NFT deals on behalf of German football league Bundesliga, combined with sticker and trading card licensing, will generate US$179 million in the 2023-2024 season, almost four times the current season’s value:
We have extended our successful partnership with @DFL_Official for an additional two seasons (2023-24 and 2024-25). 💪
Bundesliga has partnered up with three different projects. Topps, which has officially licensed Bundesliga’s physical trading cards since 2008, is extending the NFT rights it acquired for the 2020/21 season. Sorare will extend the partnership it undertook in 2021 to create NFTs of Bundesliga players for fantasy football until 2025. And OneFootball has acquired the licensing rights for digital trading cards collections and video-based NFTs of Bundesliga highlights. In total, these NFT partnerships are set to grow revenue by 280 percent:
🚨 Major new partnership alert! Starting with the 2023/24 season, OneFootball will become Official Partner of @DFL_Official in a deal that will see the Bundesliga tap into our vast user base of digital-first football fans to bring Germany’s top-tier into the world of Web3.💥 pic.twitter.com/fw79IodGIr
As a consequence of the pandemic, Bundesliga’s total revenues dropped by almost 400 million euros (US$423 million) across the 2020 and 2021 seasons. The new sources of revenue from the NFTs and collectibles deal is important for all the league’s teams, particularly lower-ranked teams that depend on ticket revenue.
According to Lucas von Cranach, founder and chief executive of OneFootball, “We couldn’t have imagined when we first started working with the Bundesliga that we would build the partnership and achieve official partner status.” He added:
Now as official partner of one of the most innovative leagues in the world, we have the chance to build an even longer-term relationship that gives us the chance to take tens of millions of football supporters from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0.
Lucas von Cranach, founder and CEO, OneFootball
The partnerships undertaken by the league mark an evolution in the Bundesliga’s nascent NFT strategy and will provide much-needed additional revenue. Bundesliga’s international chief executive, Robert Klein, said the short-term deals reflect what is a rapidly evolving market.
Popular NFT video game Axie Infinity has suffered another hack, this time on the game’s official Discord channel.
According to an official statement, Axie’s MEE6, a popular Discord bot used for automating roles and messaging within channels, was compromised. The attackers used the bot to add “a fake Jiho account, which then posted a fake announcement about a mint”:
1/ There was a compromise of the Mee6 bot which was installed on the main Axie server. The attackers used that bot to add permissions to a fake Jiho account, which then posted a fake announcement about a mint.
The MEE6 bot wasn’t hacked as such – the admins’ accounts were. This allowed the attackers to use the bot to feature messages on the channel. While Axie said the messages had been deleted, it advised users to restart their Discord.
This isn’t the first time Axie Infinity’s Discord has been hacked. A few months ago, users on Reddit reported that their MetaMask wallets were compromised after falling for a fake minting announcement. Users had to delete all connections with Axie Infinity within the MetaMask app:
Not the Best Year for Axie
This hasn’t been the best year for Sky Mavis’ Axie Infinity. A month ago, the studio behind the video game revealed that Ronin – an Ethereum sidechain for Axie Infinity – suffered what is to date the biggest DeFi hack, losing US$625 million.
Discord hacks are not uncommon in the cryptocurrency space. A month ago, Crypto News Australia reported how the Bored Ape Yacht Club Discord servers suffered a phishing scam, causing ApeCoin to drop more than 20 percent.
A South Korean law firm is suing Terraform Labs founder and CEO Do Kwon over last week’s Terra collapse. The firm will also be filing warrants to seize Kwon’s property:
Things are getting real for #Terra CEO Do Kwon "Terraform Labs founder and CEO Do Kwon and co-founder Daniel Shin could soon be facing lawsuits and property seizures in the aftermath of the Terra meltdown last week"#luna#terraluna#Cryptocrash#Crypto https://t.co/0fOws6b9ie
Kwon and Terraform co-founder Daniel Shin are the subject of a class-action lawsuit from Seoul-based law firm LKB & Partners, filed in the wake of the Terra downfall, with possible criminal charges to follow:
There are related investors inside the law firm, and we will file a complaint against Kwon at the Financial Investigation Unit of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.
Kim Hyeon-Kwon, partner, LKB & Partners
LKB & Partners will sue on behalf of the investors who have lost money because of the UST crash, with some of the impacted Terra employees set to join the suit. LKB & Partners will also file a police complaint and a bid to seize Do Kwon’s property as compensation.
Not sure if $LUNA can be reconstituted at this point except through strong community backing & it’s acceptance of a new contract & fork. Law suits & criminal probes put @stablekwon in serious jeopardy & personally I don’t believe the project can withstand the fallout.. https://t.co/xT45n0q7JV
Unfortunately for the Terraform Labs founders, multiple members of the company’s in-house law firm have resigned. While it remains unknown why these employees resigned at the beginning of the crash, it has left Do Kwon in a tough position.
What’s Happening with LUNA?
The news of the collapse of Terra has been hard to miss lately; however, this controversy is the outcome of the depegging of Terra USD (UST). Previously one of the largest stablecoins on the market, the resulting knock-on effects have been immense, including the sinking of LUNA and a negative impact on the DeFi industry.
Kwon has, however, proposed a revival plan for Terra. It constitutes a restart of the entire Terra blockchain and the distribution of one billion new tokens – a plan ex LUNAtics are highly opposed to.
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin took to Twitter this week to air a series of contradictions he sees between the direction of the network he created and his personal beliefs and values.
Thread: some still open contradictions in my thoughts and my values, that I have been thinking about but still don't feel like I've fully resolved.
In the lengthy thread posted on May 17, Buterin discussed issues he characterises as “open contradictions in his thoughts and values” that revolve around Ethereum’s stability and security and its cultural and political impact.
Admiration for Bitcoin’s Stability
Buterin’s first point highlighted his admiration for Bitcoin, in particular its long-term stability, saying he’d like to see Ethereum attain a similar level of stability. To do so, however, would require significant short-term change and instability – something Buterin rightly sees as a contradiction:
Contradiction between my desire to see Ethereum become a more Bitcoin-like system emphasizing long-term stability and stability, including culturally, and my realization that getting there requires quite a lot of active coordinated short-term change.
Buterin Airs Views on Security, Decentralisation and Democracy
Buterin mused on the tensions between his personal beliefs and core crypto values such as decentralisation, security, and networks’ independence from specific individuals.
While expressing his love for decentralisation and democracy, he said that on a personal level he often finds himself siding with the views of intellectual elites over the opinion of the masses.
And while his preference for Ethereum is to reduce reliance on individuals and build “fixed systems that can stand the test of time”, Buterin also admitted his appreciation for people he describes as “live players”, those who make change happen.
Contradiction between my preference for reducing reliance on individuals and trying to build fixed systems that can stand the test of time and my appreciation of “live players” and their role in helping the world move forward.
He also described a contradiction between his goal to make Ethereum a highly secure layer 1 network that can survive “truly extreme circumstances” and his knowledge that many important apps currently running on the network have far weaker security than he would ever deem appropriate for Ethereum itself.
Grudging Acknowledgement of NFT Craze
Buterin confessed his dislike of the NFT “art” craze exemplified by Bored Ape Yacht Club, but acknowledged such collections have played a role in funding some of the more interesting DAO and decentralised governance experiments. An example he cited was the AssangeDAO to assist Julian Assange’s legal defence, largely funded by the CypherPunks NFT community.
Contradiction between my dislike of many modern financial blockchain “applications” ($3M monkeys etc), and my grudging appreciation for the fact that that stuff is a big part of what keeps the crypto economy running and pays for all my favorite cool DAO/governance experiments.
Buterin said that while he wanted more countries to adopt crypto, he had concerns that the kind of governments most likely to fully embrace the technology are less likely to allow freedom to flourish:
Contradiction between my desire to see more countries adopting radical policy experiments (eg. crypto countries!) and my realization that the governments most likely to go all the way on such things are more likely to be centralized and not friendly to diversity internally.
Unlike many crypto founders who shy away from difficult topics and go all in on self-promotion, Buterin is prepared to discuss flaws he sees in the Ethereum ecosystem. For example, earlier this month he shared his belief that gas fees on Ethereum layer-2 protocols should be under 10 cents to be considered “truly acceptable”.
Unsurprisingly, the UST depegging fiasco has triggered regulators around the world to accelerate their efforts. While some persist in being hostile towards any regulation, others have expected it from the outset:
One day, people in crypto will realize that all markets are an epiphenomenal manifestation of humans, & thus converge into similar expressions.
And then they’ll ask why in the hell they’re trading magic beans & getting stomped by bandits in an environment with no regulation.
Regulators Seize the Opportunity Amid LUNA Debacle
When history is written, this past week may well be regarded as a watershed moment for the crypto sector as LUNA plunged 97 percent overnight.
To illustrate the extent of the carnage, consider that LUNA plummeted from an all-time high of US$119 in April to US$0.000143 at the time of writing. In addition, its sister not-so-stablecoin UST has completely depegged from the US dollar since May 9, currently trading at US$0.0901.
The LUNA collapse alone saw US$50 billion in market capitalisation erased in a week, leading crypto-sceptic regulators around the world to seize the opportunity to capture the narrative.
Regulations Incoming
With the market down US$500 billion in the past two weeks and with UST completely depegging from the US dollar, regulators’ initial focus has been on stablecoins.
In addition, crypto regulation has been placed on the agenda for the upcoming G7 summit in Germany, with French central banker Francois Villeroy de Galhau commenting:
What happened in the recent past [UST meltdown] is a wake-up call for the urgent need for global regulation.
Francois Villeroy de Galhau, governor, Bank of France
In the US, Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler said on May 16 that “a lot [needs] to be done here, and in the meantime, the investing public is not that well-protected”, adding: “We’re going to continue to be a cop on the beat.”
Treasury secretary Janet Yellen also told told lawmakers last week that UST’s fate underscored the need for bank-like regulations to be imposed on stablecoin issuers. An anonymous official familiar with the matter added: “In the absence of congressional action, last week’s volatility will put regulators and stakeholders on a stronger footing if they feel the need to act alone to mitigate the risks.”
Shortly after, a non-partisan report by the Congressional Research Service echoed Washington’s sentiments, arguing that the stablecoin industry lacks the regulations found in traditional finance systems to safeguard investors. The overarching theme of the policy recommendations relates to transparency and disclosure.
G7 nations are coming together to regulate #Crypto
Let's hope for the following outcomes:
– way forward for economic growth of developing countries – solution for blockchain interoperability to transfer digital assets – global Crypto framework for investors – clarity on CBDC
— Nischal (Shardeum) ⚡️ (@NischalShetty) May 18, 2022
Separating the Wheat from the Chaff
While regulation is not welcome by many, it appears all but inevitable that it will play an increased role going forward. It’s difficult to envision how a parallel system (ie, crypto) with little to no disclosure obligations can persist for long.
Let’s take a closer look at today’s altcoins showing breakout signals. We’ll explain what the coin is, then dive into the trading charts and provide some analysis to help you decide.
1. Ripple (XRP)
Ripple XRP is the currency that runs on a digital payment platform called RippleNet, on top of a distributed ledger database called XRP Ledger. While RippleNet is run by a company called Ripple, the XRP Ledger is open-source and not based on a blockchain, but rather the aforementioned distributed ledger database.
XRP Price Analysis
At the time of writing, XRP is ranked the 6th cryptocurrency globally and the current price is US$0.4198. Let’s take a look at the chart below for price analysis:
XRP printed some gains during Q1 after moving sideways for the past few weeks. The price is in a downtrend, with the 9, 18 and 40 EMAs providing resistance on each attempt to rally.
However, bulls are showing some interest at the 70.6% retracement, near $0.4372. If this level breaks, a move into possible support – just below the lows near $0.3752 – seems likely.
If the price does rally through the swing high at $0.4955 – perhaps triggered by a sudden surge in Bitcoin – bulls might find some resistance at the 61.8% retracement level near $0.5850.
Overlapping swing highs and lows near $0.6546 might provide the next target, where bears immediately forced the price down in late December.
More bullish market conditions could shift targets up near the midpoint of Q1’s consolidation, near $0.7217, where higher timeframes show an inefficiently traded zone.
2. Tron (TRX)
Tron TRX is a blockchain-based operating system that aims to ensure this technology is suitable for daily use. Whereas Bitcoin can handle up to six transactions per second, and Ethereum up to 25, TRON claims that its network has a capacity for 2,000 TPS. This project is best described as a decentralised platform focused on content sharing and entertainment, and to this end, one of its biggest acquisitions was the file-sharing service BitTorrent in 2018. Overall, TRON has divided its goals into six phases. These include delivering simple distributed file sharing, driving content creation through financial rewards.
TRX Price Analysis
At the time of writing, TRX is ranked the 14th cryptocurrency globally and the current price is US$0.07396. Let’s take a look at the chart below for price analysis:
TRX accompanied the rest of the market during the April drop, falling nearly 60% from early May until it found a low last week.
Price action formed a weekly support level near $0.06754, which has so far held up the price. The most recent swing low inside this range, near $0.06329, might be the target for any future stop runs. After this low, the swing low near $0.05889 and the gap beginning near $0.05426 mark possible higher-timeframe support.
The price is currently battling with significant higher-timeframe resistance levels, with the closest probable resistance resting near $0.07892, just over the previous monthly open. A sweep of the relatively equal highs above this resistance might find sellers near $0.08235, but could reach as high as $0.08737.
3. Compound (COMP)
Compound COMP is a DeFi lending protocol that allows users to earn interest on their cryptocurrencies by depositing them into one of several pools supported by the platform. When a user deposits tokens to a Compound pool, they receive cTokens in return. These cTokens represent the individual’s stake in the pool and can be used to redeem the underlying cryptocurrency initially deposited into the pool at any time. These COMP tokens can be bought from third-party exchanges or can be earned by interacting with the Compound protocol, such as by depositing assets or taking out a loan.
COMP Price Analysis
At the time of writing, COMP is ranked the 90th cryptocurrency globally and the current price is US$66.93. Let’s take a look at the chart below for price analysis:
After rallying over 60% from its March low, COMP is encountering resistance near $75.43.
This resistance and the monthly open at $80.13 currently have the price trapped. The swing high and resistance near $86.27 provide a likely target before any major bearish market shift, with continuation through this resistance possibly reaching for short stops and resistance near $92.55.
The daily gap at $62.12 could provide support, while the area beginning near $58.49 could see more substantial interest from the bulls. A longer-term bearish shift in the marketplace will likely reach the relatively equal lows near $50.48, possibly finding a floor at possible support beginning near $45.81.
These coins have high liquidity on Binance Exchange, so that could help with trading on AUD/USDT/BTC pairs. And if you’re looking at buying and HODLing cryptos, then Swyftx Exchange is an easy-to-use popular choice in Australia.
In a Fortune report issued last week, it was noted that steep declines in Bitcoin, Ethereum and other tokens were not associated with the decline in equity markets. Instead, prices were subject to investor “speculation, with limited real user demand”, according to crypto analyst Sheena Shah.
However, such speculation is not limited to cryptocurrencies, with both NFTs and digital real estate in the metaverse affected. Shah noted that most holders bought NFTs with the expectation that they would appreciate, but at the moment that is simply not happening.
Overall, this year has not been kind to the NFT market. Total NFT transaction activity declined from US$3.9 billion to US$964 million from mid-February to mid-March. That’s not to say all NFTs are suffering equally – recent high-profile NFT collections such as Moonbirds, and the metaverse land sale for Otherdeeds, have done major business.
According to Modesta Masiot, finance director at NFT raking platform DappRadar, most NFT trading was centred on “blue-chip” NFT collections such as CryptoPunks. She added: “NFTs look to be entering perhaps one of many maturity stages. We expected this and believe it’s a normal development in such technology.”
Another Bored Ape NFT has been undersold, this time for just US$200. The crypto community now believes this has become a common practice to evade capital gains taxes.
A Twitter account that reports Bored Ape NFT sales shared the news of Ape #6462 being purchased for only 200 USDC. This NFT has some of the rarest traits in the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) market, and is currently priced on OpenSea at 101.75 ETH, or US$206,000:
Tax evasion 101. Both accounts have nothing in their wallets, offers accepted Within 3 mins of listing
While some in the NFT community say this is just another costly mistake, most believe it was a tax evasion manoeuvre. They based this on the transaction history, which shows the buyer’s account was created this month and that the offer for Ape #6462 was accepted minutes after being listed. It also has been transferred five times between different wallets since its mint date:
Whether tax evasion or just a mistake, this is not the first time a Bored Ape NT has sold for much less than its original value. A month ago, Crypto News Australiareported that a US$350,000 Bored Ape had been sold for just US$115, raising suspicions in the crypto community.
What was more intriguing is that the owner accepted a bid of only 115 DAI – an Ethereum-based stablecoin – for his NFT. Again, most in the NFT community believed the reason behind this was tax-loss harvesting.
Genuine mistakes occur, however. Five months ago, Twitter handle Manaut.eth made a rookie error by misplacing a decimal point in pricing his NFT at 0.75 ETH instead of 75 ETH.
The native token of the IDEX decentralised exchange (IDEX) has seen significant gains this week, pumping over 150 percent following the announcement of IDEX version 4, which will feature decentralised perpetual swaps:
Time to take your trading to the next lever. 👾
We’ve started work on IDEX v4, a decentralized perpetual swaps exchange.
Our infrastructure is perfectly aligned with the desire from traders for a high-performance derivatives DEX
According to CoinGecko, on May 16 IDEX was trading at US$0.049 before reaching a high one day later of US$0.126. At the time of writing it was changing hands at US$0.111.
IDEX is planning to launch IDEX v4 within four to eight months, suggesting perpetual swaps could be available on the platform by the end of 2022.
Perpetual Swaps an Opportunity for IDEX to Grow
IDEX refers to itself as a hybrid DEX, or a hybrid-liquidity DEX, meaning it has elements of centralised exchanges (CEXs) – such as order books and order types usually associated with CEXs, like limit orders – all while maintaining the decentralised model that defines DEXs.
IDEX has seen an opportunity to grow its market share by bringing perpetual swaps to the world of DEXs. Derivatives trading represents about 57 percent of total monthly trading volume in crypto markets, with one of the most popular instruments being perpetual swaps. Offering trading options traditionally dominated by centralised exchanges makes perfect sense for IDEX, given its position as a hybrid exchange.
The large gains seen by IDEX in the past few days mirror the performance of several other small-cap alts since the start of the year, including STEEM, which increased 60 percent following its launch on Binance, and MINA, which pumped 75 percent following its Coinbase listing.
Portugal’s Finance Minister Fernando Medina has confirmed that the southern European nation will begin taxing cryptocurrencies, reversing a six-year-old tax law that excluded crypto gains on the grounds that they are not legal tender.
The current capital gains tax rate for financial investment in Portugal is 28 percent. However, legislation relating to the introduction of such an impost on crypto could take two or more years to implement, given Portugal’s notoriously slow-moving bureaucracy:
On Portugal's plans to tax crypto, a 🧵⬇️,
– Finance Minister said crypto would be taxed in a loose statement with few details 3 days ago – Portugals bureaucracy moves hyper slow, legislation like this takes a long time to move, never mind be implemented, IMO 2+ years
Portugal’s altered tax stance will bring the country into line with many other nations around the globe. Among them are Australia – whose Tax Office earlier this week warned investors of the need to report annual crypto capital gains and losses – the UK and US.
Goodbye ‘Golden Visa’
Until now, Portugal has been seen as a crypto tax haven that offers permanent residency via what is known as the ‘Golden Visa’, because it grants holders special tax exemptions and a path to citizenship. The program was instituted as a means of attracting foreign investors, and in response to the country’s new tax plan, industry observer and cyber security professional Anthony Sassano saw the funny side:
