WAGMI United aim to acquire an English football club
FAYRE Founder Luis Carranza visits El Salvador for a first-hand view of bitcoin adoption in the Central American country
El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin
“The tide of press linking El Salvador to progressive monetary policy and innovation is worth the price. El Salvador is future-facing thanks to bold moves from its leaders. I talked to people on the streets and taxi drivers and the signals are mixed on Bitcoin. But most of the people I talked to said that things are improving and that has to count for something.” (Luis Carranza, FAYRE’s founder)
Our founder, Luis Carranza, was recently in El Salvador to see for himself how real Bitcoin adoption is. He also shared his view on a recent interview with Capital.com (article here — link is blocked in the U.K.).
In a country known for its low rates of financial inclusion, their centre-right president, Nayib Bukele, is making progressive changes towards putting El Salvador on the map when it comes to promoting Bitcoin adoption. Let’s see how.
Firstly, he recently signed a bill to accept the orange coin as a legal tender — against the advice of the World Bank and the International Monetary Authority.
Secondly, he launched Chivo — a wallet designed to hold the digital asset, enable trading (e.g. large banks, merchants) and facilitate overseas remittance payments (e.g. from the United States).
Thirdly, he is committed to allocating a portion of El Salvador’s budget to digitise the economy, accelerate bitcoin adoption and hold this asset on its treasury’s portfolio.
Last but not the least, he’s announced the creation of a Bitcoin City — an “ecological offshore” (I’m self-quoting) with a view to accelerate Bitcoin adoption and form a case study (first-mover). Some critics argue this is simply a way to land global awareness — I guess time will tell, but one thing is certain: if it works it could be replicated in other Latin American economies. He also intends to increase this project’s self-sufficiency, hence why they are trialling methods of mining bitcoin by repurposing the energy released from its volcanoes. It’s about time Elon Musk pays them a visit.
In time for Boxing Day?
It seems like WAGMI United (crypto-backed American investors) are aiming to acquire an English football league club. What’s cool about this is that they intend to apply a new ownership model.
Football clubs typically make money from ticket sales, seasonal memberships, merchandise, player transactions, etc. However, the onus of decisions and ownership is at the club-level. By doing NFT drops these new investors want to get closer to the fans and give fans a sense of ownership that doesn’t exist in today’s sports world.
Ultimately, this will help finance the use of advanced analytics to improve the way the club is managed. Not sure if I’m bearish, or bullish on this one. Time will tell. If successful, and, as an example, this could help advance a second-league club into the Premier League. However, they seem to have been slowed down by Bradford City AFC. Nice first attempt, but probably REKT?
To the Metaverse and beyond (aka looking into the future)
Meet Solana: the “Cool kid on the block”. We thought it would be a good idea to talk about the underlying technology that’s accelerating some of the most popular Web 3 projects. It reads: [SO]+[LANA] and means “wind from the East”. I guess it must also mean “tailwind”, as 2021 has been a veeeery good year for Solana, namely in terms of its ecosystem/adoption and underlying token value (SOL).
It’s probably worth taking a step back and putting things into context, namely with regard to the dominant (Layer-1) blockchain, Ethereum, where most NFT projects have launched and traded (thanks to the likes of OpenSea). The problem being that Ethereum fees (known as “gas fees”) tend to be very high and susceptible to sudden spikes. It’s also a network that cannot process that many transactions in a short timeframe. Put into context: imagine you’re one of the thousands trying to simultaneously mint an NFT. Suddenly, you’re not one of the lucky ones, so you don’t get the mint, but you pay the hefty “gas fees”.
Given the growth in DeFi and NFT-related projects (e.g., such as blockchain gaming), which entail an increase in transaction speed and require lower costs (due to wide user adoption), there was a need to consider other blockchains that could price-in that user traffic. The graph below shows that shift.
Also, Solana is really good at things that Ethereum doesn’t try to be good at — a reason why it is considered a good complement to the multichain-future of Web 3. Others says it’s a legitimate challenger to Ethereum’s Layer 1 dominance. So, if you’re wondering what the Solana overall value proposition is… let me use layman’s terms… it’s super fast and super cheap (I mean close to zero-network fees) & is a leap forward in building a multi-chain world.
The result is clear-cut: NFT secondary sales on Solana have witnessed formidable growth, which is impressive given that such trading on Solana started in August 2021.
To learn more, I recommend Kyle Samani, one of the project’s early investors.
Fun facts
Tinder has announced its bet on the Metaverse. It’s gonna be called…wait for it…the Tinderverse. JK — another editor came up with that name. In a recent interview, their CEO explains how the company use Tinder Coin and how it will help keep the magic alive.
LOOKS RARE. PROBABLY NOTHING.
- They’ve always been into their mega: Dubai is known for its (tax) Free-Trade-Zones. They just announced their leap into promoting crypto’s mass adoption by creating a crypto-friendly trade-zone and, amongst others, will promote the NFT industry.
- NFTs meet Politics: Congressional candidate (Shrina Kurani) to address a new audience by dropping a Solana-based NFT collection as part of her campaign. Could she be leaning towards crypto policymaking?
- Steve Aoki pursues happiness: by growing his monkey collection with a Degen Ape Academy PFP (supporting the thesis of the shift into Solana-based projects).
- Lewis Hamilton’s second-best option: He recently decided to collaborate with an augmented-reality company.
- Bookmark this event: Philosophy meets virtual reality (February 2022).
USE THIS ICE-BREAKER NEXT TIME YOU SEE YOUR HIPSTER NEIGHBOUR:
Who doesn’t like the idea of making a quick profit? Apologies for being such a nasty capitalist, but it’s the easy intro to explaining what “NFT flipping” refers to. Exactly: it’s the art of “buying low to sell high”. In short, it refers to those who find undervalued NFTs, hold on to them until the time is right to sell for a profit. Typically, NFTs are an illiquid asset class. However, when there’s a big buzz around a specific project, liquidity accelerates. An example of this is what happened with the Catalina Whale Mixer NFT drop this week. They managed to build a lot of momentum from day 1 by kicking off the project with an invite-only community discord, gradually released updates on the project and, as a result of keeping the community engaged, sold out in 4 minutes and reached record sales on Magic Eden. Put in a simple way: high volume in sales, plus floor price fluctuation enabled a good bit of flipping.
As always, the FAYRE team invites you to join their Telegram channel on https://t.me/Fayre for whitepaper and real-time news or follow all of the project’s developments on Twitter via @FayreLabs.
Michael Jordan: Air Jordan jumps into the Metaverse.
MEME OF THE WEEK: Melania, seriously?
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