Headline News - GPT-4 Is Launched, Meta Turns Back On NFTs As It Cuts Another 10,000 Jobs, and Balaji bets BTC hits $1m in 90 days
Mutant Ape Yacht Club tops the 7-day volume charts. Bored Ape Yacht Club sits in second, Azuki is in third, HV-MTL is in fourth and Otherdeed for Otherside is in fifth.
This past week we saw OpenAI release their much anticipated GPT-4, upgrading their famous ChatGPT application to the latest version for paid subscribers. This marks a huge leap forward in consumer grade AI tooling, and the tech world is in awe of the new use cases.
Closer to home with NFTs, we saw the launch of DeGods on BTC Ordinals, where 500 DeGods were sold for a price of 0.33 BTC. There was a lot of FUD leading into the launch, but Frank proved the disbelievers wrong once again with a successful and seamless launch. The floor price of Ordinal DeGods is currently sitting at almost 2x.
Meta announced it was shutting down their “digital collectible” (NFT) program for Instagram, a move made in conjunction with them cutting an additional 10,000 jobs. Instagram’s NFT program never gained widespread adoption like they (and many of us) were probably hoping for, so this move is not altogether surprising.
The crypto markets have pumped significantly this week after a Monday announcement by the FDIC saved Silicon Valley Bank’s depositors. There is increasing uncertainty in the US banking crisis, and it appears people are looking to crypto as an alternative haven to store value. We’ll dive into this much more in the Talking Point section below when we look at Balaji’s bet on BTC hitting $1m in 90 days.
For full articles on all the above and much, much more, head into the sections below and click on the relevant links.
Curated News - the biggest stories of the past week
BIGGEST NFT Sale: Fidenza #971 - 380WETH
Meta Cuts 10,000 More Workers After Scrapping NFT Plans—Is the Metaverse Still On?
Popular AI Artist Claire Silver Will Not Be Showcasing Her Work At The Louvre
OpenSea Patches Vulnerability That Potentially Exposed Users’ Identities
Uniswap's NFT Platform Shows DeFi's Reluctant Acceptance of Centralization
Animoca Brands Co-Founder: Royalties Make It Possible for NFT Projects to Flourish
Crypto Wallet Prototype Discovered Inside Microsoft Edge Browser
Gwyneth Paltrow-Backed NFT Art Platform Wild Reveals Latest Artists
MetaMask Addresses Privacy Concerns w/ New Features For Enhanced Control
Ethereum Layer-2 Solution Arbitrum Announces Token Airdrop, Opens Tech Stack to Devs
OpenAI’s GPT Is Helping Turn Text Into Custom Metaverse Worlds
Educational: What Is an Open Edition NFT Sale?
Educational: ZenAcademy’s 30 Days Of NFTs - Entry Level NFT Course
A word from our Founder: Welcome to ZenAcademy! and why to join
Project news & things we’re keeping an eye on
Yuga Announce Inscription Process For TwelveFold Collection Is Underway
Polygon Labs Partners With Unstoppable Domains To Launch Top-level Domains
Talking Point - Balaji Predicts $1m BTC in 90 Days
The thing everyone is talking about this week is a bet that tech entrepreneur Balaji made, where he effectively said he believed the price of Bitcoin will reach $1m USD in less than 90 days due to hyperinflation. See this tweet for the original bet:
This is obviously an alarmist bet and sentiment, and is causing a whole spectrum of reactions from the community (and the world at large).
The premise for his belief that hyperinflation is going to take off is that the fractional reserve banking system is now falling apart, starting with what we saw with SVB last week.
When a bank run occurs, it becomes apparent that banks do not hold the cash on hand to repay everyone asking for their money.
The approach with SVB was for the US Government to guarantee all deposits, effectively insuring an additional $150b. That’s a lot, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to how much they would have to back if every bank had a bank run. That number is on the order of $16 trillion.
All of this of course does not mean that Bitcoin is going to (or is likely to) go to $1m in 90 days. Such an extreme event should be treated to be extremely unlikely, though not impossible.
Here is a thread by Balaji where he breaks down his thesis more:
and this is a Twitter space he did where he spoke about his point of view for an hour:
We recommend reading the comments and all the contrarian opinions.
You should always diversify your investment portfolio across a variety of assets with various risk profiles. We are not in the business of being alarmists, or of being financial advisors. We encourage you to speak to a professional and do your own research as everyone’s personal situation is different.
Zeneca’s Tip Of The Week - Always buy multiples
Ever been in the agonizing position of holding one NFT from a collection and never knowing when to sell it? We've all been there.
The solution is to buy multiples, and I think 3 is a good number. This way, you can sell one to cover costs, one at a significant profit, and one for the moonbag/forever hold (or just to sell at a higher profit).
“But Zeneca, i'm not a whale, I can't afford multiples!” I would argue that if you can't afford to buy 3x of an NFT, you shouldn't be buying 1x of it. There are exceptions, and this is mostly geared at short-medium term trading and not long-term conviction holding.
Let's say you have 0.3 ETH burning a hole in your pocket. Instead of looking for what you can buy between 0.25-0.3 ETH, look at what you can buy 3x of between 0.08 - 0.1 ETH. Not only does this help reduce the variance by allowing you to sell off a portion of your holdings (vs it being all-or-nothing if you have only 1), it has a tremendous positive impact on your mental state. That anguish of "only having 1" diminishes, and you no longer spend an inordinate amount of time wondering what to do with your single NFT.
ZenAcademy Recommends…
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HeyMint Launchpad - Are You Looking to release an NFT project? We have recently partnered with HeyMint Launchpad. They are, without a doubt, the most comprehensive no-code toolbox for creating your dream NFT collection. The best part? It’s 100% free for creators. It’s great for independent artists and 10k PFP collections alike. Try it out for yourself here.
Note: All links in the above text are referral links; by using them you are directly supporting the ZenAcademy Community. Thanks for your ongoing support.
ZenAcademy & 333 Club Noticeboard
ZenAcademy Community News
Excited to announce a couple of events ZenAcademy will be hosting & featured in at NFT LA (aka Outer Edge) next week. Our very own praetor and DancingEddie are going to be presenting a workshop called "How to truly build community in web3" and praetor will also be featured on a panel called "Merging Web3 with Web2: How we do it".
If anyone is going to NFT LA / Outer Edge next week, please join the chat in NFT LA (Outer Edge) (21 - 22 Mar). The team would love to meet as many of you as possible.
Introducing ‘Who Wants To Be A Zillionaire?’ This fun quiz game will run twice a week during ZenDaily, on Tuesdays and Thursdays! Three contestants are chosen live from the audience, and are asked six questions. If you answer right, you get a prize. You can then take that prize, or try and answer another question for a better prize. Make it all the way and you could land yourself a ZenChest. But answer wrong, and you lose everything.
The ZenAcademy community was invited by InPeak to join their weekly Networking session. Together with their community, we met up and then jumped into break out rooms to network. Whether you just wanted to hang out and make new connections, ask for advice, pitch your ideas or share alpha, there was a place for everyone. Look out for more of these kind of events in our ZA Discord Announcement channels.
NFT Sensei gave away 10 trial spots (one-week duration) to 333 Members last week. Sensei is officially launching their new and improved Bid Bot Experience. With 120 active tasks available running at up to 7000 bids per hour, it is a welcome edition to the premium Mint bot, Deal Sniper, and Wallet Manager experience you all have come to know and love!
In case you missed this, The ZenAcademy PFP Artist has been revealed!!! It’s Pondering! We are SO excited to have the privilege of working with him, and love everything he does. Check out his work via his Twitter profile linked above.
ZenAcademy’s Student IDs are here and available for everyone! We’re so excited to have rolled this out, with over 13,400 Student IDs already claimed. This is a FREE access point into our community for anyone wants to join. If you’ve not done so yet, Claim your token here: https://zenacademy.com/enroll. Remember, these are Soulbound NFTs which means that they cannot be sold or transferred out of the wallet that mints them. Also, the supply is unlimited which means that you do not need to rush.
ZenAcademy - Latest Content Releases
YouTube Video: Episode #71 of Two Bored Apes is now available - BLUR Airdrop, Centre Pompidou and LACMA acquiring NFTs
YouTube Video: The Importance Of Asking Questions In Web3 - Zeneca at MET AMS
Zeneca Newsletter: Letter 36: All about ERC-4337
Zeneca Newsletter: Letter 37: SVB & USDC
YouTube Shorts: How to Transform Your Audience into a Loyal Community
YouTube Shorts: How 20% Of Your Fans Create 80% Of Your Impact
ZenAcademy Regular Events
The ZenDaily Show hosted by Zeneca and Emileevee, every Mon-Fri (at 10:30am EST). This space is all about education, information and entertainment. It has a focus on Web3 education, topical perspectives, and being a forum for the ZA community and beyond to join in and discuss what’s going on in the web3 world. Additionally, Zeneca will be doing what he does best: distilling complicated information into easily digestible bites.
Wellness Wednesdays - Hosted by @Kit777 every other Wednesday. Kit talks with one of our highly esteemed members in a Twitter spaces where we pause, take a break and discuss all things related to mental health/wellness and our shared human journey in life.
Artists Corner - Every other Wednesday, hosted by KingInTheCastle, this event takes place in our Discord for our members. Artists take to the mic and share their journey, experiences and knowledge with our community. Hop in the call to learn and have fun.
333 Club’s weekly ‘This Week in NFTs’ Twitter Spaces, each and every Sunday. Follow the 333 Club Twitter page here for more info.
Join Poker Nights via our Discord. Events held weekly, with prizes to be won.
There’s a ‘global-events’ forum in the ZA Discord to help facilitate IRL meet-ups amongst the community. Find more details here.
Don’t forget to keep across the Giveaways Discord channel, with plenty of allowlist spots up for grabs on a regular basis.
If you enjoy ZenCaps, don’t miss out on ZenDaily. It’s published Monday to Friday and provides a short recap of the past 24hrs in the NFT space. Subscribe for free here.
Nothing in this or any other ZenCaps publication should be construed as financial or investment advice. The views and opinions expressed in ZenCaps publications do not reflect those of Zeneca or the ZenAcademy.
We occasionally use affiliate links in this Newsletter where we may earn a commission on any successful referrals.
Always exercise caution within the NFT space and adhere to best practices when it comes to making any investments. There is plenty of potential, but this comes with inherent risks.
Stay safe, and as always, good luck.