After months of anticipation, the London hardfork is complete.
And to say it's delivered on its promise so far would be a huge understatement.
In just five days at the time of this recording, we've seen over 20,000 Ether burned to dust,
while the price of ETH has rallied to over $3100.
All in spite of some serious FUD coming out of Capitol Hill.
Today, we'll be taking a look at what the success of the London hardfork and EIP-1559
means for the Ethereum roadmap
as well as checking out some of the hottest and downright bizarre trends in the thriving ecosystem.
Let's get it!
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It's hard to believe Ethereum's march to proof-of-stake
could be coming sooner rather than later.
I know. I know.
But don't just take my word for it.
Even Vitalik himself has gone on record
saying that the move to ETH 2.0 will be taking place this millennium.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg,
the Ethereum co-founder and Stoner Cat voice actor said the success of the London upgrade
was proof that the Ethereum ecosystem is able to make significant changes,
making him more confident about the mainnet's upcoming merge with the Beacon Chain.
And this is a guy so confident, he wore a unicorn shirt.
So while the expected ETA is still sometime in 2022,
Buterin hinted it could possibly even come by late 2021.
Don't hold your breath, folks.
I don't want you to die.
But so far, so good.
With EIP-1559 in full swing,
let's take a look at some of the data.
The numbers? Well, they speak for themselves.
In less than a week, the cumulative total of fees burned is currently at 21,976.83 Ether,
which multiplied by the current prices,
exactly $69,358,875 and counting.
And while ETH isn't officially a deflationary asset just yet,
data from Dune Analytics shows that on two occasions already,
the emission rate has dipped into negative figures.
Meaning more ETH was being burned at the time than issued.
If this is a sign of things to come, well, this is all super exciting stuff.
With EIP-1559 working like a charm,
the dream of ultrasound money could well be a reality in the near future.
So, where is most of this burning taking place?
Well, the crypto community is in the midst of an NFT craze right now
which is why OpenSea is sitting comfortably at the No. 1 spot on the burn leaderboard,
miles ahead of Uniswap and Axie Infinity in second and third place.
Yep, it's games and NFTs dominating the charts right now,
and the sales figures are pretty staggering.
If you'd bought a CryptoPunk for 3.5 ETH in 2019,
I'd probably have called you an idiot.
Today, you're a genius.
The floor for these guys is now sitting around $100,000 worth of ETH.
Just last week, CryptoPunk 2338 sold for an insane 1500 ETH worth $4.4 million.
To put that into perspective, that's six figures per pixel.
Per pixel.
That's not just a 10X, 100X or 1,000X.
That's 1,000,000X from the price of purchase.
A million.
Friends, BitSquad,
please join me in a moment of silence for the guy or gal who minted that Punk in 2017
and sold it for $651.
That's not the only NFT craze picking up steam.
Bored Apes are selling like hotcakes.
Art Blocks are flying out the digital shelves.
NBA Top Shots are a slam dunk.
And unless you've been living under a rock,
you've probably heard of another super hot NFT project
Ether Rocks.
Now, you may think they all essentially look the same,
but don't be fooled.
They actually come in 100 different shades of gray.
Or should I say 100 shades of gwei?
Yep, these exclusive digital rocks might sound like a joke,
but pound for pound, they're some of the most valuable stones on the planet right now,
with many selling for hundreds of ETH apiece.
So next time you see somebody on the corner trying to sell some rocks,
they may be worth a lot more down the road.
And if you thought that was impressive, just check out the asking price of rock No. 62.
It's currently on sale for way over a billion dollars.
I mean, that's got to be a joke.
But, hey, sign of the times.
Speaking of big numbers,
the last few days saw NFT game Axie Infinity officially become a billion dollar business.
Yep, Axie mania shows no signs of slowing down.
In the last 30 days alone, the game has generated over $780 million in sales
over 1.4 million transactions.
In some parts of the world, particularly in the Philippines,
Axie is literally paying people's rent,
with one player who goes by the username Magnus TV claiming to have purchased two homes
after cashing out his SLP tokens in May.
So with all this NFT gaming mania going around,
it's no surprise that more and more brands are looking to get a piece of this pie.
This week, we saw an unlikely candidate for the gaming world
announce their addition to their ecosystem.
Louis Vuitton
Yes, fashionistas can now get their NFT fixed through Louis The Game
available on iOS and Android,
where players control a cute wooden mascot called Vivienne on a journey through mysterious lands.
I want to play right now.
With up to 30 free NFTs available in game.
It's not every day we get our crypto news from Vogue,
but then again, it's not surprising that luxury fashion houses will be looking to get their Jimmy shoes
in the door of this booming industry
with Burberry also announcing an NFT game collaboration with Blankos Block Party
which offers characters and accessories as non-fungible tokens.
Now, obviously, I don't imagine I'll be playing Louis The Game anytime soon,
but the key point is that Ethereum-based NFTs are going mainstream in a big, big way.
Ethereum is burning.
And it's spreading like wildfire.
Take it from me.
The Devil Wears Polo
One of the potential players in the road to mass adoption is Arbitrum,
who've just announced they'll be launching their layer 2 this month,
a scaling solution that promises to make smart contracts
fast, private and with negligible fees.
Offchain Labs have been working on this for years now,
and after opening up their project to 400 projects since May,
it looks like they're ready to roll in August
with Arbitrum One being made available to users hoping to benefit from the optimistic scaling solution.
It's early days and technically still in beta,
but that's only to ensure they maintain upgrade ability controls
to improve performance and respond quickly to any security incidents.
Offchain Labs also said they'll put initial limits on the volume of activity
to provide smooth sailing before raising the bar as things progress.
With stiff competition like Polygon and Optimism in the fray,
only time will tell if Arbitrum has what it takes to deliver on its potential.
But the devs at Offchain Labs have developed a pretty unique rollup layer 2 scaling solution
which has already been integrated with Uniswap after a community vote garnered almost unanimous support.
Maybe Congress and the Senate could take a hint.
Either way, it's yet another super promising addition
to an ecosystem that has plenty of room for some healthy competition.
Last but not least,
because I know you're not just here for the tech,
how's the ETH price looking?
It's acres of green compared to a few weeks ago, up a huge 83% since the low on July 20.
And there's barely any resistance
standing in the way between its current price of around $3150 and the all-time high in May.
When it fell, it fell fast.
You all know I'm beyond bullish on ETH long term for the remainder of this bull run.
So for now, we have to wait to see how Bitcoin decides to respond to the news out of Washington.
How quickly it's going to make its next move up or sideways,
or maybe even down a little bit.
But as I said recently, ETH is like a snake in the grass
coiled and ready to make a killer move.
You don't want to miss it when it does.
That's all I got.
Be blessed.
BitBoy out.