerge” hashtag on Twitter. Wijden has also pointed the community towards the Ethereum R&D discord channel to maintain communication throughout the testing program.
“The program is not compensated, but if you find a critical bug (consensus issue/panic), I’ll buy you a beverage of your choice at the next DevCon!” Wijden teased in the program outline.
According to the Eth2 page on Ethereum.org, The Merge with the Beacon Chain is set to officially complete by Q1 or Q2 of 2022. The Merge is seen as the final chapter in the blockchain’s evolution to PoS consensus, however there is still more work to do before the transition to ETH 2.0 and sharding is complete.
The final piece of the puzzle is the Shard chains upgrade slated for late 2022 (AKA 'sharding'), which will see the network's load spread across 64 new chains to help the network scale its capabilities in a decentralized manner, with the aim of ramping up transactions per second and bringing down gas fees in the process.
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A letter to the secretary of the SEC outlines discrepancies in its rejection of Bitcoin spot ETFs and acceptance of Bitcoin futures ETFs.
Grayscale Investments has fired back a the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the recent rejection of VanEck’s spot Bitcoin ETF application.
The operator of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) issued a letter to Secretary of the SEC, Vanessa Countryman, on Nov. 29 to argue the SEC is wrong to reject spot Bitcoin ETFs since it has now approved three Bitcoin futures ETFs, one each from VanEck, Valkyrie, and ProShares.
Grayscale argues that the SEC has “no basis for the position that investing in the derivatives market for an asset is acceptable for investors while investing in the asset itself is not.”
It claims the SEC violated the Administrative Protections Act (APA) by failing to treat the two Bitcoin ETF products the same.
A Bitcoin futures ETF allows traders to speculate on the future price of Bitcoin (BTC) via derivatives, while a spot Bitcoin ETF would allow traders to trade on the current price of the asset, thereby functioning similarly to holding the asset.
Grayscale is hardly a disinterested party with an application filed in October to list GBTC as a Bitcoin spot ETF, with a decision possible as w Christmas Eve. On Nov. 12, the SEC rejected VanEck’s similar application on the grounds that it was not consistent with the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Exchange Act).
Grayscale disagrees with those grounds for rejection.
“We believe this rationale failed adequately to take account of significant regulatory and competitive developments since 2017 when the Commission first considered, and denied, a national securities exchange’s application to list and trade shares of a spot Bitcoin ETP.”
In approving Bitcoin futures ETFs, Grayscale believes the SEC allowed applicants to sidestep the requirements of Section 6(5)(b) under the Exchange Act which Bitcoin spot ETF applicants must adhere to.
Section 6(5)(b) is designed to “protect investors and the public interest” by preventing fraud and market manipulation while also disallowing “unfair discrimination between customers, issuers, brokers, or dealers.”
Ethereum price appears en-route to a new all-time high, but data shows retail and pro investors are slightly skeptical about the current rally.
Today Ether (ETH) price briefly touched $4,760, exciting investors and reminding the world that the altcoin is a mere 2.2% below the $4,870 all-time high reached 20 days ago. While the spot price action might be intriguing, let’s see what’s happening in Ether’s derivatives markets.
Ether ETH/USD price at Bitstamp. Source: TradingView
While it is possible to draw a descending channel that shows support at $3,960, today's 5.4% positive move seems decoupled from Bitcoin's (BTC) negative performance.
Earlier today, commodities and stocks took a hit after the U.S. Federal Reserve acknowledged that inflation is more than just a "transitory" trend and Fed chair Jerome Powell said that the bank's relaxed money policies could end sooner than anticipated.
Retail traders are not fully confident
To understand how confident traders are about Ether's price recovery, one should analyze the perpetual contracts futures data. This instrument is the retail traders' preferred market because its price tends to track the regular spot markets.
In any futures contract trade, longs (buyers) and shorts (sellers) are matched at all times, but their leverage varies. Consequently, exchanges will charge a funding rate to whichever side demands more leverage, and this fee is paid to the opposing side.
Neutral markets tend to display a 0% to 0.03% positive funding rate which is equivalent to 0.6% per week. This indicates that longs are the ones paying and data shows retail traders have been mostly neutral since Nov. 4 and the last move above 0.07% happened on Oct. 21.
Top traders have reduced their long positions
Exchange-provided data highlights traders' long-to-short net positioning. By analyzing every client's position on the spot, perpetual and futures contracts, one can better understand whether professional traders are leaning bullish or bearish.
There are occasional discrepancies in the methodologies between different exchanges, so viewers should monitor changes instead of absolute figures.
Exchanges top traders ETH long-to-short ratio. Source: Coinglass.com
Despite Ether's 17% rally over the past four days, top traders at Huobi and OKEx decreased their longs. This move was even more evident at OKEx because the indicator made a drastic move from favoring bulls by 120% on Nov. 25 to a meager 30% advantage three days later.
Currently, data indicates that whales and arbitrage desks have reduced their long exposure, while retail traders remain suspicious of the recent bull run.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of theauthorand do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.
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The company projects it can mine up to 25,000 BTC per year by 2024.
In a filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, Adit EdTech Acquisition Corp, announced it would merge with Cincinnati-based Bitcoin (BTC) miner Griid at a $3.3 billion enterprise valuation. SPACs are blank check companies created for the sole purpose of acquiring other firms. After the deal consummates, Griid will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol GRDI. The deal is expected to close by the first quarter of next year.
According to its investor presentation, Griid expects to mine 637 BTC this year with a total hash rate of 187 petahash per second (PH/s) from all miners combined. By 2024, the company projects it can mine 24,348 BTC per year, with its total hash rate surpassing 26,180 PH/s. In context, the total hash rate of the entire Bitcoin network as of Tu is approximately 156,000 PH/s.
The firm also claimed that newly designed chips in its mining machines can surpass one of the best application-specific integrated circuit Bitcoin mining devices out there, the S19 Pro. Comparing its proprietary machine to the S19 Pro, Griid boasts that it is 15% more efficient, 50% cheaper and results in 130% more gross profits per year. Currently, about 70% of the company's Bitcoin mining operations are carbon-free.
Trey Kelly, CEO of GRIID, issued the following statement regarding the development:
We are building an American infrastructure company with the largest pipeline of committed, carbon-free power among public bitcoin miners at the lowest cost of scaled production.
David Shrier, CEO of Adit EdTech, added:
Carbon-free mining is the future of Bitcoin. GRIID’s combination of a large pipeline of low-cost, carbon-free power, distinctive access to next-generation ASICs, and market-leading execution position them to generate attractive profitability and growth.
Griid business metrics | Source: Company Investor Presentation
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The United Arab Emirates has adopted a favorable approach towards crypto. Now, its postal operator is issuing NFTs to commemorate National Day.
The United Arab Emirates’ postal operator is issuing nonfungible token (NFT) stamps to commemorate the federation’s 50th National Day, offering further evidence that digital collectibles are gaining mainstream appeal globally.
Emirates Post Group, or EPG for short, announced this week that it has become the first postal organization in the Middle East and North Africa to issue digital-collectible stamps. The new stamps, which will be unveiled on the Dec. 2, National Holiday, consist of blockchain-based digital twins that will be sold as digital collectibles linked to their physical counterparts.
A total of four stamps, each with a distinct design consisting of a national theme, will be issued. Buyers will be able to see the digital design linked to the physical stamp they purchase after scanning a QR code printed on the card. To activate the digital collectible on the blockchain, users must scan a QR code hidden behind the card.
EPG CEO Abdulla Mohammed Alashram told Cointelegraph that embracing NFTs aligns with the company's vision of becoming more digitally oriented. In the wake of the COVI-19 pandemic, EPG is "exploring how the implementation of blockchain technology can streamline and enhance our operations and introduce other competitive advantages."
When asked whether the NFT stamps are a one-off foray into blockchain or part of a broader strategy to embrace the new technology, Alashram said EPG plans to launch more digital stamps in the future:
"The adoption of the latest advancements in digital technology in our operations is also to address the technology-savvy generation who prefers digitally accessible services. As part of our efforts to bridge the gap between traditional postage stamps and the digital world, we are also working to launch more NFT stamps."
The UAE has adopted a progressive attitude towards blockchain technology and digital assets, with local regulators pushing a slew of crypto-friendly regulations. In September, local authorities established a new regulatory framework that supports cryptocurrency trading and related activities in Dubai’s economic free zone, potentially opening the door to wider adoption and innovation in the emirate.
BTC, stocks and commodities took a hit after the Federal Reserve acknowledged that inflation is more than just a “transitory” problem and hinted that tapering could occur sooner than expected.
Global financial market took a hit on Nov. 30 after comments from U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell hinted that inflation and the Omicron COVID-19 variant are growing threats and that the bank's easy money policies could end sooner than anticipated.
Prior to Powell's comments, Bitcoin (BTC) had been on the rise and the digital asset had rallied 6% from a low of $55,840 in the early trading hours on Nov. 30 to an intraday high at $59,200, but the price was hammered back below $57,000 after the Fed's remarks.
BTC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
At the time of writing, Bitcoin has managed to climb back to $58,000 but a series of technical indicators signal that traders are not confident about BTC's next move.
Stocks and commodities take a hit
It wasn’t just Bitcoin that was hard hit by the Fed's comments. According to economist and CryptoQuant analyst Jan Wuestenfeld, the dollar index (DXY) increased while the DOW, gold and other equities indexes pulled back.
DXY vs. Gold vs. BTC/USD vs. SPX. Source: Twitter
Wuestenfeld said,
“US dollar index appreciating on Powell remarks that the FED might speed up taper (no matter how believable). Everything else going down. Gold included.”
Deeper insight into the actions from the Fed was provided by market analyst and former treasury employee Nik Bhatia, who highlighted the fact that the Fed “doesn’t have the ability to react to dynamic conditions” and instead “behaves in a binary way.”
Bhatia said,
“If things are going well, it can tighten policy. If the economy is in trouble, it eases policy.”
According to Bhatia, “inflation is running hot in the United States” with “headline statistics pointing to multi-decade high increases in aggregate price levels.”
At the same time, the Fed has implemented “a monetary policy at essentially the easiest it has ever been,” leading Bhatia to caution that “with inflation waking up, this will soon come to an end.”
Bhatia said,
“The Fed is clearly heading into a policy error in which it tightens policy despite longer-term growth and inflation expectations coming down, due to tighter monetary policy itself (that’s why it’s called policy error).”
It's no longer "transitory inflation"
Interstingly, Powell's comments acknowledged that the year-long mantra of “transitory inflation” is now coming to an end, with the Federal Reserve chair suggesting that it's time to “retire” the transitory narrative.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell just suggested that we stop using the word "transitory" when speaking about inflation.
“I think it’s probably a good time to retire that word and try to explain more clearly what we mean.”
While it’s refreshing to see a bit more honesty coming from the Fed, cryptocurrency pundit Anthony Pompliano pointed out that the average person knew all along that the inflation was anything but “transitory” in nature and will likely remain an issue well into 2022.
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $2.638 trillion and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 41.2%.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
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AlphaWallet CEO and Spruce co-founder talk about their roles as contributors to the Ethereum Name Service following the project's recent airdrop.
Earlier this month, the Ethereum Name Service, or ENS, formed a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, for the ENS community.
Cointelegraph spoke to two ENS DAO delegates who applied for the opportunity to represent the community and stay involved in the decision making process: Victor Zhang, CEO of AlphaWallet, an open source Ethereum wallet, and Gregory Rocco, co-founder of Spruce, a decentralized ID and data toolkit for developers.
Zhang spoke about his experience as an external contributor to ENS and an early supporter since 2018. Zhang initially sought to help ENS by offering Alpha Wallet as a user-friendly tool for resolving .eth names and cryptocurrency wallet addresses. Essentially, if a user inputs an .eth name in the AlphaWallet, it will show the wallet address, and vice versa using reverse resolution. AlphaWallet also supports ENS avatars.
Zhang, also known as @Victor928, is among the top 30 delegates with the most voting power. When asked about how he plans to keep contributing to the DAO, Zhang said:
My biggest concern currently is voting power. The second largest voting power is Coinbase, a big corporation. We need to make sure the ENS is always a public group, always a neutral service, not influenced or controlled by any single party for its own interest.”
During the ENS token airdrop, 100 million total ENS tokens were distributed. While 25% went to users with .eth domans, another 25% of the tokens were allocated to those who “contributed in significant ways to ENS over the last four years.” The other 50% remains in the DAO community treasury.
As an external contributor, Zhang received 46,296.3 tokens. At the time of publication, this number of tokens amounted to $3,320,311.15. Zhang is among 27 contributors to receive this exact amount.
Zhang confirmed that he is, “holding it all. I’m not cashing any tokens out. As long as ENS continues to grow in the right direction, I don't see any competitors. So that means the value is much bigger than the current market cap, if we’re looking at it as an investment.”
The day of the airdrop, Brantly Millegan, AKA “Brantly.eth,” ENS’ director of operations, tweeted about the “responsibility” bestowed upon users and added how it’s up to the ENS community to use decentralized identity “wisely.”
you were not airdropped free money, you were airdropped responsibility
Gregory Rocco from Spruce discussed this concept of decentralized identity with Cointelegraph. He developed Spruce, a secure sign-in with Ethereum, or SIWE software, precisely to help users own and control their digital identities, rather than give up that data to large corporations.
He is referring to large centralized corporations such as Google, Twitter or Facebook that offer web2 users the option to login to third-party apps and services using their respective Gmail or Facebook details instead of having to create and remember individual usernames and passwords for each new account.
According to Rocco, these traditional logins have the “ultimate control” over user identifiers because “if Google pulled the rug on you, you wouldn't just lose access to Google services, you'd also lose access to every service that you signed into using Gmail.”
The goal of SIWE is to enable users to control their public identifier by owning their private keys or as Rocco put it: “‘your keys, your crypto’ but also ‘your keys, your identifier.’” Not only does Spruce’s toolkit establish a blockchain-based identity, but it also enables verifiable proof of identity, ownership of assets and DAO membership. This is important for a user to prove his or her value to the ENS ecosystem and earn rights to upcoming airdrops.
When asked how it feels to be a delegate, Rocco said:
“I feel this motivation to stay on top of everything for ENS and be on board and establish that social contract. I believe in the future of ENS and support participation in user-controlled systems. That paradigm is the first step towards enabling users to have more control over their identity and data.”
Decentralizing identity ultimately empowers the ENS DAO and builds up its credibility as a truly decentralized organization. Both Zhang and Rocco are champions of collective ownership and hope to further promote the usage of ENS in the Web 3.0 ecosystem.
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Comments from the Federal Reserve might have sent BTC price tumbling, but SHIB, RGT and AMPL ignored the taper talk by posting double-digit gains.
Volatility reared its ugly head for a second day after growing fear of the new Omicron Covid-19 variant and the Federal Reserve's admission that an earlier than expected adjustment to its bond buying program continue to impact global stock markets. The impact of these concerns appear to have impacted Bitcoin price and this morning the digital asset retreated from its intraday high at $59,175, falling to as low as $55,875.
It’s not all bad news for crypto holders, however, several altcoins have racked up notable gains over the past 24-hours.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the biggest gainers over the past 24-hours were Shiba Inu (SHIB), Rari Governance Token (RGT) and Ampleforth (AMPL).
Shiba Inu reveals gaming and Metaverse plan
Shiba Inu is a meme coin that operates on the Ethereum (ETH) network and has risen in popularity over the course of 2021 by embracing emerging trends like nonfungible tokens (NFT) and decentralized finance (DeFi).
VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for SHIB on Nov. 29, prior to the recent price rise.
The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historical and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.
As seen in the chart above, while the VORTECS™ Score for SHIB has remained relatively flat over the past week, the NewsQuakes™ alert system from Cointelegraph Markets Pro posted three updates around 15 hours before the price increased by 42% over the next day.
SHIB's price spike comes after the token listed on Kraken exchange and the news that Shiba Inu partnering with William Volk, the former VP of Tech at Activision, to create games for the project's ecosystem and foray into the Metaverse.
The Rari Governance token is the native token of Rari Capital, a non-custodial DeFi Robo-advisor that enables users to autonomously earn a yield with their crypto holdings.
VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for RGT on Nov. 25, prior to the recent price rise.
As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for RGT spiked into the green zone and reached a high of 77 on Nov. 25, around 78 hours before the price increased 51.5% over the next two days.
The rally in RGT comes as the protocol surpassed $1.5 billion in total value locked and launched a new shield mining campaign with Nexus Mutual (NXM) where NXM stakers can earn RGT for their staking activities.
Ampleforth adds a wrapper
Ampleforth is a rebase project hosted on the Ethereum network that uses an algorithmically adjusted circulating supply that aims to be the base money for a decentralized economy that can remain decoupled from the price action of other cryptocurrencies.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after hitting a low of $0.75 on Nov. 22, the price of AMPL has rallied 87.5% to a daily high at $1.41 on Nov. 30.
AMPL/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
The rally appears to be connected to the release of wAMPL, a wrapped version of AMPL that does not rebase and can be more easily used throughout the DeFi ecosystem.
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $2.613 trillion and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 41.1%.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
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An elementary school teacher, Aarika Rhodes said she plans to use her time in Congress “fighting to keep Bitcoin innovation” in the United States.
Aarika Rhodes, a Democrat running to represent California's 30th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, has begun to accept campaign contributions in Bitcoin using the Lightning Network.
In a Tuesday message to her more than 21,000 Twitter followers, Rhodes said her campaign website had started using Lighting for campaign contributions in addition to the BitPay options for Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). According to the congressional candidate, the move was aimed at making her campaign more accessible for voters, who will consider Rhodes in California’s primary election in June 2022 and potentially the general election later that year.
Our campaign has officially adopted Lighting for campaign contributions.⚡️
This revolutionary technology creates accessibility and looks towards the future. I am excited to provide this option to our supporters across all 50 states. #Bitcoin
Rhodes is seeking to replace fellow Democrat Brad Sherman, who has represented the district since 2013 and is also looking towards re-election in 2002. During his time in office, Sherman has made several anti-crypto statements, including calling for a ban on digital assets, and referring to supporters of initial coin offerings as “charlatans and scammers.” Rhodes, an elementary school teacher, said she plans to use her time in Congress “fighting to keep Bitcoin innovation” in the United States.
At the local level, many lawmakers coming out in support of pro-crypto legislation and other initiatives in the space have already won elections. Earlier this month, Eric Adams defeated his Republican opponent for the New York City mayoral race in a landslide, later saying he would begin accepting his paychecks in crypto and promoting the launch of the NewYorkCityCoin (NYCCoin). In Florida, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez was vocal about his intentions to make the city have “the most progressive crypto laws” prior to winning re-election on Nov. 2.
Though some current members of Congress do accept crypto contributions for their re-election campaigns, publicly announcing and promoting such a move is still a relatively novel concept, given how few federal elections have occurred in the U.S. since the 2017 bull run. Morgan Harper, a candidate interested in Rob Portman’s Senate seat for Ohio, recently said she was “in learning mode” on the crypto space and encouraged public feedback on how lawmakers might “keep bad actors out while encouraging innovation.”
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The Grayscale Solana Trust would allow high-net-worth and institutional investors to gain indirect exposures to the yearlong bullish SOL market.
Solana (SOL) held onto its intraday gains on Nov. 30 as Grayscale Investments, the largest cryptocurrency fund in the world, announced that it would add SOL to its product line.
SOL rallied to nearly $217.50 after rising by over 6.50% intraday. The Solana token's gains came primarily as a part of a recovery move that started Nov. 28, wherein it rebounded over 20% upon testing a dependable multi-month ascending trendline as support (near $190), as shown in the chart below.
The latest bout of buying near the trendline support also helped push SOL over the 23.6 Fib line (~$204) of its Fibonacci retracement graph, drawn from the $23.22-swing low to the $260.69-swing high. As a result, the $260-price level appears like the last line of defense between SOL and a new record high.
"SOL, although, looks like exhaustion, still $300-something is possible (this season)," noted @fomocapdao, an independent market analyst, adding:
"It depends on the whole [ecosystem though], meaning TVL, NFTs, Tabasco, announcements of announcements."
"Continued appetite" for Solana
Grayscale's decision to add Solana into its service portfolio promised to make SOL visible across more high-net-worth and institutional investors.
That is primarily because of Solana's incredible growth as a blockchain project in 2021. The layer-one protocol emerged as a rival to fellow smart contracts platform Ethereum after providing users with one of the lowest-costing and fastest public ledgers.
Solana blockchain performance versus others. Source: Reddit
Solana's ecosystem attracted over 500 projects spread across decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFT), Web 3.0, and other sectors, with 1.2 million active users on the network. Among them is Serum, a decentralized derivatives exchange backed by billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX and Alamada Research.
As a result, the price of SOL, which works as a fee and staking token inside the Solana ecosystem, surged by more than 10,700% year-over-year, with its circulating market capitalization peaking near $77.93 billion in November.
SOL circulating market capitalization. Source: Messari
Now valued at over $70 billion, Solana is still the fourth-largest blockchain by market capitalization, with Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein noting that there is already a "continued appetite" among investors to gain exposure in the blockchain project.
The statements came after Coinshares, a London-based asset management firm, reported net capital inflows worth over $250 million into the SOL-based exchange-traded products (ETP). This month alone, the Solana ETPs attracted around $42.2 million, Coinshares underscored in its Nov. 29 report.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
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“We’ve long recognized Israel as a hot bed of strong technology and cryptography talent, and are excited to continue to grow our team with some of the best and brightest minds in these fields,” said Coinbase.
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase will acquire cryptographic security company Unbound Security in a move that will also have the U.S. company launch a research facility in Israel.
In a Tuesday blog post, Coinbase said it would be purchasing Unbound to gain access to its cryptographic security experts as well as establish a presence in Israel. The exchange cited Unbound’s work in multi-party computation to provide users with the “virtually impenetrable nature of cold, offline storage, with the frictionless convenience of hot, online wallets.”
“We’ve long recognized Israel as a hot bed of strong technology and cryptography talent, and are excited to continue to grow our team with some of the best and brightest minds in these fields,” said Coinbase. “The Unbound Security team will form the nucleus of this new research facility, which we plan to grow over time.”
The Unbound acquisition is the latest of many for the major crypto exchange following its public listing on Nasdaq in April, giving the firm a roughly $100 billion valuation. Last week, the team at crypto wallet provider BRD announced it would be joining Coinbase in an effort to “help accelerate Web 3.0 adoption” as well as provide “deep expertise in self-custody.”
Coinbase did not immediately disclose the terms of the Unbound acquisition. The exchange has already purchased firms including Agara, an artificial intelligence-enabled support platform with operations in India, data aggregator Zabo, and data analytics platform Skew, with each agreement likely in the millions if not more.
As cryptocurrency prices continue to be volatile, Coinbase announced in August that it had stockpiled a war chest worth roughly $4 billion in cash to prepare for a potentially harsh crypto winter, spurred by decreased crypto retail trading volumes and higher operating costs from regulatory hurdles. The company reported revenue of $1.2 billion in the third quarter of 2021, with profits totaling $406 million.
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The remarks came at a time when the country's crypto regulatory framework remains underdeveloped.
On Tuesday, Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, voiced his criticism regarding the state of the criticism sector at the "Russian Calling" investment forum in Moscow. According to local news outlet lenta.ru, the president made the following remarks, as translated by Cointelegraph:
"It is not backed by anything, [and] the volatility is colossal, so the risks are very high. We also believe that we need to listen to those who talk about those high risks."
Putin called for the greater monitoring and regulation of cryptocurrencies and pointed out that certain countries worldwide are seeing significant adoption of digital currencies. Currently, cryptocurrency regulation is still in its infancy in Russia. Although the government is considering the launch of a central bank digital currency, at least eight federal laws and five legislative codes must be changed for the digital ruble to take effect.
Furthermore, no regulation exists in the country regarding cryptocurrency mining. This has led some to claim that $2 billion in crypto mining revenue is generated annually in Russia, but on that, no taxes are paid. Due to the lack of a regulatory framework, cryptocurrency use has soared among ordinary Russians, with transactions surpassing $5 billion each year.
In other parts of the former Soviet Union, cryptocurrencies are also rapidly gaining in traction. Kazakhstan has become the world's largest Bitcoin (BTC) miner by hash rate, and its president is seeking to collect more taxes from such activities to fund the country's expenses. In Ukraine, the government is actively encouraging legal crypto operations. Last year, the city of Olsztyn, Poland, began adopting the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain for emergency services.
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2021 is proving to be a breakthrough year for NFTs, but what is driving such impressive performance? This Cointelegraph Research report has the answers.
In 2010, if someone had told you that Internet memes, digital artwork and Twitter avatars would sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, would you have believed them?
Well, these are nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, in a nutshell. NFTs are driving blockchains toward uncharted territory on the backs of cute kitties and pixelated punks. What may appear to be a shroud of speculation over pointless collectibles is actually the clouded horizon of fintech innovation. NFTs represent a turning point. Blockchain technology is now being used to represent assets beyond the chain.
In order to understand the thriving and intriguing world of NFTs, the Cointelegraph Research team delves deep into this new space, presenting the findings in the latest report “Nonfungible Tokens: A New Frontier.”
This report covers the history and development of NFTs, how NFTs are stored, traded and exchanged, how to mint an NFT and what platform to choose, how the NFT market works and how the prices are formed, how to find exciting new NFT projects, how NFTs are regulated in various jurisdictions, how much energy is used when creating and trading NFTs and what future awaits this emerging market.
Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney first mentioned an early version of NFTs in 1993. He called them “Crypto Trading Cards.” In a forum discussion, Finney touched on definable scarcity, exclusive ownership and provenance. These concepts are now at the core of every NFT.
The idea of NFTs wouldn’t see much development until 2012 when Yoni Assia wrote about “colored bitcoins,” which eventually became “colored coins.” Built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, Colored Coins created semifungible tokens that were supposed to represent real-world assets such as real estate, commodities and bonds.
One of the earliest NFT iterations “Quantum” was created in 2014 by Kevin McCoy and Anil Dash and presented at the New Museum in New York City. In 2015, the first Ethereum-based NFT called Etheria was launched at Devcon 1. This is largely considered to be the first truly nonfungible token.
The term “NFT” emerged in 2017. Although little known at the time, two very significant NFT projects, CryptoPunks and CryptoKitties, were launched in 2017. This same year, the first NFT house was sold through Propy. This marked the first wave of NFT popularity which synchronized with the crypto market cycle.
Market growth
NFTs have become a booming market that expands year after year. For example, sales have grown from just $41 million in 2018 to an astonishing $2.5 billion in the first half of 2021, representing a 60-fold growth in three and a half years.
Even compared to 2020, the growth is staggering. Total sales in 2020 reached $340 million and in 2021 so far the sales have already surpassed $9 billion which is more than 25-fold growth according to data from NonFungible.com on NFTs on Ethereum.
The rich, famous and influential began collecting or issuing NFTs in 2021. By May, monthly sales volume reached $360 million. Shortly thereafter, a deep downturn in the crypto markets briefly ended the NFT euphoria, causing daily volumes to drop significantly — a reduction of up to 90% from their highest levels. By July, NFTs rebounded and once again reached record-breaking highs, astonishingly attaining $2.6 billion in total volume in August on Ethereum alone based on data from NonFungible.com.
While Ethereum continues to dominate NFT market activity, there is interest growing in alternative layer-one blockchains due to their cheaper transaction fees and faster block times.
Ethereum holds approximately 80% of NFT sales volumes in 2021, but only 37% of total NFT traders. This is a reflection of the higher average NFT valuations on Ethereum and larger transaction fees. Flow and Wax both hold a large share of total traders, 32% and 25%, respectively, but with significantly less volume. Their cheaper transaction fees enable lower-priced NFT transactions and use cases for high-volume applications such as games.
What categories are among the most popular?
A breakdown of transactions by popular NFT categories, discussed in section 1.3 of the report, reveals that early sales were dominated by collectibles such as CryptoKitties and CryptoPunks. In late 2019, the gaming NFT category surged in transaction count, as player bases expanded on games such as F1 Delta Time, Gods Unchained and Decentraland.
In mid-2020, the number of transactions that included sports and metaverse NFT projects began climbing as these platforms increased in popularity. Around the same time, art NFTs also drew increased attention, peaking in January 2021 with Beeple’s record-breaking sale.
Although the overall share of transactions for collectibles has decreased, they still dominate total sales volume and lead projects by a significant margin. The art category follows behind collectibles in sales volumes, reflecting the similarly high valuations in the art and collectibles categories.
Will NFTs survive the next crypto crash?
This year, there are over $9 billion in NFT sales on Ethereum so far. Total NFT sales are expected to achieve at least $17.7 billion by the end of the year, as new traders look to boost secondary market activity.
Historically, the NFT’s dependence on cryptocurrency has been quite high. NFTs waned in popularity during the 2018 bear market in cryptocurrency and again in June and July of 2021 when the cryptocurrency market pulled back. Elevated interest in NFTs has coincided with the overall uptrend in the digital asset market, which may indicate that NFT prices will drop if cryptocurrency prices drop.
This article is for information purposes only and represents neither investment advice nor an investment analysis or an invitation to buy or sell financial instruments. Specifically, the document does not serve as a substitute for individual investment or other advice.
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