The crypto market was in a period of consolidation for much of this past week, particularly Bitcoin which traded in a tight range, mostly between 47-48k. Notable altcoin movements included Solana (which dropped over 30% following a network outage but has since been recovering), Avalanche (which gained about 20% on the week) and ATOM ( which gained over 40% on the week).
Cardano, the third largest cryptocurrency by marketcap, successfully implemented its much anticipated network upgrade late on Sept 12 to introduce smart contract capabilities for the first time in the network’s history. Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said on Friday that with Cardano’s new capabilities, the decentralized finance (DeFi) space is now “up for grabs.” Arguing that DeFi is about to enter a second wave that he has dubbed '“RealFi” (in which the next generation of DeFi applications will have much more utility and facilitate governance and decentralization), Hoskinson claims that Cardano was designed for this second wave. ADA will be a key coin to watch in the coming days and weeks, as well as those within the Cardano ecosystem. A potential near-term price catalyst for the token is the Cardano Annual Summit which will take place on Sept 25. The event will feature Cardano representatives and developers from around the world (in many cases, cryptocurrency prices tend to rally ahead of such an event).
Below is a quick wrap of other crypto stories that made headlines over the past week, followed by the coins that we have been eyeing or buying over the week. But first, our disclaimer needs to be noted: the information provided here, as well as on our website (coinpad.io), does not constitute investment advice, financial advice, trading advice, or any other sort of advice and you should not treat any of the content as such. Investing in cryptocurrency is risky; do your own research and invest at your own risk!
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Let’s start with a couple of broader market pieces, beginning with an insightful piece explaining how crypto innovation has moved well beyond Bitcoin into layer-2 solutions, DAOs, NFTs with utility and the emerging GameFi sector:
Bitcoin is great, but real crypto innovation has moved elsewhere
Evolve or die: How smart contracts are shifting the crypto sector’s balance of power
Here is an interesting piece arguing Bitcoin appears to meet the definition of an energy-backed currency proposed by Henry Ford: 100 years ago, Henry Ford proposed ‘energy currency’ to replace gold
Crypto adoption is a key trend to track in crypto, here are this week’s top stories:
The Latest Crypto Adoption: Buyers Can Pay in Bitcoin for Manhattan Retail Properties
Africa Has Some of the 'Highest Grassroots Adoptions in the World
Smashing crypto adoption barrier? Solana aims to do its own ‘thing’
And finally, some coin-specific news:
Ethereum is Moving off Exchanges at a Record Rate – Here’s Why It Could Be Bullish
Avalanche (AVAX) just hit a new ATH, but what’s really behind the price surge?
Next stop $85K for Bitcoin as analysts predict ‘explosive’ Q4 for BTC price action
Coinpad’s plays
In last week’s wrap, we discussed about getting our feet wet in a booming new sector combining crypto, DeFi and blockchain gaming: GameFi. In short, we believe that blockchain gaming is about to explode and this sector is an excellent diversification play as we expect the best gaming tokens will be less tied to the overall market (gamers will be buying these tokens for utility purposes whether BTC is booming or crashing). That is at the core of our investment thesis. Gaming, blockchain and crypto - all driven by tech - seem a natural fit (see here for an insightful article on the future of gaming). Will a GameFi autumn follow lats year’s DeFi Summer? We certainly think so.
Of course, the million dollar question is what coins are going to move the most should the GameFi sector take off as we anticipate? If we knew we would not be writing this wrap as we would be busy buying our next yacht.
Yet here are our thoughts:
The top GameFi gainers will not just 10X, but will likely 100X or more. Therefore, our main strategy is to make small investments in numerous projects as opposed to larger investments in a select few projects.
The top. gainers will likely be new projects and / or ones that have yet to launch at this point; likely they will not be the main established ones that have done well so far (and already have a high marketcap), such as Axie Infinity (AXS) and The Sandbox (SAND). Of course that’s not to say we don’t think that these projects will continue to do well, yet we believe better gains will be seen in projects that have much lower market caps that have yet to break out.
GameFi launchpads and projects with strong ecosystems will likely be among the biggest gainers, therefore we are focusing on these types of projects. As such, the main project we are eyeing at the moment is GameStation, a soon-to-be launched decentralized multi-chain gaming launchpad and marketplace - touted as the Kickstarter of Gaming. GameStation will be launching its IDO (public sale) shortly, although few details are out.
Other GameFi projects we have been eyeing or buying include:
GameFi (GAFI): An all-encompassing hub for game finance servicing blockchain gamers, investors, and traders that includes a launchpad exclusively for games. (This project also has a serious name advantage.) However, we have serious concerns that the token is over-valued and that the time to get in on this has already passed. Nevertheless we like the project, we love the name, and we think it will at the very least be a good resource to check out new GameFi projects that are launching through their platform.
Sensorium (SENSO): A platform building a digital metaverse bringing people together through high-quality virtual entertainment. (Not to judge a book by its cover, but Sensorium’s website is one of the coolest we have come across in the crypto space.)
Vanilla Network (VNLA): A deflationary token delivering decentralized social gaming and staking dApps.
Chain Games (CHAIN): A blockchain-integrated gaming network that allows for decentralized game of skills contests with real crypto payouts.
While we hope for the best, we don’t forget to keep things into perspective.
Outside of GameFi, we have jumped on a new Cardano ecosystem token, Paribus (PBX). Paribus is a cross-chain borrowing and lending protocol for NFTs, liquidity positions, and synthetic assets powered by the Cardano blockchain. Barring a complete failure, we believe this project should reach a minimum $100 million marketcap, which would be a 10X from its current marketcap of about $10 million.
Finally, we have gotten in early on kick.io (KICK), a Cardano-based fundraising platform and project accelerator. The initial public sale is currently being offered on Exmarkets, a crypto crowdfunding platform. Marketcap at time of token launch will be $10,395,000, and like PBX, we see an easy 100 million market in the near-term, which would also be a 10X.
That’s all for this week folks. If you found our information helpful and you have not already subscribed to our site, please head over to coinpad.io (registration is free) and / or follow us on Twitter @coinpadhome. We will have our soft launch of Coinpad later this month so please stay tuned. Happy sailing.