August Market Update⛓
All Eyes on the Fed...and Ethereum PART II
Summer doldrums will come to an end soon with big market moving events in September. We will get CPI inflation numbers and if they are lower once again (last month inflation was lower than the previous month as I expected) then we will know inflation peaked in June. The data for August will be available on September 13th and the Fed FOMC meeting will be on September 21st. If inflation peaked and other economic data are weak the Fed may increase rates by lower than expected (bullish), keep rates flat (very bullish), or cut (insanely bullish). Furthermore, any pause on quantitative tightening and maybe even a pivot to easing would add extra rocket fuel to a risk-assets recovery. China actually cut rates in mid-august so this is in the realm of possibility. Everything I’m looking at points to lower inflation and recessionary economic activity. And if this wasn’t exciting enough, we also have the Ethereum Merge scheduled for sometime between September 13-15th. The Merge is the biggest event in Web3 since the last Bitcoin halving in May of 2020. The impact of the Merge on ETH will be ~3x that of the Halving on Bitcoin and possibly greater. The recent trade has been to dump NFTs for ETH to maximize the amount of Proof of Work ETH after the Merge (if you own ETH now you will have the new Proof of Stake ETH in addition to the old Proof of Work ETH). After the Merge we could see an inflow back into NFTs which have been beat up lately by the macro environment as well as very low trading volume and a very boring and quiet summer with no updates from key blue chip projects (which have all been feverishly building this whole time).
Currently, my top investment ideas are CloneX, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Doodles, Otherside, Moonbirds, Ethereum, Bitcoin, and ApeCoin.
RTFKT recently announced forging on their new DNA collections. More details expected to rollout soon.
RTFKT has so much planned over the next 4 months that they should be dominating crypto twitter and attention.
Otherside is expected to announce another demo for September. And the most bullish news came from Gordon Goner from Yuga when in an interview he mentioned that Otherside was more of a platform than a game, like a Web3 Roblox.
BAYC has been quiet other than the bullish interview (above) they did recently as well as their 1M Twitter follower celebration held on Twitter Spaces. Gordon Goner was emphatic and pumped up as he repeated many times that this year is going to be insane and they have a massive team now (~80 people, up from 8 in January) and are working on all current projects as well as many secret ones.
Also, the next milestone on their disclosed roadmap is the Trial of Jimmy the Monkey, for which you will need a Doggo (Bored Ape Kennel Club NFT).
PROOF has their big semi-annual alpha event on August 30th called FuturePROOF. They are expected to announce a plethora of material updates to all aspects of the PROOF ecosystem, including Moonbirds.
In a recent community broadcast Kevin Rose dropped a Moonbirds coin in the Discord as well as described project High Rise as a Web3 Platform that will be a landing page with massive utility for all things Web3 and available to all.
They also announced that Oddities can be burned for Moonbirds 2, this catalyzed the floor to double in minutes.
Doodles is expected to announce more around the utility of the Duplicator, Genesis Box and news about Doodles2.
The Ethereum Merge is expected on September 13-15th. This is the hall-mark event of the year for Web3 and of all-time for Ethereum.
Bitcoin continues to penetrate the global financial system like an ocean devouring a desert. There has been so much extremely bullish fundamental news coming out, yet failing to impact price due to the pessimistic macro-overhang. All this will be violently priced in once sentiment changes.
Apecoin acceptance news keep rolling in with the 10KTF project moving to Apecoin from New Tokyo Dollars and Gucci announcing adoption.
The next investment idea is a Web3 company that has ambitions to become the largest decentralized community owned and built brand in the Metaverse. If you haven’t already, please upgrade your subscription now to receive it when it is published at the end of the month.
To the moon and beyond,
Andrew
Disclaimer
The content of this letter is for informational and entertainment purposes, and should not be construed as personal investment advice.