We break down the state of the Meme economy and make comparisons to what we saw in the 2021 bull cycle. Memes on Solana have strong parallels to the NFT market on Ethereum from last cycle, especially when you compare revenue figures of the top marketplaces like pump.fun to Opensea. We give our thoughts on where we are on the timeline of meme mania and speak about the impacts memes are having on the broader crypto market. This includes methods of launching new projects by leveraging memes as a more user friendly go to market vehicle to onboard community and then adding complexity layers down the road to not off-put sentiment.
Also, when it comes to marketing narratives memes seem to be dominating the mind share so we discuss how we are approaching $NAT from a marketing perspective. Now that $NAT is weeks away from officially becoming Bitcoin’s second subsidy reward coin, how we classify this new coin is important for public perception. Some do not see $NAT as a candidate to fit within the existing market demographic of memes and rather see a new narrative formed around the coin that distinguishes it from the meme asset class due to its technical provenance to DMT and the broader mission of supplying Bitcoin miners with additional subsidy to sustain network security. We discuss our thoughts on this and also the liquidity dilemma when it comes to supporting Bitcoin assets. All sectors of the Bitcoin ecosystem are facing this problem and are actively working toward building solutions that can either bring more liquidity to Bitcoin from other chains or port Bitcoin native assets to other chains like Solana to benefit from those capital markets.
William and Iman collect a group of Decentraland all stars including Corv, FrankyNeedles and Lastraum to discuss our thoughts on the launch. We discuss the gear we found in many of the beta tests and how they'll increase in valuation. A Decentralized Autonomous Organization will be responsible with many of the updates and governance of the platform. Throughout this journey, many of us have asked ourselves whether it continues to make sense pouring in our time and investments in building out things in the metaverse. We also discuss some feedback for the Decentraland team which ranges from some SDK improvements to additional functionality that would open up new experiences. We also discuss what has more value between MANA and LAND. Make sure you stay tuned till the end to watch us go through some play tests. Keep in mind the final tests will have some bugs in preparation of the launch in just a few days. Finally we discuss how NFTs are supported in Decentraland such as wearables and how the community could contribute to his space.
As we prepare ourselves for the launch of Decentraland on 02/20/2020, we cover everything that's been happening in the crypto space. Bitcoin inches closer to its halvening which is contributing to this year's all time high. The Decentralized Finance community has reached a psychological milestone where $1 billion has been locked up in DeFi protocols. With RSK, Bitcoin is now interoperable with the Ethereum network enabling new functionality. Pretty soon we're going to start seeing NFTs used as collateral in a similar way a house is used as collateral. Brian Armstrong explains the similarities in maturity with messaging and crypto. Another exchanged gets hacked. Finally, we reveal our 2 new games powered by MetaZone.io!
Andrew Yang has been the figure that has motivated those of us disengaged from the political process. As the only candidate that has recognized cryptocurrency as an asset we should invest in, naturally we're inclined to invest in his candidacy. This is even without acknowledging his other rational policies that we believe to solve other systemic issues such as his freedom dividend. We also discovered Jack Mallers' Strike app that allows you to use your traditional bank account to facilitate Bitcoin Lightning transactions by scanning a QR invoices. We also evaluate the price of Bitcoin as we try to figure out whether or now we've seen the beginning of a bull cycle. Finally, we discuss adding a gaming mechanic to the world of Decentraland where players collect resources to craft more valuable items. We ask the community a question, is it more interesting to mint brand new NFT's through a proof of work mechanism or would a standard token sale suffice?
After returning from a long trip from Mexico, we summarize some of what transpired over the last week. We discuss events occurring around the world such as the virus called Coronavirus that's infected over 6,000 people. We reflect on Kobe Bryant's death and figure out why so many people felt this loss so deeply. Andrew Yang being the only candidate with a cryptocurrency policy won an Iowa Youth Straw Poll and why it might indicate his potential to win the presidential nominee. Bitcoin has been rising since the start of 2020, could we be in a bull market right before the halvening occurs? We're a week removed from our interview with Ben Kelly. He's one of the more knowledgable about the Axie Inifinity NFTs and we debrief on our conversation and reflect on the whole NFT ecosystem emerging. Finally, Decentraland is launching February 20, 2020. The Block Runner has 2 more games in development as we get ready for the launch.
William and Iman interview the man they call Elon Stark because of his talented skills for developing automation techniques to solve problems in the gaming industry. Ben Kelly started his career collecting and competing in the world of Magic the Gathering to going from a few hundred Axie Infinity NFT's to nearly 10,000 using his team's proprietary breeding engine. Ben describes how he first heard of Bitcoin and how he got involved in crypto. He also explains what makes an Axie Infinity NFT so valuable and how he optimized Axie Infinity genetic identity to breed more powerful and more rare Axies. Finally, we explain our own NFT idea to Ben so he can give us his thoughts on how viable it could be.