🧘‍♂️ALERT: Mystery Crypto Trend

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Dear Meditators

It’s a beautiful day to be early in an explosive and vibrant industry. 

Here’s your one-stop shop for everything you need to know about crypto. 

Today’s Meditations: 

• Top Crypto Headlines 

• Mystery Crypto Trend -> FOAN 

• Cardano Deep Dive 

• Mechanism x Metaverse

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⏰ In A Rush?

• XDEFI Cross Chain Swaps in Wallet Now Available

• Brazilian Asset Manager Hashdex to Launch DeFi ETF Including UNI, AAVE and COMP

• Coinbase partners with Mastercard to let users buy NFTs via cards

• Strips Announce $100,000 Public Testnet Trading Competition

Our Market Meditations are longer format educational segments. Each letter features a Market Meditation which will deep dive and analyse a relevant crypto event, theme or tool. 

? What The FOAN?

Everyone loves a trend. Whether or not it is a trend almost seems irrelevant; as long as enough people believe in something, the trend aspect becomes self fulfilling! Enter the stage FOAN. FOAN is a word made up of the first letter of the native tokens of the following cryptos: 

• Fantom ($FTM) -> F

• Harmony ($ONE) -> O 

• Cosmos ($ATOM) -> A

• Near ($NEAR) -> N

So, what do these cryptos have in common such that they are grouped together? 

They are all layer 1 blockchains that aim to overcome some of the limitations of competitors such as slow transaction rates, limited throughput and poor cross-compatibility. 

A recent CoinDesk article summarises FOAN success stories: 

• DeFi activity on Cosmos and Near have grown in the past months ahead of planned upgrades on both blockchains. More than $154 million worth of assets are staked on Near-based DeFi protocols, with exchange and lending tool Ref Finance locking up over $104 million alone.

• Interest in Fantom received an extra boost as developers known for launching protocols on Avalanche, Ethereum and Fantom that lock billions of dollars in value announced a collaboration on a project that will deploy on Fantom.

• Harmony enjoyed much of its hype in the past month with the rise of DeFi Kingdom. An integrated game, exchange and NFT project that’s locked over $740 million worth of its native token and other assets since its launch. 

Some analysts are starting to think that the majority of layer 1 focus which has primarily been on Solana, Avalanche and Luna is now shifting. Whilst it is premature to suggest that this is definitely the case, these cryptos are well worth monitoring. 

Remember however, if we lose the $40k BTC level, further downside to $36k is not out of the question and in this scenario all cryptos will be negatively affected. So some patience may be required before FOAN shows its full potential. 

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⚖ Sundae on Thursday

It takes time to make the perfect Sundae, and taking time is something Cardano knows all about. Fans and critics alike are waiting for killer apps to be deployed and one of the most anticipated is launching on mainnet on Thursday – but is it a BTRSTN event? Here’s the scoop:

• In September 2021 Cardano implemented smart-contract functionality that would allow developers to build decentralised apps on it. 

• In the month leading up to it the $ADA price rocketed to an ATH of $3.09, before entering a four-month downtrend – the functionality was there, but nothing big was built yet.

• Enter SundaeSwap – a decentralised exchange for the Cardano ecosystem, hoping to emulate or better what UniSwap did for Ethereum, and fully launching in two days’ time. 

• A potential scaling issue with Cardano’s UTxO approach was highlighted last year, but the Sundae team announced recently that they have “developed solutions to address” this, although bugs and congestion remain.

Engineering issues can generally be resolved so this is certainly an important milestone for Cardano. However we will learn soon enough whether traders will sell the news again or go on a sustained run. To learn more about the key dates and takeaways of the Sundae launch click here.

⚙️ Mechanism Capital Dives Deeper Into the Metaverse

Mechanism Capital originally launched in August 2020 with a focus on decentralised finance (DeFi) but was excited by the evolution of blockchain gaming. They have already successfully invested $100m with key names in the space such as Star Atlas, Yield Guild Games and Merit Circle.

• In addition to their previous success Mechanism Capital announced on Monday 17th January 2022 the launch of their new $100m fund – ‘Mechanism Play’ which will be dedicated to play-to-earn gaming investments and partnerships. 

• The firm views mobile gaming as the natural evolution of crypto gaming and has hired Steven Cho, a former Apple App Store games business manager to provide invaluable industry insight. 

• Despite the understandable popularity of play-to-earn gaming Marc Weinstein, head of platforms at Mechanism Capital, told CoinDesk in an interview “we want to back games that people want to play regardless of the crypto incentives.”

Play-to-earn gaming originally exploded with the rise in popularity of Axie Infinity and The Sandbox which provides speculators and participants with the ability to profit heavily. 

To find out how you can utilize play-to-earn to generate some extra income check out our article: Free Money.

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??‍♂️✍️ Stories in this newsletter were written by Isambard FA, Kai.A, Nick T., Max P., Kimia K., Ellen B. and Koroush AK. Graphics were produced by Ellen B.

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