A promising new year brings sensational uptake for Crypto
Disclaimer: This is not financial advice and shouldn’t be taken as such. The opinions expressed are my own and do not reflect the position of my employers.
Very much embracing the “new year, new me” mentality which dawns upon us all every 1st of January, I have decided to begin posting one of these newsletters at the end of every month, in my position as head of Digital Assets at Armstrong International, the leading and most experienced executive search boutique in the City. Compiling developments within the digital assets space, from NFT auctions to new tokens being deployed, I will be keeping you up to date with a space which seems to move at the speed of light. The newsletter will compile the most interesting stories within different pockets of the digital asset ecosystem to give you the full picture on the everchanging landscape, including takes from a head-hunter’s point of view. Be sure to read until the end for alpha in my selection of the Top Picks of the Month.
Fulfilling the promise of the Metaverse
Ever since Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook to Meta, it seems like the Metaverse will be 2022’s equivalent to NFT’s in 2021. Having been touted as a $8 trillion opportunity by Goldman Sachs, it may be the new kid on the block, but the hyperbolic nature attached with most developments within digital assets is not lost upon the Metaverse. In the NFT world we had Twitter allowing users to display their NFT’s in the shape of a hexagon as their PFP, the first step taken to linking wallets with the social media giant’s platform. Much like a game of Monopoly, everybody wants the most expensive property, something which was not lost upon PwC who earlier this month announced the purchase of a plot of land in the Sandbox. It’s main competitor, Decentraland also had a notable month. Joining forces with the Australian Open, they hosted the first major sporting event in the virtual world yet. Personally, until we see seamless integration between different projects within the so-called “metaverse” the virtual world will not be an authentic one. Who knows, you may soon be seeing an Armstrong International office open up in the metaverse too.
The VC Wars
With the growth accompanying projects within the digital assets space in 2021, came a whole host of VC’s itching to enter the space. As we at Armstrong International have quickly come to learn, a position which most self-proclaimed crypto natives will argument is that this new participant has in some cases done more harm, than good. Thus, a narrative which dominated January was the desire by new projects to skip the VC phase and go straight to DAO’s. DAO’s, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, provide a community governance structure which allows joint investors to take decisions. Most notably, Global Coin Research has been able to “democratise crypto investing” according to founder, Joyce Yang, leading investment in protocols such as Aurora. 2022 could very well be the year of the DAO. In terms of recruitment, our client list continues to grow and the interest in the space is hotter by the day. Be it founders in the Metaverse, DAO’s, or the best DeFi traders out there, Armstrong International is unrelenting in it’s pursuit of top talent.
It’s time to build back better
January has been great for rising adoption within the larger ecosystem, but the DeFi space has taken a bit of a hammering. Nonetheless, this has not stopped the demand for DeFi Specialist’s in the market, with a high degree of interest in Armstrong’s services in hiring the hottest and most well versed specialists in the space, our clients can not get enough of what is often touted as the future of finance. With a general decline in price between 20–30% for leading Layer 1 protocols, 2022 is off to a rocky start. On the brighter side, the decline in prices has seen an uptake of yield farming on native stable-coins. Platforms such as Anchor Protocol have had increases of Total Deposited Value increase by more than 40% since the start of the year. In other news we’ve seen treasury’s also take a bruising, such as OlympusDAO who’s concerned over the management forced a plunge from all time high’s. Yeet non worse than Wonderland’s, after a core member of the founding team was discovered to have a track record of scamming investors/.
As promising as DeFi looks to be, it’s the responsibility of us as participants to remove inefficiencies and increase accountability.
January’s Top Picks
In this section, I will try and make note of a few projects which I’m keeping an eye out for and will compare them at the end of the next month to see how they performed.
Metagravity: Founded by Rashid Mansoor, ex-founder of distributed compute platform Hadean.
Taking your time and developing a project with significant value is not lost upon the team at Metagravity. Fulfilling the narrative of following founders with a track record, Metagravity is my top pick to develop a truly connected and synchronized Metaverse.
Platypus Finance: The Avalanche networks leading stable swap
No one does UX like projects on AVAX. Notably, Platypus Finance, the Avalanche network’s most successful stable swap platform finally released their awaited dApp, skyrocketing the value of the native token from $1.70 at the start of the year to almost $16.00 following their launch in December. As whispers of a bear market continue to grow, something tells me so will the protocols Total Deposited Value.
