Presented by CryptoLink.Tech

Volume 1 | Edition 4 | July 13, 2023

Opening Thoughts

We are back and cooking with gas in week 4 of this little experiment we have going on with Chain Reaction!

Thanks to everyone for tuning in and checking out the newsletters, even if its only for a Zealy code (you know who you are).

The last week was full of wild stuff in the blockchain realm including yet another depeg on a major DeFi-centric blockchain. Along with that we had some cool stuff happen here close to home with CryptoLink and some possibly bullish news on BTC that we will get into a bit.

I will say, it seems as though the space is making a small comeback ever so slowly. It feels good to be connecting with real builders in the space, but the quality of engagement still leaves a bit to be desired.

Let’s get into the meat of this week! Be sure to stick around to the Final Byte for my opinion on engagement in the space and the lack of solid outreach platforms. (AMAs might be dead)

Cryptolink Connect

BIG news this week in CL Connect, check it out.

Traders Paradise is Here: AnyToAny.io Public Beta LIVE

This week we are opening the AnyToAny Beta up to any and all who wish to try it out!

Cross-Chain swaps at these speeds are going to revolutionize the entire space. Hop in early 😉 

AnyToAny.io/alpha (AnyToAny.io/alpha)

Hop on Twitter with a clip of your swap and a screenshot of the txn timestamp and tag @CryptoLink_Tech to be eligible for raffle ticket giveaways!

CryptoLink Halts Fantom Chain Temporarily

This one breaks our heart at the moment — Fantom has been our “home chain” since Day 1.

Unfortunately, until the Fantom stable coins repeg, we will be shutting down the bridge in and out of the Fantom ecosystem to prevent any collateral damage to CryptoLink’s liquidity.

We are keeping a keen eye on Fantom and the most recent developments. I cover the latest on Fantom and Multichain in this weeks Interchain Intel segment below 👇👇👇

Crypto Currents

This section covers major recent developments and trends in the crypto world.

Banking Giant Calling $120k BTC in 2024

I know it’s bullish at face value, folks…

But this is more comical than anything considering most of us here probably believe in BTC in the long run anyways.

Allow me to explain myself:

Standard Chartered is the Bank that is calling for $120k BTC by the end of 2024 and $50k by the end of this year.

Their Chief strategist is calling this due to the halving coming up and miners recieving less BTC for more work. This should drive the price up and result in miners hoarding more BTC in the long run.

I’m not an economist but we can all agree the halving cycle is typically a decent indicator.

Anyways, the reason this makes me chuckle is that Standard Chartered also called a possible $5k BTC in 2023 back in December of 2022.

Moral of the story is that you should just make informed decisions and realize that these people are mostly wombats.

On-Chain Data Not Matching BTC Price Increases

Despite the recent hype over the Bitcoin ETFs that were filed for in the last few weeks, on-chain data seems to show stagnant investor activity.

BTC has seen a slow increase in price over the last couple of weeks that coincided with the ETF news but the data tells an interesting story:

Bitcoin's seven-day average active addresses have failed to exceed 1 million, indicating a stagnation in the number of active users on the network.

Additionally, addresses holding over 100 BTC, a proxy for institutional investors, have remained unchanged for months.

Looking at Bitcoin derivatives, both futures contracts and options markets reflect a neutral sentiment among professional traders

While the hope of a BTC goldrush was there for a minute it seems we may have to wait on the institutional money a bit longer, anon.

Powell Powerplay: Inflation Numbers Fall to 3% in Latest Report

Do you hear that, folks?

Bulls in the distance maybe?

Only time will tell, per usual; However, reports came in on July 12th that inflation numbers were down to 3%. This is lower than what was expected and bodes well for the FEDs plan to wrangle inflation.

In an interview with CNN, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan stated that he believes the U.S. could reach its target of 2% inflation by 2025. (Watcher.Guru 2023)

Google Gives The Go-Ahead: Google Play Store Now Allowing Games With NFTs

The tech giant’s Group Product Manager made it public in a tweet on Wednesday!

It is important to note that they explicitly state they will still not allow gambling games on their store.

Another week, another bullish piece of news in web3.0 gaming! Score 1 for the good guys.

Interchain Intel

Updates and insights from across different blockchain networks.

Multichain of Madness: Fantom USDC De-Pegs, MC Devs Suspiscious

The Multichain saga continues, and it gets stranger and stranger the further along it develops. I am not here to write a hit piece competitors at all, frankly because we don’t need to (we are just the best). However, this is definitely newsworthy and I felt like I would be doing you a disservice to not cover it.

Let’s cover the timeline a bit here then we can get into some of the on-chain sleuthing that has gone on.

It all began on July 7th when over $100m was withdrawn from the ETH side of the Fantom, Moonriver, and Dogechain bridges and sent to another wallet. (Cointelegraph 2023)

This was the majority of the liquidity in those bridges.

On July 8th, this happened 👇

On July 11th, Chainanalysis (A blockchain canalysis firm) said “[the withdrawl] looks more like a hack or rugpull and less like a migration.” (Cointelegraph 2023)

This is all on top of the Multichain CEO being missing since late May.

Now let’s get into some of the sleuthing.

On-Chain sleuth Spreek has reported that a Multichain Executor address has been draining their anyToken (MC’s native token) addresses across multiple networks.

Other sleuths have pointed out a connection between the MC Dev wallets and the wallets/deployers of other large protocols like Bitpanda, Ascendex, and Bitmax.

That’s as far as I’ll go with the accusations as of now as its always safer to let things air out.

On the other hand, this is what the event did to USDC/WFTM 🙃 

All-in-all I hope Fantom is able to find a way to recover from this. Fantom is our OG chain at CryptoLink from the original deployment of Printer.Financial. Not to mention the OG of all OGs in the CryptoLink community is a $FTM die-hard and we always support Jigs!

Foreshadowing Troubled Times: Lending & Borrowing Leaving Algorand

Lending & Borrowing platform Algofi on the Algorand blockchain is closing up shop, according to Cointelegraph.

When Lending & Borrowing tends to be the lifeblood of DeFi this is certainly not a good look at what is to come for Algorand.

$ALGO was also one of the tokens listed by the SEC as securities in the Coinbase lawsuit.

Not much more on this topic, I don’t know the Algorand ecosystem too well, but I do know when TVL tanks like that its typically not a good sign.

Tech Trends

Here, we explore the latest technological advancements and innovations in the blockchain space.

W3RKS: The Future of Freelance Work?

This one popped on my radar recently and I think the idea is something that can definitely be leveraged well in the blockchain and greater web3 spaces.

W3RKS is a platform that aims to bridge the gap between creatives and businesses, without an intrusive account system or high fees.

W3RKS claims to solve the following problems with traditional freelance work platforms:

• High commission fees

• Mandatory submission of additional documents and skill assessments

• High risk of scams

• Extended payment cycles

Why am I telling you about this?

Because they are accomplishing this with an in-house escrow service built on-chain that will require agreed upon “milestones” to be met in order for payment to be released to the provider.

The W3RKS team will step in to resolve any disputes. The platform will take a 2.5% fee on the escrow transactions and a nominal 7.5% from the W3RKers compensation.

As a CMO in the web3 space I can definitely say something like this could help ensure quality projects and businesses can connect with quality creatives in the space. I can’t tell you how hard it is to get quality media content done for a decent price.

Bonus: The team has some familiar faces from the EgoVerse team.

Double Bonus: They claim to be building a swap… I wonder if they need cross-chain. 😉 Give them a follow on Twitter and let them know you come from CryptoLink!

Decoded

In this section, we decode complex blockchain and cryptocurrency concepts into understandable language.

Block Finality

You have probably heard the CryptoLink team say this more than a few times. That’s because our bridge runs at the speed of block finality.

What is that fancy term?

It’s very simple, finality occurs when a transaction is considered immutable (permanent) on a blockchain. This means the block has been finalized and the chain is continuing on. If the block has not been finalized the transaction is not yet considered legitimate.

Different blockchains have different finality times resulting in some being slower than others to transact on.

For example, Bitcoins block finality requires 6 block confirmations which is roughly an hour. Ethereum on the other hand is about 15 minutes and fast chains like Fantom (sigh) are 1 to 2 seconds!

So when you hear us say we run at the speed of finality just know we can’t go faster than the blockchains, but we can go as fast as them. ;)

(Atlas tried to go faster than them once, it broke the bridge. lol)

Final Byte: Wally’s Wisdom

So that was quite a bit to unpack this week.

The Fantom issue sucks for everyone involved, and frankly we would all just like to see the whole situation get back to normal. The inflation data looks juicy and I am definitely excited to see how that pans out over the next few months coupled with the ETFs and the progress there.

On a slightly seperate note, lets chat about AMAs and other forms of community engagement.

Are AMAs dead? Like, completely?

Asking this question would have seemed insane a year ago today — today, that question is very valid.

The traditional AMA format killed itself in my opinion and is struggling to recover. AMA houses/groups on Discord and Telegram would charge you outrageous rates to come shill your token or NFT to a bunch of hungry degens with inflated bags.

Then the money dried up… for a long time.

Now AMA platforms are offering free AMAs as long as there is a giveaway at the end of it, but to what audience?

It seems to me that most of these “communities” are botted or full of people looking for a quick giveaway to dump into LPs. It’s certainly not worth money to go and pitch your project there. Oftentimes you end up answering multiple questions at the end that you already answered in your pitch because no one is listening and they think they have a chance at the giveaway if they ask a generic question.

“How can someone make ‘passive income’ from your project?”

“Sir, do you have long-term plans and a roadmap for your project?”

You can see the pattern.

Of course I have already answered all those questions in the pitch already. AMAs are dead, at least in their traditional form. The best growth is organic social media growth until the interest in web3.0 begins to pick up again. Building a true core of die-hard supporters will always be the way for start-ups and especially in the blockchain space.

I will take 1 Ferret, BTK, cPunkW00t, JHarp, InkFanatic etc… over 100 “Wen Review” types any day.

The smart projects with a real product will focus on building a brand that is respectable and trusted. This space is so damn thin these days that the cream will rise to the top, as it should. That’s what we have worked on and that’s what we will continue to work on. ✊✊

Thank you for being part of our chain reaction this week. We hope these insights help you navigate the exciting world of blockchain and cryptocurrency. Stay linked for more updates next week!

Best,

Wally CMO CryptoLink.Tech

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