They say every dog has its day, but is today really the day for Dogecoin?
Welcome to The Daily Forkast. April 20th, 2022.
I'm Angie Lau, Editor in chief of Forkast covering all things blockchain.
Dogecoin's price soared a year ago after fans designated April 20th as Doge Day and encouraged
people to buy while the price was low.
But with the market and the token in very different places now, a year later, can the
feat be repeated?
Well, we're going to take a look at that, plus a whole lot more coming up.
Let's get you up to speed from Asia to the world.
Join thousands of NFT traders who already start their day on CryptoSlam.
Let's kick off in Australia right now where mass retail appetite for cryptocurrency is
about to be tested.
That's after two Bitcoin and one Ethereum spot exchange traded funds or ETFs gained
approval for listing.
All three are set to go live on Australia's CBOE Exchange on April 27.
Now Swiss-based 21Shares has partnered with Australia's ETF securities to offer both a
Bitcoin and an Ethereum ETF with their respective assets held on Coinbase.
While Cosmos Asset Management's Bitcoin ETF invests through the purpose Bitcoin ETF listed
in Toronto, Canada.
Cosmos already operates two other adjacent funds in Australia, the Global Digital Miners
Access ETF and the unlisted Bitcoin Wholesale Access Fund.
Now, ETFs, as you know, allow retail investors to gain indirect exposure to an asset through
stock trading.
So the last man standing will possibly the US, where its Securities and Exchange Commission
has been hesitant to offer spot ETFs, though it has greenlighted Bitcoin futures ETFs.
Meanwhile, over in India, a big move in the wake of the imposition of the country's new
crypto tax law.
Earlier this month, local media reports that the co-founders of the Binance backed Indian
crypto exchange, WazirX, have moved to Dubai.
Nischal Shetty and Siddharth Menon have reportedly moved to UAE's financial hub along with their
families.
Shetty has since tweeted that crypto has no boundaries.
Although the exchange maintains offices in the cities of Mumbai and Bangalore, the company's
manpower works remotely.
Now, as you'll remember.
and as we reported, India imposed a 30% tax on all gains made from cryptocurrencies on
April 1st, while a 1% tax deducted at source on all transactions actually starts July 1st.
And a study by cryptocurrency research firm Crebaco showed the imposition of the crypto
law led to the biggest drop in trading volumes in years in India.
And the UAE is swiftly emerging as a crypto friendly hub, with both Bybit and Crypto.com
recently announcing the opening of offices in Dubai.
You can find those stories and more at Forkast News.
Well, happy Dogecoin Day, everyone.
April 20th is the day the community behind the world's leading meme coin chose to celebrate
their favorite dog themed currency last year.
But can the market pump the pup up again and recreate some of the magic from when Dogecoin's
Price first exploded?
Forkast's Lachlan Keller reports.
Dogecoin's Price soared after fans began promoting Dogecoin Day last year, hitting an all time
high of almost US$0.74 cents shortly after but has plummeted since and was trading at
just $0.14 Wednesday morning in Asia.
The coin's biggest supporter, Elon Musk, recently threw the corner bone by making a bid to buy
Twitter and suggesting he could incorporate Dogecoin based tipping to the platform.
However, one expert told Forkast that investors need to manage their expectations over Musk's
influence when considering the likelihood of its price rising again.
I think we shouldn't over over qualify his kind of dedication and commitment to Dogecoin.
He's always said it.
It's funny, it's a joke, you know, it's for good fun.
So don't make more out of it than than than that.
Named after a popular meme at the time, doge was created in 2013 as a joke on Bitcoin and
it spawned a whole series of copycat tokens of varying popularity.
But Kastelein thinks those days are over.
I think generally meme coins are, I would say overall a past thing.
I don't really see that we're going to be returning to a kind of animal age in the crypto
industry or a food age again, as we've seen.
However, fans aren't letting the joke stop just yet.
When asked what they expected for Dogecoin today, several members of its Discord message
group assured Forkast that it is, quote, "going to the moon".
Kastelein says that while Dogecoin does carry some brand value compared to other meme coins,
today should be seen mainly as a bit of fun.
I do sometimes wonder if people know that when they buy the coin they're not actually
buying the dog.
So I would suggest keep memeing.
Elon will join the meme fest.
You know, there will be lots of pictures going around Twitter, but probably it should stay
at that and people should focus on some, some real prospects.
For Forkast, I'm Lachlan Keller.
Japanese gaming giant Sega announced it spending over US$800 million on its super game framework,
where they will be developing interactive gaming titles.
Who knows?
You might be able to ride along with Sonic the Hedgehog in the metaverse in the near
future.
We have right now with us Yehuda Petscher.
He is NFT Relations Specialist at CryptoSlam, a cross-chain of NFT data tracker and aggregator.
And he joins us now to discuss that and a whole lot more on NFT Insider.
It is great to have you with us, Yehuda.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
This is my it's a pleasure to be here.
All right.
Okay.
Let's talk about this.
I think it's already in the theaters.
I already brought my little guy to see it, Sonic the Hedgehog.
But imagine one day he could hang out with him in the metaverse.
One of Sega's producers has been quoted saying that it's natural for gaming to evolve into
NFTs and cloud gaming.
Sega also registered its NFT trademark in December, but the company's super game initiative
has drawn quite some flak from the traditional gaming crowd.
What do you think of that?
This kind of this kind of conflict, almost adversarial tension between the new gaming
folks thinking forward and the traditional gaming fans?
Yes, I've seen the backlash and I was pretty surprised by it.
I'm a gamer.
I have been for three decades now or so.
I love games.
I'm very excited to see blockchain integrated in games and excited to see how that grows
going forward.
But again, surprised to see the backlash from my fellow gamers.
But if their only exposure to NFTs are profile pictures and the praise of the money that
surrounds it, and you combine that with their general dislike for micro-transactions, you
can kind of understand where they're coming from.
Ultimately, it's up to game makers to to innovate, to use NFTs to enhance games.
But there's no substitute and a great story and great characters and fun mechanics.
And if you can use NFTs to further those, that's how you win over gamers.
That's a great point.
And when we talk about blockchain gaming, NFTs have an important role in the whole range
from freemium, to play to win, to play to earn.
Which segment are you excited about when you're taking a look at the space?
Where are we seeing interest?
Just all of them.
Because I do think there's a lot of overlap with each of those terms.
But what I'm excited about is a new term kind of encompasses all of them.
It's called Play to Collect and that's coined by a project called the CyberKongz.
And that's what I think traditional gamers are going to be interested in.
And it's what I'm interested in.
I want to be rewarded for my time and my efforts, not with money per se, but maybe trophies
and limited edition NFTs.
And I want to level up my assets, things that I can choose to keep forever and use in games,
or maybe sell them on secondary markets, if I choose.
But but yeah, I think there's a new type of game coming out that is more play to collect,
play to earn something like Cyberbrokers, Cyberkongz.
The Wolf Game, Aavegotchi soon to be Pixel Vault's upcoming GameFi game.
It's all really exciting.
There's still always going be a place for play to win games like horseracing and card
battle games.
But I think those will probably get incorporated into larger worlds like Fortnite's new upcoming
metaverse that I believe they're working on building out.
Maybe we'll have limited time events with limited nfts and we'll have those mini games
where you play the game and you do win from from participating.
You know, Axie Infinity really kind of broke the doors down for a lot of people when they
became the bellwether of play to earn gaming.
So had a change of heart is changing tack to lure players who want to play for fun.
How has this played out in Axie Infinity sales as people try to navigate, as you say, the
changing tides of what ultimately what people want is is having a lot of fun here.
Yeah actually it's been impacted by something most play to earn games are going to experience
and that's if if people don't find the game fun or rewarding enough they're not going
to play.
And if people aren't playing the game, nobody's going to be buying the characters and the
assets.
And if they're not buying them, it's a race to the bottom with the prices.
So Axie, yeah, it's, it's it's a pretty tremendous downturn.
And now they're working on new ways to attract new gamers with with free or cheap Axies that
you can play with and with an easier and easier game mode so you can, can kind of join in
play and not find it too competitive right from the start.
So in a way, they're going back to the fundamentals and they lost their way for a bit there where
it was too expensive to get into Axie, if you could get it in at all.
I mean, these these NFTs to play the game were costing $10,000, $20,000.
And at that point, if you're not attracting new gamers that want to play your fun game,
you've got a problem there.
Yeah.
You kind of limit the growth, don't you?
But it is a brand new metaverse, a whole, whole new brave new world, a brand new metaverse.
And it's great to navigate this space with you.
Yehuda, it was great having you on.
Thanks for having me.
And that's The Daily Forkast.
And if you want a deeper dove on these stories, The Daily Forkast is now also a newsletter
and can be delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign up at Forkast News/Newsletter.
Thanks for watching.
I'm Forkast Editor in Chief Angie Lau, until the next time.