ADA is looking like BTC

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. A Twitter crypto detective helped French police catch NFT scammers. Some fraudsters built a replica of BAYC and stole Bored Apes from people. ZachXBT (not their real name) did some sleuthing and found out the ETH addresses of the imposters. Now over to the police to rescue those ugly apes.

The markets reacted to the sharp rise in US inflation. Bitcoin slipped below $19,000 while Ethereum fell to $1,200 levels. Nasdaq fell in early trade. Back home, Sensex and Nifty were also hit with losses.

Is ADA Like BTC From 2013?

In 2013, Bitcoin was five years old. Nobody understood its potential and then it became the giant it is today. Some suggest that Cardano is trending in a similar direction. Let’s try to analyse this a little.

The hard timesThe token is down ~82% from the start of the year. The Vasil hard fork hasn’t led to any significant performance improvements. Cardano’s TVL or Total Value Locked has hit a yearly low of $66.7 million. TVL is the number of crypto funds deposited in a DeFi protocol. This means that investors have not pumped money into the Cardano protocol.

Active addresses have also slid because wallet holders have sold off Cardano. This indicates more price drops. Market analysts have predicted a fall to below $0.25 levels. What’s possible is that investors held on till the Vasil hard fork and sold their ADAs soon after.

There’s a positive here, right?But, at the same time, decentralised applications on Cardano have seen a user surge. So far, 102 projects have launched on Cardano and another 1,117 projects are being built on it. Bug fixes are also underway. The NFT platform is also being revamped to become creator-friendly.

Is it enough?There is a consensus that Cardano is undervalued right now. Analysts believe that Cardano’s bear spell could, in fact, attract investors to buy at a discount. The Basho and Voltaire upgrades could bring a breakthrough. Till then, the blockchain has its fan base intact.

Axie Is Limping

It’s a two-year low for Axie. The NFT game Axie Infinity has lost 2 million players since January 2021. The winter’s hit hard and Axie’s in-game token has plunged ~96% in a year.

Logged outAxie got popular in 2021 because of the rewards. Some players reportedly earned more than their country’s minimum wages. Since then, the token Smooth Love Potion has not been as valuable. Gamers lost interest. The bear market added to the woes. In June alone,1.2 million Axie players left.

NFTs fall tooAxies, the fantasy pets of the game, had NFT avatars for sale. This time last year, close to 2 million Axies were traded on the marketplace. Now it has dropped to 311,300.

Game over?Axie Infinity hasn’t given up. The company has launched new games in their desperate attempt to attract more users, so they spend more time and buy NFTs.

Crypto VCs Hit Pause

Risk capital across sectors is drying up and crypto is no exception. Venture capital funding for crypto startups dropped 35% to $6.2 billion in Q3.

The funding winterThe market is challenging. Crypto prices have dropped and many ventures have gone bankrupt. Bitcoin has fallen ~60% since the start of the year. So, VCs are playing it safe. VC funding also fell 22% in Q2, just around the time when Terra crashed the crypto market.

Any outliers? The Crypto deal flow was gloomy. But Web3 startups such as SettleMint and Tatum managed to raise capital.

Overall, there was a funding slowdown in the past two quarters. VCs invested $15.8 billion into crypto startups in Q2 and Q3. That’s more than the total venture funding for crypto between 2017-2020.

Tornado’s Not Your Business

Crypto non-profit Coin Center is unhappy with the US government. The think tank has sued the treasury department of the US. The department banned crypto mixer Tornado Cash calling it “too private”.

How dare you!Coin Center believes that the Treasury’s foreign asset control office doesn’t have the authority to blacklist Tornado Cash. It now wants the court to stop the department from over-extending its authority.

ICYMI: The US Treasury earlier said that Tornado Cash transactions are untraceable and could be used by criminals.

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Who are we? This newsletter’s ambition is to educate (and to entertain). The world of money is changing everyday and we want to help you decode what’s happening in the world of crypto, public markets in the US and India.