Weekend 🔗 Digest - Global adoption 🌏
[7 min read] Web3 goodness in your inbox every Saturday morning, best enjoyed with coffee and brunch ☕. Today we showcase examples global crypto and blockchain adoption, and take a Metaverse deep dive
Good morning everyone!
It has been a big week so lots of good stuff in today’s Weekend 🔗 Digest. Thanks for all the great feedback on the new format. If you are new, be sure to check out the history & purpose of this newsletter as well as the archive.
Have a great weekend and happy Lunar New Year🧧!
Ryan
Here’s what you’re getting today:
Market update: The crypto market cap pops back above 1 trillion and sentiment improves
Interesting news: 3 stories from around the world showing the rapid enterprise and state level adoption of blockchain.
Video of the week: A recording of my well attended Metaverse webinar from Wednesday night
This weeks AI creation: I use particular “prompts” in ChatGPT to generate a next-level explanation of Stablecoins
Market update 📈
It has been a great week for the space with the crypto market cap as a whole above 1 trillion for the first time since Nov 2022, an important psychological milestone following the FTX implosion:
The Crypto Market Heatmap shows what a great week it has been (size of the blocks are market share, and while colour & % show the 7 day change)
Sentiment has risen to levels not seen since April 2022:
Interesting news from the week 🗞️
🇦🇺 National Australia Bank Mints AUDN Stablecoin. Pegged to the Australian dollar, it is designed to help large institutional customers with transactions. Institutional adoption is positive for the space. Learn more about Stablecoins later in the newsletter.
“Elements of the future of finance will be blockchain enabled because it has the potential to help deliver instantaneous, transparent, and inclusive financial outcomes for customers as our economy becomes increasingly digitised…Our focus is very much on looking at use cases where there is high friction and clear customer benefit particularly for larger businesses,” says National Australia’s Chief Innovation Officer Howard Silby.
🇺🇸 The makers of the popular layer one Avalance blockchain and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have joined forces to accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology for businesses, organizations, and governments. Avalanche is the first blockchain partner with the AWS platform, which allow AWS to provide decentralized application services to its users with the help of Avalance which is known for its scalability and speed. This partnership is positve for mass adoption of blockchain tech given the ubiquity of AWS.
🇮🇳 ‘Crypto Is Harmless,’ Says Indian IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar. “India will lead the world in all things blockchain- both in size and scale and how we migrate to web 3.0.” He also said “There is nothing today that outlaws crypto as long as you follow the legal process.” Always good to see politicians discuss crypto in a positive light.
Video of the week 🎥
In partnership with Blockchain Council, the deep dive Metaverse session went really well (apart from a few initial minutes of technical difficulty cringiness).
This week’s AI creation 🎨🤖
Each week I showcase something amazing generated by an AI-based tool.
ChatGPT is the AI chatbot taking the world by storm. It uses billions of words of text from a 2021 “download” of the internet. To get the best out of it, use specific prompts. You can try ChatGPT for free here. This was my prompt, and the output below:
Stablecoins are a type of digital currency that are pegged to the value of a real-world asset, like the US dollar. This means that the value of the stablecoin is directly linked to the value of the asset it is pegged to.
How do stablecoins work?
Stablecoins are created and managed by a company or organization.
They are built on top of a blockchain, which is a type of digital ledger that records all transactions made with the stablecoin.
When someone wants to buy a stablecoin, they send an amount of money (usually in the form of another cryptocurrency) to the company or organization that manages the stablecoin.
The company or organization then sends back an equivalent amount of stablecoins to the person.
The value of the stablecoin is kept stable by the company or organization using different methods.
Why use stablecoins?
Stablecoins can be used to make transactions, just like any other cryptocurrency.
However, because their value is pegged to a real-world asset, their value does not fluctuate as much as other cryptocurrencies.
This makes them useful for things like making purchases or sending money to other people.
Example
USDC (USDC) is a stablecoin that is pegged to the US dollar, meaning 1 USDC is always equal to 1 US dollar.
DAI is a stablecoin that is pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar, but it's created by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) on the Ethereum blockchain
It's important to note that not all stablecoins have the same level of stability and reputation, some have been proved to have issues with their peg or lack of transparency, so it's important to research and investigate before using any stablecoin.
Remember that this was made available only in Nov 2022, we are so early. It will be an exciting year for AI!