Maker Minds #13 —The future of Ethereum — The digital euro — The success of Doodles
Hey! 👋
Here’s a recap of the most important crypto news.
Latest prices
Bitcoin: $19,324
Ethereum: $1,349
Solana: $31
Gold: $1,667
S&P 500: $3,876
💰 Blockchain and adoption
🔘 Long expected by the ecosystem, Ethereum has just successfully completed its famous Merge and thus acts its transition to PoS. After this merger between the Beacon Chain and the Mainnet, miners no longer receive revenue for block production and have passed the torch to validators. The network's power consumption decreased by 99% with the transition.
🔘 The Ethereum Foundation estimates that the merge will reduce global energy consumption by 0.2%, making it one of the largest decarbonization efforts in history.
🔘 Ethermine, the world's largest ETH mining company, shut down its servers after the merge and launched a staking service.
🔘 ETH falls to its lowest level since July. BTC and major altcoins are also tumbling as investors await the latest interest rate decision from the US central bank. A minimum increase of 75 basis points is expected, a continuation of the Fed's monetary tightening policy. The Fear & Greed crypto index remains firmly in fear territory.
🔘 Ethereum: the overall impact of the merge may not be evident for some time. For now, ETH and other cryptos seem likely to continue to be vulnerable to the same macro forces that have been affecting stocks and other riskier assets for months.
🔘 Another headwind is rising on Ethereum, and it is not based on macroeconomic policy. The SEC is paying close attention to PoS tokens. Its chairman has been quoted as saying (not specifically about Ethereum) that the nature of PoS could make them an investment contract that would subject them to securities regulation.
🔘 The performance of ETH against the Dollar after the merge can be compared to what happened to bitcoin after major changes. During the famous BTC halvings, the price first traded in the same window for weeks or months. Then, all it takes is for a major stakeholder to make a decision to buy after a certain amount of price stability for the price to take off. During the last BTC bull market, it was MicroStrategy and Terra.
🔘 Ethereum PoW, a fork of Ethereum that continues to run on proof of work, experienced significant problems after the merge. Users were unable to connect their wallets to the network.
🔘 MetaMask uses MoonPay to integrate with the Brazilian government's Pix payment system, and will allow users to make crypto purchases with Brazilian reals.
🔘 European Central Bank selects Amazon, Nexi and 3 other organizations to prototype the digital Euro. The ECB plans to test the ability of the technology behind the digital Euro to integrate with user interfaces developed by companies. The tech giant's presence on the list has reignited the debate about Europe's dependence on the United States.
🔘 FTX is consolidating its position in Europe with a new license from CySEC. The company now enjoys registration as a Cyprus investment firm (CIF) and will now have to comply with the European Union's MiFID (for Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) II directives.
🔘 Binance gets Helium token accounting wrong and overpays millions to its users. The Helium network has two tokens, $HNT and $MOBILE. Binance counted them as one, HNT, resulting in a windfall for customers who deposited the much less valued MOBILE.
🔘 Egypt renews its hostility to the blockchain sector: cryptocurrency holders could face substantial penalties, including jail time.
🔘 The Linux Foundation launches its own open-source wallet solution.
👩🏻🎤 NFTs & Metaverse
🔘 Ethereum: the last block before The Merge turned into a NFT for $50,000. It was the Vanity Blocks project that wanted to immortalize this historic moment. And to do so, it had to ensure that the last block in PoW contained only one transaction. It cost 30 ETH, or $50k at the time of the transaction. Why 30 ETH? Because that's the gas limit per block. So this ensured that the creator of the NFT was alone on that block.
🔘 Doodles sales exploded by 1200% and the valuation of the project reached 700 million. Notable collectors include the famous Justin Bieber, Future, Snoop Dog, or even Steve Aoki. The project announced the ambition to establish a sustainable presence in the music, fashion, culture and entertainment sectors, and announced the recruitment of a new artistic director in the person of Pharrell Williams. The latter is also expected to produce an album inspired by the collection. Entitled Doodles Records: Volume 1, it will be released in partnership with the production company Columbia Records.
🔘 Starbucks' Web3 initiatives, named Starbucks Odissey, will build on Polygon. It will start with a loyalty program, which will offer its members digital stamps in the form of NFTs. Next, it's a metaverse that the brand seems to be considering.
🔘 The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York is considering purchasing NFTs with a portion of the $70 million in revenue it expects to generate at an upcoming auction. The NFT purchase would be part of the museum's ongoing digital strategy.
🔘 Epic Games has listed its first NFT game: Blankos Block Party. Last year, Epic Games' competitor Valve said it would not publish games using NFTs or cryptocurrencies on its Steam marketplace.
🔘 NFT rental platform Rentable closed its doors after failing to find its product-market fit (PMF).
🔥 What’s Poppin’?
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Have a nice week!