The Winklevoss twins are so pissed with DCG’s behavior in the Genesis/Gemini fiasco that one of them penned an open letter to CEO Barry Silbert asking them to publicly commit to sorting out the issues. Silbert hasn’t moved an inch.

Former CEO of

Celsius Network Alex Mashinsky has been sued by the NY state attorney

for defrauding investors by making false statements about the condition of the company to encourage money to keep coming in.

If you are a policy nut, this is interesting:

Web3 Foundation announces @Polkadot's native token DOT has morphed and is software, not a security!
After 3 years of proactive engagement with the @SECGov, W3F announces a landmark step towards the achievement of Web 3.0, a decentralized, trustless, serverless internet.
— Web3 Foundation (@Web3foundation)
6:07 PM • Nov 4, 2022

, not a security, and hints that this has been done with consensus from the SEC. This has ramifications for token design and regulations.

WEEKLY PRICE TRACKER

Price movements from last Friday

BTC Watch

1.3% as it received bull support near the 20-day moving average. BTC will remain in the accumulation phase and we don’t expect any major movements.

ETH Watch

4.4% with the next Shanghai update coming sometime in 2023. ETH is expected to hold or slightly improve in the coming weeks.

ADA

10% as the community expects two stablecoin releases this year that will help grow its DeFi ecosystem.

SOL

37% with the first meme crypto coin on Solana called Bonk Inu being a runaway hit in the ecosystem boosting SOL along in that process.

LDO

38% as Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade will enable stakers and validators to withdraw their tokens that have been locked since December 2020, providing more liquidity to a project like Lido DAO.

WHAT'S HOT

Coins to watch out for

Bonk Inu (BONK) is the first meme crypto on Solana blockchain and has been responsible for boosting the price of SOL token in the past week. BONK is up by 4335.25% in the last 6 days.

USDD (USDD)

Rumours are floating around crypto Twitter that Huobi exchange could be in trouble. So, affiliated coins like USDD, which is Tron ecosystem’s stablecoin, could be affected due to market dynamics.

Project to watch out for

MASQ is a private Web3 browser, decentralized multihop-VPN, app store and earning ecosystem that makes living in Web3 secure, private and fun. One of its USP’s is the ability to not only consume data, but earn $MASQ tokens with the same software by supporting the network as a data server. Competitors have split their network into 2 versions of the software: one for users who consume data and another for serving when users run nodes.

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THE HOT TAKE

Five crypto predictions to help you trade better in 2023

As we begin another year, here are our top predictions for crypto and Web3. Our focus is on: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Regulations, Passive Earning and NFTs.

1. Bitcoin will have a 50% rally in one of the months

The year after the bear market is usually a period of deep consolidation. While we believe that a market bottom may still be found in the next three months, Bitcoin (BTC) should have a solid one-off month that gives hopes to long term ‘hodl’ers.

We can see that in 2015 and 2019, the years post bear markets of 2014 and 2018, BTC had substantial gains month-on-month, two or three times. We anticipate a 50% increase this year in the second half, but, there will still likely be months with negative returns after that. A year-end BTC pricing of $30,000-40,000 will be good, leading to a halving year (2024).

Source: Into the Cryptoverse

2. Ethereum becomes truly deflationary

Ethereum’s supply is now based on its usage – the more its utilization, more ETH is burnt as fees, leading to a deflationary tokenomics. Post the Merge, two out of three months were deflationary with December 2022 reversing this trend. We anticipate ETH to completely turn this one way – a bit like escape velocity. As adoption increases and transactions surge, ETH will become deflationary forever. Expected upgrades to Ethereum will also aid in this. Naturally, a deflationary product will have higher demand and possibility of price inflation.

3. Regulations take their own sweet time

As much as we want governments across the world to sync, react and adopt blockchain technology soon, regulations often take a lot of time to fructify in developed nations. While we will see baby steps in boosting commerce via crypto and Web3, we don’t anticipate big, definitive steps towards a global understanding of how to regulate the industry. Smaller nations are more incentivized currently to adopt crypto and will likely do so.

4. A new ‘X to Earn’ will be popular again

2021 was the year of ‘Play to Earn’ with Axie Infinity and similar platforms. 2022 saw STEPN launch its‘ Move to Earn’ initiative that grew its MAUs nearly 280x from 2.5K to 700K in just four months. However, that seems to have faded as the crypto ecosystem crashed globally post May.

Source: Dune Analytics

We do anticipate a new way to earn trend globally this year – this can be a ‘Listen to Earn’ music app or ‘Watch to Earn’ video app etc. Eventually, an ecosystem will develop to earn crypto tokens for many activities – a loyalty program that encompasses multiple aspects of life.

5. NFTs will evolve into something more meaningful

While NFTs have been a topic of mixed opinions globally, they continue to preserve and exhibit their versatility. They have, so far, been defined by speculation rather than a solid use case. That is likely to change starting this year – NFTs will find increasing relevance as a proof of authenticity technology. From supply chain to real estate, healthcare, education and retail, NFTs will play a key role in various operations.

That said, various global brands have already taken NFTs seriously in its present form. Some are also already reaping rewards – Nike made over $180 million in NFT sales and royalties in 2022. We will see more digital first brands (music, apparel, lifestyle etc.) do better.

Source: Dune Analytics

51 weeks from now, we hope to look back at these predictions and see how we fared.

That’s it for this issue, see you next Friday.

If you have any questions or feedback for us, write to us at [email protected]. You can check out the previous issues here.

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