MAJR News 077
Bitcoin and crypto's rally slows in the final days of the year, Jay-Z and Jack Dorsey team up to launch 500 BTC fund to build global ecosystem, OpenDAO drops $200m in free tokens to OpenSea users
@zolloc
MAJR NEWS BRIEF
Videos
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) General Partner Chris Dixon discusses “Crypto Networks and Why They Matter,” giving an overview of the crypto space, the transformative implications of its technology, and the potential for crypto networks to lead a new wave of innovation.
Top Stories
BITCOIN
Bitcoins Falls Back Below $50K as Crypto Markets Stumble
Over the past three weeks, bitcoin’s price was trending higher touching $52,050 in the last 24hrs before a 4% correction. Other top crypto assets followed like ETH, LUNA, DOT, SOL and XRP. The decreasing volume late 2021 rally may indicate that we’re still in the accumulation phase before taking off in the new year.
El Salvador President Bukele Buy 21 Bitcoin Trolling Twitter
El Salvador’s millennial President Bukele understands Internet culture. The bitcoin president tweeted that “El Salvador’s entire size is 21,000 km2…Coincidence? I don’t think so #Bitcoin.” He then followed up saying he’s going to buy 21 bitcoin to commemorate the final 21st day of the month of the 21st century. And then he tweeted the bitcoin receipt.
MAJR Take: President Bukele is not only building a bitcoin city in El Salvador and a bitcoin volcano mining operation, but he’s trolling twitter for marketing purposes and galvanizing the community. The president’s actions may seem unusual, but they show a heighten awareness the opportunity in bitcoin and how to best execute using common sense.
Jack Dorsey and Jay-Z Created ₿trust - 500 Bitcoins
₿trust is a 500 bitcoin endowment ($27M) formed by Jack Dorsey and Jay-Z with the mission of making bitcoin the currency of the Internet. The fund will be used to grow the global bitcoin ecosystem in places like Africa and India by supporting education efforts and entrepreneurs building on the technology.
CoinShares Execs: Retail Investor Interest Going Beyond BTC, ETH
CoinShares, the London-based ETP (exchange-traded products) issuer said they will provide more exposure to alternative coins outside of their BTC, ETH, LTC and XRP products (totaling $600M) to satisfy retail demand. They didn’t name any particular coins.
MAJR Take: The capital will most likely flow to the larger cap ecosystem coins such as alternative layer 1s like Solana, Avalanche, Polkadot and Terra or DeFi related coins like Uniswap, Aave and Maker. This is very bullish for large cap tokens. If investors can deal with the volatility and take a longer term approach, these are the types of alpha opportunities that de-risk digital assets - the institutional capital is telegraphing where the wall of money will go.
More on Bitcoin
Mexican billionaire encourages Twitter followers to invest in Bitcoin
Trading volume for bitcoin and ether futures surpassed $32 trillion in 2021
CRYPTO
DeFi Traders Push Terra’s UST Stablecoin to $10B Market Cap
Terra’s stablecoin UST is the fastest growing stablecoin in the market. The protocol surpassed Binance Smart Chain for total value locked (TVL) on chain, with $18B. Terra’s stablecoin was under $200M to start the year and it’s now $10B, which is biggest milestone for a algorithmic stablecoin. The most popular trade in the Terra ecosystem is utilizing the lending protocol Anchor. Users deposit their UST into Anchor which is then lent out to borrowers and returning a 20% APY to depositors.
Near Protocol Soars During Christmas Week Amid Terra Integration
Near Protocol (NEAR) is another smart contract platform that’s been seeing some market traction, up over 90% in the last week hitting a new high of $16.33. The price action came from two protocol upgrades - a sharding feature to increase throughput by moving computation to parallel chains and an integration with Terra’s dollar-pegged stablecoin UST.
MAJR Take: Near’s (NEAR) market cap is $8.6B, which is lower compared to other alternative layer 1s. This may be attractive for some investors looking to find better entry points trading L1’s. Near launched an $800M ecosystem fund to provide incentives for projects to build on the network. This was one of the largest funds across any project in the space. However, accordingly to DefiLlama, the total value locked (TVL) on chain is quite small at $124M.
OpenDAO’s SOS Token Airdrop for OpenSea Users
OpenSea is the largest decentralized marketplace for trading NFTs and they’ve had a huge year, crossing $10 billion in sales volume with over 600k traders. The OpenSea community was anticipating an airdrop since the platform hasn’t released a token, however the CEO announced a possible IPO instead. An upset community witnessed something very unique this past Christmas Eve when an independent 3rd party DAO called OpenDAO airdropped $200m in $SOS to 200k wallets that had previously traded on OpenSea. The drop was unique because it retroactively awarded previous work for a separate platform. Shortly after the drop, the project lit up crypto twitter drawing attention to its community, website and discord. The attention was followed by $SOS being listed across multiple exchanges.
MAJR Take: This was a web3 growth hack at its finest. OpenDAO, an unknown project jumpstarted a community, a token and a brand by retroactively airdropping tokens for a completely different platform. OpenDAO’ market cap sits at $241M, which is pretty good for being less than 1 week old. It’s unclear if any security issues were breached or where this project will go. We will see if its liquidity will hold since they just passed out free money to be collected on sale. We’ll be digging into this strategy for our web3 projects.
Kraken's NFT Marketplace Could Let Users Borrow Funds Against CryptoPunks
OpenSea and the NFT boom stole the show in 2021. Now, other large crypto players such as Coinbase, Kraken, FTX, Binance and Nexo are jumping into NFTs. Kraken announced that their NFT product could allow users to borrow funds against CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. CryptoPunks were the first glorified collection to take shape and catch mainstream attention. CryptoPunks can sell for hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in ETH.
MAJR Take: The financialization of everything is upon us. Everything in the real world will find it’s way on to a blockchain for this very reason - real time pricing and liquidity. Digital art and collectibles are low hanging fruit. It get’s crazy when more nuanced unique items come on chain via NFTs like clothing, IP and real estate.
More on Crypto
MACRO
China Vows Proactive Moves to Stabilize Economy in 2022
China is reversing course away from tighter monetary policy to bolster their economy and reverse the slowdown caused by a weakened property sector (down 20% YOY), weak consumer consumption and a surge of covid cases. The finance ministry said that they would roll-out additional fiscal measures on top of the PBOC’s $188B capital injection and reduced reserve ration requirement (RRR) for banks. Fiscal policy changes could help stabilize growth by cutting taxes and fees planned for 2022.
Japan Production Jumps by Record as Car Manufacturing Rebounds
Japan’s industrial production jumped last month highlighting a possible recovery in supply chains. In November, 11 of the top 15 sectors saw outputs increase, with auto leading the pack. The auto industry production climbed 7% from October. However, economists expect Omicron to have an impact and slow down some of the recovery. They also expect prices to increase next year as supply chains are still a mess and freight costs are expected to rise.
The $900 Billion Cash Pile Inflating Startup Valuations
SPACs and VCs are plowing money into startups at record rates. Special-purpose acquisition companies that take startups public through mergers have raised $12 billion in both October and November, doubling previous months. There’s roughly $160 billion in SPACs looking to take private companies public in the next two years. The other capital allocators focused on growth have significant dry-powder ready to go with $440 billion in VC and $310 billion in PE. There have been nearly 340 unicorn startups this year, almost 1 per day that have raised capital valuing a company north of a $1B. While, these investments come with higher risk and many will go bust, its a sign of the times in a 0% interest rate world, as investors search for yield farther out on the risk curve.
These Food Items Are Getting More Costly in 2022
Food prices are estimated to rise 5% in first half of 2022. Mondelez said they were raising prices by 6%-7% starting January. General Mills and Campbells Soup Co said prices will increase in January and Kraft Heinz said consumers could see some items increase as much as 20% next year. Price increases are due to higher input costs for materials, higher wages to keep employees due to higher living costs and higher transportation costs such as freight rates. November CPI was 6.8%, while consumer food stables like meats, poultry, fish and eggs increased by 12.8%.
More on Macro
World Hits Record Daily Covid Cases as Omicron Mars Christmas
Omicron Variant Is Expected to Dent Global Economy in Early 2022
MEDIA
Chris Dixon: Crypto Networks and Why They Matter
Bitcoin and crypto adoption is here to stay. Don’t let your friends and family miss the opportunity of a lifetime.
For more breaking news and updates, follow us on Twitter @majrcreators
We’ve moved some content behind the pay wall. This is the free newsletter that drops on Tuesday and Thursday.
This is not financial advice. Do your own research. Investing in bitcoin and cryptocurrency comes with risk. The information presented in this news publication is for informational and entertainment purposes only.