Does BTC have a bottom?

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. The eth.link domain name has expired and the only man who can renew it is in prison. Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith is behind bars and his lawyer doesn’t have renewal permission. Will any generous ETH aficionado step up to buy it back? 

The market was flat on mixed signals from the US Fed. Bitcoin slipped below $20,000 and Ethereum fell under $1,500. Nasdaq faced volatility in early trade. Back home, Sensex and Nifty were down due to a selloff in technology stocks. 

How Low Will BTC Get?

It was a bad start to the week for Bitcoin. The crypto fell to under ~$20,000, on the back of Fed chair Jerome Powell’s indication of more rate hikes. Ethereum wasn’t spared either. It slipped under the $1,500 mark. Even the Merge couldn’t save it. 

Is it a bear?The two largest tokens have been sliding since the start of the year. Look, we’re not getting into the war, inflation and tech stock slide. You know the drill. But there are a few interesting things that have happened over the weekend that may explain the slide a little more. 

1. No more Hodlers: Bitcoins that lay untouched for 7-10 years on the network have started to move. 

2. There’s no coal: It is getting difficult to mine Bitcoin, with high costs and low profits. 

3. Merge boredom: We know. Look, we were excited too. But it seems people are bored. Experts believe that Ethereum’s price will be volatile till the Merge is completed.  

Can it recover?You’re not going to enjoy the next bit. In September, Bitcoin will be returned to the original Mt.Gox investors. This is expected to cause a crash because the crypto could be sold as soon as it is credited.

FYI Mt.Gox was a crypto exchange that imploded in February 2014 after a ~$500 million Bitcoin theft. Eight years later, the exchange will repay account holders. 

Polygon Has A Different Side 

The crypto market crashed over the weekend as fears of an interest rate hike returned. But Polygon was an outlier. 

Excitement around Polygon?Things are looking up for the firm. The number of transactions on the network have grown by 13%. NFT mints are up 10%. Its weekly active users are now at ~800,000. And there has been a small drop in the transaction cost. 

Encouraged by this, new GameFi projects have entered Polygon. The cool kids call this the “fundamentals”. 

The zkEVM factorThat’s not a typo. zkEVM means zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).  Jargon free definition: Multiple transactions can be validated on a single protocol. 

So, Polygon has shifted to zkEVM, which is one reason why transaction costs are lower and has increased the capability to process a larger number of transactions, faster.

OpenSea Is Dry

OpenSea is a desert. The world’s most popular marketplace saw a 99% drop in daily volumes in 90 days. Users have exited and there is a transaction drought on the platform. Three months ago, OpeSea recorded transactions worth $405.7 million. Now, it has dropped to $5 million. 

No fish in the seaThere is a general disinterest in NFTs. That’s crashing the floor prices, the minimum amount one is ready to pay for an NFT. Case in point is the-almost-useless Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, whose floor price tumbled to 78 ETH on August 28 compared to 153.7 ETH on May 1. 

FYI OpenSea laid off 20% staff in July because of muted sentiments. 

Onset of NFT winter?Ethereum is partly to blame. The crypto fell over 55% since August 2021. So NFTs prices fell in lock step. Plus, there’s confusion over NFTs’ identity within crypto. 

For now, there’s no point fishing in OpenSea. 

Avalanche’s A Gangsta

Avalanche is in trouble. Its developer Ava Labs has allegedly “ganged up” to attack crypto firms. Crypto Leaks claimed that Ava has hired a law firm to “distract regulators and thwart competitors”. Ava Labs denied it. 

The slip upAvalanche’s AVAX token dropped 22% on Friday after the report was published. 

What’s the grouse?A whistleblower alleged that Ava Labs worked with law firm Roche Freedman to trap rivals in class action suits. In return, Roche Freedman would get paid AVAX tokens and Ava Labs corporate stock.

Now what?CEO Emin Gün Sirer called it “conspiracy theory nonsense”.

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Who are we? There is a lot happening in our world. Everything has layers, and each layer has to be carefully peeled so you, the reader, know how the world of money is changing every day. That’s our promise. Help you unpeel the onions, which are the public markets in the US, India, and crypto, so that you know just a little more.