MARKET WRAP

1. $BTC and $ETH Hold Below Support Levels Ahead of Ethereum Merge

CoinDesk – September 4, 2022 at 8:58pm EST

Cryptos

$BTC and $ETH price action was tight this past week with $BTC floating right below $20K and $ETH just under $16K. Prices at the moment are “good… to begin accumulation” according to BitBull Capital’s CEO Joe DiPasquale, but another drop may yet come next week when the August Consumer Price Index (CPI) is released on the 13th.

Insights

The long-awaited Bellatrix upgrade for Ethereum arrives tomorrow, roughly at around 11:34:47 UTC. At this time, the Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) level for Proof-of-Work (PoW) will exceed 58.75 sextillion, meaning that the PoW network will have a roughly fixed number of hashes left to mine before the network transitions over to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).

Equities

US equity markets have more or less followed the recent decline in crypto prices as a result of the Federal Open Market Committee meetings in both July and August, where Jerome Powell announced a 75 basis point interest rate hike. The Nasdaq, S&P 500, and DJIA have all dropped over 1% in the past three weeks.

Takeaways

This coming week will be incredibly volatile for investors that own $ETH. The Merge, when it occurs, may face technical difficulties and could potentially fall further than it already has this month if such is the case. However, if the Merge successfully converts the network over without issue, a short squeeze could occur, driving the price of $ETH up significantly, before a “hard fork” enters the picture.

2. Reddit Co-Founder’s VC Seven Seven Six Announces $178M Raise for Kryptos Crypto Fund

Bitcoin.com – August 31, 2022

Alexis Ohanian, Reddit Co-Founder and well-known husband to tennis superstar Serena Williams, has announced his plans to raise $178M for a crypto-focused fund through his VC known as Seven Seven Six. The fund, called Kryptós, is set to launch in October and will invest in a variety of crypto assets. Seven Seven Six is well-renowned for its accomplishments in the space, such as leading an $18M funding round for Rainbow, an Ethereum wallet platform, as well as launching a $200M social media web3 fund in collaboration with Polygon.

3. Kevin Rose’s Proof Raises $50M in Series A led by a16z

Decrypt – August 31, 2022

Proof, the web3 startup behind the Proof Collective NFT membership club and the acclaimed Moonbirds NFT collection announced its $50M fundraise led by Andreessen Horowitz, following a $10M raise by Seven Seven Six. The raise, which is backed by others like True Ventures, Flamingo DAO, Collab + Currency, CV Angel, and Gary Vaynerchuk’s VaynerFund, was announced at Proof’s Future Proof streaming presentation along with news of a new token and a new Moonbirds Mythics NFT collection for 2023.

4. Opensea’s Trading Volume Down By More Than 90% Over the Past Months

Dune Analytics

The trading volumes on Opensea - the world’s biggest NFT marketplace - amounted to around $500M in July and August. This number was a fraction of April’s trading volume, which recorded more than $5B. According to Dune Analytics, the majority of trades are from the Ethereum blockchain.

5. crvUSD Stablecoin May Arrive This September

The Block Crypto – August 31, 2022 at 9:33am EST

The founder of Curve Finance has disclosed in a recent community discussion that its upcoming stablecoin could be launched as soon as September. This is not the first time Michael Egorov mentioned this new project development. However, no details regarding the delivery timeline were ever discussed until recently, when Egorov was asked about it, to which he replied “(September is) possible.”

The new stablecoin could open many new opportunities for the Curve protocol, which already specializes in providing liquidity for stablecoin projects.

6. Crypto.com Accidentally Sends Customer $10.5M Instead of $100

The Guardian – August 31, 2022 at 2:47am EST

An internal mistake at Crypto.com has temporarily rewarded one of its customers with $10.5M. According to sources, the sender accidentally entered the client’s account number in the payment field instead of the correct amount of $100, quite some time ago. 

The benefitted customer has since used the illegitimate funds to buy a 4-bedroom house in Melbourne and transferred ownership of the property to her sister - who currently resides in Malaysia. Crypto.com is now seeking to reclaim the missing funds and, via litigation, acquire $27,369.64 in interest along with associated costs.

The incident happened 7 months ago and was only brought to the surface recently.

7. Algorand Supports New FIFA NFT Collection Launch for the World Cup

Be In Crypto – September 3, 2022 at 7:00am EST

FIFA has announced that it will launch FIFA+ Collect on FIFA+, a new NFT platform of FIFA built specifically for the World Cup Qatar 2022 on Algorand, launching later this month. The platform will bridge the gap between football players and their fans, granting them an opportunity to interact with their favorite players. The platform also functions to further integrate the use of Web3 in mainstream events and grow the salience of Algorand in a non-native crypto setting. As for FIFA, this new NFT project represents an opportunity for lucrative returns for the global football organization.

8. Jigger Founder Finds That More Than 40% of web3 Gaming Accounts Are Bots

CryptoSlate – August 31, 2022 at 6:06am EST

Levan Kvirkvelia, the founder of Jigger, an anti-bot protection software, has revealed that more than 40% of Web3 account games are bots, which includes 20,000 bots across 60 Web3 games. To explain this phenomenon, Louis Regis, Founder and CEO of Xborg, said that Web3 games tried to use bots as the “real player” to attract gamers to participate in and buy in-game assets to boost their valuations. Head of Polkastarter gaming, Omar Ghanem, adds that the earning mechanic of Web3 games, being primarily “Click-to-Earn”, lends itself to a core gameplay loop dependent on task repetition, which encourages the implementation of bots. 

9. National Korean Television Network MBC Partners with Sandbox

Forkast – September 5, 2022 at 12:56am EST

South Korea’s national television and radio network, Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), has partnered with the Hong Kong-based metaverse platform Sandbox. The commitment allows MBC to recreate its emblematic Sangam office building and production studios within the virtual space. It also opens the door for multiple partnerships with South Korean entertainment entities like CJ ENM, and K-Pop super agencies like SM and Cube Entertainment.

Note:

We hope you liked this new format of Weekly News! Over the bear summer, lots of news ended up being more disheartening than we’d like, and even without the doom and gloom, our articles lost a bit of their sparkle. This new rendition of Weekly News, which we call M3TA Recap, is shorter and denser with news, so we hope it’s a fun read for you once more! Thanks for reading!