Crypto Market Overview – February 21^th, 2022

 

Bitcoin Drops to $37,000 Amid Russian Aggression Against Ukraine

The flagship crypto once again reflects general market fears and, after a modest gain overnight, falls to $37,000, in parallel with a sharp increase in the number of provocations by Russian troops on the border with Ukraine, which seems to bring the largest regional conflict closer to the point of maximum heat. By the middle of the day, the price of Bitcoin began to rise and reached $38,800 per coin. Experts attribute this to the announcement of negotiations between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, according to analysts, this is more of a short-term reversal, since the price of crypto-gold has already fallen to $38,600 at the time of writing. But do not forget that the price of Bitcoin is influenced by many factors, including macroeconomic ones. The total volume of trade between Russia and Europe is less than 1% of Europe's GDP. Thus, the possible blocking of the "white" capital of the aggressor country should not affect the desire of the Russian authorities to hedge their losses. Moreover, any outflow of Russian capital from foreign investors may end up in the markets of Europe and the United States, and Bitcoin will become one of the ways to transport it to the final beneficiaries. Thus, rather soon, regional markets should begin to become less dependent on five minutes of Putin's glory. Except, of course, for the Russian markets, which will have to live with this stigma for a very long time to come.

 

Snoop Dogg Launches a Collection of 10,000 Custom NFT Avatars for The Gaming Metaverse

The Sandbox Alpha metaverse, in partnership with Snoop Dogg, announced the release of 10,000 software-generated, voxelated NFT avatars under the title Doggies, which contain over 150 unique traits and can be used in the second season of Alpha Season to celebrate events, go for concerts, participate in quests and exploration of the metaverse. Avatars are divided into seven categories based on their rarity: Human, Blue, Alien, Zombie, Dogg, Robot, and Golden. While two-thirds of the NFT characters will be regular (the most common), there will also be three types of uniquely designed avatars with special traits and characteristics. The release of the collection is scheduled for February 22. This is done so that the release date (22-02-2022) is easy to remember for fans of the metaverse. It’s also reported that users who already own Snoop-exclusive NFTs from the Snoopverse Early Access Pass, Snoop Party Pass, JADU Jetpack, JADU Hoverboard, SupDucks, and FLUF Burrow series will have the opportunity to create their own characters 24 hours before the official release.

 

FTX Launches Crypto Service for Game Designers and Developers

The American branch of the FTX crypto exchange in the United States announced the launch of a gaming division called FTX Gaming, which aims to launch gaming tokens and offer support for NFT this month. The company has already announced the opening of vacancies for software engineers who will have to implement the project. By the way, only three months have passed since FTX announced that it will invest $100 million in crypto game projects together with Lightspeed Venture Partners and Solana Ventures. “We are launching FTX Gaming because we see games as an exciting use case for crypto. There are two billion plus gamers in the world who have played with and collected digital items, and can now also own them,” — an FTX spokesperson said. The company itself has also seen some personnel changes. In particular, Amy Wu, formerly a partner at Lightspeed, has joined the cryptocurrency giant. She will lead a new venture capital fund, FTX Web3, with an estimated value of $2 billion. Earlier, in an interview, she already hinted at a white label solution for game publishers that allows integrating various crypto components into the gaming space. And apparently, it was just about the future release of the FTX Gaming platform.