Maker Minds #10 — Inflation Update — GameStop vs Coinbase — The StarkWare Token
Hey Maker Minds! 👋
Inflation. That's all the world seems to be talking about right now, after the U.S. Consumer Price Index hit a whopping 9.1%, beating all economists' estimates.
Everyone knew the price index was going to be high, but few expected it to be this high. The immediate market reaction was proof of that. As usual, stocks and crypto moved in tandem, confirming their strong correlation.
It's interesting to see how BTC has fully recovered from its post-CPI plunge while stocks are still lagging. Two days certainly doesn't make a trend, but it’s interesting to see that bad news has less of a negative impact on prices. A phenomenon to watch for the future.
Following the Fed's announcement, the Bank of Canada surprised the markets by raising its key interest rate by 100 basis points (to 2.5%) to allay fears of runaway inflation, thus paving the way for the American Central Bank. This is the largest Canadian increase in 24 years.
A reassessment of the Fed's expectations quickly followed. At one point Wednesday afternoon, swap market bets showed that traders were bracing for a 75% hike at the end of the month.
This has not been done since the Fed began using an overnight policy rate to conduct monetary policy in the early 1990s.
The deadline is less than two weeks away. Every word of the Fed's speech will be carefully scrutinized over the next few days.
💰 Crypto
🔘 The global crypto market has regained the $1 trillion capitalization.
🔘 Ethereum: The Merge is expected on September 19, 2022.
🔘 Crypto spot trading volumes fell 28% in June to $1400 billion, the lowest seen since December 2020.
🔘 Coinbase may no longer be in the top 10 crypto exchanges by volume. It was the 4th largest exchange at the end of 2021, it is now the 14th.
🔘 Celsius platform files for bankruptcy. It owes $4.7 billion to its users.
🔘 Celsius' mining unit has auctioned off thousands of freshly purchased mining machines, also known as rigs. The price of rigs has dropped to its lowest level in two years.
🔘 Cryptocurrency miner CleanSpark continues to take advantage of the bear market by getting its hands on over 1,000 mining machines.
🔘 Crypto payments gateway CoinPayments is ceasing operations in the U.S. and advising users to withdraw their funds by July 19.
🔘 OKX gets a license in Dubai and plans to open a regional center there. OKX followed in the footsteps of FTX and Kraken by securing a license in the United Arab Emirates.
🔘 Algorand is encouraging central banks to build on its blockchain by publishing a study outlining the qualities of blockchain to meet the needs of state-owned digital currencies.
🔘 Nearly two months after the collapse of the Terra network, more than 48 Terra projects have begun migrating to Polygon.
🔘 Paraguay's Senate approved a bill allowing BTC miners to use the country's excess energy at a lower price.
🔘 Vladimir Putin signed a law banning BTC and cryptocurrencies as a means of payment in Russia.
🔘 MoonPay announced the hiring of 6 former executives from Coinbase, Cash App, and Figure.
🔘 Brazil's largest private lender, Itau Unibanco Holding, is considering offering cryptocurrency trading.
🔘 Bitfinex exchange donated 36 $BTC and $600,000 USDT to support economic development in El Salvador.
🔘 JPMorgan reported that the cost of producing one $BTC globally has dropped from $24,000 in early June to $13,000 now.
🔘 StarkWare announced the StarkNet token, with an airdrop expected in 2023. The token will be required for governance, payment of transaction fees on StarkNet and participation in its consensus mechanism.
🔘 The Lyber platform ($LYB) gets PSAN registration. It’s a mobile application intended for the purchase of cryptocurrencies and has its own crypto card.
🔘 French company Lugh gets PSAN registration from the AMF.
👩🏻🎤 NFTs & Metaverse
🔘 NFT trading volumes are an important indicator of the overall health of the industry. Currently, we are still hovering around the year's low, with little change from last week.
🔘 GameStop's NFT marketplace launched its public beta on July 12. It is a non-custodial marketplace built on layer 2 Loopring.
🔘 GameStop recorded a transaction volume of $3.5 million. In comparison, Coinbase's NFT marketplace has recorded $1.8 million in volume since its launch in May.
🔘 CryptoPunks have made their return to the top of the volume charts. The demand appears to be organic and not driven by any particular news. A punk was just bought for 2,500 ETH ($2.6 million), making it the 5th largest CryptoPunk sale in terms of ETH.
🔘 Polygon joins Disney's accelerator.
🔘 New this week is The Saudis collection, based on the meme that Saudi princes are #MAXBIDDING on BTC and ETH. There has been controversy around influencers who received free mints and got rid of them after promoting them to their followers.
🔘 Zinedine Zidane signs a multi-annual partnership with blockchain game Sorare.
🔘 OpenSea has laid off 20% of its employees.
🔥 What’s Poppin’?
▹ Celsius Files for Bankruptcy
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See you next week!