Triaconta Weekly #213

The following topics will be addressed in this weekly.

  • Bundle performance
  • Winners & Losers
  • Market overview

Bundle performance
Inflation and rising interest rates have dampened return expectations for stocks and bonds, making cryptocurrencies (relatively) attractive. Both the Nasdaq and S&P500 are trading at their lowest prices of the year, and our own AEX seems to be heading towards that point again. And this while Bitcoin is still well above its lowest price of €30,000 (on January 24, 2022). There has been an abundance of news about crypto and blockchain adoption and just as many stories lately about how low the prices are going to sink. it really will go up again. Triaconta Bundles are not meant to be invested in for a week, or a month. What will the market look like next year, or in five or ten years? Bundles are long-term investments and actually the best time to invest in them is when the market is (very) low.

Big 3:
1 Month: -17.01% | 7D: -5.63% | 24H: -6.38%

Top 30:
1 Month: -28.10% | 7D: -10.73% | 24H: -8.97%

Penny stock:
1 Month: -32.44% | 7D: -11.47% | 24H: -11.20%

DeFi:
1 Month: -33.11% | 7D: -12.66% | 24H: -9.82%

Winners & Losers

There are always exceptions. Tron (+29%) is doing extremely well after launching its own USDD stablecoin. Algorand (+6%) struck a major sponsorship deal with FIFA, the global soccer federation. They are also becoming a blockchain partner and are going to help FIFA develop its own NFT collection. This week, Kyber Network (-46%) is the big loser, surrendering a month’s worth of profits. This is followed by Kava (-26%), Filecoin (-20%), Fantom (-19%) and Axie Infinity (-17%). Solana (-13%) is actually getting off easy after a third network outage that prevented transactions from being done for hours. The network once again became overloaded and, like Ethereum this week, could not handle the number of transactions. Adoption can also sometimes go too fast for developers to keep up with.

Market overview

Terra buys another 1.5 billion in Bitcoin, passing Tesla and becoming the second-largest business owner of Bitcoin with 80,934 BTC.

The government of Argentina obtained a $45 billion loan from the IMF in March that included a special condition that the government should discourage the use of crypto-currency in the country. Argentina is at the forefront of cryptocurrency adoption because of their high inflation rate (now 55% per year). Saving in crypto is really the only way for Argentines to see their wealth grow in value. Research shows that 21% of those surveyed had or used crypto in 2021. This puts Argentina in sixth place in the world for adoption. Also, after growing 340% in one year, the country has more employees paid in digital assets than any other country in the world. This week, after a successful survey (60% of customers want to be able to buy crypto from their bank), Banco Galicia announced that their four million customers can directly buy the Big3 crypto from the bank, Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP. This went well for four days until yesterday the central bank of Argentina issued an immediate ban on the sale of crypto by banks. The ban is defended by pointing to risks for customers, but seems more a result of the special condition in the government’s IMF loan.

In countries where it is allowed, Liechtenstein’s largest bank LGT is starting the direct sale of Bitcoin and Ethereum to their customers in cooperation with the Swiss bank SEBA. The financial institution indicates that they have to accommodate the surge in demand among their customers.

Gucci announces to accept crypto payments in all their stores in North America before the end of May. Now only 17,000 DogeCoin for a handbag. Gucci is also active in the metaverse with digital handbags, which oddly enough are even more expensive than the real ones.