Deepdive into the crypto markets - August 2021

Crypto has started to move north during the month of August with bitcoin touching 50k USD again for the first time since May. Driving this time's movements from a narrative perspective is to many the non-fungible token rally (NFT for short). NFTs are digital rights to for example an image and can be compared to modern forms of hockey cards.

Every artist and their grandmother has either launched an NFT or “aped in to” buying a CryptoPunk for 250k USD per jpeg. Ape in as it's known in the industry quite accurately describes the mood of many of these investors and is when you jump into buying some obscure crypto asset you do not understand from the fear of missing out. Let the rampage (and as always subsequent slaughter of the uninformed) commence.

The crypto market

Bitcon is working its way upwards on the year to date chart. We started at around 29k USD and are now hovering just below 50k USD. Not too shabby even in bitcoin standards.

Bitcoin and the traditional industry

Not too much is happening in the traditional financial markets vs bitcoin chart. All we can conclude is that we are luckily still above our newfound arch enemy Elon Musk's Tesla as well as Berkshire Hathaway.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin slowly bleeds its market cap against the other crypto assets combined. It cannot compete in today's environment with the FOMO of NFTs, the allure of 100% interest yearly in decentralised finance and the ability for anyone to print money as easily as if he or she was the Federal Reserve's Jerome Powell himself.

Education

Today is a good day to learn about NFTs. Thus, we let no other than Andreas Antonopoulos explain the concept of it and see if he can attract you to dive deeper into the topic. Crypto Explained: What Are NFT or Non Fungible Tokens? Why Should I Care? [2021]

This month most impactful news

Will PayPal's adoption of bitcoin make cryptocurrency more mainstream?
Could Developing Nations Follow El Salvador’s Move To Bitcoin?
Explainer: Binance: The crypto giant facing pressure from regulators

Other interesting data

It's hard to slice NFT interest as anything other than a phenomenon. It's something of a joke to most, but it is becoming something very real in a way that was almost impossible to predict for even the most bullish crypto kid. It has also become a way for non-crypto users and people with absolutely no interest in crypto to become avant crypto users. All without really ever knowing about crypto, decentralisation or consensus protocols.

OpenSea is the largest NFT market place in the world. It ranks among the top 1000 websites globally which, just in itself, shows how crazy fast and hard the interest for NFTs has risen. Looking at their daily volume, anyone can quickly see that the recent craze has been something indeed.s

The amount of NFTs sold is also a good way to measure the current interest of the newfound industry. You do not need a masters degree in statistics to conclude that it has been quite a month.

Users naturally follow in the heels of such a buying pattern, and we see the explosive growth there as well. But the most interesting aspect of all of this is not the bull market that is currently raging in NFTs. No, the most interesting element is what can be built around it. A company like OpenSea, which didn't exist approximately 20 minutes ago, was valued at 1.5 bnUSD in June. Just imagine the valuation today. This is an unforeseen part of the evolution which branches off from the bitcoin stem that neither Satoshi nor anyone else really could predict with any accuracy. Yet, in hindsight it is logical. It is inevitable.

I leave you with the NFT sale fees. They speak for themselves.