The FED Met, Ethereum Roadmap, Curve Stablecoin & Generative Art NFTs
In This Issue
- I share my thoughts on the state of the market, the FED met, recessions redefined, Ethereum roadmap, Curve Stablecoins & the NFT meltdown.
- Sam has a report for you on generative art NFTs.
Premium members also get the following:
- My latest portfolio updates
- Rekt Capital has the latest technical analysis for you on the market.
- Rebecca has all of the latest news for you.
- Upcoming NFT drops
- Defi Dad has a tutorial for you on how to earn up to 9.7% vAPR with USDC on PoolTogether on Optimism.
- Jesse has a ton of hot new airdrops for you.
- Hot new token sales.
- Rebecca breaks down this week’s trending coins.
- Jesse has a deep dive for you on SeedOn Crypto.
And much more!
What’s On My Mind by Lark
The State of the Market
Volatility is the key word this week.
We had a nasty weekly close for Bitcoin with sellers smashing the price back under the 200 week moving average.
This was all in anticipation of the FED meeting and how the market would price in a rate hike.
What is most surprising is how hard the market bounced on news of the rate hike. But as usual crypto is not dancing to its own music. Key stock indices rallied hard on the news, and crypto as usual slavishly followed along.
The question now is if this bounce is going to be a continuation of the relief rally or just a big fat nothing burger!
FED Met, Now What…
Well, the FED has just announced the newest rate hike at 0.75% and the market went wild!
The market has feared a possible 1% rate hike, but since it was only 0.75% this was actually a bullish event. Which is funny because previously this big hike would have been looked at with a more bearish lens.
One thing is for certain this event did cause a lot of fear and volatility this week!
Recession Redefined… Kind Of…
With the US GDP data release this week the internet went abuzz with the new way for determining a recession.
You see normally we all learn that a recession happens when a country registers two quarters of negative growth. Recessions can be shallow like two quarters of -0.1%, or they can be fast and brutal like two quarters of minus 10%. But this definition has long been used to make the call.
That was until 2009 when the group responsible for making the call, the NBER, redefined how a recession is determined.
It is now roughly defined as “ a decline in economic activity spread out over several months that factors in things like employment, consumer spending, real personal income, and industrial production”.
So while the GDP data is likely to show the US entering a technical recession. The bean counters at the NBER will be unlikely to announce one.
Ethereum Roadmap
Vitalik Buterin recently laid out the road ahead for Ethereum.
As he said Ethereum will only be 55% done when The Merge happens. The final version of Ethereum will be capable of 100,000 transactions per second.
Here is a quick overview.
The Merge – This is the transition to Proof of Stake which is scheduled for September 19th.
The Surge – This is when Ethereum brings in sharding on-chain. Essentially it breaks the chains into smaller pieces called shards allowing the workload to be shared. 2023 sometime.
The other three stages are coming at some point in the future.
The Verge – will bring in something called Verkle Trees to optimise data storage and reduce the size of nodes.
The Purge – This works to reduce network congestion by getting rid of old data from the blockchain.
The Splurge – will bring in a series of smaller upgrades to help the final version run smoothly by making a holistic version of all these upgrades.
All of this could take years more. But it is coming. Ethereum may take a while to get where it is going, but they do deliver. I will personally not be betting against Ethereum.
Curve Stablecoin
The founder of Curve Finance has hinted that they may be releasing a stablecoin for Curve.
I know what you are thinking… “NOT ANOTHER DAMN STABLECOIN”.
That is how I feel too.
But, Curve Finance is one of the biggest defi protocols.
So, much like with Aave’s stablecoin announcement I think that this is something to pay attention to.
We don’t really have any details yet.
Will fees go to CRV holders? When will it be released?
This and 50 other questions for which we have no answers to yet. I will keep you updated.
NFT Meltdown
NFTs have hit their lowest trading volume on Opensea in a year.
NFTs have not been spared from the general market carnage. And to be honest it is not super surprising since a big macro downturn like this means that people have less disposable income, and right at the bottom of the list of non-essentila purchases are NFTs.
Although one very interesting thing to note is how well price wise some collections have held up.
I suspect the reason for this is the extreme scarcity of NFTs with collections of only 10,000 pieces, and the collector mind set of people who have zero intention of selling.
Sadly the NFT bargains I had hoped for have not yet emerged.
GMX Exchange Review by Jesse
(Wealth Mastery Premium Article)
GMX Exchange is a decentralized perpetual exchange designed for Avalanche and Arbitrum traders. If you’re unfamiliar with how an exchange like GMX works, don’t worry, we’ll be going over all the details, starting with just what the heck a perpetual even is.
A perpetual is simply a Smart Contract with special instructions written for futures trading. One of these instructions is that the contract has no expiration date. Trading futures enables anyone to bet on a yet-to-be-discovered future price of an asset. This commonly falls into the degen side of the crypto space, due to the extremely high risk and high rewards offered by such a product.
By using GMX Exchange, you can freely trade these perpetuals, as the exchange allows anyone to bet for or against Ethereum, Wrapped Bitcoin, Chainlink, and Uniswap. Users can deposit Ethereum, Wrapped Ethereum, Wrapped Bitcoin, Chainlink, Uniswap, USDC, USDT, DAI, and Frax Tokens to fund the account and begin leverage trading. This form of trading is difficult for even the most seasoned market makers. It’s highly recommended that you have a deep understanding of futures trading before attempting to long or short any cryptocurrency, ever.
How does GMX Work?
We’ll get more into those perpetual contracts and staking a bit later. For now, let’s discuss another equally important part of the GMX Exchange. That is, how it works…
Generative Art NFTs by Sam
NFT trends shift and cycle, and while interest in PFP projects is currently dipping, generative art is experiencing a surge.
Just to be clear about what exactly generative art means, it usually refers to digital art that is algorithmically put together by a programmed system. There’s an element of randomness to what is created, and it’s a crossover between coding and artistry.
Generative art is nothing new, going back to the 1960s, but over the past year or so has experienced an explosion of activity and interest in the world of NFTs.
Art Blocks
Image credits: Dmitri Cherniak
In the generative art NFT space, Art Blocks is the definitive creative platform. It was founded by an innovator known as Snowfro (real name Erick Calderon) in November 2020, using funds raised by selling part of his CryptoPunks collection. New collections from an ever-expanding range of artists are generated and sold through Art Blocks, some of which have become prestigious collectible assets that sell for huge sums.
Within Art Blocks, there are three sections: Art Blocks Curated, Art Blocks Playground, and Art Blocks Factory. Curated projects are closely reviewed and, well, curated, giving them an element of special attention and exclusivity. Playground projects are more experimental and give artists a space in which to play around with ideas, but can only be created by artists from the Curated section. Factory projects are similar to Playground projects, but the space is open to artists who have not previously released work in the Curated section.
Arguably the most famous Art Blocks projects are Fidenza and Ringers, while Chromie Squiggle, created by Snowfro himself, was the first Art Blocks mint. The platform has been central in creating a huge range of generative art to explore and collect, through Art Blocks itself and on secondary markets.
Other Platforms & Projects:
GM Studio
Image credits: Mathias Isaksen
Created by gmDAO, a community of collectors, artists and investors, GM Studio is a platform for new talent to launch generative art collections. It recently gained increased recognition through the success of the Factura collection, which then boosted sales of earlier projects Plasticity, Mind the Gap, and Koripo, and pumped the price of the gmDAO access and governance token.
Art Foundry
Image credits: Art Foundry
Originally known as Degen Art Club, this project is the work of artist, engineer and designer Lim, who also co-founded West Coast NFT, a web3 development team that helped launch Doodles and MFers.
The most recent collection to drop was Metaglyphs, and previous drops include Pukenza (a Doodles derivative inspired by Fidenza) and Happy Accident. Of these collections, Metaglyphs and Happy Accident are both fully on-chain and can be bought in the same place.
If you hold a Linea Forma Mint Pass (which are artworks in themselves), then you’ll get access to future releases, and up to now, minting has been free for pass holders (except for gas payments).
Gen.Art
Image credits: Dan Zucco
This platform is run as a DAO and drops at least one new collection a month, featuring some talented artists with a range of styles. Members have access to all new mints, and you can become a member by picking up a pass on secondary, where prices have dipped, at the time of writing, to around 0.25 ETH.
There are 5,000 regular passes and 500 gold passes, the latter of which allow holders to mint 5 items from new drops, and give access to the DAO Steering Committee, events, and exclusive drops and 1/1 pieces.
Artists and collections
When it comes to art, it’s all about individual tastes, but as a starting point here are some interesting artists and collections that are well respected, some of whom have been pulling in increased attention lately and enjoying a satisfying uptick in sales.
Image credits: Grant Riven Yun
Grant Riven Yun doesn’t only create generative art, but his fully on-chain Primera collection, made in collaboration with Andrew Mitchell, took that route, and has been moving on secondary lately, although the most recent interest is focused around his precise, minimal 1/1 artworks.
Image credits: William Mapan
William Mapan has a collection called Dragons on fxhash (a generative art platform on the Tezos blockchain) and a highly original, standout collection called Anticyclone, created on Art Blocks.
Image credits: ykxotkx
ykxotkx doesn’t have a lot of personal information online (don’t ask how to pronounce the name), but has had work exhibited at the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt, and appears to be based in Japan. Ultimately though, the work, which is stunning and in some cases uses an ukiyo-e style, speaks for itself. Collections can be found on fxhash.
Image credits: Andreas Rau
Andreas Rau is a designer and artist who creates clean and stylish generative artwork, with collections minted on the Tezos blockchain available at Teia and Objkt (both of which are Tezos NFT platforms), and at fxhash.
Image credits: unsigned_algorithms
Unsigned _algorithms is the work of programmer and engineer Alexander Watanabe. It’s among the earliest wave of NFT collections on Cardano, is entirely on-chain, and has come to be regarded by Cardano NFT collectors as a piece of history. The NFTs can be picked up on Cardano secondary markets.
Image credits: Shvembldr
Shvembldr (real name Ilja Borisovs) is an artist from Latvia, who is now publishing an ongoing account of a criminal case being brought against him, which he claims is unjust. The story is generating a lot of interest, as are Shvembldr’s NFTs, notably the Alien DNA collection.
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Final Notes
Thank you so much for your support, and I truly hope that today’s issue will give you insights needed to help you master your wealth.
If you are reading this it means you are on the free version of the Wealth Mastery Investor Report, which is great for news and tips on the crypto markets.
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See you next time!
Lark and the Wealth Mastery Team
Legal Disclaimer
TCL Publishing ltd (director Lark Davis, owner of Wealth Mastery) is not providing you individually tailored investment advice. Nor is TCL Publishing registered to provide investment advice, is not a financial adviser, and is not a broker-dealer. The material provided is for educational purposes only. TCL Publishing is not responsible for any gains or losses that result from your cryptocurrency investments. Investing in cryptocurrency involves a high degree of risk and should be considered only by persons who can afford to sustain a loss of their entire investment. Investors should consult their financial adviser before investing in cryptocurrency.
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