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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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Hello!
If you are a crypto trader or platform in India, you need to be REALLY careful about how you file TDS – if you don’t pay up, you could go to jail for up to 7 years.
On that note, our Top 5 for this issue…
1
While we all initially thought there was nothing for crypto in the recent Budget (🙄), there was a warning shot: the government has introduced a penalty for offenders and platforms that don’t pay TDS on “virtual digital assets (VDAs)” through an amendment to Section 271C of the Income Tax Act. From April 1st 2023, people failing to pay TDS could be fined in the amount of the liability or get jail terms of between 3 months to 7 years.
So, use a compliant (and preferably local) crypto exchange like Giottus, otherwise…
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2
Amazon’s cloud behemoth AWS is ramping up its hiring for Web3, hoping to rake in more clients from the sector.
Meanwhile, Binance’s BNB Chain is rolling out BNB Greenfield, a new decentralized data storage system with smart contract-integrated Web3 applications that will be powered by BNB tokens.
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3
DappRadar says NFT sales spiked by 38% in January, driven by a trading surge in Bored Apes.
Want to know how to get in on this action? Our lead piece below is on this.
4
Jack Dorsey-backed decentralised social network challenging Twitter has been rolled out: Damus is now out on App Store. Here’s how it looks… |
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WEEKLY PRICE TRACKER
Price movements from last Friday
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BTC Watch
 3% as markets reacted positively post the FOMC meet. BTC will however face resistance on the way up to $25,000.
ETH Watch
4% with Bitcoin rally providing momentum to major altcoins including ETH which is the largest among them. ETH is likely to outperform BTC as a major upgrade awaits in March.
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Altcoins Watch
LTC: 14% with whales continuing to accumulate LTC over 6 months as LTC approaches $100.
AVAX: 17% as AVAX foundation goes all in institutional adoption with a major deal with Intain.
FTM: 25% as FTM continues to ride on the momentum of its new overcollateralized stablecoin launch FUSD.
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Coins to watch out for
Fantom (FTM) - Fantom co-founder and blockchain architect Andre Cronje announced innovations regarding the ecosystem's native overcollateralized stablecoin fUSD. According to him, these innovations are needed to make the systems more predictable and budget-friendly for builders, partners and users. FTM saw renewed interest from crypto participants post Andre's return.
Optimism (OP) - Being one of the popular Ethereum L2's available in the crypto space, Optimism foundation proposed a mainnet upgrade called Bedrock to boost performance and functionality. Bedrock is a rollup architecture developed by Optimism. Post the announcement, OP has rallied 25% and it's worthwhile to keep an eye on it.
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Project to watch out for
MinaProtocol is the world’s lightest blockchain, which uses zk-SNARKs alongside a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Mina dramatically reduces the amount of data each user needs to download, with ZK-Rollups allowing nodes to store smaller proofs, as opposed to the entire chain.
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NFTs are making a comeback, how can you benefit?
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NFT volumes are soaring again after a dull second-half last year. In Jan 2023, NFT sales increased by 38% from a month earlier as per DappRadar. Today, we present key trends in this space and suggest how you, as an investor, can benefit.
1. Top NFT brands still command a considerable share
Sales of NFTs topped $946m last month, according to data across multiple blockchain networks and marketplaces. That marks the largest market-wide total since June 2022 according to DappRadar. The key point to note is that top collections are still the key element of this surge – Yuga Labs’ ecosystem contributed to more than one-third of all sales volume in January.
2. NFT space is slowly moving towards utility
According to research by Ark Invest, while NFT volumes are dominated by large collections such as Bored Apes, new NFT mints are more utility oriented. On-chain domain names (such as ENS), digital memberships are all part of this utility NFT creation. Big brands such as Starbucks and Nike are looking at NFTs as a starting point of their loyalty programs globally. Social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook are also creating avenues for mass adoption.
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3. Ethereum is the king; Solana and Polygon are other leading contenders
More than 78% of all transactions were recorded on Ethereum blockchain. In spite of the rise in alternative blockchains offering cheap fees to trade NFTs, Ethereum continues to be most sought after given the ecosystem that has already developed in the blockchain. Solana (9% share) and Polygon (5% share) are playing catching up for now.
While volumes are bigger in Ethereum, it is pertinent to note that, in terms of traders over time, Polygon is not far behind. Ethereum has just over 2.5m traders on OpenSea (the leading NFT exchange) compared to 1.6m for Polygon.
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4. Emergence of Blur and new marketplaces
Opensea is currently the leading marketplace and commands a 58% share of NFT volumes. Blur, a new competitor, has emerged to quickly gain a 20% share. This is due to an upcoming airdrop of BLUR, its token, that will be given to all users who have traded NFTs on its platform by February 14, 2023.
Popular global crypto exchanges, such as Coinbase, are also creating their own marketplaces.
That leads us to: How can you the investor benefit?
There are multiple ways to engage and gain from the growth in NFTs. Some are listed below:
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- Invest in blockchains and its tokens that support NFT growth – ETH, SOL and MATIC are the key contenders today.
- Interact with marketplaces to gain upcoming airdrops such as BLUR.
- Sign up to be one of the first users of revamped loyalty programs that use NFTs – the perks can be disproportionately high at the start.
- Own domain names such as ENS to simplify your Web3 interactions.
- Support India specific artists and NFTs – cricket based NFTs have been around for a while, AR Rahman has recently launched ‘Katraar’ platform – and benefit from early hype.
But as always, DYOR and don’t get too risky.
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That’s it in 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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