Sell all your Bored Apes

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. The Tatas are getting on the metaverse bandwagon. Tata Consultancy Services is teaming up with group companies such as Tanishq, Tata Motors, and Croma to get going in the digital universe. In fact, Tanishq has even launched its jewellery collection on the metaverse for customers to try virtually. We are ‘in’ the internet already. 

Crypto’s Going Mainstream

Australia and Europe are the latest on the bandwagon of countries who are warming up to investing in crypto via ETFs. It all started with Grayscale launching its “Future of Finance” ETF on some European exchanges. 

And Australia, too, caught up with the trend with its first Bitcoin and Ether ETFs managed by Sydney-based ETF Securities. 

But what are ETFs? 

Exchange-Traded Funds are simply a collection of stocks or securities that track a market index. Say you want to invest in the tech sector. Instead of going about buying individual stocks for Google or Apple, you can simply invest in an ETF that tracks tech-related indices on the market. Saves you tons of time, research, and money. 

With the Grayscale ETF, it's tracking the Bloomberg Grayscale Future of Finance Index. This has companies like Robinhood, PayPal, Argo Blockchain, and more. All heavily into crypto, blockchain, and the digital economy. 

Gaining ground?

The Australian ETFs, though, were in for a cold welcome. Understandably so, since both Bitcoin and Ethereum are just recouping from their brutal thrashing and double-digit losses. Still below the $30,000 mark, BTC lost 10% over the last week. ETH fared no better with a weekly loss of 17%. 

If you’re wondering where India stands, we’ve made some headway too. Asia’s first crypto ETF has already gone live in Gujarat’s GIFT city in March 2022. It is a joint venture between Kling Trading India and Cosmea Financial Holdings. But we’re yet to see where that goes.  

Solana’s Bot Tax Rescue

Solana Labs’ surging popularity in NFT collections didn’t go unnoticed by bots. On April 30, there was a seven-hour crash on the platform initiated by bots trying to game the system. And now, Solana’s owner, Metaplex, is striking down on these trouble-maker machines. By imposing a Bot Tax.  

What is this tax?

For every invalid or ‘bot’ transaction that is entered ‌into the system, there’ll be penalty charges of 0.01 Solana. That’s about $0.5 per transaction. Looks like a small amount, but those attempting multiple attacks to ‘overwhelm’ the system would see mounting fines. As of May 11, about $82,000 worth of fines were collected and passed on to creators.

Cracking down

Till the bot tax was imposed, people would let the bot programmes run indefinitely, booting out legitimate buyers. Metaplex Studios CTO Nhan Phan says that malicious bots have gone down significantly since fines started getting slapped. Solana has detected another 162,000 NFT botting transactions. It is now tackling them using this tax. The war isn't over yet.  

SEBI’s No to Crypto Star-Ads 

Was Ayushmann Khurrana's Future Yahi Hai crypto exchange campaign a motivator to invest? It probably was. Well, the news is you’ll soon miss your favourite celebrities in crypto ads. 

Market watchdog Sebi might come swinging on public figures endorsing crypto. In fact, Sebi has suggested that neither celebrities nor sportspeople should appear in such advertisements. 

What’s the deal?

The crypto market is still largely unregulated in India, except for the 30% taxation imposed on sales of these virtual digital assets.

Sebi doesn’t want users to be misled. The regulator wants crypto ads to carry disclosures on possible law violations. The justification is that these assets are unregulated. 

Then what?

The consumer affairs ministry monitors all ads. Current regulations impose fines of Rs 10-50 lakh, plus a three-year ad ban on celebrities for appearing in misleading ads.   

This means that stars will land in a soup and lose all endorsements for three years. 

Bored NFT Adventures

How bored are you of those ugly apes? Not bored enough. The holder of BAYC Ape #6462, which looks as ugly as the rest of them, found their latest victim. The owner of this NFT‌, probably out of hatred for these apes, sold it for 200 USDC. The rumour is that it’s a mistake. How big a mistake? The floor price of these apes is 101.75 ETH or about $206,000. 

What’s so special about this ape?

Nothing. No, really. But this one is rare because he wears a bone necklace and is eating a pizza. Look, there are actual use cases for NFTs. We appreciate them. But a pizza-eating ape isn’t on the top of our list. 

The mother of them all

While we are on NFTs, let's take a moment to welcome Madonna. She, along with Beeple, has started a “Mother Of Creation” NFT triptych. She wants to share “a different form of birth in our world”. The results of this are up on the NFT platform SuperRare.

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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.