🍿 Is Cardano A Scam Even Bigger Than Tether?
Welcome back to Popcorn - internet’s most interesting crypto newsletter.
Here is what’s poppin’ 🍿:
Featured Story: What Are Play-to-Earn Games? How Players Are Making a Living With NFTs. Play-to-earn games are video games where the player can receive rewards with real-world value. NFT-powered play-to-earn games are revolutionizing the gaming world, with many gamers now earning a living playing titles like Axie Infinity.
Teen Makes $1M Selling His Selfies in NFT Form. A 22-year-old who has taken selfies every day for five years has made $1.2 million by selling them as NFTs. More than 500 people now own one of Ghozali's selfies — and his selfies are selling for at least $1,300. (Link)
Coinbase Makes $2B per quarter, with 50% Profits. 95% of that comes from trading fees. 90% of their trading comes from retail investors (not institutions). They also had ~$1B of expenses for the quarter equally divided between employees, transaction expenses, tech and development, and marketing. Not a bad profit margin, if you ask me. (Link)
Coinbase partners with Mastercard to let users buy NFTs via cards. Coinbase and Mastercard are working on letting users buy NFTs via Mastercard cards on Coinbase's upcoming NFT platform. Easier to buy for users = more transactions = more revenue. Win-win. (Link)
Hacker Steals $15M from Crypto.com. Security research firm Peckshield says that there is "at least" 4,600 ETH ($15 million lost), while Crypto.com says that "no customer funds were lost." How is this possible? These might be Crypto.com funds, however multiple Twitter users posted about their funds being lost as well. (Link)
Microsoft is buying Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. And guess what? The community is going to see $0 from this. Play-to-earn couldn't come sooner. (Link)
PayPal is “Exploring” Its Own Stablecoin. The online payment processor confirmed to Bloomberg that it may create its own stablecoin. (Link)
Walmart enters the metaverse. Could this be related to Walmart’s old VR shopping video? Yes, it is a big corporation. Yes, they are just trying to capitalize on the trend. But this is the future wether you want it or not. Corporations have great minds working for them and built teams that can quickly turn ideas into a reality. And they have resources to do it. By getting the mainstream public to see, feel and adopt this new technology, even if it’s far from perfect, the whole crypto/metaverse industry benefits and evolves faster. (Link)
In case you missed:
What Are Play-to-Earn Games? How Players Are Making a Living With NFTs.
Reddit co-founder says Play-To-Earn crypto games will be 90% of gaming market In 5 years. Alexis Ohanian predicts the shift will come from gamers wanting to be "properly valued for [their] time." And I am 100% onboard with this.
What are play-to-earn games?
Simply put, play-to-earn games are video games where the player can receive rewards with real-world value.
In games such as CSGO, DOTA 2, Runescape, WoW and Diablo 3, players can already sell their accounts and items at big bucks via unofficial marketplaces. So what’s new you ask?
“Nearly 50% of active cryptocurrency wallets connected to decentralized applications in November were for playing games. The percentage of wallets linked to decentralized finance, or DeFi, dapps fell to 45% during the same period, after months of being the leading dapp use case.”
Blockchain and NFT technologies are changing the gaming world. They enable users to take ownership of in-game items, such as virtual avatars, in game items like clothing or weapons and even plots of land.
Unlike regular games, where in-game items owned by the companies that created the game, NFTs enable players to actually own the assets that they purchase or create.
Which means players can trade and sell those NFT assets for fiat currency ($$$) on any NFT marketplace. And because those NFTs are limited, or if the game takes off and there is a high demand, they have real-world value. Sometimes that value could be as high as hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Most often, regular games are played just to kill time and relax. And unless you are a pro-player or a streamer, you won’t be able to monetize the time you spent playing the game or any of the assets you earned, created or bought in the game. They do not belong to you.
Crypto gaming actually offers an opportunity to get paid for playing the game and own all of your assets.
The biggest player.
The biggest play-to-earn game by far is Axie Infinity, launched in 2018 by Sky Mavis.
Here is how it works. You purchase and collect creatures called Axies (NFTs) which all have different strengths and weaknesses. You can then play the game with your Axies and earn rewards. Players earn Smooth Love Potion (SLP) crypto tokens as rewards for battling, while Axie Infinity Shard (AXS) tokens are used to vote on decisions regarding the game and its future development.
It’s important to note that so far the roadmap indicates that the DAO (which will allow stakeholders to vote on small governance decisions proposed by the development team) will not be created until late 2023. Until then, Sky Mavis will make the majority, if not all, of Axie Infinity’s major decisions.
Axie Infinity has more than 2.8 million daily users and a total trading volume of $3.8 billion, it has become the biggest play-to-earn game.
What’s more that in countries like the Philippines and Indonesia, people are even playing Axie to support their families.
How I look at these projects: Fun. New. Exciting. I don’t treat these as investments or income streams. From what I have researched and tried, the economics do not make sense in terms of investing or earning while playing.
In most instances, the earning potential is just too small for the “western” world and the price of in-game tokens just keeps going down with players trying to cash out. The more it goes down, the more players want to cash out causing the price to keep crashing.
The only value I see here is speculation play with NFTs (in game assets such as avatars or lands). Buying at launch and selling later or holding long term. However, now you are betting on the project and before doing this make sure you do your research.
Let’s keep in mind that the industry is just taking some shape and form so it will be interesting to see where this goes. I often go back to them and check out the progress and if any of them have figure out a unique solution for a sustainable Play To Earn model without crushing the token price.
More crypto gaming projects:
Fight of The Ages (FOTA)
Also, a number of blockchain projects are eyeing the play-to-earn space. For example, a famous NFT avatar series Bored Ape Yacht Club announced an upcoming play-to-earn game in its latest roadmap.
It is incredible that we might be quickly moving into a world where anyone, from anywhere, has the chance to earn a living simply by playing games.
Mind blowing really.
However, this starts to remind me of that Black Mirror episode…
What's your opinion on Cardano ($ADA)?
A poll by Vitalik revealed that the Ethereum community has a lot of hopes and optimism about the platform. Let’s see what’s the new hype is all about.
Cardano (ADA) Analysis
Currently, Cardano is soaring ahead of Thursday's planned launch of SundaeSwap, the first decentralized finance (DeFi) exchange on the cardano blockchain. In addition, another metaverse is joining Decentraland and The Sandbox. It’s called Pavia and it’s built on the Cardano blockchain.
However, critics would argue that Cardano has been very slow to deliver any meaningful progress. Basically, constantly over-promising and under-delivering.
And then, in 2019, Cardano hires a world-class advertising agency McCann to handle its marketing. This practice is looked down on heavily among crypto folks. Because if a blockchain is built with true crypto ethos, they would stick to organic network-effect — in other words, people use the system and like it.
Like, why would a blockchain need marketing?
Charles Hoskinson, the founder was also kicked out of Ethereum, because he wanted the Ethereum foundation to be for profit.
Again, nothing common with crypto ethos.
So is he just chasing a possibility of a big pay out here? Who knows.
For me personally it is missing any utility beyond to what is already offered and they are too slow, actually years behind AVAX or Solana, which are younger. And with fast and cheap ETH upgrade coming this year, I can’t see Cardano catching up.
Cardano’s (ADA) chart looks like a bull squeeze to me. Very similar to EGLD.
Chart for Cardano:
Chart for EGLD:
As you can see a very similar setup forming where traders will might get squeezed before the price possibly moves up.
Personally, I am waiting for an entry at $0.6-0.8 to enter. Otherwise, I am out for now.
Shower Thoughts:
“We should all admit that 90% of success is luck.”
“If you're reading this, congratulations. You discovered crypto before the majority of the world.”
Tweets and Memes:
I believe there are TONS of benefits we will get from these “metaverses”. Also would really love to have a system similar to App Store where different Worlds can be entered, each with own avatar etc.
How is this for VR after school tutoring? There are so many uses: on job training (Starbuck’s baristas can do most of their training at home for example and even practice customer interaction), truckers, medical, driving lessons, schooling.
And not even mentioning the commerce aspect of it like shopping, including major purchases like buying a home or a car.
Imagine being in different cities with your partner and both of you can meet each other in the metaverse and eat a breakfast together on a beach in Fiji.
Incredible times and I am really excited for this. And yes just like with smartphone, overusing it and becoming addicted to “social status” and the “dopamine rush” will have consequences. Everything is good for you in moderation.
Until next time,
Max 🦸🏻♂️
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