MARKET WRAP

1. Higher Inflation Numbers Cause Cryptos… to Rally?

CoinDesk – October 14, 2022 at 12:53 pm EST

Cryptos

Last week, cryptos performed about as strange as we have ever seen them before. On Thursday, October 13th, the Federal Reserve released its latest collection of inflation measurements, and to say the least, it wasn’t pretty. Quickly, $BTC dropped to a low of $18,372. But almost just as suddenly, it climbed right back up rallying 7.8% over the course of 12 hours, ending Thursday at over $19.8K. Does it make much sense? Nope, and analysts themselves are struggling to find a macroeconomic justification for it.

 

Insights

One interesting take on this price action is succinctly depicted in a tweet by Sam Ro, editor of Tker.co.

While its logic is comically circular, it makes more sense than any other explanation out there at the moment. Asset prices drop due to increased anti-inflationary measures by the government, but then they recover because those people then take the next step of suspecting that overly tightened monetary policy will elicit a market downturn, thus encouraging lower rates to compensate. It sounds ridiculous, but this forward reflexivity is the name of the game these days when it comes to guessing just how Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s decisions regarding monetary policy will affect price performance.

Equities

We saw stocks perform characteristically similar to cryptos this week as well, matching the same price action as bitcoin. The S&P 500 started the day down on Thursday but rallied 4.7% by market close. The DJIA found its bottom at around $28K but then shot up 4.6% to over $30K by market close.

 

Takeaways

Regardless of investor outlook, cryptos, stocks, and even Treasury yield and safe havens like gold are all assets that, in the midst of heavy inflation, bend at the knee whenever the Fed increases interest rates, only to recoil back in the other direction. As such, assets, especially crypto and stocks, remain in a bit of a holding pattern throughout the duration of this bear market as they have in the past weeks – that is without any catastrophic market-turning events that may come in the future.

2. Google Implements Crypto Wallet Address Search Function

CoinTelegraph - October 11, 2022 11:20 pm EST

The Google search engine’s latest feature makes it incredibly simple for users to identify Ethereum wallet addresses and check their balances directly in the search bar. With this feature, people no longer need to resort to Etherscan, especially during times when Etherscan’s congestion can result in untimely crashes.

Google Ventures Principal Han Hua made a public announcement of the new feature in a short, yet sweet tweet.

Google’s new small yet impactful update comes as a result of its collaboration with US-based Coinbase, but this is not the first time Google has attempted to provide Google-native tools that are geared toward blockchain users. Recently, Google also embedded a countdown timer for the Ethereum Merge that happened in September. Users were able to simply type in a search related to the Merge in order to see the remaining time.

Implementations like this show Google’s growing attention toward the world of web3 and blockchain technology. 

3. OpenSea Adds Support for Avalanche NFTs

Decrypt – October 12, 2022

Avalanche is the latest blockchain to have support for its NFTs on the OpenSea marketplace, making it among the few other blockchains to provide NFT services, including Ethereum, Polygon, Klaytn, Solana, Arbitrum, and Optimism.

 

According to its announcement on Tuesday, OpenSea will integrate with already-established services such as trade and other Avalanche-supported NFT exchanges like Joepegs and Kalao. Users will be able to resolve NFT transactions in under a second with minimal transaction costs due to Avalanche’s uniquely fast and secure consensus mechanism. 

All Avalanche-based NFT collections will be made available on OpenSea in the coming weeks.

4. 100 Million XRP Moved by Behemoth FTX Wallet

Cryptosnewz.com – October 11, 2022

A staggering amount of XRP – 100,000,000 to be exact – was sent to a wallet that was flagged as "unknown" according to a recent tweet from Whale Alert. The receiver wallet was a Binance crypto address, according to data from Bithomp's XRP-focused tracker.

A similarly large transfer of XRP was observed back in September when the token’s community felt significant hope for Ripple to win its legal case with the SEC. Since then, however, transactions of this size were rarely witnessed. This new influx of transfers could signal higher investor interest over a long period of idle performance.

5. Japanese Game Giant Konami Begins Web3 and Metaverse Initiative

Crypto News – October 14, 2022 at 6:44 am EST

Japanese video game giant Konami has stated its intentions to establish a marketplace for trading NFTs within their game IP through a unique distribution platform that makes use of the blockchain. 

Notably, this is not Konami's first step into the blockchain industry. To commemorate the 35th anniversary of its cult-classic title Castlevania, Konami sold a collection of NFTs earlier this year.

6. Mastercard Outlines Plan to Make Crypto Common Payment Method

Crypto News – October 14, 2022 at 8:50 am EST

Mastercard has listed 5 key improvements that its organization and others can strive toward to help turn cryptocurrencies into an everyday method of payment.

1. Crypto “credit” cards are needed to act as a bridge between financial services and the crypto market. Mastercard itself has already begun a partnership with Gemini to launch a credit card.

2. There should be more service providers for crypto companies. Mastercard has expanded its services to include crypto "to help card issuers stay compliant with regulations and assess the risk profile of crypto transactions."

3. Make the conversion of crypto to fiat currency easier for payments. Companies can do this as Mastercard and Visa have by partnering with top-tier crypto-focused companies.

4. Expand the network of cryptocurrencies available within traditional payment ecosystems. For Mastercard and others, this would entail the introduction of altcoins and (just maybe) a couple of shitcoins, here and there.

5. Partner with NFT and metaverse projects to improve user experience; Mastercard has partnered with Coinbase to make NFT purchases easier, for instance.

7. Leading Japanese Media Group Fuji Creative Corporation Acquires XANA Land

Twitter – October 16, 2022 at 6:03 pm EST

Fuji Creative Corporation (FCC), the production and rights-handling company of Fuji Media Holdings, one of Japan’s leading media groups, has just acquired virtual land on the XANA platform. Given the sharp increase in demand for virtual lands within various metaverse economies, FCC sees XANA Land as its next fruitful investment, following a pattern of heavy investment in virtual land properties that it has made before.

According to the FCC announcement, a steady income stream and unique features in the XANA platform have urged its participation. Furthermore, the acquisition will help FCC to expand its business operations within real estate, event, and welfare industries within the metaverse.

XANA ran its premiere land sale on October 15 and 16 with more than 5000 NFTs available for users, attracting much public interest.

8. Japanese Telecom Giant NNT Docomo Joins the Metaverse

Bitcoin.com – October 11, 2022

Japan’s largest telecommunications carrier, NTT Docomo, has announced the launch of its latest subsidiary, Qonoq, a research, and development symposium determined to produce software and hardware solutions for metaverse products.

In particular, NTT Docomo has spent approximately $412M on its human resources, a team of 200 employees building three core products.

The first of these is a metaverse platform where users can experience its world called “XR World.” The second is a “digital twin” business that will allow customers to complement the information about a particular venue with extended or augmented reality. The final product includes the production of hardware devices to enjoy metaverse experiences in an immersive way. 

This new subsidiary of NTT Docomo marks the beginning of its metaverse transition, joining the likes of other telecom carriers such as SK Telecom, Qualcomm, and Telefonica.