Analyzing the Future of Crypto - BTC, ETH, Solana, and Multichain Trends

In this episode of Market Muse, Gramajo delves into the latest developments in the cryptocurrency world. He discusses the recent performance of ETH and BTC, speculating on the impact of future ETF news. Gramajo highlights the trend toward multichain usage and the implications for artists navigating various blockchains for NFT minting. Privacy concerns surrounding the delisting of privacy coins from exchanges and the burning of NFT artworks are also examined. The episode concludes with a review of notable NFT sales and auctions, offering insights into the evolving landscape of digital art. Join us for this insightful exploration of the current trends and challenges in the crypto and NFT markets.

00:00 Etherscan acquired, Vulcan supports Solana, VC money.
06:12 Artists adapting to new digital market trends.
07:16 BTC side technology diverse, adapting for NFTs.
13:33 Zcash faces challenges, privacy remains a concern.
16:10 Rapid events, Max Payne joke, collector's dilemma.
19:24 Notice similarities in artists' work and drops.
22:50 BTC art scene booming with high bids.

Zealy word is multichain

Transcript

0:24

So welcome to another episode. Happy New Year 2024 market muse yes, let's get started. Since January 1, ETH is up 11% from 22,200. Sorry, BTC is down 5.4% from January 1, and it started off the year at reason kind of I wanted to highlight this is we'll get into a little bit, kind of on the future of what's happening, the ETF news and all that. But it's safe to say that probably the pricing on bitcoin, on the ETF news was already baked into that price. So that's probably why you could see some of this downturn. And with ETH up 11% and speculation around ETH ETF on the horizon later this year, we could, maybe it is a different asset and all that, but we could make an assumption that the same thing could happen as well. Where the price right now is going up, it's rallying from all time lows up to this price point. Obviously, we're still about 50% away from all time highs, which was about 4000 ish usd. So if the price keeps climbing, it's just something to keep aware of. The price could be baked in, so when the news drops, it could drop again, not financial advice, but just something to keep in mind. Got three stories for you guys in the past two weeks. It's been a busy two weeks to start off the year. The first one I wanted to kind of call out is the future of crypto and how it's multichain. So one thing we've noticed in the past kind of two weeks or so, even further back, but I think this is currently what's going on in the market as a whole is we've seen tools like Phantom Wallet, which is from Solana, supporting ETH and BTC ordinals. On top of Sol, we've seen magic Eden support Solana, obviously from the go, but also BTC ordinals. We've seen Etherscan acquire recently the sole blockchain Explorer, so the equivalent of Etherscan. But for Solana, we've seen Vulcan, which is discord, token gating and a bunch of other tools. Actually, now they're getting pretty big and doing a lot of good stuff, but they're recently also starting to support BTC ordinals. So where does that kind of put us? Well, I think one observation that's interesting about all this is that as much as people don't, whether you're ETH, Maxi, BTC Maxi, or any kind of maxi whatever, one thing that is kind of apparent is that Solana definitely skews a lot younger than my age group, which I guess we're the old boomers now at this stage. But they also do have a lot of VC money. So whether you believe on the centralization or the not centralization of Solana and their fast transactions, they do have a lot of vcis, a lot of VC money. A lot of their founders come from really big tech companies. So it is kind of interesting to see them expand from sold to other tools as opposed to metamask and Opensea and all these other companies that had a really big lead when it came to the marketplace. They haven't expanded, really, from ETH, except for Etherscan. I think they see the writing on the wall and they're trying to get ahead of it as much as they can. And good on know, it does seem like the future for all of us is multichain. I think you can't say that you're just going to stick in one blockchain. And it is what it is, I think, to reach critical mass, we're going to get rid of these tribal wars of which crypto or blockchain is better. I think users won't even know that we're even using crypto or blockchain technology. They're just going to know that they got their skins or whatever for their video games or collectibles that are verifiable and bringing us to kind of modern day or just now in the present day. Artists are definitely at a crossroads. The crossroads being is if you got a lot of success in ETH. So obviously, the ETH marketplace for NFTs is definitely very mature and has been maturing for the last couple years. And so now a lot of artists are looking at, do they mint on Solana, do they mint on bitcoin with inscriptions and ordinals? And how do you do that right, without alienating your current existing holders and further exacerbates or kind of creates this roadmap that's very convoluted. So we recently Amadon, who had a really good drop on ETH doppelganger, and he's been really pushing the boundaries on tech with transient. He decided to go Solana. A lot of artists are going, you know, they're all exploring different places. Some artists, like Kath, who's a photographer, she did a salana drop, I think, a year or two ago. So like in 2022, 2021 probably. And back then, a lot of people were attacking artists for doing salana drops. And now the beta sort of changed a bit. So it seems like, that's like the cool thing to do now. And obviously they have their own culture, their own people, their own whales, all that. So the tech is kind of similar to eth, but it is different things, different terminology, different everything that you have to kind of learn. It takes a lot of energy as an artist to get familiar and up to speed with that if you want to do it properly, if you just want to mint and drop and get your money, get your bag and get out, then probably it takes less mindpower to do that. You just got to figure out how to mint, and that's pretty much it. But at least, like BTC, there's size limitations, unless you're extremely rich or don't really care. There's a lot of technology in the BTC side that's different from the east side. So there's parent child relationships, there's on chain metadata, there is cursed inscriptions. So negative numbers. Yeah, there's a lot more going on on the BTC side that they've had to get kind of creative to be able to have nfts on. Know, it's, if you're a dj that's on multiple chains, then none of this probably scares you. But if you're a casual person, it's just a whole other new wallet, new everything that you got to learn. I mean, luckily, the tools like Phantom Eden magic Eden ether scan and all that, they're making it a little bit easier or the barrier for entry a little easier. Yeah, it definitely seems that the future is multi chain, as much as we don't want to admit that if you don't, as a previous kind of person that used to be a BTC, Maxi, I'm okay with this. The future has been multi chained for me for a very long time. For a very long time, I was a maxi on the BTC side. Anything else that wasn't, you know, quote unquote shitcoin for me. So it's definitely been a multi chain world for me for a very long time. So I'm okay with experimenting and being up to speed with other chains. So I'm a big supporter of stacks, which is the layer two from bitcoin that's been doing really well for me. And, yeah, that seems to be one of the metas. The other thing I wanted to call out for everybody is privacy coins. So, second topic, as crypto goes mainstream, privacy coins are definitely at risk, and privacy as a whole is at risk. So, obviously, the big news at the beginning of the year is the BTC ETF got approved what does that mean? So obviously, the price of BTC definitely went up. It's gone down since, but it definitely went up. It's currently above$40,000. BTC, as most people know, is a transparent blockchain. So you could follow really the Satoshis really back to where they came from originally. So in some cases you could go all the way back to the first block that they were mined from, Satoshi himself. So essentially we have zero privacy on there. ETH is the same way as well. So we had tools in Eth that tried doing this and these same tools kind of existed in bitcoin as well. So in BTC we have coinjoin, which we all send similar sized amount of money. Think of like kind of washing money a little bit. Not to evoke crime behavior, but that's kind of what it is. Think like a washing machine. Everything goes in. We don't know who gets what and what got what, so it obfuscates it a little bit more. Obviously, it takes a level of diligence to be able to keep that money separate because the moment you combine it with your money that hasn't been coin joined, then you've sort of lost that edge. So a little bit more complicated. Same with ETh, has that as well with tornado cash. Tornado cash recently. Last year, at the very end of the year, they got into some legal troubles. They got banned, some people got arrested. So privacy is definitely in danger right now. And the reason why I bring it up is Zcash and Monero both are getting delisted from binance. So Monero's always had issues with centralized exchanges. They've been getting banned and delisted for years. There was even a bounty from the IRS to crack the code or deciphering. And so companies could do blockchain analysis on Monero. They haven't been successful. I think the IRS put up even like a couple hundred thousand dollars for the person that could crack that code. And they haven't been able to crack that nutshell. Zcash, it's one of the other bigger privacy coins. They have a system where you could turn on. So it's like by option you could turn on private transactions or you could keep it public. So it's just a matter of you choosing. But even that kind of wishy wash stance doesn't seem like it sits well with the SEC and the US government and therefore a lot of governments as well. So they're thinking about delisting. So Zcash, you know, they talked about trying to be able to find ways to comply with the request from binance and also by the requests of the government through binance. Essentially, binance got in trouble here in the US. So it's pretty easy to kind of connect the dots that the SEC and the financial institutions and regulatory financial institutions here in the US have. Binance kind of, they got them where they want them. So if they want to do business in the biggest market in crypto in the world, which is the US, then they sort of have to listen to them, which they're going to make. There's a lot of money to be made as a centralized exchange. And so they're going after Zcash and Monero. Monero was kind of like, they took it. No news for them. They weren't going to change how the tool works or the crypto and their ethos and what they stand for. So they said, cool, we'll get delisted. Zcash was trying to make it more work for them, but even with the changes that they wanted to introduce, it seemed like that was not enough. So they're also getting delisted as well. Privacy is a big thing that I care about, so this is why I bring it up. So our privacy is definitely at risk with the EtH ETF potentially getting approved this year and maybe some stablecoin coming from the government, privacy is a right, in my opinion, and not a luxury. And even if you're not doing anything malicious or illegal, I still think you should be allowed to. Cash is pretty private if you interact with cash, so it should be the same way. Obviously, they don't like that. But, yeah, you don't have to be a criminal to like privacy, in my opinion. You could just like privacy to like it. All right, next topic. So X copy, Max Payne. So for those not familiar, Max Payne is an NFT from X copy that dropped, believe, two years ago now in March 2022. I dropped her in ETh. Back then, ETH was, I believe, around 3000, if I'm not mistaken, a little bit more than what it is now. The floor price on this piece got down pretty low. Got down to, like, 0.3.28, definitely below 0.4. Right now, it's hovering about zero point 49 e. So about half an ETH or so. And we've been having a lot of burns. So Max copy is gone, X Pain is gone, or X copy has gone very Oprah Winfrey on this whole thing. So we've had about four burns now, which has brought down the supply of Max Payne about 15%. So what does this all mean? I've been trying to interpret this myself. Some collectors are happy with kind of what's going on. Some are not. I myself own two Max pains myself. That I bought midday. So down in the hole on that one. But I wouldn't say I'm unhappy. I wouldn't say I'm ecstatic either. I'm kind of just trying to figure out where I sit in all this. Well, one thing's for sure is the style is cool. I like it. The launching or dropping of these pieces so quickly next to each other. So two weeks, essentially, in two weeks, this has all happened. I'm trying to understand, was the Max Payne joke. Because people were saying when reveal was that for this whole time that has passed. And now the performance is done. And now these burns are the result of that performance. Or is there more there for collectors themselves? So the way these burns have been working is essentially, you have to burn one piece plus some more eth. So dot one eth. And we've had four pieces. There was one that we had that was one piece plus two e. So nothing too crazy. But we're waiting to see when we'll have a multiple max pain burn. And I'll share my screen right here for you guys to see what Max Payne looks like for those that aren't familiar. So this is Max Payne here. Really cool piece. Definitely really like it. And then the pieces that have dropped, I will show them now. So we've had four pieces. Most of them have been pretty high additions. 500. This one sideways ended up being dropped right after bang bang. This one was the one that had two eth. Plus the max pain burn. And immediately the sideways drop, which was supposed to be one of 500. But it only 420 people burned. This was the original one. The oblivion. That was 500 pieces. And then this one right now is a quote, unquote open edition. Till the end of the year for people to burn. And, yeah, I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out where I stand with this. Let me know what you think. I'm kind of concerned more from the perspective of. I'm more concerned from the perspective of. Well, one. I really, actually like the piece myself, personally. Max Payne. It is the first x hoping piece I ever got. So I don't see myself burning it anytime soon, personally. And the reason kind of being for that, and I know that it's a different tool, is lucress had a similar drop and still does, called the jack. So the jack was like a timed open edition. And he's done a lot of burns since then. And one thing that kind of stood out to me about that, and again, two different artists, two different chains, that's on tezzos eth. Price points are different. Not trying to say that it's the exact same scenario, but just an observation for me is that a lot of the pieces from those burns from lacrosse have gone below the price or the sacrifice that had to be done. So for me, example, my max pain is one eth. And if I have to do another one eth, that's one. One eth. So about $3,300,$3,400 if I take in the original price, obviously eth this eth, either way you slice it, it's still below. And the prices on these pieces are like half an e 75. I mean, you could definitely get them all for under one eth. So if there's four pieces or three pieces, you get all of them really for under two e. And personally, I'd rather do that. I'd rather get them for two eth and keep my Max Paynes. I suspect that they'll go up in price, just like the jack. Shout out to the jack. So I'm going to wait and I'm going to keep collecting those max pains. I think they're going to be valuable, but there's a balance at some point, I don't know if the max pain journey is. We want them to all go away. If this is it, who knows? Only x copy knows. So we'll see. Let me know what you think. All right, to wrap up, got some notable sales and auctions. So I'm going to show these two notable sales in the last two weeks is last prayer by otherworld. Sold for 23 e. Really dope piece. Very religious piece, but, yeah, 23 e. Very nice piece. I really like this background back here. This sort of reminds me of in photography, you can get a similar effect, like when you are processing your images. So I really like this then ripcash system by Ripcash. Ripcash, who also recently dropped some pieces in BTC called swarm. Those have been doing pretty well, too. This piece here sold for 1969 e. So decent chunk of change. Rip cash. As one of the artists that has been dropping in ordinals recently and quite a bit. It sort of fits with his ethos and style. So it's been awesome seeing him drop more on the BTC side. And he's definitely getting recognized for this. I think the BTC ordinal scene is definitely going to mature art wise, especially as these kind of artists that are popular on the east side start minting and dropping on the ordinal side, there's two auctions right now going on, so Sotheby's is doing a BTC ordinals drop inscriptions. This piece right here, far the Genesis cap from Taproot Wizards is currently at $120,000 bid. It's actually a pretty cool piece. I kind of like it. Yeah. So that auction is going down right now. And then my favorite for sure is the Lucresa benediction from between worlds 65k. Currently the auctions for both of these are the whole lot ends January. Can take out an app to figure out when that is your local time. Really awesome pieces again. So lucress has dropped this on BTC as well. So if we have rip cash lucres, we have neurokiller recently also dropped a piece. I think the maturity over on the ornal side is definitely going to be there. I mean, the same could be said also for Solana as well. So a lot of artists that drop on ETH are now dropping on Solana as well. The barrier is a little lower for that one. There's not as much size limitation on that one. It's very similar to east. But for these bitcoin drops, unless you're extremely rich, 100 megabyte file would cost you, or even a 1 mb file would cost you a lot of money, like half a bitcoin just to mint, which is a lot to mint. So you got to get your sizes down. But these pieces are great and give us a good insight or glimpse into what's to come on the warno slide. And I like Warno. So yeah, thanks again for joining in tuning in. I'll be doing these bi weekly like and subscribe. I have a newsletter and for those of you listening via know you can check this out on YouTube as well. If you want to give it a like subscribe leave leave reviews on the podcasting app on YouTube. Anyways, thanks again. See, I see.