WAGMI | $9.5 million for a JPEG
What’s up humans! Welcome back to WAGMI, a Morning Brew-ish newsletter for the crypto and NFT curious.
If you’re new around here, this is what you’ll find in WAGMI:
Irreverence for everything
Tweets and bullet point lists
Tiny recaps of what's gone on in the crypto/NFT space
A culture section to keep you young
Not financial advice
Let’s hop into this mess.
Crypto
Anyone 29 years old and above question their life choices
I’m 30+ years old, writing a crypto newsletter as an anonymous penguin with my mom as a subscriber, all while the CEO of crypto exchange, FTX, is busy being the world’s 2nd richest person at 29. 😅
Coinbase is trying to talk crypto to the US government
The year’s been a bit of a wild ride between the US government and the crypto industry. The government’s trying to weasel its way into crypto, but has no idea what’s going on or how it works and has, so far, taken a whack-a-mole approach towards taxation and regulation proposals.
Coinbase, a crypto exchange that’s been around since 2012, is trying to give them something else to go off of instead of the conception that “crypto puts the [financial] system at the whims of some shadowy, faceless group of super-coders and miners.”
They have four pillars to their proposal, which I’m translating into normal human words.
Regulate crypto differently than other stuff you regulate (Regulate Digital Assets Under a Separate Framework )
Have a specific digital regulator person in charge of figuring out how to do that (Designate One Regulator for Digital Asset Markets )
Actually help people who like the digital stuff (Protect and Empower Holders of Digital Assets )
Help the crypto industry grow (Promote Interoperability and Fair Competition)
Step aside, Dow Jones, there’s a new DAO in town
This penguin thinks DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) are important to understand, if nothing else, at a high level. The founder of the wonderful n00b friendly blog, Creator Economy, Peter Yang, breaks it down for us mere mortals.
Teens and their crypto habits
In their annual teen survey, investment banking company Piper Sandler released a bunch of really interesting data around what the youths are into and how they’re spending their money in 2021.
There were a few data points that I thought were particularly interesting.
Obviously, most teens have heard of crypto, which makes sense because they can buy it on all of their preferred payment apps (Cash, Venmo, PayPal). But, not many have bought, and those who have are overwhelmingly dudes.
This is interesting because of the picture it paints of the future. Most teens know what crypto is, and their perception of it will differ incredibly than most adults who have come to know and love it as a scam because of its accessibility from trusted companies like Venmo and PayPal.
NFTs
Yet another Coinbase headline
Everyone and their mom is launching an NFT platform, and, not wanting to be left out, Coinbase announced they’ll be launching Coinbase NFT by the end of the year.
Where Coinbase differs from the other platforms is that they already have a 68 million users. In comparison, OpenSea, the largest NFT platform currently has 300K+ users.
But, check this out.
OpenSea has been around since 2017. Coinbase announced their NFT platform on October 12th and just four days later, their early access waitlist for Coinbase NFT has over 2.3 million people.
Yes, you read that right. 2.3 million people are ready for Coinbase NFT. It took Coinbase NFT less than twenty four hours to eclipse OpenSea’s user base it gathered over four years. Regardless of what you think about NFTs, this probably means something.
Teens and their NFT habits
We’re back to Piper Sandler’s annual teen survey because they also had some interesting data around NFTs.
While 70% of teens had heard of crypto, only 22% of them had heard of NFTs. Yet again, dudes make up those who are more likely to have heard of them, as well as buy them.
NFTs are still very early.
NFT Collector richerd REALLY likes the JPEGS| A short story
Chapter 1: A collector somewhere bids 9.5 million dollars on a CryptoPunk owned by @richerd
And then….
What are you feeling right now and why is it anger?
Valve said, “Nope” to blockchain games on Steam Marketplace
Steam is a PC game marketplace run by game developer, Valve, and they recently added a No blockchain rule to their “What you can’t publish on the marketplace” list.
This, of course, opens the door for other gaming companies to step in and innovate where Valve refuses.
Blockchain game founder, Loopify, had some thoughtful things to say about the mess.
What a time to be alive
Volcano-powered bitcoin
Sound investment advice
Crypto traders fight in Dubai
Two twitter famous crypto traders, @rookieXBT and @loomdart did a whole thing and had a boxing match organized by another trader who lives in Dubai. Tons of traders went, saw, spent a ****ton of money on drinks.
It’s just more proof that this space continues to be…strange. What other Twitter niche would do this? Miniature model Twitter? Horticulture twitter?
Not financial advice
Gather round Russmonk’s fire and listen
The crypto markets are heating up again and a crypto trader named Russmonk has some epic advice on how to make the most of it.
Crypto trading | a short story
All data points to staying the **** away from leverage trading.
That’s all for now, frens.
If you learned something, laughed, or enjoyed this newsletter, please subscribe and share. You subscribing and sharing will help everyone make it.
N00b glossary
Remember, nothing in this newsletter is financial advice, or should be used as such.
NFT | Non-fungible token. An item that is unique and can’t be replaced or switched out with something else, like a rare trading card or art piece.