MAJR News 075
Bitcoin comes to mobile gaming on the Lightning, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust at its lowest discount ever, Turkish citizens seek refuge in BTC, Polkadot's parachains are live, Terra UST is a top stablecoin
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In this interview, Peter McCormack talk to Michael Saylor, the CEO of MicroStrategy. They discuss the evolution of their Bitcoin strategy, technological disintermediation, and Bitcoin as a foundational societal technology.
Top Stories
BITCOINGrayscale Bitcoin Trust Hits Largest Discount Ever
The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, Grayscale’s core product was trading at its largest discount at 21.36%. This means investors can get exposure to bitcoin by purchasing GBTC shares at prices lower than the actual market price, currently $49,124. GBTC is a closed end fund which means it cannot easily add or remove shares to accommodate inflows and outflows, which creates these discount and premium opportunities for investors. Grayscale is one of the many firms that filed with the SEC to turn their flagship product into spot Bitcoin ETF.
Mobile Bitcoin Gaming Is Powering Up on Lightning
Bitcoin’s second layer solution, the Lightning Network which allows near instant bitcoin transactions has a new use case with mobile gaming. Zebedee and Thndr are creating fun mobile games and tools to help developers integrate bitcoin into their games. Games like Thndr Bay and Boozy Coins are tapping into the massive mobile gaming market (61% of the total $200B gaming market is mobile) to incentivize the 1.98 billion mobile gamers to play their games for bitcoin. These games are similar to Candy Crush, but rather than win in-game points you can earn bitcoin via raffles or collect bitcoin via answering trivia questions at specific GPS locations verified by your phone, similar to Pokémon Go.
Turkey’s Inflation is an Example of Why We Need Bitcoin
The Turkish economy is on the brink of hyperinflation as the Turkish lira has fallen nearly 45% this year against the dollar. It’s plummeted more than 20% in one week. A cup of coffee might cost the average person a quarter of a day’s paycheck. Bitcoin has emerged as a safe haven for savings as prices for basic goods like bread and baby formula double in costs. The escalating living costs have led to protests and dissent in the country blaming President Erdogan and government officials for the massive inflation. President Erdogan has lashed out by locking up political opposition citing espionage and blaming the IMF and low interest rates as the primers for their economic situation.
More on Bitcoin
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CRYPTOPolkadot Launches Parachains, Increasing Scalability
Polkadot successfully launched their parachain model with five applications going live - Acala, Moonbeam, Parallel Finance, Astar and Clover. Polkadot is one of the leading layer 1 smart contract alternatives to Ethereum and Polkadot’s parachains are unique and technically on “layer 1.” In order for blockchains to scale capacity (allow for more cheaper faster transactions), they generally have to move transactions off the mainchain or base layer to maintain consensus given that they’re distributed databases, hence layer 2’s, sidechains, subnets and other innovations. Polkadot’s parachains are individual blockchains that can be completely unique, but share security by each one connecting to the relay chain. While, this is a big milestone for the Polkadot ecosystem, DOT’s price has unfortunately been trading down since their November highs of $55, now $24.
Chinese Investment Is Pouring Into the Metaverse
A metaverse gold rush is happening globally, and China aims to be a dominant player filing over 7,000 metaverse trademarks and pouring capital into things like virtual social platforms and AR/VR game projects. Big companies like Tencent and Alibaba are not waiting around. Tencent applied for “King Metaverse” and Alibaba invested in offline VR experience center called Sandbox VR. TikTok parent company ByteDance acquired VR headset maker Pico spending 9 billion yuan.
Terra's UST Flips DAI to Become Fourth-Largest Stablecoin
Terra’s UST stablecoin has become the largest algorithmic stabelcoin by market cap hitting $9 billion surpassing Maker’s DAI and is now the 4th largest overall. Tether ($77B) and USDC ($42B) are the respected fiat backed stablecoins, followed by Binance’s BUSD ($15B). Terra and DAI are unique because they are decentralized and backed by crypto assets, therefore harder to seize and shut down by authorities and almost separate from the fiat monetary system. They’re $1 pegs are determined by supply and demand for crypto assets, Terra’s in particular is their native token called LUNA. Terra also acts as a layer one smart contract platform that makes it very unique with other features such as Anchor Protocol for savings (20% APY), Chai for payments and Mirror for synthetic asset investment.
Reddit Co-Founder and Polygon Pledge $200M for Web3 Social Media, Gaming
Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six VC firm and Polygon team up to back social and gaming projects running on Polygon’s layer 2 Ethereum scaling solution. They’ve committed $200 million together split evenly. Ohanian is not spreading his bets across platforms, as this investment follows the $100 million he invested into Solana. Reddit has also made news as it plans to go public and build out their own Ethereum-based rewards and NFT marketplace for its social platform.
More on Crypto
MACROCentral Banks Worry Omicron Could Sustain Inflation
In the last week, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank all planned to tighten monetary policy due to inflation concerns even in the face of the rapidly spreading Omicron variant. Even without the extra stimulus, monetary officials and economist expect increased inflationary pressures from Omicron - more supply chain disruptions, closed factories, and workers staying home because they’re afraid of getting sick. This means producers will be making and less and consumers may be spending less, putting a drag on an economic recovery early next year.
Inflation Hawk to Lead German Bundesbank
Germany’s new central bank governor, Joachim Nagel is a known inflation hawk and is expected to move Germany away from its ultra-easy monetary policies amid the surge of inflation in Germany and across Europe. Germany’s inflation numbers reached 5.25% in November and the Eurozone hit 4.9%. Germany is the largest economy in the Eurozone and doesn’t have a pretty history with inflation, which was one of the main causes for WWII. The new German central bank governor will try balance out the continued easy monetary policies from the ECB.
U.S. Sets 55-Mile-a-Gallon Fuel-Efficiency Standard for 2026 Models
The Biden administration increased the fuel-efficiency standard for US automakers to 55 mpg from 43 mpg set by the Trump administration for 2026. The transportation sector is the number one source for green house gas emissions in the US, 29% of all emissions. Biden’s $2 trillion Build Back Better social spending and climate bill includes a $20 billion in tax credits to electric vehicles makers, but DC auto lobbying groups advocated for increased support to meet these new higher gas efficiencies targets. Ford estimates that nearly 40% of their sales will be EVs by 2030. However, currently only 4% of all US sales are for electric vehicles.
More on Macro
Omicron Becomes Dominant U.S. Strain With 73% of Covid Cases
School Closings Surge 82% as Omicron Spreads Across the U.S.
MEDIABitcoin is Digital Energy with Michael Saylor
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