Crypto Markets Under Attack: Coins Rally but Face Difficult Week Ahead
US Congress to Hold Jan 20th Hearing on the Environmental Impact of Bitcoin Mining
Who We Are
If you’re reading this, welcome to the CRYPTOPONG family. As this is our first newsletter, we’d like to give a bit of insight into who we are/what we are trying to build. In general terms, we are a tech startup founded while we attended Dartmouth College that provides both high-quality NFT collections and premium insight into the Cryptocurrency/NFT/DeFi sectors. Within the next couple of months, we will be releasing a collection of NFTs. Purchasing one of these NFTs for a small amount will give you lifetime access to the CRYPTOPONG newsletter (amongst other benefits), instead of the monthly fee that we will be eventually charging.
Our Mission
We founded CryptoPong to bring together individuals who love creating just as much as we do. Late-night pong games and early morning binge drinking coffee sessions led us to where we are today. Our company’s mantra of “One Cup, Everyone Knows the Rules” emphasizes the paradoxical nature of our members’ party-centric lifestyles. Although we love to let loose every once in a while, fulfillment of our personal/professional journeys always comes first. To this end, we seek to build a community of young entrepreneurs who can bounce start-up ideas, investing strategies, NFT opportunities, etc. off of each other to help each other achieve monetary and personal success. In the end, none of us is as great as all of us.
Together we will rise.
Join us as we take this journey together.
— Pat & Ari
Market Movers (7-day price change of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, and the biggest pump of the week)
Overall, the larger coins by market cap are rebounding after being hammered the week before with Cardano making the biggest rebound by percentage change
The highest 7 day gain for any coin on the market was “First Dog” (FSD) and is available via the decentralized exchange PancakeSwap V2.
According to the coins’ website, “First Dog is a community-driven token and Trading Card Social Gaming platform in development. $FD TO THE MOON” (FirstDog). However, there is little insight into the actual logistics of the game and there appears to be a definitive “meme-like” culture surrounding the coin.
Elon Musk, a known meme coin advocate, tweeted his support for FSD on January 7th.
Table Talk (Broad crypto market analysis for the past 7 days)
Cryptocurrencies bounced back this week following the tumultuous start to the new year.
Despite the 7 day moving averages of the top 5 cryptocurrencies in terms of market cap (BTC, ETH, BNB, ADA, SOL) all being in the green, national sentiment regarding BTC, and much of the broader crypto market remains tentative. A good indicator of this hesitancy is The Fear & Greed Index by Multifactorial Crypto Market Sentiment Analysis. The Index analyzes market volatility, momentum/volume, market share, Reddit posts sentiment, and Google Trends data to form a range from 0 to 100 that reflects the overall viewpoint of the crypto market.
Feelings regarding BTC and other large currencies have evolved from Fear to Extreme Fear over the past month, which according to the FGI, “Extreme fear can be a sign that investors are too worried… [which] could be a buying opportunity.”
Although investors may be worried, extreme fear may signal a good time to buy in and that there are better days ahead. Conversely, “When Investors are getting too greedy, that means the market is due for a correction” via the FGI Index.
NFT Buzz (An overview of the biggest news in the NFT space)
BEWARE OF RUG PULLS.
The first rug pull of a large collection in 2022 occurred this past Tuesday as a collection named Frosties sold over $1.1M worth of ETH-based NFTs and then instantly deleted their Website, Twitter, and Discord. Scumbags.
Long story short, a bunch of people lost money. Here are some factors to evaluate before you invest in a project to avoid a rug pull (via TechTimes):
The project came out overnight
The project developers are anonymous
Low liquidity rate
Unlocked liquidity
Uneven distribution of the token
Low “total value locked”
Lack of social media engagement and suspicious website
Absence of audits
DeFi Demographic (Something significant that occurred in the DeFi space)
BURNT FINANCE RAISES $8 Million
Crypto startup Burn Finance has raised $8 million through a Series A round with the goal of launching a decentralized auction protocol NFT marketplace. The company aims to be a hub for NFTs and separate itself from the current industry-leading marketplaces OpenSea and Magic Eden by introducing the following DeFi functionalities:
NFT lending
liquidity mining with staking incentives
fractionalization
GameFi
The company claims to already have 160K users on its waitlist and promises low fees, fast speeds, and permissionless access to NFTs when it launches.
It should be interesting to see how the company pans out. NFT sales topped 4 billion in December 2021 alone as the space shows no sign of slowing down (via TechCrunch).
Tweet of the Week (A tweet that represents the pulse of the crypto community)
Our tweet of the week comes from Bitcoin Archive, a popular Twitter page/fellow newsletter within the crypto community. The January 20 hearing comes following a letter sent by a group of national and international climate organizations in October who argued that the mining of the coin was/will continue to cause massive greenhouse gas emissions, resulting in an overall negative impact on the environment.
The hearing will provide insight into the validity of their argument and could be an indicator for BTC price movement in the following days, weeks, months, and even years. Regardless of the hearings’ outcome, the debate is far from being over.
Final Cup (A consolidated summary of our thoughts from the week)
Crypto has hit a patch of turbulence—primarily stemming from federal regulatory guidance (or lack thereof).
NFTs are also bumpy, so do your due diligence as “rug pulls” are becoming far more common.
Keep an eye out for how BTC and other cryptocurrencies react to the January 20th (Thursday) hearing on the environmental impact of mining.
Tequila sales grew 46% in 2020 (via Forbes). One could wonder if lime sales trended upward as well.
Disclaimer: None of this is investment advice, financial advice, or trading advice. CRYPTOPONG does not endorse any of the cryptocurrencies, DeFi applications, or NFT collections mentioned in this article. Perform your own due diligence and/or consult a financial advisor before investing.