Metacoin

Covering Bitcoin, the Blockchain, Altcoins, and Fintech

Seeing Through the FUD: How the Avalanche Network is Saving the NFT

(Editor’s Note: we’ve let our friend Anthony take the reins for this guest post.)

When FUD is at maximum and the bubble seems to have been thoroughly popped already, learn why the future of crypto looks bright for artists, developers, and users. I’m super bullish on Avax for at least three reasons: subnets, a talented artist community, and the best tokenomics project I have ever seen: Chikn.

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As of this writing, the markets have taken mega hits around the world. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt — better known to crypto enthusiasts as FUD — is a term that gets thrown around a lot but it’s representative of how emotionally-driven many crypto investors are and how incredibly wary most are of scams and the completely insane price volatility that crypto is known for. And they have a right to be hesitant since a reported $2.2 billion was stolen via crypto scams only in 2021 — and anyone trading NFTs can tell you that it’s like navigating a minefield sometimes. Those looking for easy money without any due diligence or attention were getting rekt by outrageous APR pump and dump scams, elaborate cash grabs, extreme volatility, and even the recent top 10 coin, Luna, getting obliterated due to a massive exploit with the UST algorithmic stablecoin.

Putting down their bloodshot eyes from their screens for a minute after 48 hours of staring at red candles, the crypto trader of 2022 is a battle-hardened veteran that is being told to go outside and take their minds off the market for a while before they go looney. Not too long ago, they were the green rookies getting into the degenerate world of NFTs and crypto trading. They have seen firsthand just how difficult trading can be — it’s said that 95% of traders lose money.

Often, people have no idea what they’re getting into as their nephew or third cousin or whoever told them to buy a dog coin back in 2017 and maybe they should have (nephew, is it too late to buy the dog coin?) and then wonder why their wallet went to 0 after plugging their metamask seed phrase into a phishing website (wait, I can’t email customer support or the SEC to get my money back?). These stories are far too common, unfortunately, and I barely scratched the surface here. 

It’s not just noobs getting destroyed also, but experienced vets that have been scammed and phished by professional, anonymous criminals taking advantage of the wild west unregulated DeFi space. But it’s all quite interesting, isn’t it? We are still here digging in our trenches.

*Insert my affiliate link to a hardware wallet here*. Just kidding, but seriously, look into getting a hardware wallet such as Ledger Nano X. Nobody will be able to make transactions without you physically using your device to approve it, which can prevent malicious code from emptying your wallet of your crypto and NFTs–it is happening all the time.

This is just the tip of the fudding iceberg, and even experienced veterans can get fooled by a professional scammer. Fortunately, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and silver lining to all of this. That light is the limitless ingenuity of the human spirit and how the cooperation of developers and artists on the Avalanche Network are redefining how NFTs are utilized, including pioneering art, tokenomics, community, and Avax Subnets. The silver lining may be that all these shenanigans and growing pains are happening now while crypto is still in its infancy — like my mom said, it’s better to get chickenpox when you’re a kid than when you’re an adult. The future looks good as we learn from expensive lessons and mistakes and build and grow into a more inclusive and safer Web 3.0 experience. Avax is leading the way on this development and I’ll briefly explain why I think this.

Three reasons why I’m bullish on AVAX

1. Avax Subnets

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Scaling is a major problem for the most popular networks. Ethereum could be said to be a victim of its own success — with more people using it come the insane eth gas fees we have reluctantly grown accustomed to, with many people using some kind of app to track gas prices and only do their business on off-peak hours — which could still be way too expensive for practical, transactional use. Not to mention that claiming rewards from the node projects right now costs more in Ethereum than they are actually making in claims, effectively killing even the “best” node projects such as Strong Nodes.

Avalanche is helping to solve this problem by building the foundations that create attractive opportunities for project developers. Subnets allow devs to build their own custom chains using their own custom native token as the gas fee. These networks can be optimized based on the needs of the organization or project. At least a few DeFi projects have already utilized subnets, namely DeFi Kingdoms and Crabada, and I know at least DFK is still under constant development despite some recent horrible price action with their token (but I could say that about literally every token right now including Bitcoin — although I shalt not fud as I’m still bullish in the long term). On those projects, gas fees are paid not in Avax, but in that project’s own native token, which basically means the gas is ridiculously cheap. 

GameFi is particulary suited to being hosted on its own subnet, as the game tokens can be used to pay for gas fees

Avax subnets are still in the baby stages and there’s so much potential for this tech. Entire blockchains could even be ported over to Avax subnets. You can look here for a “subnet demo” filled with lots of neat statistics and links.

Read the official website for more info about Subnets and why there is such massive potential for this technology.

2. Artists are pioneering the use cases and utility of NFT on Avalanche, with very affordable prices (unlike Eth)


A Swarms bee in Avax style

Artists are wisely utilizing the NFT as another primary sales avenue, and for good reason because it is allowing independent artists — especially independent female artists — a chance at making revenue. Historically, artists have always had clients or benefactors and so this is a continuation of that. 

However, artists collaborating on NFT projects are changing the game. These are high-powered NFTs that are sometimes breaking technological limitations and changing the idea of what an NFT is and can do.

The Swarms

For example, Swarms is a brilliant art project that gives super-detailed 4K HD bee art as part of an imaginative world that is an analog to our own world and culture, inviting the NFT owner to be a part an interactive artistic experience. There are seven different bee variations, called genotypes, and each bee has six body parts of varying rarity. You can evolve your bee by sacrificing another bee, which levels up your current NFT to “GEN II”. The NFT metadata changes as well as the artwork, giving you a brand new NFT that is based on the “genetic material” of the previous NFTs. It is an awesome blend of tech and co-creative storytelling. Swarms develops collaboratively with the Swarms NFT community, dubbed the Beekeepers.

The awesome lore gives context to the art and makes ownership fun and exciting. The project is clearly just in the early stages with a long and exciting roadmap. You can check out some of the articles I wrote about Swarms for more info — it’s awesome.

Web 3.0 Dieselpunk Metaverse

Metropius is a new multimedia Dieselpunk project which just launched their first NFT collection a few weeks ago. Minting a Metropius NFT allows one to claim an actual hard copy comic book for each NFT they mint. Years in development, Metropius is an award-winning animation that has expanded to include comic books, GameFi, a board game, merch, four NFT collectables, Augmented Reality (AR) and other perks. It has a long roadmap with neat rewards for holders. The metaverse will eventually be fueled by the $DIESEL native token which will be exchangeable with Avax. You can see my article about it here. There’s lots of active development going on with it.

There’s a lot more going on in the Avax art department, but these two are my favorite art projects right now, and it would be a good introduction to the type of creativity happening on Avalanche. It’s a great blend of pioneering tech and artistic ingenuity.

For the general user, Avax NFTs are also way more affordable – most NFTs are minting for only 1 or 2 Avax. Avax had an all time high of $134, which is considerably less than Ethereum’s high of $4732, with most NFTs minting for a bare minimum of a few hundred dollars and often trading for much more. Right now, you can buy a Swarms NFT for just under $60.

Avax also has a super great community, mostly through Twitter and Discord, and there are often Twitter spaces with giveaways and talks and lots of developments being shared by not only the artists but also developers and other community members such as myself. 

3. Stake-to-Earn Tokenomics: Featuring Chikn

When I buy an NFT now, I’m wondering if I will get any benefit from it. Sometimes, sure, I buy one just to support an artist I like, and that’s it. However, more and more NFTs — whether to compete or whatever — are offering various utility and the most popular of this is probably the stake-to-earn tokenomics model, where ‘staking’ your NFT will generate tokens which are then useable within the project’s ecosystem to upgrade the NFT. The token can also be traded for Avax/USDC/other coins (which is the real end game for these projects — people are looking to earn).

One project definitely worth looking into is Chikn.Farm.

Out of every NFT project I’ve encountered that offers utility or earning potential, Chikn is by far my favorite. 

It’s really quite simple which makes it so smart and compelling. Chikn NFTs lay $EGG which can then be used to upgrade the Chikn, but EGG is also used for other NFTs in the system including the Farm and Roostr NFT, which all work together to create a neat little game where you can choose to upgrade your NFTs, thereby generating more tokens in the future, or just selling them immediately on a decentralized exchange, or DEX, such as Trader Joe which is the best and most popular Avalanche DEX.

Anyway, super smart projects like Chikn have proven that NFT stake-to-earn projects can have both very interesting art as well as profitable and sustainable Tokenomics. And what’s really great about it is that they are basically passive income nodes that are MUCH easier to liquidate, since the NFT itself is generating daily tokens and there’s no need to lock anything up for long term-if markets go south, you can sell (and in a successful project like Chikn, you will find a buyer — Chikn NFT floor price is currently 32 Avax as of this writing –it minted for 1 Avax each last November).

Bullish on Crypto and Super Bullish on Avax

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Although I barely want to glance at my portfolio right now as I’ve been pretty unskilled at catching bottoms recently, I do believe that just buying and holding Avax for the next few years will end up being a profitable investment, regardless of any short term fluctuations. It seems the general sentiment is bullish but we are just being subjected to macroeconomics that takes its toll on everything. In any case, it’s a very interesting space to be involved with. I think once the real potential of subnets are realized, we are going to see a price explosion on Avax similar to Ethereum. If Avax had even just half the market cap of Eth, the price would be around $400–500. As of today we are about $22–25. And remember when Ethereum dipped to $80 and you wished you emptied your savings into it then? NFA at all but just saying….

~ AntCat

Crypto: Down. Stocks: Down. Inflation: Up. So What Do You Buy?

Here’s yet another post with a couple blatant caveats: (1) THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE and (2) NOBODY KNOWS WHAT’S GOING ON.

We’ve had a couple weeks here in CryptoLand. You name it, it’s down. Take our 2022 Growth Portfolio: a hypothetical $10,000 investment with $1,000 each in ten different crypto assets. Thank God it’s only hypothetical.

Screenshot from May 20, 5:30 a.m. CDT

It was a bloodbath. It still is kinda sorta a bloodbath, in that nobody knows if BTC saw the bottom, or if ETH’s move to Proof of Stake (known colloquially as “The Merge”) is going to be all that, or if stablecoins will stabilize.

And whether or not you’re better off throwing darts.

At Least the Stock Market Is Okay, Right?

Let’s answer the question in the meme with a screenshot.

Stock market, one-month performance.

The problem, though, is that to keep propping up the stock market, The Fed is going to need to thread the needle on interest rates. Too much of an increase and the stock market tanks. Too little of an increase and you can’t catch up with inflation.

So you’re painted into a corner because the stock market is so important to everyone’s 401(k) plan and the inflation rate — which is caused, DUH, by ALL THAT PANDEMIC MONEY PRINTING — is so important to everyone’s standard of living that it really REALLY stinks to be Jerome Powell right now.

Now, Let’s Talk Inflation. Cue Karen Carpenter…

“We’ve Only Just Begun…”

As David Stockman — President Reagan’s former Budget Director, native Midwesterner (shout-out to Michiana!), and future guest on my YouTube channel (call me!) — told us on Doug Casey’s Dispatch a couple weeks ago, we are collectively screwed. And it’s mostly thanks to central bankers.

That part about J-POW having a rough job is not an understatement; the corner we have been painted (printed) into is troublesome. Investors don’t know which assets to invest in, and the average Joe is more worried about real-life things like gas prices or the cost of food.

So…What DO You Buy?

We follow a few financial people on Twitter, on YouTube, and elsewhere. We’re nailing Jell-O to a tree here.

Here’s Joe from Heresy Financial, telling us (SPOILER ALERT) that Treasurys might be the way to go. Here’s another YouTuber — one we found from typing in “where to invest 2022” into the YouTube search bar, then going with the first one we found from the month of May — suggesting individual stocks. And here’s CNBC, taking a break from its “How This [NUMBER] Year-Old [JOB DESCRIPTION] Made [LARGE AMOUNT] By [ZAGGING WHEN EVERYONE ELSE ZIGGED AND/OR INHERITING MONEY]” template (shown here) to give us a whole host of ideas of where to invest in an inflationary environment.

Feel free to grab any of these ideas and batten down the hatches, right?

We’d refer you back (AGAIN) to our series called SHTF. Volume 1 is here and Volume 2 is here. But these are *mostly* crypto-related ideas (with a break for some precious metals and cash on hand). And that isn’t even guaranteed, if the last few weeks are any evidence.

TL;DR: See Elmo

Elmo Fire

Buckle Up. Good Luck.

Reputation Laundering in Crypto

To say that Do Kwon — the man behind $LUNA and $UST and the precipitous drop of both this past week — is a bit of a pariah might be the understatement of the year. It’s time, then, to launder his reputation.

On the website Ordinary Times, Dave recently shared his “Own The Narrative” framework in the context of student loan forgiveness. We put together a list of 8 rules — guidelines? concepts? — for owning the narrative, and we showed how the plan could unfold. Other real world issues took precedent in the various news cycles, but we think the framework still makes sense.

We mention that because we’re watching Do Kwon’s Reputation Laundering take place in real time (Sunday Morning, CDT in the USA), and we’re going to see which of the rules he’s applying already.

We’ll have to re-order these rules for today’s Reputation Laundering, but we’ve found half of them already being employed.

Be The Name Dropper (Rule 5)

We think Laura Shin is one of the top journalists working in crypto today. She certainly has the industry bona fides and has a popular podcast with thousands of listeners. You could argue that there is no better choice to go live with than Laura.
This is exactly what Do Kwon is doing right now. It’s “Name Dropping,” but raised to the nth degree. I’ve been watching for 40 minutes already at 9 a.m. Central Time.

If you are in reputational trouble, you need to associate with someone like Laura, and you need to do so quickly.

Start at the Finish Line (Rule 1)

“UST will repeg and LUNA $1 per LUNA next Week.” That is a bullish “Finish Line” statement. It is not very believable right now — if your coins drop to the tune of the below graphic, telling us that you’re going to be on the medal stand isn’t something we can bank on.

This morning’s price also tells us how unrealistic this is.

This works hand in hand with another of the rules…

Make Hubris Your Friend (Rule 3)

To get to $1, $LUNA needs to go up not 5, not 50, but 5000 times from here. Meanwhile, Mr Kwon is on the podcast smiling while talking about things like Korean crypto crashes. (9:10 a.m. Chicago time.)

Use Malleable Definitions to Your Advantage (Rule 6)

The definition of “stablecoin” is probably the most malleable one in modern crypto. These coins — they started this whole mess — are supposed to be pegged to real US dollars (or another similar asset) that is then backed by a cryptocurrency equivalent. In other words, if I put the stablecoin up on a blockchain platform, and it’s worth $1, I should then use my Bitcoin to buy US Treasurys or another stable asset. Questions have come up for the last few years about just how much of the asset is parked somewhere with other coins; but where the Do Kwons of the world got into trouble was using their own algorithmic magic AND their own crypto asset as the “stable” asset backing the token.

1 UST equaled 1 USD until it really didn’t, because, instead of having $10,000 in US T-bills to back $10,000 in UST, they had $10,000 of their own coin. It was ready for an exploit, and, if you want a primer on how that went down, watch this video from two months ago.

This Is the Most Egregious Crime

The worst Reputation Laundering crime is being committed, and it’s not any of the above rules, is this:

THIS IS A SCAM. Do not do this. Never send crypto to anyone with the hopes of getting more crypto back.

How NOT to Launder Your Reputation

Since it’s crypto, and it’s perceived to be the Wild West, and Mr Kwon is out in Singapore and is from Korea and has the perception of a world-traveling vagabond, his moves are not surprising.

And they are completely, totally, 100% awful.

He’s torching the reputation of his own coins, his own projects, and his own name in real time. The rest of the industry will have a ton of work to fix this.

Help With Crypto Doom Scrolling

If you’re looking for a bright spot, any bright spot, where do you look? Darn good question. We don’t know, either. But here are a couple things to help. Maybe.

It’s Not as Bad This Morning as It Was Overnight

Our 2022 Crypto Growth Portfolio

Behold, the numbers from the 2022 Crypto Growth Portfolio. The columns next to price are (first) 1-hour change and (second) 24-hour change.

Sell in May and Go Away has been replaced by “buy stuff an hour ago, watch it go up 5% on average, then sell it all and buy some foodstuffs.”

BTW, your $10,000 investment in the 2022 Growth Portfolio is now…$6702.

At Least You’re Not LUNA or UST

(If you are holding one of those or you’re part of the teams behind those…scroll on to the next subhead. Trust us.)

Here’s a chart of what happened overnight to UST.

This is after yours truly thought they had somewhat kinda righted the ship after sorta kinda having one of those weird days the other day.

Still, this is a coin that is pegged to the US Dollar and uses something called “an algorithm” to keep its price at $1.00 Or so we thought; but, as a wise man once told me, sometimes the quants get it wrong.

One year of UST

360 days of being thisclose to $1 each. And then the rug gets pulled. It’s Soros-level market manipulation (Learn more about that here: Soros.) It’s not done.

Below you’ll find a 24-hour price chart for $LUNA, which backs $UST.

We’re being nice. Could have shared the 1-year chart.

Then There’s $COIN

Oy. Coinbase is having a rough go of it, eh? Much will be discussed about the company’s growth — whether too much too quick or the post-IPO blues — but it’s really a yikes moment.

Not a good look.

(We won’t even mention the infamous “Jim Cramer Albatross” rating the stock a buy all the way up to $475.)

Carnage, Carnage Everywhere

The bubbles are popping left and right; not just in crypto. Used-car marketplace Carvana has laid off 12% of its staff. While you’d *think* this has something to do with inflation and used-car demand, you’d be slightly right but actually way wrong.

Read the thread, short the stock.

This is about that “Irrational Exuberance” that the Fed warned us about back before they became a meme.

At Least Inflation Is Better, Right?

Narrative highlights tell you it’s not so bad.

The narrative machine has kicked in already: it slowed (from 8.5% last month, but that’s year-over-year) but it actually went up (0.3% month-to-month). And Gasoline isn’t bad because the index fell, but energy prices went up year-over-year.

Now What?

“RETVRN” is a common cry among trads on Twitter. Better days ahead if we go back to what better days were like before. Or something like that.

Good luck.

Creators Gotta Create (and Announcing Our New Collection)

We saw a maxim somewhere on the internet and decided to share it: “Be brave enough to suck at something new.” If the web3 explosion has taught us anything, it’s that there are completely new ways of making a buck — and creators (like you, perhaps?) are learning new and interesting tactics along the way.

And some of us — maybe some of you — weren’t very good at it to start. We get better: the more you write, the more often you write, the better you become at writing. The more you make music, the more often you make music, the better a musician you become. We could go on…

We Are Onto Our 4th NFT Collection

A year ago, we started sucking at something new here: our first collection of NFTs. (The first one is here, created on March 14, 2021.) Called the “Obvious Statement Collection,” the goal was to come up with a few pieces — we’ve created 25 of them so far — that told you something that was, well, obvious. (And maybe semi-controversial, like the statement below.)

Collection two, “One Hundred NFTs,” was perhaps a little better but, as art goes, it ain’t great. Three, though, we’re especially proud of: #Sketches2021 is its name (see below about the giveaway!) and here’s a link to all 256 of them: Sketches 2021.

So it’s time for our fourth collection. We’ve entitled it “Collezione” and the plan is 256 pieces (again; that’s a nice number that is definitely attainable.) 26 of them have been created so far. And we’re pretty pleased with how they’ve turned out.

w123 in the Collezione series

We’re Giving Two NFTs Away!

So here’s what’s up with the giveaways*: All you have to do is follow the instructions below by March 31. We’ll pick two at random and one will get a piece from Sketches2021 and one will get a piece from Collezione. Those instructions…

  • Follow @teammetacoin on Twitter or Instagram. (You can do both to increase your chances!)
  • Like at least one of our posts from between March 20 and March 24.

On April 2, 2022, we’ll select one Twitter follower and one Instagram follower at random (* here’s where the asterisk comes in, as this is not a sweepstakes or contest or the like, all decisions final and it’s a gift and there’s no cash value) and we’ll send them a DM and they’ll respond with their ETH address and enjoy their new artwork.

Good luck! Now go create something.