NFT-based game Axie Infinity is leading the non-fungible token (NFT) space with $25.45 million in sales in the past week, according to CryptoSlam. Axie Infinity’s numbers beat Dapper Labs’ NBA Top Shot which has been previously leading the nascent market for early 2021. NBA Top Shot also managed over $13.8 million in sales, nearly a 7% increase from the previous week. Recently, users of the game spent $6.73 million on in-game NFTs in a single week to become the most valuable NFT collection. This came from almost 30,000 sales. https://twitter.com/AxieInfinity/status/1406245700828995586 In the past 30 days, Axie Infinity recorded a 433% jump in sales at $80.6 million and claimed the top spot. However, in the past 24 hours, Bored Ape Yacht Club is at the top with more than $6 million in sales, followed by Axie’s $4 million. Axie’s popularity began in November last year and maintained it so far into this year with constant ups and downs. Daily Axie transfers also rallied in November 2020 from a mere 500 to above 9,000. After slowing down in December and January, these figures started climbing yet again In 2021. Axie Infinity’s governance token AXS, which allows token holders to vote for the direction of the game universe, is trading at $3.80, down more than 68% from its all-time high of $11.88 three months ago. Moon Overlord stated,

“NFTs are dead round up. Axie infinity continues to make ATH in basically every metric. Bored apes ATH in every metric. Wicked Cranium sold out in less than a hour, secondary sales have exploded today. Digital pickles are up 1500% this week.”

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Chinese Bitcoin miners account for 65% of the network’s hashrate. But as their government pulls the plug on much of their industry, Chinese mining farms may have to move abroad to stay afloat.

Come to Miami, says Mayor Francis Suarez, who welcomed the persecuted Chinese miners to the Magic City in an interview with CNBC published on June 17.

To miners tired of dragging computers up chilly Xinjiang mountains or across humid hydroelectric dams in Sichuan, always threatened by a government crackdown, Suarez promises near-limitless supplies of cheap nuclear energy and a stable home.

“The fact that we have nuclear power means that it’s very inexpensive power,” Suarez told CNBC this week. “We understand how important this is [...] miners want to get to a certain kilowatt price per hour. And so we’re working with them on that.”

Electricity per kilowatt-hour (kWh) costs 10.7 cents in Miami, lower than the national average of 13.3 cents. The US government thinks that nuclear energy is the most reliable energy source by a large margin, as well as one of the most environmentally friendly.

And Suarez has heavily advertised Miami as Bitcoin City. He uploaded the Bitcoin whitepaper to his city’s website, and a county commissioner dangled a “campus dedicated to Bitcoin” before an audience at a major Bitcoin conference earlier this month.

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Ether (ETH) faces its largest options expiry ever on June 25 as nearly $1.5 billion out of $3.3 billion notional open interest (OI) in ETH options will expire. June’s expiry has over 638,000 ETH options contracts in its purview, accounting for 45% of the total open interest in these options.

Although it’s the largest options expiry in the history of the derivative product, the open interest in ETH options OI hit its all-time high of nearly $5.5 billion on May 20 soon after ETH had hit its all-time high of $4,362 on May 12.

The huge expiry amid the ongoing market-wide pull is indicative of increased interest in the ETH derivatives market despite the token trading in the $2,270 range, 47.61% lower than its all-time high from mid-May. Luuk Strijers, chief commercial officer of crypto derivatives exchange Deribit, told Cointelegraph:

“The put call ratio for the June expiry is 0.79, which indicates there are more calls outstanding versus puts (64,000 more). This is indeed indicative for bullish sentiment, however, the majority of this OI is held in contracts quite far away from the current ETH price, indicating a low likelihood of expiring in the money.”
Although, Robbie Liu, analyst at the Market Insights team of OKEx — a cryptocurrency exchange — pointed out what this gap in price indicates, “The expiry is still dominated by the bears since a significant amount of call options are a long way off the current price. For example, the largest OI is concentrated in strikes at the mark of $3,200 for call options.”

Call options contracts allow holders to buy Ether at a predetermined price on the date of expiry, while put options contracts allow them to sell Ether under similar pre-requisites. Under usual circumstances, call options are used to supplement bullish strategies, while put options are utilized as hedges against negative price movements of the underlying.

The max pain price for this record expiry is $1,920. This price being the point where the largest number of options are at a loss, it is highly unlikely that the price of ETH will drop more than 10% from its current trading range. Although, as witnessed on May 19, a day now more commonly known as Black Wednesday in the cryptoverse, seasoned investors would never say never.

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It's 2021. Super Bowl champion Tom Brady is starting an NFT company, Christie's is explaining CryptoPunks to everyone, Saturday Night Live is creating jams about NFTs, Beeple and Mark Cuban are advocating NFTs’ use case — yet, here I am, the CEO of a company that helps users securely store their nonfungible tokens and I still think the actual value of NFTs is to be decided.

It's important to back up and remember that, although it seems like we have all always known about NFTs, the opposite is true. Up until this year, NFTs were not only a novelty idea that would never be a story on cable news, but their use case was still being worked out in the blockchain industry. Although the recent hype has been fun, I believe that this current iteration of NFTs is far from the game-changing, revolutionary potential that they can truly unlock for entire industries.

Related: How NFTs, DeFi and Web 3.0 are intertwined

What makes NFTs different from Bitcoin
NFTs are different from all other use cases of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin (BTC) is considered a fungible store of value, and blockchains like Ethereum, Cardano and Polkadot help developers unlock utility via the blockchain for various DeFi projects. An NFT, on the other hand, is a uniquely generated token that uses the Ethereum blockchain to represent ownership of a digital asset in a way that is unchangeable over time.

Related: DeFi who? NFTs are the new hot stars on the crypto block

With everyone from retired professional wrestler The Undertaker to Lindsay Lohan pushing their own NFTs to take advantage of the trend, this feels far more like Ty Beanie Babies hype than revolutionary tech. Once the trend settles or the bubble bursts, all you are left with is a certificate of ownership that holds no value, which begs the question: Why not just right-click and “save as” to make a copy without spending $69 million?

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Prominent Bitcoin hater Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital and a long-term gold investor, has at last got his Twitter account verified and got the long-awaited blue tick from Jack Dorsey’s team.

He published a tweet full of excitement (and perhaps a bit of healthy sarcasm) on that.

“Things will start happening to me now”, he emphasized.

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Michael Saylor mocks Schiff to become a Bitcoiner
Big Bitcoin evangelist, CEO of the business software public company MicroStrategy (which was first to put Bitcoin on its balance sheet) immediately congratulated Schiff on that as if the latter had entered the lines of Bitcoiners.

Saylor was trolling Schiff, it seems, in his quiet manner, and offered him several instructions on what a newly-converted Bitcoiner must do “to continue on his winning streak”.

Among them is buying Bitcoin. Adding Bitcoin to his Twitter bio (this advice could be also given by Elon Musk a few months ago), getting laser eyes on the profile pic, etc.

Only in this case, Saylor insists, good things will start happening to Peter Schiff.

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Bitcoin is back under $37,500 and continues its sideways trading. After starting the week above $41,000, the Federal Reserve's plans to raise interest rates twice by the end of 2023 have some investors cautious. But sentiments have shifted across the asset classes as trader and economist Alex Kruger noted of “extreme sector rotations taking place.” This can be seen in the inflation expectations tanking, traders buying long bonds, long rates crashing, the long end of the curve flattening, financials plummeting, Dow Jones Average lower on financials, tech stocks higher on lower rates, USD also running higher, while commodities getting crushed. The US treasuries curve and the long bond are the keys to this market, he added. https://twitter.com/carlquintanilla/status/1405719604899549185 Still, the Fed balance sheet has now surpassed $8 trillion and is on track to go even higher by the end of the year, with the central bank yet to stop its $120 billion a month bond-buying amidst the rising inflation. Fed officials have raised their inflation expectations to 3.4%, up from the 2.4% March projection in 2021. According to Kruger, bitcoin is only an inflation hedge on paper and not in practice. We now have two forces pulling in opposite directions on the macro front: higher dollar and lower long rates.

“It's the long rates that are down. Short rates are slightly higher, and the market is now pricing in its first hike by the end of 2022.”
While commodities are getting sold just like Bitcoin last month, currently in sell the pullback mode, tech is all about multiples and valuations, as such all about long rates. “Longer-term view for US growth seems to be taking on a more of a cautious complexion ... investors may be saying they are uncomfortable with how strong the US economy can grow without monetary accommodation,” noted Goldman Sachs in its report. https://twitter.com/ScottMinerd/status/1405583556735389704 When it comes to the leading cryptocurrency, it currently lacks any substantial inflows to push its prices upwards. 7-day fund inflows of Bitcoin started increasing in mid-October and reached a peak in January this year. It was during this time, the price of BTC went from $10,500 to $42,000. Afterward, the flows started falling and have been negative since mid-May when prices dropped. Though inflows have started turning positive, they have a way to go to previous weekly highs.

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There’s never a dull day when it comes to crypto as was exemplified recently when the digital asset market dipped by around 50%, eventually taking the total capitalization from its all-time high of $2.5 trillion to around $1.7 trillion.

As was expected, in the wake of all this turbulence, Michael Saylor-led business intelligence firm MicroStrategy announced that it was all set to “buy the dip” — successfully concluding its $500-million offering of secured notes.

To further elaborate on the matter, per a statement released by the company, it was revealed that MicroStrategy had been able to facilitate a sale of $500 million worth of “senior secured notes” via a private offering to a set number of buyers based out of the United States. Of the above-stated total, after expense deductions, initial purchaser discounts and commissions are taken into consideration, the net total will work out to $488 million, the entirety of which will be used for additional Bitcoin (BTC) acquisition by the firm.

To quickly recap MicroStrategy’s recent crypto purchasing efforts, it should be highlighted that since August of last year — a time when the firm bought $250 million worth of BTC — the company has been on a Bitcoin-buying frenzy, as is highlighted by the fact that the firm holds a total of 92,079 BTC, which works out to nearly $3.8 billion.

Lastly, it bears mentioning that if BTC’s value continues to hover around the $40,000 zone, MicroStrategy will most likely be able to add around 11,900 Bitcoin to its balance sheets, bringing the company’s total crypto haul to over $4.2 billion.

MicroStrategy’s move smart or not?
On June 7, MicroStrategy announced the launch of the aforementioned private offering, initially stating that it was looking to raise around “$400 million aggregate principal amount”; however, as highlighted previously, this number now stands close to $500 million. What’s more, following the announcement, Michael Saylor claimed that his company had already received $1.6 billion worth of orders for their latest offering — i.e., four times the initial amount.

Kadan Stadelmann, chief technology officer of Komodo — a blockchain solutions provider — told Cointelegraph that MicroStrategy’s move isn’t that surprising, especially when considering that its newly formed subsidiary, MacroStrategy LLC., already owns a lot of BTC, adding:

“Michael Saylor is clearly focused on a long-term investment strategy rather than short-term gains or losses. Putting company debt on the line is risky, but it could obviously lead to a massive return as well.”
In this regard, it bears mentioning that the development has clearly had a positive impact on the Bitcoin market. In confluence with other positive news, the price of BTC has jumped from just over $35,000 to over $40,000 since the announcement. “The market does appear bearish overall despite this news, but one or two more stories of major institutional adoption of Bitcoin or other cryptos could very well bring the bull market back,” Stadelmann concluded.

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The community behind Guild of Guardians, an NFT-based role-playing game, appears to be enthusiastic about the forthcoming title after they snatched up nearly all of the NFTs that were part of the so-called founder’s sale.

Since going live earlier this week, Guild of Guardians’ NFT sale has raised over $3 million, the company announced Wednesday. The title raised $2 million in the first hour of the founder’s sale and $2.8 million in the span of 24 hours.

The sale featured a collection of playable in-game NFTs ranging from $200 to $100,000 in value. The NFTs will become playable once Guild of Guardians launches on mobile devices in the first half of 2022.

Pre-game registrations totaled 133,270, according to Derek Lau, game lead for Guild of Guardians. “Over 50% of all sales came via referrals — indicating that the community was sharing with each other, and there is a real 'share-to-earn' aspect in place,” he said.

Yield Guild Games, which represents a collective of nearly 15,000 gamers and investors woh generate yield from NFT-based games, was among the most prominent contributors to the founder’s sale, snatching up the “Mythic guild” NFT for $100,000.

Yield Guild Games founder Gabby Dizon said Guild of Guardians “ticked all the right boxes” with respect to graphics, gameplay, mobile readiness and guild systems”

“We are always looking for the next good play-to earn-games, and Guild of Guardians piqued our interest. We spoke to the team, and we're happy with what we found; they have polished graphics, interesting gameplay; we like that it is mobile-based and that they have the guild system [...]”

Related: NFT market projected to double by October as trading volume surges.

NFTs have been one of crypto’s most dominant storylines this year. Although sales are down 90% from the market peak, the outlook on the industry remains favorable as crypto-collectibles create new use cases.

As Cointelegraph reported, Metaplex has become the latest high-profile NFT marketplace to enter the sphere. Launched on Solana earlier this month, Metaplex allows creators to earn “perpetual royalties” for their work.

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