Sup, nerds!

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

• 💅 This is cool: NFTs in games = razor blades in apples

• 🔎 This seems important: The greatest investment of all-time

• 🤝 Partner: Unlock your startup's potential with Raze 🚀​

• 🔪 Let's dissect this: Which blockchain is best?

Terms used in this edition (click for an explanation, or ​ask Web(GPT)3!​):
NFTs, Zk-proofs, Blockchains.

💅 This is cool:

Game Makers Aren’t Letting Go of the Idea of In-Game NFTs (Here’s Why)

In one sentence: Free-to-earn NFTs in games mean players get to own/sell their collected items, while game makers get a cut of each NFT sale (creating a new revenue stream).

You know that urban legend that spread years ago…

The one about how people were hiding razor blades in apples, and giving them out at Halloween ?

All of a sudden, both kids and parents began to fear what (on paper) should be considered a healthy treat.

Same goes for gamers and NFTs.

When NFT collections first hit the gaming scene, many of them had (metaphorical) razor blades hidden in them.

(I.e. they were riddle with schemes that sought to separate collectors from their hard earned money).

Which made the gaming community’s outright rejection of NFTs completely understandable…but gaming companies are still committed to marrying gamers and NFTs in holy matrimony.

Take Team Liquid (the esports organization) as an example, they’re about to start giving out NFTs (apples) as rewards to loyal fans (trick-or-treaters).

So why continue to try and force things, if gamers aren’t into it?

Because once you see the way NFTs can benefit gamers and game makers alike, it’s easy to get hooked on the concept.

The pitch goes something like this:

• The in-game items/achievements that players work for hours/days to collect are minted (for free) as NFTs.

• Players can then buy/sell/trade these digital collectibles via an in-game marketplace.

• Game makers take a cut of every secondary sale.

Gamers get an awesome game to play, true ownership over their collected items, and the opportunity to profit from the whole experience (at zero cost).

While game makers get a new recurring revenue stream.

It’s a win/win!

So what’s it going to take to win the hearts of gamers?

A stupidly fun/popular game.

(That just so happens to have NFT functionality built into it).

🥇 Want the news before anyone else?

🔎 This seems important:

MicroStrategy Didn’t Adopt Bitcoin — Bitcoin Swallowed MicroStrategy

In one sentence: BTC swallowed $MSTR, now Michael Saylor’s BTC strategy is either going to be one of the greatest triumphs or failures in investing history (our guess is the former).

Body Snatchers (1993):

A teenage girl and her father discover alien clones are replacing humans on a remote U.S. military base in Alabama.

Body Snatchers (2024):

A 59 year old man and his software company discover Bitcoin, which then swallows his entire business model, in a remote town in Virginia.

…

MicroStrategy ($MSTR) is in a weird spot.

Sure, it’s technically a software company — but a large portion of its market cap is thanks to the fact that it owns ~190,000 Bitcoin (~$9.74B).

So much so that the narrative around the stock is “buy $MSTR to get exposure to Bitcoin” — instead of “buy $MSTR to gain exposure to the profits of its software business.”

Just look at the correlation between $MSTR’s stock price, and Bitcoin:

Here’s what defines the ‘weird spot’ the company is in:

• If Bitcoin goes up, MicroStrategy stock goes up ✅

• If Bitcoin goes down, MicroStrategy stock goes down ❌

• If MicroStrategy sells any of its Bitcoin, the stock goes down ❌

(See how the reward v. risk is asymmetric?)

The fun part of it all, is this:

With this level of correlation, Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin strategy is either going to be one of the greatest triumphs, or failures in investing history.

(We have a feeling it’s going to be the former).

🤝 Partner:

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You have a killer idea for an epic new product…all you need is a bit of funding to build out the team and market the damn thing!

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(It’s basically a cheat code for raising funding).

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🔪 Let's dissect this:

Q: Which Blockchain Is Best? A: Who Cares, When You Have Bridges

In one sentence: AMD and Wormhole’s new partnership brings us one step closer to a world where all major blockchains work seamlessly with one another.

Wormhole is partnering with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to enable ‘corridors’ for zk-proofs that will then allow cross-chain messaging.

Cool. What does that mean?

Lets dish out the who, what, how & why of it all — starting with who:

AMD makes computer chips and Wormhole is a blockchain ‘bridge,’ which means it facilitates the transfer of tokens between opposing blockchains (e.g. Ethereum to Solana).

Neat — what are these two working on together?

Well, Wormhole connects 30+ different blockchains. That’s hefty! And with that heft, comes the need for a whole bunch of compute power.

Good news is, Wormhole has created a ‘light client,’ which…

Man, how do we explain this?

Think of ‘Wormhole and Wormhole Light’ like ‘Coke and Diet Coke,’ except instead of calories, it aims to reduce compute requirements.

But even with Wormhole’s ‘light client,’ some extra oompf is needed — which is where AMD’s ‘FPGA’ chips come in.

Cool, cool…Diet Coke and computer chips, or whatever — why should I care?

You know how everyone is always arguing about which blockchain is better?

(Bitcoin vs. Ethereum vs. Solana vs. Cardano, etc. — it’s incessant!)

Well, blockchain bridges like Wormhole silence a lot of that bickering.

Cause when all the major blockchains work seamlessly with one another, they stop competing in many ways.

And this partnership brings us one step closer to that peaceful reality!

What is a Crypto Bridge?