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NFT Finance Wars

The Crypto majors seem to have settled around their new heights. The biggest winner is Bitcoin which is up over 15% on the week and is now firmly overweight in the dominance charts at 51%+.

This is no surprise as one of biggest narratives has been around the potential approval of a Spot Bitcoin ETF in the US. But also more broadly, Bitcoin is the gold standard of crypto and tends to lead the market in many ways.

Could we have reached a bottom? I can't tell the future, but November '22 last year felt very bottomy and I'd be surprised to see us go down to those levels without a strong catalyst. That said, markets are rarely a straight line up, so I would expect to see some fluctuation as we find our new levels of support.

In the short term, the timeline has turned bullish and memecoins seem to be back on the menu. There is talk of Smurf Cat (I don't hold any) which apparently is linked to a TikTok trend. Could this be a sign of things to come as crypto reaches broader appeal? TikTok investing was a trend last year and it seems like it won't be going away any time soon.

Outside of that, volume is up in NFTs, although with less traders. This suggests new money isn't coming in, but those who are already here are making moves. There is likely increased activity with the second season of Blur airdrops landing next month.

Another new development this month was a token drop from the Arcade NFT lending platform to establish ArcadeDAO. They appear to have followed the model where an initial airdrop is made, but continued usage can still gain you points which is likely to stimulate some activity there. Notably, they also beat NFTFi to the punch with the actual token drop. NFTFi is another NFT lending platform that launched a points system this year with expectations of a future token drop.

Blur is still the dominant force in lending with $79.9 Million USD of volume last week, compared to $0.6 Million for Arcade and $0.4 Million on NFTfi (Source). When looking at these numbers, the airdrops by specialist protocols almost seem defensive even though they arguably offer a better lending experience.

Is this the start of the NFT Finance platform wars?

Onwards...

- @nuconomist

Redditor Earns 41% Return Investing $5 Into Bitcoin Every Day for 1 Year - Bitcoin Magazine

This is more of a public interest piece than news but it does highlight the potential benefits of dollar cost averaging investments.

Van Eck Amends Spot Bitcoin ETF Application - Decrypt

It seems at least one Bitcoin ETF may be sourcing the funds for their ETF application in Bitcoin OTC markets instead of using cash. This article explains what that might mean.

Use LastPass? Own Crypto? You could lose everything... - Decrypt

On-chain analysts and crypto security commentators have been hinting at this for a while, but it seems like they are making more direct claims now. LastPass is a cloud based password manager that was previously breached. Now it seems that hackers appear to be stealing crypto seeds that were stored in the databases that were accessed. Another reminder that you shouldn't store your keys in the cloud.

NFT Market Cap (ETH): Ξ 5.1 Million 🔼 | $9.27 Billion (-0.01%)

Weekly NFT Volume (ETH): 47,404 🔼 +21.55%

Weekly NFT Traders: 43,182 🔽 -14.92%

Weekly NFT Loan Volume (USD): $82.2 Million 🔼 +18.57%

Weekly NFT Deposited as Collateral: 4032 🔼 +10.77%

Bored Ape Yacht Club: Floor: 30.69 ETH 🔼 | Volume: 11k ETH 🔽

Steve Aoki x STEPN Launch Co-Branded Digital Sneaker Line - NFT NOW

While RTFKT and Nike are forging their Genesis Dunks this week, they don't appear to include any smart tech. So Steve Aoki is taking the headlines instead with a move to earn sneaker platform instead.

Ryder Ripps Ordered to pay $1.5 Million to Yuga Labs - NFT Now

One of the biggest legal challenges in the NFT copyright world has truly been put to bed, with the founders of a copycat Bored Ape collection being forced to pay damages to Yuga and also transfer the smart contract for their NFT collection.

Memeland's $MEME Coin Launch - NFT Now

While this is a meme coin launch, it is fully integrated with the 9GAG NFT collections such as Captainz and Potatoez. They held a fire sale this week which sold out in less than an hour. A strong start for a release schedule that is said to last 18 months.

This thread from Arcade explains the introduction of their new DAO and transition to a more decentralised governance model.

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