Sup, nerds!

Here’s what you’re getting in today’s edition:

• 💅 This is cool: Apple’s first VR Web3 game

• 🔎 This seems important: ‘February is going to be rough for Bitcoin’

• 🤝 Partner: This painting sold for $8 million and everyday investors profited.​

• 🔪 Let's dissect this: Bitcoin ETFs (ally or enemy of the crypto space?)

Terms used in this edition (click for an explanation, or ​ask Web(GPT)3!​):
Metaverse.

💅 This is cool:

Apple’s First VR Web3 Game

In one sentence: Victoria VR claims to be bringing a photo-realistic metaverse VR game to the Apple Vision Pro by the end of June (but we’re not holding our breath).

When our team writer, Caite, said she could get us all Super Bowl tickets because her “cousin works for the 49ers” — she was talking a big game.

(Turns out he works the concession stand at the 76ers arena. Wrong team, wrong sport, wrong job title).

When Victoria VR claims to be bringing a photo-realistic metaverse VR game to the Apple Vision Pro by the end of June?

We feel like we’re being promised Super Bowl tickets again.

(We really hope we’re wrong though).

The basic gist of the game is this:

• ‘Victoria’ is an island city with multiple photo-realistic environments (think: suburbs, city, woodlands, jungle, beach — feels very GTA tbh).

• It has its own cryptocurrency (the ‘VR token’), which players can spend on in-game items, entertainment, and land.

• There’s a wide range of quests, challenges, and battles to explore.

Which sounds awesome, when the competition looks/feels like this. That said…

Here’s why we’re not getting our hopes up just yet (at least for a mid-year release):

1. Apple’s going to want a cut of all in-game transactions, which means needing to integrate Apple Pay — which doesn’t support crypto.
   
   In the short term, the only way around this would be to launch in the EU, which has recently forced Apple to drop its ‘we get a 30% cut of all app revenue’ rule.
   
   (Only problem is, the Apple Vision Pro won’t be available in Europe until the end of 2024).
   

2. We’ve been burnt by promises of ‘groundbreaking graphics’ and ‘imminent releases’ by gaming studios in the past, so we have a strict “we’ll believe it when we see it” policy.

Fingers/toes/eyes crossed this isn’t vaporware.

🥇 Want the news before anyone else?

🔎 This seems important:

“February Is Going to Be Rough for Bitcoin, but Things Should Turn around in March”

In one sentence: Decentrader predicts BTC will be a bit choppy throughout Feb (and may well take a dive), but should rebound throughout March.

In today’s “insights and predictions made by people way smarter than us” news…

Remember the other week when we spoke about the pattern that certain crypto-market-big-brains are expecting to see play out?

The one where, in the lead up to both the 2016 and 2020 Bitcoin halvings, BTC’s price saw a 40-50% drop in price from its then recent highs.

Yeah, well, more and more people are voicing their support for this theory. Today’s backing comes from Decentrader, who predicts:

“Bitcoin has around 30 days from now to meander through its corrective phase before finding the FOMO demand anticipated.”

Translation: BTC will be a bit choppy throughout Feb (and may well take a dive), but by March, expect folks to start buying/pushing the price up again.

And you know what — in complete honesty — we wouldn’t be mad if that happened.

(We love a good bargain).

🤝 Partner:

This Painting Sold for $8 Million and Everyday Investors Profited

When the painting by master Claude Monet (you may have heard of him) was bought for $6.8 million and sold for a cool $8 million just 631 days later, investors in shares of the offering received their share of the net proceeds. 

All thanks to Masterworks, the award-winning platform for investing in blue-chip art. Masterworks does all of the heavy lifting like finding the painting, buying it, storing it, and eventually selling it. When Masterworks sells a painting, investors could get a return*. 

With over 850,000 users, shares of offerings can sell out in just minutes. But Web3 Daily readers can skip the waitlist to join with this exclusive link.

*Investing involves risk and past performance is not indicative of future returns. See important Reg A disclosures and aggregate advisory performance masterworks.com/cd

🔪 Let's dissect this:

Bitcoin ETFs (Ally or Enemy of the Crypto Space?)

In one sentence: Bitcoin ETFs go against the main premise of Bitcoin, but also allows for the onboarding of folks that would otherwise not participate in the space.

Have you heard the saying: humans are creatures of habit? 

We had to look up who coined it…

(So you know for next trivia night: it was Stanley Hall in the 1870s).

We bring this up because this saying is the perfect encapsulation of why we like Bitcoin ETFs. 

The concepts behind ETFs and Bitcoin are radically opposite. 

With ETFs, investors never actually own the asset, instead the fund custodies it for them — which comes with its own risks (uhhhhh hello FTX, Lehman Brothers, Silicon Valley Bank).

Buying/storing a cryptocurrency with a middleman (centralized exchange) undermines the exact reason Bitcoin exists:

Which is to allow anyone to participate in the global financial system, giving them complete ownership over their assets, investments and information. 

BUT.

Humans don't change overnight. 

Giving investors the opportunity to purchase Bitcoin ETFs introduces them to the world of crypto, allowing them to dip their toes in, learn and eventually (hopefully) dive in head first. 

It takes time for people to adopt new ideas.

…but giving them a stepping stone (ETF) sure will help them take the leap. 

Bitcoin Halving Explained