23rd Edition

This week in The Flippening, TL;DR

One of the biggest sporting events forays into the metaverse, set to launch multiple NFT collectibles. GameStop to the moon once again? Mozilla faces community wrath for doing what it has been doing for 7 years. Coin of the week, market performance, simplifying DAOs and why they would be massive in times to come, top Coin Sets, memes and more.

Top Highlights of the Week (ending 7th Jan)

The Australian Open becomes the first ever grand slam to launch own NFTs

One of the biggest sporting events of the year, The Australian Open, has made its first foray into the metaverse, making a couple of blockchain-related announcements. The tournament will be officially launching a line of NFTs and also a virtual event for the tournament on the platform Decentraland.

This year, the Australian Open will be releasing a collection of 6,776 NFTs corresponding to minuscule plots on the tournament court’s surface. The tournament will also be hosting a virtual event for the Australian Open on Decentraland.

New NFT division help GameStop shares rally once again

Remember the 2021 short squeeze featuring GameStop, where investors (from the “financially acclaimed” subreddit r/WallStreetBets) flocked to buy the shares of the electronics retail firm to hurt the hedge funds that shorted the stock.

Now, the firm is in the news again as it has reportedly hired 20 members for its new NFT division, bolstering the share price by 26% in after-hours trading. While there is no official announcement, GameStop is reportedly launching an NFT marketplace, which will enable the buying, selling and trading of gaming NFTs.

Mozilla retracts crypto donations after community backlash

The creator company of the “Chrome Alternative” browser Firefox — Mozilla, had been accepting crypto donations since 2014. But a simple reminder tweet by them ended up being the target of a major community backlash.

While the uproar mainly focussed on community members voicing concerns about crypto and its impact on environment, what fueled the fallout was Mozilla co-founder Jamie Zawinski chiming in some choice words, and condemning the org to be “ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters.” Following the uproar, Mozilla has paused crypto donations and are reviewing how they fit with the organisation’s climate goals.

Other Highlights:

• Now, you can visit the Samsung metaverse store in Decentraland: Read it here
• Crypto payments is the top request made by users, says Airbnb CEO: Read it here
• Pulp Fiction NFT to be auctioned despite lawsuit against director Tarantino: Read it here
• Kazakhstan president suspends government and internet, plummeting Bitcoin hash rate: Read it here

Market Performance

Note: Market updates till Jan 07, 13:30 hrs UTC.

After a range-bound movement lasting a few weeks, the new year began with the bears gaining an upper hand. We saw a massive selloff across the cryptocurrency spectrum. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, Bitcoin, hovered around the $42,000 mark, ending the week with a 12% decline. With ETH dropping almost 14%, the altcoins took an even bigger hit. Solana, which is usually touted as Ethereum’s closest competitor, dropped almost 20%.

Note: Market updates till Jan 07, 13:30 hrs UTC.

With institutional activity picking pace, most of the sectors witnessed heavy profit booking. Smart contracts dropped more than 9%, followed by Currencies which dropped 8.13%. DeFi and Decentralized Exchanges also showed significant declines. Web3 remained the sector that finished the week in green after gaining a modest 3.47%. In our last newsletter, we had predicted this correction to continue over the first week of the new year.
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Coin of the week

Chainlink: $LINK

There has been a lot of talks over the past few weeks for the Oracle linked tokens, such as Chainlink and BAND. Chainlink is by far the most widely adopted oracle in the crypto ecosystem with a near eight-fold lead in partners when compared to its nearest competitor Berry Data (BRY). The project has also benefited from its focus on developing the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) which helps facilitate the ongoing growth of the multi-chain ecosystem. With whales making heavy investments in LINK, there was no surprise to see this token gain massively despite the entire market jittering from the bearish pressure.

Crypto simplified: What are DAOs and why should you care?

Few weeks back, a community called Constitution DAO tried to buy a rare copy of the U.S. Constitution at an auction at Sotheby’s. The document is one of thirteen surviving copies out of 500 originally made for the Constitutional Congress, and only this version and one other are in private hands. More recently, another community called the LinksDAO tried to buy a golf course, and raised more than $10 million in a few hours for the same.

You can think of a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) as an independent organization on the blockchain, and a group of people coming together to achieve a common goal. These organizations work on the blockchain and are run by smart contracts. Smart contracts are essentially lines of codes written to carry out actions when certain conditions are met.

DAOs are fully automated, meaning there is no need for any person to perform an activity. The codes encoded accomplish the tasks, making an organization completely self-sustainable. On top of this, DAOs are fully decentralized. There is no hierarchical authority controlling the organization. This feature makes it very easy and trustworthy for people who want to work with like-minded people in a decentralized manner. Transparency is at the heart of every DAO. Finally, and perhaps one of the most powerful features of DAOs are that they cannot be shut down by any government authorities.

There might be different types of DAOs created to serve different purposes.

Service DAOs: These are groups of people to deliver services to other groups or organisations.

Social DAOs: These are people coming together to socialise, hang out and create stuff- all on the blockchain. FWB: Friends with Benefits is one of the largest social DAOs, where artists come together and work on cool stuff.

Venture DAOs: These are similar to venture clubs, the only difference being that these exist on the blockchain.

In true essence, DAOs are cooperatives of the 21st century, formed by people coming together and smart contracts.

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Here we are, at the end of our 23rd edition. We hope you liked reading it. Please write back with your feedback, comments, and stuff that you’d like us to include in the newsletter. We leave you with a meme that contains the emotions of all “weak” crypto investors this week.