The Crypto Insider Report #15: Between rich townsman and legacy player
Disclaimer: Everything we write in "The Crypto Insider Report" is an x-ray of the industry as we see it, through the lens of publicly available information. We are not financial advisors.
I posted a tweetstorm yesterday about the lessons I learned from crypto in 2021. I think it's interesting.
Pranksy is one of the most prolific NFT collectors. He has almost 31,000 NFTs in his Opensea account, and among the many collections I minted, there were also Bored Apes: 250 initially, then up to 1250.
Subsequently, on August 4th, he had only one left, selling them all (packed with the airdropped dogs) for a few thousand ETH, approx 100x the initial investment. Big money.
It's easy to judge both from the sidelines and post-factum, but this "failure" meant for Pranksy around 50 million dollars. Even if he apparently doesn't care, the man couldn't stand aside and repurchased a monkey he had minted with 0.08 ETH at a price 4162 times higher:
In hindsight, I asked myself: why did Pranksy even sell all his monkeys? Wasn't it enough to sell 1000 of them and remain with 250? It would still have been life-changing money, and he would have continued to remain the largest BAYC holder.
On a simple calculation, assuming it was diamond hands, in total, today, Pranksy would have had 1250 apes, 1250 doggos, and 1250 mutants. Reducing them all to floor price (obviously hypothetical), the collection would have been worth 120,000 ETH or about 450 million dollars. That's without considering the token airdrop that will come in Q1 or the possibility of getting an M3 mutant, from where several million more would have come. Realistically, eliminating the reduction to the floor price, I think everything would have totaled almost 1 bln, and Pranksy would have written history.
If he had kept 250 out of 1250, it would still have meant an important milestone.
Why didn't he do it? Why sell ABSOLUTELY all of them? Because he didn't believe in the ability of the industry and NFTs to radically change the status quo. With a portfolio of tens of millions of dollars, Pranksy is probably less affected than we imagine, but when you're into something just for money, it's hard to imagine a future where Hollywood stars, NBA players, or American pop-culture personalities will change their avatars on social media to put a monkey in.
That's how you get to enjoy being able to flip continuously instead of writing history, and you end up being just another rich townsman instead of a legacy player.
Take care,
Vlad
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The first steps in crypto: What Is the Metaverse?
The metaverse refers to a shared, immersive virtual world in which avatars representing people have the possibility of interacting with one another, creating new experiences, and building in-world objects or even landscapes.
A metaverse has its own economy and currency, thus allowing people to buy, sell, or trade digital real estate, accessories, and so on. This can be experienced using a computer, a smartphone, or a virtual reality headset.
What Is a Crypto Metaverse?
A crypto metaverse is not different, on the surface, from the type we’ve already discussed, but it does stand out for using a blockchain as the underlying technology and crypto assets, like tokens, for its economy.
Among the best-known crypto metaverses already in existence, we can mention The Sandbox, Decentraland, and Axie Infinity.
The metaverse has been around for quite some time but using blockchain, crypto, and VR, all wrapped into one, makes a world of difference.
Metaverse crypto assets and items, like digital land or objects, are usually represented by various types of metaverse tokens. Their possession is recorded on the blockchain, and in some cases, they can be traded for digital assets such as Bitcoin or Ether.
Key Feature: Decentralization
In the case of the previously created virtual worlds, they used to be completely owned and controlled by a company. The crypto metaverse should be fully decentralized, with as many parts as possible being created on blockchain technology.
As a result, a blockchain metaverse strays away from the typical mainstream structure of a classically-run business.
This different structure of blockchain games means there are more equitable engagement chances for those taking part. Furthermore, ownership of the metaverse is divided between the participants, instead of one single company taking full ownership of it.
This means that even in the case that the creator of a game was to stop being involved for any reason, the game itself would be able to continue existing forever.
Provable Provenance si User Governance
The items in a crypto metaverse appear as crypto tokens, like NFTs. Buying items or making progress in the game can offer value to gamers.
Since NFTs are unique, the metaverse tokens and items are usually coded so that they can be used as proof of in-game user-generated content but also as gaming assets under the form of NFTs.
Crypto metaverses such as Decentraland rely on DAOs and governance tokens to allow users to control the direction in which the game is headed.
Therefore, users can make changes or update the game using voting. As a result, a metaverse can become more than a simple crypto game, but it can be a whole society with its own economy and elected leaders.
The Economic Value in the Real World
Since a crypto metaverse relies on crypto tokens and blockchain infrastructure, the economy of such a space is connected directly to the wider crypto economy.
This lets those who own metaverse tokens, skins of avatars, or real estate in digital form make trades among themselves on NFT marketplaces or DEXs, thus influencing the value in the real world of the investments they made inside the game.
Conclusions
The crypto metaverse has just begun developing, which means that this world is one full of potential, socially and economically.
It can let you discover new and various ways of playing, investing, and even interacting, all while making money from these actions.
While every news regarding one metaverse is already exciting, what truly shines is the potential of all of the separate metaverses being able to interoperate and interact with each other, which could push the value of the blockchain gaming ecosystem even higher to the point where it becomes part of the global economy.
The potential is so big that we still don’t know exactly how much this idea can grow, but by using VR elements, the relaxing and fun idea of playing video games, and the value of crypto, the crypto metaverse is most likely going to be a very important part of the next phase of the Internet and of the real world as well.
Animation of the day: About the importance of seed-phrases
For more animations: Cryptomatics
Tania
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The Altcoin Pulse
1. A subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, T-Systems MMS, supports the Polkadot ecosystem and becomes a validator.
2. Binance replaces the quarterly BNB burn procedure with an auto-burn mechanism.
3. Schneider Electric, a leading global provider of energy management and automation services, has partnered with VeChain.
https://finbold.com/electricals-giant-schneider-electric-picks-vechain-as-ecosystem-partner/
4. Phantom, one of the wallets of the Solana ecosystem, reached 1.8 million users in December 2021. Other milestones mentioned: 40,000 users in July 2021 and 1 million in November.
https://blockworks.co/solana-focused-wallet-phantom-hits-1-8m-users-but-aims-much-higher-for-2022/
5. Aave introduces real-world asset pools through its partnership with Centrifuge. These include trade receivables or invoices that companies can use as collateral to obtain loans. Centrifuge pools have also been offered by Maker DAO from 2021.
https://decrypt.co/89418/yield-on-real-world-assets-rwa-now-live-on-aave
6. Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, announced that work is underway to implement peer-to-peer microfinance transactions for H2 2022.
7. Several future token releases and listings, and other events.
https://icodrops.com/category/upcoming-ico/
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Interesting Headlines
1. Eminem enters the BAYC club after purchasing a Bored Ape at the price of 123.45 ETH.
https://decrypt.co/89571/eminem-buys-bored-ape-yacht-club-ethereum-nft-for-450k
2. Michael Saylor continues the DCA and buys 1,900 more BTC. MicroStrategy owns 124,391 BTC purchased at an average price of $30,160.
https://blockworks.co/microstrategy-buys-1900-more-bitcoins/
3. Samsung announces three TV models with NFT trading capabilities for 2022.
4. Umee, a DeFi crypto hub focused on interoperability between Ethereum and Cosmos networks, has completed a $32m funding round on CoinList. The round was characterized by the greatest interest coming from the community, with over 900,000 registrants.
5. The 2021 summary from Arcane Research's newsletter is free. A useful analysis of the evolution of the BTC market, alts, derivative instruments, or institutional demand.
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Tweet of the week: Adam Cochran with a mega tweetstorm. Long but worth reading.
Business book of the week: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. A reference book, written by a man who has lost the notion of his own theories precisely when it comes to crypto, an industry that is antifragile by definition.
Youtube clip of the week: If you haven't watched the interview with Raoul Pal because of ho-ho-ho, it should not be missed out:
Beautifully written. Keep up the great work!