Market Update, 27th April 2022
Bored Apes….The NFT and VIP Club Craze That Has Wall Street Salivating
By now you may have heard about the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and its associated NFTs. As noted in the CoinTelegraph today, “BAYC is a collection of 10,000 cartoons of anthropomorphic apes with stylish clothes and disreputable expressions. Each ape is practically an image file that should be worthless in a sane world. Nonetheless, they have been managing to fetch astonishing sums, sometimes from some of the world's most renowned celebrities.”
Some of those celebrities include Eminem and Jimmy Fallon, among others, willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for a picture of a Bored Ape. But, why?
Image Credit: Bored Ape Yacht Club
Rarity is one thing - being able to resell your NFT for 10 times what you paid for it is every crypto boi’s dream - but BAYC NFTs also give owners the right, nay, exclusive privilege, to enter into VIP clubs and metaverse parties, where they can schmooze and mingle with other NFT holders. With the floor price of one NFT around 68 ETH as of January 2022, this exclusive club is becoming increasingly out of reach for the crypto retailers of the world and something akin to a club membership that only the rich and famous can afford, and now, Wall Street is watching the NFT sector with a keen eye. BAYC's net sales recently crossed the $1-billion-mark, almost 10% of what Apple earned in 2021. The NFT industry as a whole processed sales worth $41 billion, as seen in data from Chainalysis. Say whaaaat??? I know, right?!
Now, don’t quote me on this but I heard that NFTs in general are currently immune to taxation, so people are using them as a hedge, instead of regular crypto currencies. As always, DYOR.
Not immune to hackers…though.
And here’s yet another Scammy McScammisson - BAYC instagram and discord servers were hacked and many wallets ripped of their tokens. Not easily done but here’s how sneaky it can get in this space - the hackers posed as leadership and tricked the community by posting links about a new mint for land sales. The genuine leadership of BAYC weren’t quick enough to stop it all in its tracks and so, many holders of the valuable NFT were scammed out of their tokens by clicking on the dodgy links.
Tip of the day, therefore is to question everything! Save yourself a buck or few by researching everything and getting confirmation before you click - especially when it comes to your assets and any connections to your wallets!
Quick Fire Updates
DOGE coin went up 5% ahead of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, making it one of the hotter tokens in the top 20.
BTC enjoyed a nice “fake out”, falling below the psychological level of $40,000 yet again (🤦🏻♀️💩).
Analysts of Terra Luna and the 20% APY on their UST token (algorithmic stablecoin) are freaking out, saying it will fall to the earth and it’s super risky. Maybe it will, but again, all crypto trading and investing is risky, so, DYOR and make your own decisions. If a project receives resistance from the traditional finance sector, then it’s probably worth investigating…. just my opinion of course, but no amount of FUD here is gonna get me to dump my current LUNA holdings.
Veteran trader Peter Brandt thinks Bitcoin (BTC) could be headed for a serious price dip. Brandt, who gained notoriety in crypto circles for correctly calling Bitcoin’s 2018 collapse, tells his 633,200 Twitter followers that BTC could drop to $27,000.
The move would represent a more than 31% decrease for Bitcoin, which is trading at $39,627.71 at time of writing. The top-ranked crypto asset by market cap is down more than 2% in the past week and more than 7% in the past 30 days. Brandt also speculates that the Nasdaq-100 index could be mirroring the dot-com crash of the early 2000s, saying on Twitter that the chart is giving him déjà vu.
This whole week is giving me déjà vu.
Binance is conforming to sanctions in Russia by shutting down accounts; “Binance is required to limit services for Russian nationals or natural persons residing in Russia, or legal entities established in Russia, that have crypto assets exceeding the value of 10,000 EUR…
Accounts that classify under this restriction will be put into withdrawal-only mode. No deposits or trading will be permitted on these accounts. The limit also covers all spot, futures, custody wallets, and staked and earned deposits.”
However, Binance notes that Russian nationals living outside of Russia and Russian accounts valued under $10,000 EUR can still remain active.
“Accounts for Russian nationals residing outside Russia, as verified with proof of address, and accounts for Russian nationals or natural persons residing in Russia, or legal entities established in Russia, that remain below a total value of 10,000 EUR, will remain unaffected and active.”