Dispatch #59: Welcome to the Zuckerverse

Oct 29, 2021 4 min read

Dispatch

In this patch of your weekly Dispatch:

Facebook goes fully web3
SHIB vs. Doge
The SEC vs the CFTC

The Big Idea

NFTs in the Facebook Meta Metaverse

When the buzzwords of 2021 are remembered, there is no doubt that “metaverse” will be right near the top. (It’s just the start, mark our words.) At some point along the way, Web3 became the metaverse and even if people didn’t know what that meant, they ran with it.

Meta: The pandemic – remember that? – taught us that life changes fast. Well, not as fast as Facebook’s name. One of the (reportedly) biggest metaverse fans has been Mark Zuckerberg who had spoken about his ambition to turn Facebook into a metaverse company and rename it to reflect this ambition. The rumors of the name change were proven true. The company will officially change its name to Meta and will be “metaverse-first, not Facebook first.” Thank God.

So, what’s the meta?

Honestly, Facebook gets a lot of guff these days, but this shift seems pretty damn interesting and pretty damn validating for everyone out there building Web3.

What’s more, NFT’s are definitely part of the plan. “This will make it easier for people to sell Limited Edition digital objects like NFTs, display them in their digital spaces, and even resell them to the next person securely,” said the company’s Head of Metaverse Products Vishal Shah.

We couldn’t agree more with Zuckerberg's statement that “the metaverse is the next frontier,” however, some relevant concerns have been raised by decentralized data provider DappRadar – that the metaverse can’t and shouldn’t be controlled by a single entity.

All in all, we are stoked that the metaverse is evolving and hoping that Zuck isn’t simply trying to avoid the “billionaires tax” by escaping to the metaverse.

The Latest In…

NEXO

IRL:

Nexo was awarded a Silver Globee® for a financial company of the year
The team attended Money2020 in Vegas for a very special product demo
Episode #7 of the Nexo Brainer dropped to tell you how easy it is to buy crypto with card.

The Latest In…

The Battle of the Doggo Coins

Remember April/May when Elon was tweeting about Dogecoin all the time, and a slew of other copycat coins sprung up to get in on the party?

DogecoinCash, Kishu Inu, Underdog, renDoge, Doget, Dogefi, Dogeswap, Monacoin, Cat. (sounds like an extremely long celebrity name)

Even then, there was one that stood out: $SHIB. Its goal was to be a true DOGE killer. Well, over the last few weeks, SHIB has been on an absolute tear, neck and neck with DOGE in terms of market cap, jostling for the overall #9 position.

Some people see this as a validation of memes. Others see it as a travesty that will herald more regulatory involvement and the end of the bull market. Whatever the case, for the moment, it seems like investors are interested.

The Latest In…

Regulation

You think the Doge-Shiba Inu battle is interesting? Check out what’s going down in Washington DC:

At the beginning of the week, news outlets were reporting that a much-anticipated crypto report from the Treasury Department was going to give the SEC broad powers to lead crypto regulation in the US.
Apparently this is something that SEC Chair Gensler has been arguing for behind closed doors.
Interestingly, however, in confirmation testimony, acting Chair Rostin Benham also suggested that he thought the CFTC was in the best position to be the “primary cop on the beat.” What’s more, he argued that “nearly 60%” of cryptos are commodities.

The Latest In…

CBDCs

We haven’t checked in on the wild world of CBDCs for a while, and this week saw two important updates.

Europe kicked off its two-year investigatory process. It will involve them researching, and figuring out what their approach should be. We’re curious to see the results but for now the EU’s bureaucracy has grown by 30 members aka the digital euro advisory group.
Nigeria officially launched its eNaira. The goal is to provide better payment tools for people from all walks of life. It will be interesting to watch this experiment play out live!

The Week’s Most Interesting Data Story

All-Time Record Inflows

We’re sure you don’t need us to tell you that the first week of Bitcoin Futures ETF trading rocketed BTC to a new ATH. But here’s an even more exciting chart, arguably. Weekly crypto asset inflows absolutely skyrocketed to $1.47B and, unsurprisingly, 99% of that was Bitcoin. FYI, the previous weekly record was in February, which saw a week with $640M.

The question is whether this was a short-term burst to take advantage of the new ETF products or whether it represents a longer-duration shift to interest in Bitcoin.