Hello there!
This week saw TradFi guys continuing their inevitable foray into the future, which as we all know, is all about crypto. MoneyGram has opened up crypto purchases on its mobile app through Coinme, allowing users in the US to trade BTC, ETH and LTC (litecoin). Apollo Global Management, which manages USD 500 billion in assets, has launched a BTC custody for its clients. If you are an asset manager for premium clients, you just cannot do without crypto asset management anymore.
Meanwhile, here in the crypto world, Binance enabled payments with Shiba Inu on Binance Pay, enabling mobile users to trade the memecoin, and about 70 other cryptocurrencies, with a lot more ease. In India, the RBI launched the pilot of its CBDC e-Rupee, allowing nine major banks to settle secondary market transactions of government securities via the digital currency. We aren’t holding our breath in excitement about this just yet, let’s see where this goes.
Undoubtedly the biggest story of the week is how social media giants are stepping deeper into the crypto ecosystem, and we are not just talking about Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, but also Instagram becoming an official NFT marketplace, and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey launching his decentralized social network for beta testing with 30,000 users. Faced with poor growth and dwindling stock prices, Silicon Valley giants are desperate for newer avenues for growth, and Web 3.0 is exactly that. And when the world’s richest man coughs up USD 44 billion to buy a Web 2.0 behemoth, he better figures out how he will navigate the company into the Web 3.0 future. And that’s what this dispatch of Cryptogram is all about.
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The newsletter is put together by Giottus Crypto Platform and The News Minute’s Brand Studio. You can read all the previous issues of Cryptogram here.
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WEEKLY PRICE TRACKER
Price movements from last Friday
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BTC:  0.3%, as US Federal Reserve shows no sign of cutting interest rate hikes
ETH: 2.86%, as it got rejected by strong resistance near $1,660
MATIC: 24%, as Polygon ties up with Meta
LINK: 19%, as Chainlink partners with Seedify Fund
BNB: 18% as Binance launches Bird perps (BNB, DOGE, MASK) which could hint Twitter payments integration
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New coins to watch out for:
GMX, a decentralized perps exchange that's making money during bear market.
Route, a cross chain protocol backed by Coinbase, Alameda research, Polygon etc.
Project to watch out for:
Arbitrum, leading layer 2 solution for Ethereum in terms of transaction volume and is rumoured to have a token later next year.
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Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, an opportunity for crypto investors
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Let’s start with laying the facts down for what’s happening with Twitter, and then we will tell you why it is of great significance for anyone invested in crypto.
Elon Musk has bought Twitter, and as we all know, he is a believer in crypto and wants to decentralise Twitter. If you need proof, then the court-released texts between him and his brother, and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, are all you need to get convinced.
Among the 18 investors who backed Elon’s Twitter bid was CZ, CEO of Binance. Binance has invested USD 500 million in the deal.
USD 500 million. Wow. Why? CZ gives a lot of reasons, including free speech and supporting entrepreneurship. But here’s the real reason, as told to Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”:
"Twitter is a tool that I use personally very heavily, and we want to make sure that crypto has a seat at the table when it comes to free speech. And there are more tactical things like we want to help bring Twitter into Web3 when they’re ready. And we want to help solve the immediate problems, like… charging for memberships, etc. That can be done very easily globally using cryptocurrencies as a means of payments."
Binance dumping a pot of gold into Twitter is a major opportunity for it to mainstream crypto using its own products.
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Another partner in the deal we need to take note of is a16z - Andreessen Horowitz.
Sriram Krishnan, a general partner at a16z focused on crypto, said that he is “helping out Elon Musk with Twitter temporarily with some other great people.” He reportedly serves on the boards of Polywork, Bitski and Hopkin, and his firm is solidly into crypto. They established their fourth crypto fund in May – its largest yet at $4.5 billion, with over $7.6 billion being raised in total across all funds. In the third quarter of 2022, the firm sealed nine crypto startup deals, down from its record 26 startup deals in the fourth quarter of 2021. The firm’s crypto portfolio holds several dozen companies, including big names such as Dapper Labs, OpenSea, Solana and Uniswap.
With two major investors in Musk’s Twitter deal being so bullish on crypto, it is a foregone conclusion that Twitter’s next phase will have a lot to deal with crypto.
The other exciting part is Musk’s own interest in DOGE, which has seen a MASSIVE surge since Musk took over Twitter.
It would be easier for Elon to integrate DOGE as a payment option for various Twitter products, including the USD 8 subscription service. Musk’s other companies, such as Space X, Boring Company, Tesla, and the recently launched Burnt Perfume, have accepted DOGE payments for their products and services at some point in time. Even if Twitter integrates only DOGE and not all cryptos as a payment option on the platform, many crypto players still consider this outcome a positive development for the entire crypto industry.
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Over and above all this, there is another exciting development – Twitter’s planned launch of an NFT showcase, called Tweet Tiles.
NFT Tweet Tiles will showcase the artwork of an NFT in a dedicated panel within a tweet. Partnered with major NFT marketplaces in a testing phase (Magic Eden, Rarible, Dapper Labs, and Jump.trade), the functionality will allow a larger picture of the NFT which can be displayed apace with details like creator and title. The main aim behind this is to empower creators as well as expand and improvise their tweet experience. Jump.trade is a novel NFT marketplace and B2C platform that focuses on gaming NFTs and international brands, and is the flagship product of GuardianLink, whose teams are based in India, Japan, and Singapore. Its flagship product. With this, Jump.trade has become South Asia’s first NFT marketplace to be featured by Twitter in the trial run.
What we need to take away from all this are the following:
Twitter is likely to be the first real use case of a decentralized ecosystem at scale, and this is a space we need to watch out for. It could become a major NFT display and trade hotspot, with Twitter handles becoming default crypto domains and Twitter having its own native token – all definite possibilities.
As an average investor, you should also look out for tokens which can benefit from Twitter’s Web 3.0 foray. Here are a few below – but also DYOR!
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- DOGE, touted as favs to be official twitter coin
- BTC, ETH, as leaders of cryptocurrency ecosystem
- BNB, due to CZ’s investments and other protocols that are getting developed in the BSC chain
- APE, NEAR, dYdX, SOL, UNI, DAO Maker, ROSE, AR (Arweave), CELO – tokens backed by a16z
- Projects with tokens that have invested in the 4 NFT marketplaces: Magic Eden, Rarible, Dapper Labs, and Jump.trade
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Disclaimer: Crypto-asset or cryptocurrency investments are subject to market risks such as volatility and have no guaranteed returns. Please do your own research before investing and seek independent legal/financial advice if you are unsure about the investments.
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That’s all we have for this issue, see you next week!
If you have any questions or feedback for us, write to us at crypto@thenewsminute.com. You can check out the previous issues here.
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