Join thousands of NFT traders who already start their day on Crypto slam.
You might think memecoins are big joke, but lately we're not so sure.
Welcome to The Daily Forkast February 9th 2022. I'm Angie Lau, Editor-in-Chief of Forkast,
covering all things blockchain.
While the hype has moved from memecoins to the metaverse, a couple of the biggest names
in the space are showing real staying power. How long can that last? Well, we're going
to take a look at that story and a whole lot more coming up.
Let's get you up to speed from Asia to the world.
Let's kick off with what's getting Asia talking today.
First up, China is working on standardization of the digital yuan as its plans for the currency
steams ahead.
The People's Bank of China, or PBoC, says it will work with three other central departments
on aspects including infrastructure, information security and valuation to establish the standard
for easy and wise in the next five years.
The PBoC document also says that financial cooperation will be promoted among countries
involved in its Belt and Road Initiative. Read cross-border ease of financial transactions
with friendly trade partners.
Now back in January, the PBOC said historical transaction values reached almost 90 billion
yuan, or over USD11 billion by the end of last year, and the digital currency is also
currently being showcased at the Beijing Winter Olympics, a debut, if you will, on the world
stage.
Meanwhile, in India, investors are throwing off concerns over new taxes.
Seems India's love of Crypto shows no signs of slowing down. Crypto exchange CoinDCX says
it now has 10 million registered users. That's a massive leap from August last year, when
it had just three and a half million.
That's the same month that it saw its Series C fundraise, led by Eduardo Saverin. B Capital,
which crowned the company as India's first crypto unicorn.
The milestone comes despite many investors expressing dismay at last week's budget announcement
of a 30% tax on income from crypto transfers.
And you can find those stories and a whole lot more at Forkast.News.
Over in the markets, while meme coins have been much derided, Dogecoin and Shiba Inu
were both leaders of the pack among last week's crypto market rally. So have they become too
big to be a joke?
Forkast.News, Lachlan Keller reports.
DOGEs Twitter account clocked three million followers as its price climbed over the weekend,
briefly re-entering the Crypto top 10.
Shib also rose over the weekend is currently the most widely held ERC-20 token among the
largest 1,000 Ethereum wallets.
The low value of meme coins has allowed many investors to dabble in what can be high reward
assets, but the chance of emulating DOGE and Shib success has become diluted with the ever
increasing number of meme coins entering the market.
While both Shib and DOGE built their success on a strong sense of community that says the
coins have real use cases. One industry expert told Forkast; it's more about branding.
The way we should think about Dogecoin is that it is a stray dog. It is an abandoned
project and then somehow it was found and taken care of, and it lives primarily on the
back of its brand power and kind of the mass appeal that it has as a social media meme.
Caselin says meme coins thrive of excitement and as their simple and cheap, it's easy to
build hype around them, unlike more complicated assets.
When it comes to the long term, reality comes into play and investors need to look for signs
of maturity, like whether a token can help solve real world problem, or if it has become
a subject of discussion for regulators.
For Forkast.News, I'm Lachlan Keller.
Well, the metaverse is possibly the hottest buzzword at the moment, it's got everyone
from Tim Cook at Apple to Bernard Arnault, the LVMH CEO, all interested in the metaverse
right now. And if you're so inclined, you can also study it at Stanford. Or maybe you
even attended a match at the Australian Open already in this virtual new world, but it
could be just the beginning.
And Duc Luc, executive chairman of Spores Network, a cross-chain DeFi powered NFT marketplace,
is here to tell us which inning we're in when it comes to the Metaverse.
Good to have you with us again.
Thanks for having me.
Ok, so every day, every day we hear of so many new events and activities that people
are bringing into the virtual world.
What are some of the projects you're most interested in your most excited about in the
metaverse right now?
To your point of which inning we're playing in, I think our first inning, you know, whether
it is Decentraland, which is, I would say, the most Web3 project out there, and metaverse
is where it's really an open world, open experience, Voxel based system to something like sandbox,
which is getting a bit more web to like.
There's projects such as metaverse at the service is one category where you can you
can be the Australian Open and you can work with a metaverse builder and they can build
that your version of of your of the metaverse for you.
Then there are metaverse that are full on more like gaming experiences. You know where
we're seeing now projects that are mimicking web to games like Counter-Strike and the lot.
So that'll be more unreal/unity gaming based systems, that will play out.
There are mobile metaverse that we're seeing where it's like, it's like combining AR with
your mobile phone so that you can literally walk around, build your own sort of, you know,
MySpace, right, that you can hang out in and share that space with your friends.
All right. It is an evolution of, as you've said, it's not a a revolution. It really is
an evolution. And we're seeing this in music as well.
Warner Music, one of the biggest music labels globally, partnering with the Sandbox for
virtual performance space. But is everybody ready yet? I mean, we heard about the Decentraland
concert, and some disgruntled attendee at Decentraland, AO Metaverse, was greeted by
a rather bear looking screen. They were kind of disappointed. Is everybody ready for for
this kind of experiential thing that that we kind of expect at a certain quality level?
You have to go into the details of that platform and whether it's technologically ready. I
don't know whether it's Decentraland was ready. Sandbox, again, I don't know how a voxel type
experience will, materialize as a music concert, I think.
Are you going to be watching voxel versions of the artists? Other metaverse are moving
more towards having video actual video technology. But even that once you move into the world
of true video, it's a heavy, heavy experience. Even the web to systems like Fortnite can't
handle the heavy video yet.
That's a great point. That's a great point. And finally, as if I don't feel guilty enough
about not getting to the gym, virtual reality workouts like Supernatural and Peloton Lane
Break are another fascinating area.
We're really seeing real world benefits from a virtual activity, and they're definitely
a step up from Wii in the mid 2000s. I don't. I had to borrow somebody else's Wii I never
had one myself. But but what are your thoughts here? We just kind of ramping up experiences
here.
I'm very interested in understanding that space because it's really it's a combination
of taking the physical, combining it with, you know, virtualization, but also really
the the the training aspect, right?
Because that's what that's what it really comes down to is whether you can actually.
Take the nuances of training and your trainer and then integrate it into either the AI or
the system in which you are training for. So I guess my two cents on that would be,
I think, something like Peloton who's already trying to do at home experiences. It makes
a bit more sense that they try to, you know, plop on a VR headset and to go to go fully
digital as long as that works for you.
If the Peloton way of of exercising works for you, then it might work, but it won't
work for everybody. So I'd love to see if there's a a full metaverse version. My, my
only concern to be like, are you sweating in your in your living room carpet? Like,
does that is that it's a good experience?
It is. It is. It's a brave new world, including heading to the gym right at home and no excuses
anymore.
Duc, thank you so much. It's a no excuse conversation. Always. We appreciate it.
And that's The Daily Forkast from our vantage point right here in Asia. And if you like
it, hit like hit subscribe, hit that alert button so that you can know when the next
video hits this channel. We appreciate it always, as you know. Visit Forkast.News for
more. I'm Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau. Until the next time.