This Week in Crypto

In this issue: Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg ETH DCF, Apecoin, Coincheck, HSBC, SEC, Terra, ThorChain, and a Deep Dive into Gala Games

March 23, 2022

Issue Summary: Welcome to Coinstack, the weekly newsletter for institutional crypto investors, where we review the top news and reports in the digital asset ecosystem.

In This Week’s Issue:

  1. This Week in Crypto

    1. 🗞️ Top Weekly Crypto News - Goldman, Coincheck, HSBC

    2. 💵 Weekly Fundraises - Yuga Labs, Block Tackle, Struct Finance

    3. 📊 Key Stats - Bloomberg DCF, Ethereum, Terra, THOR Chain

    4. 📝 Report Highlights - The Crypto Intelligence Report: Gala Games

    5. 🎧 Best Crypto Podcasts - Coinstack, Bankless, RealVision

    6. 📈 Top 10 Tokens of the Week - APE, WAVES, RUNE

  2. Upcoming HeartRithm Institutional Investor Webinars: DeFi for Institutions

  3. Featured NFTs: LuvMonsters - Starting at $6 🔥

  4. Coinstack Podcast Episodes

  5. Top 30: A Good Long-Term Crypto Portfolio

  6. Join Our Telegram Group

  7. Who We’re Following on Crypto Twitter

  8. How to Get Started in Crypto Learning

Thanks to Our 2022 Coinstack Sponsors…

FTX US is the safe, regulated way to buy Bitcoin, ETH, SOL, and other digital assets. Trade crypto with up to 85% lower fees than top competitors and trade ETH and SOL NFTs with no gas fees and subsidized gas on withdrawals. Sign up at FTX.US today.

HeartRithm is a crypto quant fund that invests in DeFi, margin lending, and algorithmic trading to generate monthly yield for institutional allocators and qualified clients in a market-neutral manner, without a single down month since inception. They also have a major social impact mission and are giving away a portion of their performance fee to fund philanthropic efforts. Learn more at www.heartrithm.com.

Celo, the mobile-first blockchain that makes financial tools accessible to anyone with a mobile phone number, is a proud sponsor of Coinstack. Connect, transact, and store your crypto assets on the Celo blockchain using only an SMS interface. Learn more about Celo at www.celo.org.

📺 Upcoming Webinars for Institutional Investors

HeartRithm Managing Partner and Coinstack publisher Ryan Allis is hosting an upcoming 55-minute webinar on crypto investing for family offices, wealth managers, and financial advisors covering our thoughts on crypto investing going into Q2 2022, how to invest in DeFi, which smart contract platforms are growing, and mapping out the crypto hedge fund ecosystem. Register for free below.

🗞️ Crypto News Recap: The Top 5 Stories

Welcome back to This Week in Crypto… everything you need to know in one scannable format. Here are the top 5 stories of the week…

  1. ​​⚡ Goldman Sachs Makes ‘Milestone’ Crypto Trade With Galaxy Digital - The bank’s first over-the-counter (OTC) crypto transaction could spur other Wall Street heavyweights to follow suit. (Source)

  2. 😮 Japanese Exchange Coincheck to List on Nasdaq via SPAC Listing - Coincheck, a Japanese wallet and crypto exchange, has announced its intention to list on the Nasdaq stock exchange through a special purpose acquisition with Thunder Bridge Capital. (Source)

  3. 🏧 HSBC to Become the First Global Financial Services Provider to Enter the Sandbox - Partnership will see HSBC take sports engagement to a new level in gaming metaverse. (Source)

  1. 💰 The U.S. Congress Sends Inquiry to the SEC on Crypto-Related Investigations - The US Congress sends an inquiry to the SEC regarding their actions to obtain information on cryptocurrency firms. (Source)

  1. 🤑 Australia Seeks Licensing of Crypto Exchanges via Digital Services Act - Australia Seeks Licensing of Crypto Exchanges Via Digital Services Act. (Source)

💬 Tweet of the Week

💵 Weekly Crypto Fundraises & Deals

Here are all the crypto fundraises we heard about this week, ranked by size…

📊 Key Stats of the Week

Here are the most important and interesting stats in crypto this week...

1. Bloomberg Ethereum DCF Model Suggests Ethereum Undervalued

2. Over 2,000,000 ETH Have Been Burned Since the EIP-1559 Launch

3. The DeFi sector was the best performer with a +8.58% return

4. The Number of SEC Filings Show Ethereum Institutional Interest Is Near All Time Highs

5. TVL on the Terra Chain Reaches an All-time High of $27B

6. THORChain Leads With the Most TVL Gained in the Last Week With a 42% Increase in the Last Week

📝 Highlights From Crypto Reports

Here are the top highlights from the best crypto research reports this week…

The Crypto Intelligence Report: Gala Games

About the Author: Stratmont Brothers is a European crypto investment fund that invests in meaningful disruptive innovations, with an emphasis on Web 3.0, De-Fi, cryptocurrencies, tokens, and blockchain companies reshaping trillion-dollar markets. Their mission is to create a better world for our next generations. They are known for challenging long-standing assumptions, predicting macro trends, and identifying early-stage technologies that will reshape the world.

Short Introduction

“Gala Games was founded with one goal in mind: to give power back to the gamers. Our mission is to enable freedom through play. To this end, we have embarked on one of the most ambitious development projects to date - the creation of the Gala Games Ecosystem. Founded by Eric Schiermeyer (the co-founder of Zynga and gaming legend), Wright Thurston (one of the first major miners in the cryptocurrency space and holder of multiple patents on blockchain technology), and Michael McCarthy (the Creative Director behind viral gaming hits such as Farmville 2), Gala Games is here to fundamentally redefine both the gaming and blockchain spaces.

The first game released by Gala Games, Town Star, is a deceptively simple-looking but incredibly deep farming simulation in which users build a farm to compete in weekly competitions. At various places, NFTs can be used in the game to provide bonuses but are not required to play, have fun, or compete. Mirandus, the MMORPG/Adventure Simulator currently under development by Gala Games, is working to completely redefine both the game development pipeline and the gameplay model by putting the power in the hands of the players and giving them ultimate control over the in-game economy.”

(source: GalaGames)

Growth Narrative

Gamers and consumers, in general, have been losing control over their content as the internet has become more mainstream and physical media has been slowly phased out. Many games have developed models where players can buy cosmetics and other items using in game currencies that require real world money. This has added a new experience to players as they can customize their avatars and obtain rare items. These players often spend hundreds of dollars on these in-game items, and as easily as they can be purchased, they can be taken away. With a ban from a game admin, players can lose access to everything they have paid for. All the time and money spent on getting these items disappear completely. The gaming company keeps the profits, and the player is now left with nothing. Players may purchase items, but they do not own their items as they should. Players buy the privilege of using an item but are never able to truly own it. Players can buy a cosmetic but if they have no use of it anymore, they can never sell it to another player and get their money back. This is what Gala Games is changing.

“Making blockchain games you'll actually want to play”, Gala Games' main goal is to get gamers interested in the quality of video games and for the blockchain behind it to be just a powerful tool. Gala games has observed over time that the appeal of games that only have interesting blockchain features and no quality as a video game is fading. It is then necessary to interest the gamer before the blockchain user to make a good game. In addition to playing a good game, the players have a voice in the roadmap. They can be enlisted via distributed voting mechanisms, to help determine what games Gala Games should develop and get funding. This is done through the Founder’s Nodes voting mechanism. Founder's Nodes is another innovative feature from GalaGames. A Founder’s Node is part of the largest decentralized gaming network in the world. There will only ever be 50,000 of these nodes. Everyone who operates a Founder’s Node is contributing to the growth of this decentralized gaming network. By running a Founder’s Node, one is working to give players real ownership of their assets and content. As an example, Founder’s Nodes were able to vote to allow Fortified to be accepted in the Gala Games ecosystem and if the vote ended up being no, the game would have been rejected. Founder's Nodes allow owners to get rewarded with GALA tokens, among other rewards.

The GALA token is the digital utility token of the Gala Games ecosystem. It is cryptographically secured and native to the Gala Games ecosystem. The token main use is to trade in-game objects in the Gala Ecosystem. There was no ICO led before the first distribution of $GALA, and the number of distributed tokens is lower as time passes (through halvings). $GALA price is an x3 away from All-Time High.

Une image contenant texte, fond marin Description générée automatiquement

Team & Partners

Gala Games has a team of over 150 employees and is growing bigger every month. Big names are at the head of the company. We have Eric Schiermeyer who is the co-founder and CEO of Gala Games. Eric is the former CEO of Intermix Media, the company behind Myspace, and he is the co-founder of Zynga. The second co-founder and currently the studio director at Gala Games is Michael McCarthy. He is the former creative director at Zynga and the one behind FarmVille 2, a game that had over 40 million monthly active players at its peak. The next big name on this list is the President of Games at Gala games, John Osvald. John has a 15-year background in the gaming industry, most of it from Zynga, but his most recent position was Head of Products at the mobile games division at Electronic Arts. His job at Gala is to oversee the games under development. Next up we have Warren Marshall and Craig Matchett, both of them working with 3D designing. Warren is the co-founder and art director at Gala. He has over 20 years of experience in the industry and 5 of those were spent at Epic Games where his most recent project was Fortnite. Craig is working on one specific project at Gala which is Mirandus. As for Craig, he was a part of the creation of Dead Space 2 and 3, Battlefield Hardline, and many more popular games. As for Partners, Gala Games have connections with strong projects such as Brave, Polygon, or Flare.

🎧 Top Crypto Podcasts of The Week

Here are the crypto podcasts that are worth listening to this week...

📈 Top Performers This Week

Here are the top 10 performing digital assets this week, out of the top 100 by market cap.

And here are the top 15 performers in the last week from all tokens with a market cap of $20M+.

The Top Performers This Month from the Top 100: ApeCoin is an NFT token, Waves is an L1, THORChain is an Exchange, Terra is an L1

🎨 NFTs of the Week: Our Featured Collection

🎨 LuvMonster NFTs - Collect Them Now - Starting at $6

Here are the new LuvMonster NFTs from our official Coinstack featured artist Mrs. Bubble that you can buy at our special pre-sale prices.

These NFTs are individually hand painted and then digitized for some added magic — with special sound added. We now have 308 unique LuvMonster owners — and the community is growing weekly.

For early notification on drops, so you can get them daily at the earliest possible pre-sale prices, join the Discord and the Telegram Channel.

We will continue to feature these joyous NFTs here in Coinstack, building the community and collector-base each week. We are now working on building a stuffed animal line and board game based on these characters. Think of them as the Beanie Babies of the 2020s.

Many of our early collectors are buying up the initial supply each day and then earning a profit by reselling the NFTs in the secondary markets. We love shared prosperity!

These are on the Polygon network, so there are no gas fees.

New NFTs This Week - Limited Pre-Sale Available Starting At $6 on OpenSea 🔥🔥🔥

Here are the new NFTs launching this week. All of these have been handpainted by the artist and then digitized, with sound and motion added. If you haven’t already purchased your first NFT, this is a great chance to buy one at a reasonable price.

You can also join the Telegram group here and Discord group here for early NFT drop announcements.

Hive Digital is a leader in providing SEO and PPC services for blockchain, DeFi, Web3, and crypto companies. If you want to expand your organic presence and paid leads from Google and Facebook get a proposal from Hive Digital at www.hivedigital.com.

🎧 Latest Episodes of The Coinstack Podcast

We have a new Coinstack podcast. So far we’re at 20,538 listens and growing!

Here are the episodes we’ve released so far...

You can listen and subscribe on:

We really appreciate you listening and sharing the link with your friends.

📈 Our Top 30: A Long-Term Crypto Portfolio

Each week we include our top 30 list. If we were creating a portfolio from scratch right now that we didn’t want to touch for 5-10 years, we would be sure to include our top 5: ETH, DOT, SOL, AVAX, & FTM. Here’s our current top 30 for a well-rounded long-term crypto portfolio…

To see which exchanges to buy these on, use Coinmarketcap or Coingecko. We recommend using dollar-cost averaging and holding for a 5-10 year time horizon for any crypto investor as prices can fluctuate a lot in the short term.

💬 Join The Coinstack Telegram Community

Join our Telegram Channel here to chat with our community, ask questions, and learn more about the future of money as we move to a decentralized internet and the creation of a new open global monetary system that works for everyone. We now have over 1700 members on our Telegram.

💬 The People We’re Following Closely on Twitter

📚 How To Get Started With Crypto Learning

📰 The Coinstack Newsletter:

Tracking the most important blockchain stories of the 2020s, including a decentralized internet and the creation of a new open global monetary system that works for everyone. As always, published for informational purposes only. Please do your own research. Just our opinions. Not intended as financial advice as we are not financial advisors. We may be long on many of the digital assets we write about as we believe strongly in the sector. Please do your own research. Published and written weekly by Ryan Allis and Mike Gavela.

The information above does not constitute an offer to sell securities or a solicitation of an offer to buy securities. Further, none of the information here is a recommendation to invest in any securities. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Any historical returns, expected returns or probability projections may not reflect actual future performance. All investments involve risk and may result in loss.

Comments and thoughts welcome on our Telegram channel:

Please share with your friends and colleagues.