LTC is flying

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. Nike’s launched its first physical web3 sneaker. Called Cryptokicks iRL, it’s an NFT that is redeemable for a pair of real-world sneakers. Equipped with Bluetooth, auto-lacing, and NFC chips, there are only 19,000 pairs available. It’s so high-tech, the sneakers need wireless chargers too.

The markets were in the red. Bitcoin was just over $17,000 and Ethereum fell to ~$1,260. Nasdaq fell in early trade. Back home, Sensex and Nifty were cautious ahead of RBI's rate hike decision.

LTC Is Fighting The Bears

It outperformed Bitcoin and Ethereum, and managed to keep the bears at bay. Now Litecoin is headed for $100. The PoW token has rallied ~16% in the past one month.

What’s the trigger?We’ll first take a step back to understand the significance of this rally. Litecoin’s rise coincided with FTX’s collapse. Bitcoin briefly crashed to a two-year low in November, then recovered. But Litecoin stood steady.

What worked?Litecoin got a fillip after payments company MoneyGram added the token to its app in October. This gave users an opportunity to buy, store, and use LTC along with BTC and ETH.

Previously, Ethereum’s Merge had boosted Litecoin. Thanks to the switch, there are more LTC wallets. The numbers grew from 117 million LTC wallets at the start of the year to 162 million as of December 4.

Halving winsYou know how governments have monetary policies? Litecoin has a version of it, where every four years it slashes the rewards for new tokens mined. Currently, Litecoin issues 12.5 tokens as reward for every block added. This will be halved to 6.25 Litecoins in July. The halving will continue until there are no more Litecoins to mint. There's always a rally before halving because, well, FOMO.

If LTC prices stay on the $80 track path, the road to $100 is not too far away.

ETH Inflates. Again.

Ethereum’s total supply has stabilised. It’s back to the inflation cycle, which means the minted supply exceeds the tokens burned. No wonder the token prices have been shaky.

Chaos to peaceAmidst FTX’s bankruptcy, the ETH daily burn rate spiked to ~5,240 ETH last month. It is back to ~1,200 as of Tuesday. The more the transactions, the higher the Ether burnt. The idea is to keep Ether’s supply stable, so too many variations aren’t a good idea. So far, the token’s annual issuance rate is at 0.07%, meaning supply is 0.07% more than burn.

Will this last?We don’t know yet. Ethereum has stayed below $1,300. Then there’s the US Fed rate hike meeting next week. The Fed’s promised to go slow, but how slow is the question.

Nexo Says Goodbye America

Nexo has had enough. The crypto lender has decided to exit the US, citing “lack of regulatory clarity”. Customer sign-ups will stop and interest payments for Nexo’s crypto products will be halted from Wednesday.

But why?The crypto firm is tired of waiting around. It claims that the US regulators are unwilling to coordinate with each other. Case in point is the consumer body decision to investigate Nexo’s earn interest scheme, which the SEC and state regulators are also simultaneously investigating.

In fact, Nexo said that its 2018 token sale was also registered with the SEC. It also insists that it has always played by the rules, it delisted XRP and exited New York when asked.

Now what?Nexo spent 18 months trying to convince regulators. It failed. As part of the exit, new registrations have been suspended. Withdrawals will happen as usual.

Goldman, The Saviour?

Okay, we get it. You’ve heard this word too many times. What do we do, it keeps coming up. You see, the OG saviour is penniless, and Goldman Sachs wants to grab this title.

What will it do?Goldman Sachs sees value in distressed assets. The investment bank plans to spend “tens of millions of dollars” to buy crypto companies and has begun discussions with a few.

Why now?The I-bank isn’t a stranger to crypto after all. It has already invested in 11 crypto firms so far. And now with valuations at rock bottom, it’s a good time to go shopping for someone who earned profits of $21.6 billion in 2022. These are easy investments.

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