Sup, nerds!

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

• 💅 This is cool: Proof that memes have tangible value...

• 🔎 This seems important: Why can’t the market make its mind up?

• 🤝 Partner: Ready to get hands-on with AI?​

• 🔪 Let's dissect this: Soon you’ll be able to use USDC for most purchases online

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

💅 This is cool:

Memes Have Real Tangible Value (Here’s Proof)

In one sentence: The dude that held up the “Buy Bitcoin” sign while Janet Yellen was giving testimony to congress back in 2017 just sold the notepad for 16 BTC (roughly $1M).

Let’s close out the week with a fumb one shall we?

(Fumb = fun + dumb).

Remember that dude that held up the yellow legal pad reading “Buy Bitcoin,” while Janet Yellen was giving testimony to congress back in 2017?

This was him then:

This is him now:

(On the right, not the left — can you imagine??)

See how he’s smiling? That’s cause he just sold his “Buy Bitcoin” legal pad for 16 BTC (roughly $1M).

The takeaway:

Memes have real, tangible value.

🥇 Want the news before anyone else?

🔎 This seems important:

Where’re We Going Here? (Why Can’t the Crypto Market Make Its Mind Up?)

In one sentence: It feels like there’s still a ways to go before the market gets its confidence back — which could well manifest itself in a sideways snooze fest for the next week or so.

Alright, time for a much belated bi-weekly (ish) check in with Bitcoin and the broader crypto market.

Bitcoin sold off between Wednesday night, dipping as low as $62.8k on Thursday morning, after a bunch of long positions got liquidated.

Translation: once Bitcoin started falling, a bunch of BTC holdings that were bought using borrowed money were automatically sold off to cover each account’s losses.

(And that additional sell pressure only helped to push prices down even further, triggering more position closures, until prices bounced back).

Meanwhile, altcoins followed suit — ETH took a trip from ~$3.3k to ~$3k, while SOL moved from ~$159 to ~$142 — but didn’t bleed out as heavily as they had the last time Bitcoin slipped.

These patterns of higher highs and higher lows that are being traced by most of the top cryptocurrencies indicate that a slow and precarious rebound is being made, after the violent sell-offs between Apr 09 and Apr 19.

That said — we’re not out of the woods yet! Zooming out:

It feels like there’s still a ways to go before the market gets its groove/confidence back — which could well manifest itself in a sideways snooze fest for the next week or so.

And honestly, the crypto markets kinda need a breather. Before this, it’d been up-only for seven months straight.

Here’s to resting up in the hopes of seeing an exciting month of May!

🤝 Partner:

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The friendly kind! 

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🔪 Let's dissect this:

Soon You’ll Be Able To Use USDC For Most Purchases Online

In one sentence: Stripe is bringing back crypto payments, allowing their customers to integrate with USDC in the click of a button.

BIG NEWS! Stripe is bringing back crypto payments!

If you’ve ever bought anything on the internet, chances are you’ve used Stripe’s services, without even knowing about it.

They’re the company, that other companies use, to power their payment processing.

(With over $1 Trillion (with a T) worth of transactions completed in 2023 alone).

The forward-thinking founders, the Collison brothers, are no stranger to crypto. Coinbase previously allowed merchants to receive payments in BTC, until they axed that offering in 2018 due to Bitcoin’s volatility.

But a lot has changed in crypto since then. The number of stablecoin transactions has grown exponentially and hey, Solana didn’t even exist back in 2018!

This time, Stripe is taking a more measured approach - integrating with USDC (the US-pegged stablecoin) on the Solana, Ethereum and Polygon networks.

John Collison said it best in his keynote address yesterday at Stripe’s Global Internet Economy conference: “With transaction speeds increasing and costs coming down, we’re seeing crypto finally making sense as a means of exchange.”

Crypto taking even just a small slice of that $1T per year of transactions?

We’ll take it!

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What is USDC?