August 6th, 2022

Why Competition Between NFT Marketplaces Is Good News

While crypto is in a bear market the one sector that has weathered the storm relatively well is NFTs. A new report estimates the global NFT market will be worth $231 billion by 2030, growing at a compounded growth rate of 33.7% over the next eight years. However, this quarter the NFT market has been on somewhat of a roller-coaster ride, though in terms of trading volume and sales compared to Q2 of 2021 they are up by 533% and 59% respectively. In addition, metaverse NFTs also had a good quarter, with the trading volume for ETH-based collections has increased by 101%, while Polygon collections have unfortunately declined by 26%. Overall, it has been a growth of 96%, according to DappRadar.

If that positive trend whets your appetite to get involved in NFTs trading, then you’re not alone. The recent crypto bull market was like an electromagnet for investors who flocked to NFTs. Either to try to get in early by getting whitelisted on a project and then sell once the particular project went live, or purchasing them from another user before selling them on one of the growing number of marketplaces. As reported in late 2021 by leading crypto analytics firm Chainalysis, “NFTs are far from a surefire investment” however: “Transaction data from the OpenSea marketplace shows that just 28.5% of NFTs purchased during minting and then sold on the platform result in a profit. Buying NFTs on the secondary market from other users and flipping them, however, leads to profit 65.1%of the time.” In plain English what this means is that your average NFT buyer is likely to be out of luck when it comes to turning a profit on a newly minted or a secondary market NFT trade.

If those headline figures haven’t put you off, what can help you can see the wood for the trees when it comes to trading NFTs? A little context might help for starters; namely the commercial pressure from the bear market and the competition between NFT marketplaces mean this could be a good time to up your NFT trading game.

NFTs are traded in NFT marketplaces, which are well-organized platforms for selling digital collectibles. As a rule of thumb NFTs are sold at a fixed price, while others are auctioned off. Opensea is by far the largest NFT marketplace, with a 90% market share by dollar trading volume across multiple marketplaces in 2021. But what’s changed in the last few months is that OpenSea’s market share has started to diminish. In response OpenSea has improved its service with the launch of Seaport, an open-source trading protocol which enables trading multiple NFTs at a time. And with OpenSea’s purchase of NFT market aggregator Gem, its likely they will go up against Uniswap, which recently acquired NFT aggregator platform Genie. Finally, despite the failure of Coinbase’s NFT offering, eBay has both purchased marketplace KnownOrigin and in partnership with OneOf, recently announced its first foray into the NFT space with the launch of a series of sports themed, featuring iconic athletes.

What hasn’t changed is the fact that most NFTs are released in collections. A collection is a group of NFTs that are all different but share some characteristics. Bored Ape, the most popular NFT collection, has a total sales value of approximately $2.5 billion. While the top ten NFT collections had over $15 billion in trading value in 2021, accounting for roughly 60% of the total NFT market. The fact that a few collections dominated a large portion of the market is most likely due to NFT investors’ preference to trade within collections. They do this because it is easier to value an NFT in a collection when there are “similar” NFTs to compare it to. Experienced investors know where the money is, therefore, they trade NFTs within those collections.

These NFT traders speculate and identify a specific collection with liquidity, trade, and keep flipping until they make a profit. The truth is that most speculative traders do not profit from trading NFTs. Information is key, and traders who have information on the collection with liquidity are more likely to make a profit. Instant tradability of non-fungible tokens will lead to higher liquidity. NFT marketplaces can cater to a variety of audiences—from hardcore traders to more novice players—allowing for greater exposure of the assets to a wider pool of buyers. In the same way that the ICO boom of 2017 gave birth to a new asset class driven by instantly liquid tokens, NFTs expand the market for unique digital assets.

Another factor we must consider is fraud in the NFT sector. We’ve seen a lot of bad actors sell and trade NFTs they don’t own or have access to. I believe that it is critical for every NFT trader to conduct their own research to determine the best collection to trade. In simple terms the NFT sector is still growing, and there are still certain gaps to fill.

Market liquidity is still concentrated in a few NFT collections, and a trader must be able to identify those collections where the demand is to make a profit. I am also about to publish an in-depth guide to NFTs in a new book, said I believe the NFT market was only going to get stronger in 2022. “The growth of NFTs on rival platforms to Ethereum such as Solana , and the competition with OpenSea from players ranging from DEX leader Uniswap to e-commerce king eBay, shows how dynamic this sector is. Despite the collapse of the wider crypto market with the Luna Terra collapse, the demand for NFTs shows no stopping. I was struck also by how GameStop’s new marketplace launched just a couple of days ago is already doing well, with ETH in trading volume too.”

Original Source: https://www.benzinga.com/22/08/28375889/why-competition-between-nft-marketplaces-is-good-news

Anndy Lian

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

www.anndy.com

j j j

May 17th, 2022

Why the Hottest News at Bitcoin 2022 Was Not About Bitcoin

This year’s Bitcoin 2022 in Miami came after the legalization of Bitcoin in El Salvador in September last year, and the all-time high of over $61k in October before tumbling to a largely stable plateau of around $40k. Last year’s Bitcoin conference focused on the Lightning Network, a payments platform built on the Bitcoin blockchain which is used in El Salvador by the government in creating the wallet, Chivo, which is Lightning-compatible and designed to enable seamless cross-border payments.

During the conference, Jack Mallers, CEO of Strike, revealed the company’s plans to collaborate with point-of-sale behemoths Shopify, NCR, and Blackhawk Network to revolutionize the payments industry. As a result, online retailers that support Shopify can now accept payments via the Lightning Network, in turn allowing US merchants to receive payments from customers globally as US dollars. As the integration of the Strike wallet is with major online players in the US economy, this could potentially do a lot for the mainstream adoption of Bitcoin, particularly in the retail industry.

What this means has been perhaps missed by some commentators, who fail to make the distinction between Bitcoin as investment asset and use of the Bitcoin blockchain as a payment network, with the Lightning Network sitting on top of it and processing transactions much faster and cheaper than using Bitcoin itself. In simple terms the Lightning Network (LN) is a “layer 2” payment protocol layered on top of a blockchain-based cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or Litecoin. Andreas Antonopoulos has referred to the Lightning Network as a ‘second layer routing network’. The payment channels allow participants to transfer money to each other without having to make all their transactions public on the blockchain, according to Wikipedia. So, what did Jack Mallers say about this exciting innovation at Bitcoin 2022 that helps make more sense of this? To understand what Mallers is doing and why it could be so impactful, it’s best to put aside Bitcoin and instead focus on the payment network side of Strike.

After all, that’s how Mallers introduced it to the Bitcoin 2022 audience, giving a quick history lesson about the current payment network used by retailers which began in New York in 1949 with the launch of Diners Club, started by “a bunch of rich plutocrats in New York City that didn’t want to carry cash”. Such was its success that the following year Bank of America announced a mass market payment card, with American Express in 1958. And essentially that same network, with innovations such as the launch of credit cards like Visa, is the same payment network we have today. “And so in reality, payment networks have not innovated in over 50 years. That’s insane. That’s ridiculous,” Mallers said. Following up later with Yahoo Finance Mallers explained that the current system is one of ‘debt promises’ where because it’s based on dollars or whatever fiat currency is involved, the transaction doesn’t involve sending dollars when you spend. Instead, the banks promise each other that the purchaser is good for the transaction, but the merchant pays a fee for this ‘debt promise system’.

Using Bitcoin’s blockchain as a payment network

Instead, what Mallers unveiled at Bitcoin 2022 is a way to send any currency around the world without needing to use the banks and without needing to charge the merchant. In other words, it allows you to send dollars or to a merchant on the other side of the world, using the Bitcoin blockchain via the Lightning Network, and have it converted into say Euros at the touch of the button and instantly.

“This is not in another country. This is not a test pilot somewhere – no. This is in the United States of America. You’re going to be able to walk into a grocery store, to Whole Foods, to Chipotle… You want to use a Lightning node over Tor? You do that. You want to use the Cash App? You do that… If Chipotle wants Bitcoin, I’ll give them Bitcoin, I’ll settle in Bitcoin,” he added.

What grabbed the headlines of course wasn’t just the theory behind Strike’s payments network, but the partnership with Shopify. With the Strike integration, Shopify merchants can accept payments globally and save costs on processing fees, with cash-final settlement. Strike’s integration enables Shopify merchants to diversify their existing payment options and reach untapped global markets and purchasing power. Strike’s integration also allows Shopify merchants to generate savings through low-cost payment processing. By instantly converting bitcoin payments to dollars, Strike removes certain complexities merchants face in holding bitcoin.

Chairman of BigONE Exchange, Anndy Lian, said he was impressed by the use of the layer 2 Bitcoin blockchain technology deployed by Strike, bringing together fiat and crypto in one global easy to use payment network: “While Bitcoin as a store of value is an impressive investment, it’s about time Satoshi’s original vision of Bitcoin as a payment system from people to people was realized. For me the use of the Lightning Network is certainly attractive in delivering on that promise. It will be interesting to see however if this catches on outside the US, or whether the use of such layer 2 payment networks inspires innovation in places such as South Korea with the crypto friendly new President taking office next month.” Certainly, the impact of the war in Ukraine and banking sanctions on Russia may inspire innovative payment systems using the blockchain for effective p2p payment networks that sit outside the current US-controlled SWIFT system which manages payments between banks globally, Lian added.

Original Source: https://hackernoon.com/why-the-hottest-news-at-bitcoin-2022-was-not-about-bitcoin

Anndy Lian

www.anndy.com

j j j

September 27th, 2021

Forkast News: Why DeFi holds the key to metaverse success

A profound shift is underway in online culture, writes Anndy Lian of BigOne Exchange. Here’s how decentralized finance might one day power the NFT and metaverse economy.

Visa buying a CryptoPunk NFT for around $150,000 recently may be the first sign that these unique digital assets are starting to be taken seriously for commerce. Up until now, the sale of these “non-fungible” assets has been associated with high-priced artwork, but Visa’s purchase, while also about art, is really about promoting their expertise to businesses in the field of using NFTs for commerce. Indeed, in a report, coinciding with the CryptoPunk purchase, Visa states a longer-term vision: “While the prices of individual NFTs fluctuate, fascinating use cases for NFTs are still emerging and the groundwork is being laid for the long-term utility of NFTs.”

One such use case led by big consumer brands from Facebook to Coca Cola is the use of NFTs in the virtual world, called the metaverse. Indeed, if you heard the news that Facebook is about to launch its own crypto wallet Novi (which is — in true metaverse fashion — interoperable with other wallets) then you may also recall it’s also due to work with NFTs as well as stablecoins.

What you may not know is that Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg sees the future of the global social network in the metaverse. Indeed, Zuckerberg recently said that within five years Facebook would be a “metaverse company,” while Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, said they were investing in the “enterprise metaverse.” Simply put, whoever can integrate NFTs and payment with the metaverse may well lead the biggest change in online culture and economy since the birth of the web in the 1990s. This view is also supported by David Raszucki, head of the US$50 billion Roblox Corporation, who sees the emergence of the metaverse as profound a shift as the invention of the internet and the World Wide Web.

Certainly, it’s along those lines in terms of potential of the wider metaverse, coupled with the key role of NFTs that software developer Alethea AI, which claims to have created the world’s first “intelligent NFT,” recently raised US$16 million in funding to create a metaverse populated by its bots. The NFTs that will fill the metaverse will be talking, intelligent NFTs (iNFTs) created by Alethea: machine-learning bots that can have human-like conversations.

“Alethea’s thesis is that NFTs will provide a definitive property rights infrastructure for the emerging Metaverse driven by interactive and intelligent Avatars,” according to the company. “The AI infrastructure built by Alethea will serve as the underlying connective tissue to enable NFTs to ‘come alive’ as interactive media assets, with personality traits, preferences and real-time interactive capability.”

In a recent interview in The Verge, Zuckerberg laid out his vision of a metaverse bringing “enormous opportunity to individual creators and artists; to individuals who want to work and own homes far from today’s urban centers; and to people who live in places where opportunities for education or recreation are more limited. You can think about the metaverse as an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content — you are in it.”

Of course, anyone who’s watched The Social Network, or has seen how Facebook can do harm through manipulating its online users’ behavior, is certainly going to wonder if the metaverse is going to be in safe hands with Facebook. As Tim Sweeney, CEO of Fortnite maker Epic Games famously once remarked: “This metaverse is going to be far more pervasive and powerful than anything else. If one central company gains control of this, they will become more powerful than any government, and be a god on Earth.”

Supporters of a thoroughly decentralized metaverse, where NFTs play a pivotal role in facilitating the DeFi (decentralized finance) necessary for this meta-project to come into being, gathered recently at the Paris-based ETH event EthCC. Key speaker Ben Lakoff , co-founder of NFT-protocol Charged Particles, led discussion of the need for permissionless, trustless financial services with a high transaction rate for a metaverse to function optimally. The metaverse would also necessitate a large amount of data to be stored and unaltered, where blockchain technology comes into play.

Lakoff underlined this point to the audience, connecting DeFi and identity in his presentation: “NFTs as identity, as a DeFi passport, this on-chain credit scoring — all of these things kind of mixed together. We can start to see how these things play together in a very, very unique way that paved the way for Web 3.0.” Lakoff became particularly passionate when talking about NFTs as financial products able to hold other tokens. “You have your NFT that acts as a basket, owning all of these different types of assets,” he explained, adding that baskets could contain social tokens and interest-bearing assets, as well as enabling easy transfer to another individual’s portfolio.

Certainly, there are many aspects of the metaverse to be figured out before the vision becomes a reality. Matthew Ball, a venture capitalist who wrote a key article about the metaverse in early 2020, also makes this point. A lot of the pieces of the jigsaw must come together before the metaverse can take shape, with Epic Games’ popular “Fortnite” game possibly the nearest to that future available right now, says Ball.

Putting aside the technological challenges of an “always on” environment capable of supporting thousands if not millions of people online in the same virtual space at the same time, what is certain is that a DeFi financial architecture involving NFTs is likely to be key to its success, what you might call the “MetaverseFi.”

Looking at the current cryptocurrency landscape for clues on what form these decentralized products and services might take in the metaverse it’s worth returning to the real world. Take the accelerating mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies, and greater financial institutional involvement. From the legalization of Bitcoin in El Salvador, the implementation of crypto payments in PayPal, to the reformation of the Dogecoin Foundation to push its crypto payment potential, the trend is clear. At the same time, as we’ve seen over in the U.S. with the Infrastructure Bill inclusion of provisions on crypto, and the European Commission’s proposed Regulation on Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA), there’s a parallel push for greater regulation from the government.

Clearly, any key players in creating the metaverse which includes large corporations like Facebook and Epic Games are going to have to be compliant with these emerging DeFi crypto regulations when creating its decentralized payment systems.

In an in-depth look at the prospects for a metaverse, U.K.-based blockchain VC company Outlier Venture has found the the need to have a crypto-decentralized core is paramount: “It needs its own economy and currencies native to it, where value can be earnt, spent, lent, borrowed or invested interchangeably in both a physical or virtual sense and most importantly without the need for a government.”

However, while the metaverse may reside in the virtual world, I believe its use of NFTs and DeFi to bring it to life are firmly rooted in the real world. The dream of an open metaverse is a motivating vision that engages individuals and attracts corporations, but if it’s going to include people from all around the world from Beijing to Boston, it’s also going to have to contend with the impact that increased government scrutiny and regulation will have on DeFi.

AUTHOR PROFILE: ANNDY LIAN

Anndy Lian is chairman of BigOne Exchange, a trading platform registered in the Netherlands. Anndy is a business strategist with over 15 years of experience in Asia, and he has worked in various industries for local, international and publicly traded companies. Anndy is also currently the chief digital advisor at the Mongolian Productivity Organisation.

Original Source: https://forkast.news/why-defi-holds-key-to-metaverse-success/