The First Ever Axie Infinity Lunacia Scholarship League Invitationals (March 8, 2021)
Good morning. Welcome to Monday Markets Wrap-up, part of our new series: BitPinas Daily. We will look back at all the major news and updates that happened this week. Crypto is global, but sometimes news that matters happens while we sleep. So we bring to you what’s happening in our space here and abroad. We highlight three to four important news of the past week and list down the rest.
Market Price as of March 8, 2021:
| Bitcoin | $51,313 | +4.68% |
| Ethereum | $1,727.46 | +4% |
| BNB | $240.06 | +6.22% |
| DOT | $35.24 | +5.23% |
| ADA | $1.14 | +0.88% |
| SLP | $0.05 | -4.1% |
Bitcoin closed March 7, 2021, at $51,313 per BTC. We’re up 12.6% in the last 7 days and up 74% since the year began. This is also 12% below the all-time high of $58,640, which was hit on Feb. 21, 2021.
Bitcoin’s market capitalization stands today at $945,124,788,722 which is 58% of the entire cryptocurrency market. The entire crypto market, by the way, now has a market cap of $1,601,698,996,238 (+2.5%).
On the table above, there’s the cryptocurrency SLP. If you wonder what that is, check out this article: Playing Axie Infinity vs Minimum Basic Salary in the Philippines.
Tweets for Sale
Is This The Next Frontier?
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has minted his first ever tweet on Valuables by Cent, which is a service that allows users to mint, sell, and bid on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of tweets.
At the time I wrote this, the highest offer for Dorsey’s first tweet is $2,500,000 by @sinaEstavi, who is the CEO of Bridge Oracle, which is a project on the Tron blockchain.
What happens if you purchase Dorsey’s Tweet? This is what Valuables (the platform) said:
“The tweet itself will continue to live on Twitter. What you are purchasing is a digital certificate of the tweet, unique because it has been signed and verified by the creator.
This autographed digital certificate will only be issued once on Valuables. It is signed using cryptography, and includes metadata of the original tweet like: when the tweet was posted, what the text contents are of the tweet, the timestamp of the tweet, and the digital signature from the creator’s crypto wallet address.”
Why should you pay to own a tweet? This is what Valuables said:
“Owning any digital content can be a financial investment, hold sentimental value, and create a relationship between collector and creator. Like an autograph on a baseball card, the NFT itself is the creator’s autograph on the content, making it scarce, unique, and valuable.”
My own personal take on this subject can be found in this Twitter thread:
What are NFTs? Check out the BitPinas article: Non-Fungible Tokens – NFT 101 – Why People are Spending Millions of Dollars for Crypto Art and Digital Items
Citi
Citi: Bitcoin Could Become the Currency of Choice for International Trade
Citi researchers are forecasting that Bitcoin’s core properties, combined with its global reach and neutrality, could see it become the “currency” of choice for international trade in around seven years.
“A focus on global reach and neutrality could see bitcoin become an international trade currency. This would take advantage of bitcoin’s decentralized and borderless design, its lack of foreign exchange exposure, its speed and cost advantage in moving money, the security of its payments, and its traceability.”
But aren’t nations developing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) to simplify trade? Citi explained that Bitcoin is better for this role because if the trade used Bitcoin, the government or any entity won’t be able to take steps to affect the supply and demand of the trade currency. This will decouple trade from political considerations.
At least one problem, Citi said, is Bitcoin’s scalability issues. At 5 transactions per second, it is 2,00 times slower than Visa.
“All of these views about Bitcoin’s potential and how it influences and helps to inspire new business models emerging in the blockchain domain are what leads us to call it the North Star. Whether it maintains this position and how far the potential transformation it has inspired extends are both unknowable at this time, but Bitcoin’s journey has clearly entered a new stage.”
“Bitcoin is at the tipping point of its existence and the path forward from here may have broad and widening repercussions.”
Ripple x MoneyGram
Both Companies End Their Partnership
Under the terms of the partnership, Ripple had been paying MoneyGram to use XRP tokens in international settlement since 2019. Moneygram had netted $61.5 million in “market development fees” from Ripple.
Last week, Moneygram was charged for allegedly misleading investors about XRP. The class-action lawsuit stated:: “[MoneyGram made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: XRP, the cryptocurrency that MoneyGram was utilizing as part of its Ripple partnership, was viewed as an unregistered and therefore unlawful security by the SEC.”
Dogecoin
Mavs is the largest Dogecoin merchant in the world
#CryptoPH
Bloom’s New App for Crypto Trading
BloomSolutions has announced that it is launching “BloomX.app”, a new cryptocurrency trading platform for Filipinos. The app will allow Philippine residents to securely trade over 250 cryptocurrencies in exchange for PHP. Among the cryptocurrencies that can be traded are popular ones like Bitcoin and Ethereum, the DeFi token Aave, Swipe’s SXP, and Axie Infinity’s SLP. Those interested to try the app can join the waitlist here.
“This is not an app for professionals. We are aiming squarely at the average individual who wants to buy or sell smaller amounts of cryptocurrency, and are no longer satisfied with the limited offerings of other local providers.” – Luis Buenaventura
Yield Guild Games Raises Funding To Bring Gamers to the Metaverse
YGG recently announced that it has raised $1.325 million from a seed round led by Delphi Digital. The funds will be used to invest in game assets and virtual lands and YGG, effectively acting as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), will lend these game assets in virtual worlds to its players so they can earn income.
YGG is in the business of scouting which of the blockchain games have NFTs that can earn yield for players so that more people can participate in what it thinks is the future of work — jobs and participation in the “metaverse“, a shared virtual world similar to the virtual world seen in the film Ready Player One. There’s still a lot of room to grow in this shared metaverse and YGG is intending to take everyone from all walks of life in that ride.
“Everybody is talking about NFTs, but we’re demonstrating what you can actually do with them. In particular, the idea of play-to-earn gaming is giving people all over the world a chance to earn real money while doing what they enjoy,” Gabby Dizon, founder of YGG, remarked.
Lunacian Scholarship League (LSL) Held
The LSL invitational took place on March 6 and 7 to serve as a prelude for the longer formal league launching in April 2021.
LSL or the Lunacian Scholarship League is a tournament partnership between education hub BlockchainSpace and SEAesport, the Southeast Asian esports organization behind the tournament series: Community Showdown (Valorant x GrabFood, CS: Go x VPGame).
Sponsors include Community Gaming together with Axie Infinity, the game developer, esports design firm Overdrive Studios, HaloDao, JihoDao, and YGG.
Why was this done?
According to Peter Ing, founder of BlockchainSpace, at 2 – 4 hours playing time per day for Axie scholars, many may have forgotten that those hours are like an equivalent of a part-time job.
“We want to remind the scholar community why they were attracted to the game in the first place and build a fun tournament program designed for them” – Peter Ing
What’s the takeaway?
Chris Gonsalves, CEO of Community Gaming said they are excited to support the SEA community of #PLayToEarn gamers and help build out the competitive infrastructure in Axie Infinity.
“I think this year we’re going to see more esports teams competing in blockchain-enabled games and earning tokens from tournaments as well as acquiring valuable in-game assets.”
Takeaway on Axie Scholarships
Brief refresher: Axie Infinity players can legit earn top money from playing Axie Infinity every day. Onboarding however remains complicated (installing MetaMask, education on cryptocurrencies, etc) and gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain might limit the appeal of even attempting to try the game.
But Peter Ing and many others know how powerful and life changing this game can be, as evidenced by an article on Coindesk where a family survived the loss of jobs during the pandemic by playing the game every day.
Axie Scholarships is a system wherein a group would lend out Axies to gamers who would play the game, with both the gamer and the group or organization sharing on the SLP earned per game. This is how Scholarships are usually conducted:
- Loans of 3-Axie Teams
- Education on Axie Infinity and SLP Farming
- Education on Crypto and its applications in Axie Infinity
- Community Building & Support
The group, such as Axie Academy of BlockchainSpace and Yield Guild Games, would provide the onboarding and mentorship to make sure the gamer is successful in the game.
According to Lars Hernandez of Overdrive, Axie scholarships could provide the framework to future blockchain-native esports teams:
“We truly believe that Axie scholarships are not only a powerful onboarding tool for new players to get to play and earn in the Axie Universe, but also we believe that they are the future blockchain native esports teams in the making. We look forward to creating a platform for these scholarships to compete, thrive, and grow. For those who aren’t in scholarships and are already axie owners themselves, don’t worry we have a lot in store for the future!” – Lars Hernandez.
What else is happening
- No more ‘Bitcoin effect’? MicroStrategy stock falls by 50% in 17 days.
- John McAfee Indicted by DOJ on Money Laundering, Fraud Charges for Boosting ICOs
- Publicly-listed beauty apps maker Meitu buys $40 million in BTC, ETH
This article is published on BitPinas: The First Ever Axie Infinity Lunacia Scholarship League Invitationals (March 8, 2021)
