The Fed announces the biggest interest rate hike in 22 years

Edition #16 - 6 MAY 2022

The Federal Reserve said it was lifting its benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point, to a range of 0.75% to 1% after a smaller rise in March. Markets, both crypto and equity, slide heavily into the red.

gaming developments

• Sky Mavis has released an update on Axie land staking this week;

• Illuvium prepares to auction 20,000 of its highly anticipated land plots on June 2nd;

• Axie Infinity surpasses $4 billion in all time NFT sale volumes;

• Blockchain card game Splinterlands is back on top as the most popular game this week, with just under 500 thousand unique wallets connected.

metaverses & Adoption

• Yuga Labs rakes in $317 million in its Otherside metaverse land sale - a landmark minting event, already records a $1 million secondary sale;

• OpenSea’s official Discord has been hacked, promoting a Youtube phishing scam;

• CryptoPunks collection reaches $2 billion in all-time volume, despite a cooling NFT market;

• Argentina’s central bank blocks financial institutions from offering crypto, days after two banks announced opening up crypto trading to their clients;

• Crypto adoption increases in the United Kingdom – 33% of UK consumers have purchased digital assets, 61% plan to increase their holdings;

• Luxury brand Gucci begins accepting crypto in its stores;

• Ibiza's leading night clubs partner with an NFT collective Party Degenerates to offer unprecedented utility to its users.

zen portfolio highlight

This week we highlight our portfolio company Edensol – a fantasy gaming metaverse combining fun-packed action with P2E features and the use of collectible NFTs on Solana blockchain.

Edensol blends features of games like Path of Exile and Diablo 3 to offer players unprecedented play-to-earn gameplay and the widest array of special gear NFT upgrades. Heroes engage in a unique quests to hunt for monsters in story mode or directly challenge other players in one-to-one battles for ultimate supremacy. Edensol’s landscapes, characters, their ranking and storylines make for a highly engaging lore and gameplay, previously unseen on Solana.

Edensol is already available as a public demo release, with a full launch scheduled for Q3 2022.

Find out more about Edensol and it’s on-going public IGO pre-sale by joining their thriving communities on Twitter, Telegram and Discord.

defi

• Hedging against inflation survey: 79% of people do nothing, 4.9% turn to crypto;

• Yuga Labs’ Otherdeed land mint clogs Ethereum, almost $200 million of gas fees burned in hours. Users report paying as much as $20,000 for a transaction to execute, triple the price of the mint itself;

• Block (formerly Square) announced that its Q1 Cash App bitcoin sales totalled to $1.73 billion, spread across 10 million accounts;

• Crypto lender Nexo grants $3.3 million NFT loan collateralised by 2 rare Crypto Punks;

• April saw Total Value Locked (TVL) drop in excess of $20 billion to just over $200 billion across DeFi dApps.

funding rounds

• Amberdata, a digital asset data provider, completed its $30 million Series B this week, at a valuation of $330 million. Knollwood Investment Advisory led the round with Nasdaq Ventures, Nexo, Coinbase and others participating;

• LootRush, an NFT gaming platform, raises a $12 million Seed round led by a16z at undisclosed valuation. Axie Infinity, Dapper Labs and Vivi Nevo, amongst others, participated in the round;

• Decrypt, a crypto media company, closed its $10 million funding round at a $50 million valuation this week, with investors including Hack.VC, Hashkey Capital, Canvas Ventures and Protocol Labs.

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