📔 Weekly Journal: Google Bets Big on Web3 🌐🫰
[8min read] Your guide to getting ahead on the digital frontier (& the weekend!). Today, the usual market news & treats plus all about Polygon and its latest partnership with Google Cloud.
Welcome to this week’s Weekly Journal 📔, your guide to the latest news & innovation in digital assets, emerging technology, and our exciting path to the Metaverse. This is week 21 of the 520 weeks of newsletters I have committed to, a decade of documenting our physical and digital lives converge.
New subscribers are encouraged to check out the history & purpose of this newsletter as well as the archive.
Enjoy your weekend! 😎
Ryan
Here’s what you’re getting today:
📈 Market update: BTC midweek dip on Mt Gox release rumours, Eth euphoria subsides
🗞️ Interesting news: Google partners with Polygon, Starbucks releases more NFTs, and Eth euphoria fades.
👓 Read of the week: State of Polygon Q1 2023, I highlight the key take aways
🎥 Video of the week: Humane, a new AI wearable from ex-Apple heavy hitters
🤖 This week’s AI showcase: I discuss how wearables like Humane could affect society
✅ Weekly poll: Pick the topic for next Wednesday's emerging tech showcase
🤑 DCA with me: Follow me as I invest $50NZD every week in different digital assets
Market update 📈
🥝 NZ Economy
Inflation has peaked, the labour market is slackening, and interest rates and house prices are at a turning point.
The economy is rebalancing, and migration is playing a significant role in this, with approximately 52,000 migrants settling in NZ in the 12 months to February.
This is likely to be the driving force behind other positive developments in the economy, such as easing staff shortages, solid spending levels, and some stabilisation in the housing market.
Crypto Market
₿ Bitcoin’s price experienced an 8% decline on Wednesday due to rumours of transactions involving wallets linked to the defunct cryptocurrency exchange, Mt. Gox. The market is aware of the eventual distribution of the 850,000 stolen Bitcoin from a hack that occurred in 2014. However, "Since not all of the stolen BTC could be recovered, only a fraction of the original amount held by creditors will be compensated," Matrixport's head of research Markus Thielen wrote.
🔷 Following the successful Shapella upgrade on April 12, data from Nansen shows that more ETH is currently being staked than withdrawn for the first time since the upgrade, with staking volumes of 124,000 ETH exceeding withdrawal volumes of 64,800 ETH as of April 17, indicating that validators are restaking their unlocked Ether instead of mass selling 🙌
Heatmap below - price recovered well after the midweek dip (size of the blocks are market share, colour & % show the change over the last week)
🎭 Sentiment levels have pulled back slightly (healthy!) with Market Cap steady above $1.2 Trillion.
Interesting news
☁️🔗 Google Cloud has announced a partnership with Polygon, as part of its deepening participation in the web3 industry. The multi-year strategic alliance between the two companies aims to provide tooling and infrastructure to developers building on Polygon's scaling solutions, and Google will make its Blockchain Node Engine available for Polygon PoS Chain node operators. With this partnership, developers using the Blockchain Node Engine will no longer have to configure or run their Polygon PoS nodes. Polygon's PoS Chain is the fifth-largest smart contract chain with $1 billion in total value locked, while its recently launched zkEVM secures $5.5 million.
😞 Crypto markets saw a downturn as regulatory and macroeconomic risks resurfaced after the euphoria of Ethereum's Shapella upgrade wore off. Ether lost nearly 15% of its value, breaking its upward price trend. Bitcoin also lost 7% of its value, and the native ETH staking yield dipped below 5%. US regulators continue targeting crypto (“Operation Chokepoint 2.0”), with Congress revisiting a bill to require stablecoin issuers to provide monthly attestations of their reserves and ban certain algorithmic stablecoins. Another 25bps rate hike is predicted at the US Federal Reserve's next meeting on May 3.
☕ Starbucks Odyssey launched a new NFT collection, "The First Store Collection," featuring 5,000 collectibles priced at $100 each. NFT owners receive 1,500 points on the soon to be launched Starbucks Odyssey platform, and collectors with two Starbucks NFT Stamps gain early access. The new collectables (buy here) will also introduce Starbucks rewards for beta users on April 24, including immersive coffee experiences and points earned by completing in-app tasks and making in-shop purchases.
🏦 Franklin Templeton's OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, with over $270M in assets, is now supported on the Polygon network for Ethereum-based blockchain compatibility. The fund invests primarily in government securities, cash, and repurchase agreements to provide stable income, with one share represented by one BENJI token. Franklin Templeton cited increased security, faster transaction processing, and reduced costs as benefits of integrating blockchain into its system.
👓Read of the Week
This week’s deep dive read is all about Polygon, a scaling solution for Ethereum. Layer 2 scaling solutions are built on top of the Ethereum blockchain to enable faster and cheaper transactions while maintaining the blockchain's decentralization and security features. It is fighting 2 other L2’s (Optimism and Arbitrim) for “market share” of this. Polygon also has a venture arm and partners with both Web3 and legacy companies.
The Messari State of Polygon Q1 2023 report came out on Thursday and here are my highlights:
Polygon's PoS chain saw strong growth in Q1, with 22 million new addresses and 400k daily active addresses.
It had the largest share of gaming users among EVM chains, with popular games like Planet IX.
Polygon Labs launched the zkEVM Mainnet Beta for fast and open EVM-equivalent solutions.
Polygon ID is now available for anyone to use for Web3 identities.
Avail, its data availability layer, will be spun off to focus more on ZK-scaling efforts.
Lastly, the Delhi hard fork improved the network's performance and reduced gas spikes.
Video of the week 🎥
This week’s must-watch video is on a mind-blowing wearable AI assistant. More discussion in the next section.
Let me know what you think in the comments!
This week’s AI showcase🎨🤖🎵✍🏼
Each week I showcase something amazing generated by an AI-based tool. AI is disruptive, challenging industries and driving innovation. My vision of the emerging Metaverse predicts the use of many AI tools to enhance how we work, learn, play and socialise.
This week’s example is in the video above. Here’s what you need to know:
Humane is an AI company that raised $100 million in funding for its product. They are developing a new device that could potentially replace smartphones, partnering with Microsoft, Open AI, and SK networks.
The device is wearable and can project onto surfaces, with features such as language translation and food scanning. The device operates independently without needing to be paired with a smartphone
Humane claims to have their own AI and data, and the product can do more than existing apps in the market.
The co-founders of Humane are former Apple employees, with one having spent 20 years at the company.
While the technology is impressive, it raises questions about its impact on society. Will this device further erode our privacy and increase surveillance in public spaces? How will this wearable affect social dynamics and communication, particularly in group settings?
As we move towards a more integrated technology-dependent world (the Metaverse as I define it), it's crucial to consider the broader implications of such devices and their impact on society.
Weekly Poll ✅
Help choose what you would like to learn about on Wednesday for my weekly emerging tech showcase:
That’s all for the free version this week! If you have any organisations in mind that could benefit from learning about emerging technology, be sure to reach out. Educational workshops are one of many consulting services I offer.
DCA With Me 🤑
Dollar Cost Averaging is an investment strategy in which an investor regularly invests a fixed amount of money into a particular asset/asset class, regardless of its current market price. By doing so, the investor can reduce the impact of market volatility and potentially earn a better return over time. The basic idea is that by investing a fixed amount of money at regular intervals, an investor can buy more of the asset when prices are low and fewer when prices are high, which averages out the overall cost of investment.
To experiment with this, I invest $50 NZD into Digital Asset every week. Each week I will choose an asset that seems underpriced in the short term and has positive long-term potential. My timeframe is 1-3 years. I don’t give financial advice but if you want follow along with me you can use my easycrypto.co.nz referral link to support this newsletter. Let’s dive into this week’s pick:
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