Sup, nerds!

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

• 💅 This is cool: We need to call ourselves out…

• 🔎 This seems important: Number go up tomorrow

• 🤝 Partner: The first AI-powered startup unlocking the “billionaire economy” for your benefit​

• 🔪 Let's dissect this: We could soon be paying our taxes with BTC

• 💡 Bellwethers in Web3: Karel Kubat, Union Labs

Terms used in this edition (click for an explanation, or ask Web(GPT)3!):
Web2/3, wallets.

💅 This is cool:

Web3 Just Found a Side Door Into Web2 (And We Totally Missed It)

In one sentence: If you can paste/embed a link on a web2 platform, you can allow users to interact with your web3 app or game — without them ever leaving the platform (which means web3 now has web2-style distribution options).

We need to call some people out…

And those people are ourselves.

Yesterday when we wrote about the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems matching each other one-for-one in many-a-feature-update, we kinda just skimmed over the launch of Solana’s new ‘Blinks’ feature.

Here’s the Oprah patented “ah ha” we just had (24hrs after the fact):

Last week we wrote about ‘Hamster Kombat’ — the Telegram-based game that has now pulled in 200M users since March.

Then a few days later, we harped on about how web2 companies (like Telegram) have the largest opportunities in web3, because they have established distribution way beyond any web3-native apps/platforms.

…but we failed to marry these two stories with the advent of Solana Blinks, until now.

Hamster Kombat is (apparently) a fun game, which can be easily accessed by Telegram’s 900M monthly active users, via the app.

Web3 apps/game don’t have that kind of distribution power.

(E.g: the leading ETH and SOL wallets, MetaMask and Phantom, have a combined monthly active user base of 37M).

But features like Blinks steer around that hurdle by piggy backing off the distribution of existing web2 platforms.

If you can paste/embed a link on a web2 platform, you can allow users to interact with your web3 app or game — without them ever leaving the platform.

(Just like Telegram).

The huge opportunity being:

If you’re building on Solana, you can now outcompete Telegram’s reach of 900M monthly active users, simply by posting your game to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit — or hey, even Telegram itself.

Now — there’s still a big ol’ catch:

Users of these web2 platforms will still need a Solana wallet, like Phantom, to be able to interact with the game or app…so there’s still friction.

But there’s a good chance the social proof (aka: folks seeing these apps/games everywhere on their timeline) provided by these major web2 platforms, will drive wallet adoption up and to the right.

It’s like web3 tech just found a side door into web2!

🥇 Want the news before anyone else?

🔎 This seems important:

New Data Shows: Number Go Up Tomorrow

In one sentence: $2.7B worth of profitable options set to expire tomorrow — which should cause a flurry of buying/selling of BTC & ETH (and right now, the data shows there will be more buying than selling).

Good news!

Fresh upward momentum is expected to hit the crypto market tomorrow.

Here’s why:

Friday is the last trading day of the quarter — and traders have a habit of buying options that expire on these days.

Option trades are exactly what they sound like:

An option to buy or sell an asset (in this case Bitcoin and/or Ethereum) at a certain price in the future. Options to buy an asset are known as ‘calls,’ while options to sell are known as ‘puts.’

(Why? No idea ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ probably because it makes traders sound smart).

Right now, roughly 27% ($2.7B worth) of the $10B of options set to expire are ‘in the money’ (i.e. profitable), which means they will be acted upon — resulting in a flurry of buying/selling.

The key question in cases like this is:

Which of the two profitable options make up the majority — the options to buy (calls), or to sell (puts)?

Cause if the buy orders are the dominant ones, that means we’re going to see a bunch of buying pressure (helping to push the price up). While if the sell orders are the majority, the inverse will happen.

But wait! It gets more confusing!

In this web of financial back and forth, traders can sell their options to other traders.

And by looking at which of the two options is most in demand on the secondary market, we can get an idea of whether there will be net buying, or selling tomorrow.

As promised up top, the good news is:

As of this writing, buy options are winning that race.

This could have changed by the time you’re reading this (in fact, news just broke that the US government is about to sell a bunch of seized BTC)…

But for now, we’re in good shape!

🤝 Partner:

The First Ai-Powered Startup Unlocking the “Billionaire Economy” for Your Benefit

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The best part? Everyday people are already benefiting.

The company that makes it all possible is called Masterworks, whose unique investment platform enables savvy investors to invest in blue-chip art for a fraction of the cost. Their proprietary database of art market returns provides an unrivaled quantitative edge in analyzing investment opportunities.

So far, it's been right on the money. Every one of their 16 exits has been profitable, with recent exits delivering +17.8%, +21.5%, and +35.0% net annualized returns*.

Intrigued? Web3 Daily readers can skip the waitlist with this exclusive referral link.

_{*Past performance is not indicative of future returns, investing involves risk. See disclosures masterworks.com/cd.}

🔪 Let's dissect this:

We Could Soon Be Paying Our Taxes with BTC

In one sentence: Earlier this week, a Bill was introduced to allow US residents to pay their federal tax payments in BTC (which tells a larger, more positive story).

Remember when Uber first came out?

It started as a high end service that no one really used, and which operated in the ‘grey area’ of the law.

Now, 15 or so years later, many people in the world couldn’t live without it.

That’s the kind of transition Bitcoin is starting to see — and this latest proposed Bill backs that up.

Earlier this week, Republican House Representative, Matt Gaetz, introduced a Bill to allow US residents to pay their federal tax payments using BTC.

Now, there’s still a long way to go before the Bill is passed…

But! We’re still excited about it — here’s why:

Firstly, it represents a move from rejection of crypto → acceptance of crypto (well, at least of BTC).

It also opens up the conversation for the House to battle it out.

Whether it passes or not doesn’t really matter right now - the important part is that it’s being discussed and debated.

And — if we can dream for a second — if this Bill does get passed?

It would not only result in more adoption for crypto, but more clear legislation around BTC payments.

Just as the journey to mass adoption for Uber was long and hard, so far mass adoption for BTC has been even tougher.

But this is a small step in the right direction!

💡 Bellwethers in Web3

"Bellwether's in Web3," is a daily profile series recorded live with Nolcha Shows and Movement Labs in collaboration with Bellwether Culture. Check out the latest video below.

Interview: Karel Kubat, CEO of Union Labs

Karel Kubat is the Founder of Union, the first fully trustless bridge powered by zero-knowledge technology. Before Union, Karel was CTO at Composable Finance, successfully steering the company to achieve a valuation of $450 million.

Karel has been coding smart contracts since 2016, beginning with Solidity and then expanding to Rust and Go in 2018. Drawing from his deep technological expertise and his background in Systems Engineering, Karel developed the IBC Protocol on Substrate (Polkadot) and is now committed to bringing interoperability, security, and trustlessness to web3 - and the world - through his work at Union.

Follow: @0xkaiserkarel (Twitter), @union_build (Twitter), Union.Build (website)