Reading time 4m30s
Good morning, Tokengraphers! Extra, extra, read all about it — Web3 is changing the world, and there’s nothing traditional finance can do about it 👍
On today’s menu…
BTC Fear & Greed Hits 2021 Levels
Polygon x Immutable Partnership?!
Former Coinbase CTO Predicts $1M BTC
Coinbase Fights SEC with Petition
Manta Is Making Privacy Cool again
In quite a wild turn of events, Bitcoin has gone from sub-$20k prices to just over $28k in a matter of days, and the Fear & Greed Index is now at 68, a level that we haven’t seen since right before BTC’s all time high in 2021 ($68k).
JUST IN: #Bitcoin Fear & Greed index reaches a 16-month high of 68. http
— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru)
Mar 21, 2023
This serves as a timely reminder of just how quickly market sentiment can flip in a market that moves as quickly as crypto. Many are bullish on Crypto Twitter at the moment — reflected in the overall “greed” reading in the Fear & Greed Index.
This year may be one for the books.
The advent of AGI.
The devaluation of the dollar.
The rise of Bitcoin.
The global flippening to the East.Even for someone who was thinking about these trends, the pace of change will feel shockingly, disorientingly fast.
It reminds me a bit… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
— Balaji (@balajis)
Mar 20, 2023
But there are also those who think this is a bull trap — that Bitcoin will likely see a large correction (or even crash) in price from here.
Benjamin Cowen, one of our favorite crypto analysts, recently drew striking comparisons between the crypto market’s current cycle and the dot-com bubble crash of the late 1990s. He predicts that we’ll see crypto’s overall market cap go down by another 30% before we hit bottom and begin a true climb up.
I am old enough to remember when the Credit Suisse CEO said #Bitcoin is a bubble. Bitcoin was $7,000 then. Bitcoin is now $28,000. Meanwhile, Credit Suisse is getting acquired by a competitor and being bailed out by central banks.
— Gabor Gurbacs (@gaborgurbacs)
Mar 20, 2023
The fantastic Tweet above from Gabor Gurbacs, Founder of the PointsVille app, highlights how the tables have turned in the world of finance over the past decade. Bitcoin is soaring in price close to $30k because people view it as a safe haven away from untrustworthy financial institutions, and Credit Suisse, considered to be financially invincible for a long time, has completely crashed.
Bailouts are the problem, #Bitcoin is the solution 🔥 twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine)
Mar 21, 2023
To wrap this section up, we wanted to share Ryan Selkis’s predictions for what’s going to happen between now and next year. Selkis is the Founder and CEO of Messari.
This is an optimistic bet on the future, as BTC is treated as a life raft and peaceful exit option.
But the key is threading the needle so institutions can buy it and defend it alongside of us.
Best case scenario right now.
— Ryan Selkis 🥷 (@twobitidiot)
Mar 17, 2023
He predicts that because of the perfect financial storm, we find ourselves in, BTC could hit $100k before long. And although we can’t see the future and say whether his price prediction is ridiculous or spot on, we can say that the anti-inflation and anti-corrupt-financial-system narratives that Bitcoin has always embodied are looking very, very strong right now.
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In a very high-profile partnership, Polygon is collaborating with Immutable to create an entirely new zkEVM Ethereum gaming network.
A monumental day for gaming!
@0xPolygon has partnered with @Immutable!
🖥️ Immutable will launch a zkEVM MATIC staked chain powered by Polygon
🎮 This is a huge win not for only Polygon, but for game developers and gamers.
🌎 The world is building on Polygon. When are you?
— Ryan Wyatt (fwiz.polygon) (@Fwiz)
Mar 20, 2023
What does this mean, and what will the partnership look like on a practical level? The two companies will be bringing together their preexisting strengths to form something bigger and stronger than either could hope to on their own.
Immutable is bringing its gaming platform and Polygon is bringing its upcoming zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) technology, a scaling solution that aims to boost Ethereum’s transaction rate past that of credit card giant Visa.
The Immutable zkEVM announcement is coming out on the tail end of a massive year of funding for both companies in 2022, amounting to over $2B invested in Web3 games total.
Calling the partnership an “obvious move,” Co-Founder and President of Immutable Robbie Ferguson had this to say regarding the announcement: “For us, this is the endgame. This is how the next billion users will be onboarded into Web3.”
Both Polygon and Immutable will continue to operate separately from one another and will run and develop their own projects as usual.
Hey @pcgamer I thought the internet "bullied" NFTs out of mainstream games?
since this post
• Pokemon Company listed a job for NFT/Web3 game advisor• Dr. Disrespect announced an reveal at the Optic Gaming arena for his NFT Game
• Square Enix announces plans to launch NFT… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
— Brycent 🚀 (@brycent_)
Mar 13, 2023
The old Crypto maxim that the bear market is for builders seems to be holding true for the Web3 gaming industry. In just the past few months, within the depths of the bear market we’ve found ourselves in, the Pokémon Company itself opened a job listing for someone with Web3 expertise, famous streamer Dr. Disrespect held a massive event for the alpha test opening of his new NFT-compatible game, and Square Enix announced that it’s planning to launch its own NFT game soon as well.
Both Polygon and Immutable are Layer 2 blockchains on Ethereum. What is the main function of a Layer 2 blockchain?
A. They define the network’s consensus mechanism and other “rules”B. Layer 2s are where most users will interact with the blockchain directlyC. They provide Layer 1s with scalability solutionsB. Recording transactions in a public ledger
Scroll down to the bottom to see if you're right!
Other Top Stories Today 📢
In the midst of the bear-bull fight of this current stage of the crypto market, Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase, has predicted that we’ll see Bitcoin not only shatter its previous all time high, but also grow parabolically by more than 30x in price — over just the next 90 days. He put his own capital on the line, too, setting up two separate $1M bets that BTC would reach his price prediction. Srinivasan’s logic is that the banking failures we’ve seen combined with hyperinflation will cause a level and speed of mass adoption that we’ve never seen before. Our take? No, we’re not going to see $1M bitcoin this year — but with current economic conditions and $1M bets being thrown around, the short term future of Bitcoin’s price is anything but set in stone.
Crypto firm’s long war against the SEC rages on, and the newest development is a petition from Coinbase directly to the SEC explaining in clear terms why staking cannot be a security, which has been a point of serious regulatory contention recently, costing Kraken $30M for offering staking without “properly registering” with the SEC. The petition runs through several ways that staking fails the Howey Test, an assessment used to determine whether an asset is a security or not. These include the fact that staking is not an investment of money, there is no common enterprise involved, and there are no managerial efforts required for it.
Manta, a new zero-knowledge (ZK) Layer 1 blockchain, has officially added support for NFTs and soulbound tokens (SBTs) to its MantaPay protocol. This will enable users to launch zkNFTs and zkSBTs totally privately with no need for technical knowledge. Manta’s ZK technology will make sure that only the result of transactions are revealed while keeping any and all other information involved hidden and secret.
❓ Trivia Answer
Answer: C.
Most every blockchain suffers from scalability issues, and layer 2 chains are built on top of layer 1s to address this problem. They take transactions and process them off-chain, essentially alleviating some of the computational load for the layer 1 and only providing it with the result of the transactions to process.
Web3 Resource of the Day
What is Polygon? MATIC Explained with Animations | Video from Whiteboard Crypto
One of our main stories today was about Polygon’s new partnership with Immutable. If you want to get a good handle on what exactly Polygon is, why it’s so much cheaper to use than Ethereum, and how it’s changing the game for Ethereum with its scalability, then check out this video. As always, Whiteboard Crypto presents the potentially daunting topic of a layer 2 blockchain like Polygon in an easy-to-digest format, full of helpful diagrams and well-crafted explanations.
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DISCLAIMER: This is not financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Do your own research.