Gate.io Ambassador Program Major Updates；SHIB announces entry into the metaverse；El Salvador rejects IMF call；Russia treats crypto assets as currency

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TA Highlight

The cryptocurrency market has swept away the gloomy sentiment of the previous weeks, ushering in a series of upward momentum day after day this week.

BTC spot has achieved price gains on all seven trading days this week, and the highest price has broken through the $45,000 mark.

During its ascent to $45k, BTC did not show extreme decline or any abrupt decline in the process. Buyers are still the absolute main force of the market, which showed a double rise in price and volume.

Towards the end of the week, the momentum of BTC slowed down quite a bit, as shown by the momentum indicators, and prices fell at an accelerated rate. The market entered a wait-and-see adjustment phase, and prices have traded sideways for two trading days.

Currently, the resistance level of BTC remains around $45,000. Within the last two days, investors can set up grid trading in the range of 43000 to 45000.

This week, Ether continues to replicate the direction of BTC spot, and the direction of fluctuation is not significantly different from BTC.

Crypto Alerts

Doggie Strike Back: Shiba Inu to Enter the Metaverse

Developers behind popular meme coin Shiba Inu said the protocol would soon offer plots of virtual lands in an upcoming, yet-unnamed metaverse, causing the prices of ecosystem tokens like $SHIB and $LEASH to jump as much as 40%.

“The Metaverse is set to be one of the biggest areas within crypto for many to enjoy…using it as another great resource to offer crypto communities incentivization, content, and regular royalties,” Shiba Inu developers said in a blog post.

Developers said they are working on a "queue system" designed for the Shiba Lands sales event. Participants earn a place in the queue based on the amount of LEASH they hold. Such a system would prevent opportunistic bots from snapping up land early at low prices to sell them at a higher price to the community.

El Salvador: “No international organization is going to make us do anything”

According to AP News, the government of El Salvador on Monday rejected a recommendation by the International Monetary Fund to drop Bitcoin as legal tender in the Central American country.

To which, Treasury Minister Alejandro Zelaya angrily replied, “Countries are sovereign nations and they take sovereign decisions about public policy,” indicating that Bitcoin is an issue of “sovereignty.”

The IMF recommended last week that El Salvador dissolve the $150 million trust fund it created when it made the cryptocurrency legal tender and return any of those unused funds to its treasury. The agency also recommended eliminating the offer of $30 as an incentive for people to start using the digital wallet “Chivo” and increasing regulation of the digital wallet to protect consumers. It suggested there could be benefits to the use of Chivo, but only using dollars, not Bitcoin.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele had been dismissive of the IMF’s recommendations concerning Bitcoin.

AssangeDAO: A Cause So Big, It’s Making History in DeFi

According to a report by Decrypt, since starting its fundraising efforts on February 3, AssangeDAO has raised over 14,329 ETH, around $44.8 million, according to DAO fundraising site Juicebox.

AssangeDAO, which includes members of the Assange family, launched December 10 in response to a U.K. court overturning a ruling that barred Assange's extradition to the U.S.

The DAO, which utilizes the Ethereum blockchain, distributes the AssangeDAO JUSTICE governance token to those who donate ETH. Those tokens currently have little in the way of actual value, but people who hold them can vote on future DAO proposals.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has contributed 10 ETH to the cause.

AssangeDAO's plan is to bid on a one-of-a-kind NFT produced by celebrated digital artist Pak, who collaborated with Julian Assange on the "Censored" collection. Proceeds from the auction will benefit the Wau Holland Foundation for Assange's legal defense.

Market Updates

Ubisoft Partners Up with The SandBox, Releasing the Rabbids

Ubisoft and the Rabbids are coming to the blockchain-based virtual world The Sandbox, according to an announcement from the company. The gaming giant Ubisoft is well known for its multimedia franchises including Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Tom Clancy’s, Prince of Persia, Rabbids, and Rayman.

The Sandbox says the project has “strategically partnered with Ubisoft to introduce Ubisoft game IP elements to The Sandbox gaming metaverse.” To start, Ubisoft is bringing characters from the franchise Rabbids, a spin-off video game stemming from Rayman.

In The Sandbox metaverse, Ubisoft will produce an entertainment zone with interactive experiences and where voxelized versions of Rabbids’ characters and items will be introduced.

In addition to Ubisoft, The Sandbox has been making various partnerships with well known brands and celebrities since the project’s inception. Partners include Adidas, Warner Music Group, Atari, The Smurfs, Care Bears, and Snoop Dogg.

Youtube 2022: Web 3.0 Here We Come

In a new blog post, YouTube's CPO, Neal Mohan, revealed new details about the popular streaming service platform’s upcoming Web3 ambitions.

In his message, Mohan delves further into the specifics of YouTube's Web3 strategies, revealing specific plans for "a verifiable way for fans to own unique videos, photos, art, and even experiences from their favorite creators." The language essentially confirms that YouTube intends to begin minting its own NFTs for not only the videos posted on its site, but other forms of media as well.

YouTube also revealed that it, like seemingly every other company right now, is exploring ways to take its content into the metaverse. That push will apparently first focus on gaming, where it hopes to "bring more interactions to games and make them feel more alive."

IOC Officially Authorized nWayPlay to Sell NFTs

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has granted authorization for a limited series of digital mystery toy boxes themed on this year’s official Olympic mascot, Bing Dwen Dwen, to be put on sale at 1:00 a.m. on February 12, Beijing time.

Only 500 of these so-called “Epic boxes” will be made available, each of which costs $99. Individual consumers are limited to buying a maximum of five.

Apart from products related to the 2022 Winter Olympics, nWayPlay also released digital badges and posters of many past Olympic Games since 1926. The most expensive product is a legendary poster of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, which costs $9,999.

In addition, nWayPlay has reached a cooperation deal on licensing by the IOC, whereby the two sides agreed to jointly develop Olympic Games Jam: Beijing 2022, a Play-to-Earn game, which was released on February 3 this year.

Google is Looking to Build and Invest in Web 3.0

During an earning’s call last Tuesday, the CEO of Alphabet Inc.– Google’s parent company – Sundar Pichai said the company is monitoring developments within the blockchain sector and Web3, which many tech companies are piling into with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investments – and Alphabet may soon follow suit.

According to the earning’s call tran_script_, Pichai was recording stating, “...our Cloud team is looking at how they can support our customers' needs in building, transacting, storing value and deploying new products on blockchain-based platforms. So we'll definitely be watching the space closely and supporting it where we can. Overall, I think technology will continue to evolve and innovate, and we want to be pro-innovation and approach it that way.”

Companies that have made significant investments in Web3 thus far include: Nike, Walmart, Twitter, Block/Square, Meta/Facebook, Sony and many others. However, until last week, one of the largest tech companies on the planet — Alphabet — had been virtually silent regarding this emergent, yet rapidly growing web evolution.

Global Headlines

Russia to Officially Recognize Cryptocurrency

According to a statement on Tuesday, the Russian government and the country’s central bank have reached an agreement to draft legislation or amend existing laws recognizing crypto as a form of currency.

The agreement is a significant reversal after the Bank of Russia last month proposed banning miners and several other crypto operations over concerns that they could endanger the country’s financial system.

Officials also said the regulation would ensure the protection of citizens’ rights under a licensing regime aimed at cryptocurrency providers. Providers will need to have “financial airbags” in terms of liquidity and adequate capital.

Several Russian regulators and lawmakers including the Ministry of Finance, the Federal Security Service, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Tax Service and others were involved in the decision-making process.

Project Hamilton: The First Step Towards Digital Dollar (CBDC)

Project Hamilton is an open-source software developed in a collaborative research project between the Federal Reserve of Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The software, which is essentially a high performance payment processing system designed for Central Bank Digital Currencies, is discussed extensively in a Digital Currency Initiative published by The Boston Fed last Thursday.

The phase-one publication included code on GitHub as well as a white paper.

Notably, the white paper stressed that "...despite using ideas from blockchain technology, we found that a distributed ledger operating under the jurisdiction of different actors was not needed to achieve our goals."

The paper's executive goes on to state:

"Specifically, a distributed ledger does not match the trust assumptions in Project Hamilton’s approach, which assumes that the platform would be administered by a central actor. We found that even when run under the control of a single actor, a distributed ledger architecture has downsides. For example, it creates performance bottlenecks, and requires the central transaction processor to maintain transaction history, which one of our designs does not, resulting in significantly improved transaction throughput scalability properties."

Looking ahead, the work sets the stage for an additional phase of research.

Fitch Ratings downgraded El Salvador deeper into junk

American credit rating agency Fitch Ratings has downgraded the Long-Term Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) of El Salvador to ‘CCC’ from ‘B-‘.

According to its report, “policy unpredictability” and “adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender” are part of the reasons why the country has received a downgrade from Fitch, adding that El Salvador is facing “heightened financial risks” related to factors including its reliance on short-term debt, an $800 million bond maturing in January 2023, a fiscal deficit that remains high and limited financing options in the local market.

The country has accumulated a total of 1,800 BTC thus far, and the Bukele is quite optimistic about the potential growth of the cryptocurrency. Should the digital currency grow back even to its previous all-time high (ATH) around $68,000, the El Salvadoran holdings will be worth about $122.4 million, a figure that may not be enough to offset its short-term deficits.


Gate.io Weekly Blogs:
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Author: Byron. B & Charles. F & Peter. L (Gate.io Researchers)
* The article only represents the researcher’s views and does not constitute any investment advice.
* Gate.io reserves all rights to this article. Reposting of the article will be permitted provided Gate.io is referenced. In all other cases, legal action will be taken due to copyright infringement.