Dispatch #111: A Last Hope for Uptober

Oct 28, 2022 4 min read

Dispatch

In this patch of your weekly Dispatch:

A nice patch of green
Reddit NFTs onboard 3M new people
ETH as ultra-sound money

The Big Idea

Respect the Pump

We were as optimistic as anyone coming into this month. Summers? Bad. September? Bad. But October, well, historically speaking, they don’t call it Uptober for nothing.

So consider our disappointment as we stayed range-bound all month, never even poking our heads above Bitcoin $20,000 except in the first week.

How nice it was then when on Tuesday, the coins started ripping. Over the next couple of days, just about everything was up between about 5% and 15%. Other risk assets saw some positive action as well, with the S&P 500 up about 5% from the previous week.

So what’s driving things?

There is some sense that if the Fed is not ready to pivot, we may have reached a peak in bond prices and the strength of the dollar. The Bank of Canada surprised with a smaller than expected 50 bps hike, and shared concerns about global growth. Within crypto, people pointed to numerous narratives, including Ethereum being well on its way to become deflationary post-Merge.

It’s hard not to feel – after something similar this summer – that this might be a bit of a sucker’s rally before we get the next bad inflation number. But for while it lasts, it’s nice to have seen some green.

The Latest In…

Reddit NFTs = All the Rage

One of the most unexpected things about the ‘20-’21 bull market was the rise of NFTs. They brought an entirely new audience. This week, we realized that Reddit (which released Polygon NFT avatars earlier this year) had gone and made them a thing on their platform. After a steady increase in prices over the past few months, a new set was released which sold out almost instantly.

In total, 3 million users have interacted with a digital wallet thanks to Reddit. What’s more, Reddit Avatars topped the OpenSea charts. The team at Reddit has gone to pains to not use any crypto-related words, and the strategy seems to be working. Is this obfuscated, product-first-industry-second-(or-not-at-all) approach to crypto the way it goes mainstream? 💭

The Latest In…

The Big Regulatory Debate

Last week saw something of a dustup on Twitter after Sam Bankman-Fried laid out his proposal for industry self-regulation. Particularly contentious were some of the questions around DeFi and OFAC, the body in charge of sanctions. OFAC sanctioned Tornado Cash, leading among other things to a lawsuit against the US Treasury from some of the crypto influencers who were dusted with tainted crypto afterwards. And on Capital Hill, momentum is building for the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act (DCCPA), which would give the CFTC much more authority around crypto.

The Latest In…

One Week Left

It’s been a nice wee run across the board this week. But you still want more, don’t you? There is a way to increase your earnings by earning passive income on some of the best-known digital assets: XRP, BNB or AXS. You have one week to take advantage of our extended promo rates for Fixed Terms. How? Once you have any of the assets, moving to a Fixed Term is easy. To start earning the higher rates, make sure you complete the steps below by November 4. One week left. ⏳

Open the Nexo app or the web platform.
Select XRP, BNB or AXS.
Tap the “Manage Wallets” button and select “Fixed Terms”.
Tap the “Create Fixed Term” button.
Choose the new Fixed Term, enter the amount you want, and tap “Create Term”.

The Week’s Most Interesting Data Story

Ultra Sound Money

We are not totally positive that it explains the nice little pop this week, but there’s no denying that the Ethereum community is getting excited (and rightly so) about one of the key pre-Merge narratives coming to fruition. That narrative is ETH as a delationary asset. Had the Merge not happened, this year ETH would have emitted nearly 500,000 new ETH. Thanks to the Merge, the total net new issuance of Ethereum stands at less than 1,000 ETH. The network is on track to be actually deflationary by November. Poke around ultrasound.money to see for yourself.