The Mother Teresa of crypto, Sam Bankman-Fried,
weighs in on the Ethereum Merge.
And Polygon teams up with Starbucks for their NFT reward program.
Will the Ethereum Merge take us to the stratosphere?
Or will the global bearish macro environment drown out the hype?
Stick around to find out.
My name is JChains.
This is your nightly crypto news wrap-up.
Let's get it!
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Yeah. I mean, I think long term,
it's probably going to be exciting for the Ethereum community.
I think it's going to allow substantially faster and cheaper processing of transactions.
For Ethereum, I think that serves as, you know, one of the big impetuses for it.
In the first place,
I do think that it's going to be, as all big transitions are,
a little bit rocky at the beginning.
I think that there's going to be some messy activity around when it happens.
I think that's sort of inevitable.
Long term and probably even medium term,
I think it's probably going to be healthy and exciting.
After years and years of waiting,
after years and years of delay and speculation,
the Ethereum Merge is finally set to sail this week!
We are in the midst of crypto history right now.
And, man, I've got to tell you.
I'm very excited!
Some are even calling this the Y2K of crypto.
And just like that event,
there was an eye-opening amount of controversy about the topic.
While the bears are calling the Merge a sell-the-news movement,
the bulls believe that this will act as a triple halvening on price action.
Now, I personally think that even if the news does get sold at first,
overall, even though I see why proof-of work has its own merits,
proof-of-stake wins from optics alone.
Many venture capitalists and global corporate monoliths
like you'll see in our next story will align themselves with proof-of-stake
mainly because of the smaller carbon footprint
and, of course, to avoid colliding with those who want a greener world.
Now, FTX owner Sam Bankman-Fried is probably correct in saying that
it's going to be a bit rocky in the beginning considering how massive of a transition this is.
I completely expect a healthy amount of uncertainty and skepticism
in the final moments leading up to the completion of the Merge,
especially considering the bearish macro environment
and the looming Fed interest hike eight days away.
The coming days and weeks are going to be packed with excitement in the crypto space.
This is what the edge of your seat was made for.
Let's go, ETH!
Now, let's pass it over to Frankie Candles for a quick market watch.
Thanks, JChains.
Alright, guys. Let's jump in and do a little market watch here.
We've got Bitcoin coming in at $22,371.
Up about 2.7% on the day
Ethereum coming in at $1,713
Down about 2.7% for the day
Ethereum's a little more bearish than Bitcoin.
But I want to bring you guys over to the Bitcoin chart.
Now, this is on the 3-hour.
And one thing I want to point out is this bearish divergence
that just confirmed on the 3-hour,
where you have your higher highs on your price
with your lower highs on your momentum waves.
This is a big signal,
especially when coming up to key resistance
like we are right here with this purple box and this spider line right here
as well as a nonlogarithmic spider line that we are sitting right on top of right now.
But as you approach resistance and you have these bearish divergences forming,
it's very likely that you do get a pullback.
Now, we also have a 4-hour bearish divergence printing as well.
Now, if this confirms,
I would expect a cool off period for Bitcoin in the short term.
Now, things are looking a little more bullish in the long term.
We have green dots on a lot of the higher timeframes
with money flow crossovers happening as well.
So I would say that this pullback would be in the short term.
So based off of these bearish divergences starting to form on the 3 and the 4-hour,
with money flow coming out,
I do think we can cool off in the short term.
But the higher timeframes do still look pretty good.
If you guys want to follow me,
it's Frankie Candles on YouTube or @Frankie_Candles on all socials.
Back to the news.
Seattle's caffeine juggernaut Starbucks is on the brink of launching
a new rewards program that's constructed around their customers having a Web3 experience.
The program known as Odyssey will allow United States loyalty program members
and Starbucks employees to earn and purchase digital collectible stamps
in the form of NFTs!
Of course, Starbucks has partnered up with no other than Polygon to power Odyssey.
And like I said earlier,
this is why proof-of-stake is so powerful,
not necessarily because of the tech, speed and consensus mechanisms,
but because of the optics and negative carbon footprint.
This is why the Ethereum Merge will win in the long run
because the VCs and corporate giants are,
I guess, in a sense, virtue signaling to the world
that they care about a greener world.
Now, I'm not saying they don't care.
Maybe they do.
But you can't deny that it's a good look.
VP of marketing at Starbucks Ryan Butz said,
"Building Odyssey using technology
that aligns with our sustainability aspirations and commitments is a top priority."
See my point?
The fact that the big corporations are willing to put the money on the line
to support proof-of-stake projects says a lot about the future of crypto.
If they went with a project that was proof-of-work instead,
they would get a lot of pushback about energy consumption.
And in their eyes,
regardless of the positives a proof-of-work has,
it's not personal.
It's strictly business.
Now, I say this because swimming with the whales is more important now than ever.
Considering Starbucks sells about 8 million cups of coffee every single day,
this is very bullish for MATIC
and for Web3 integration as a whole.
If Starbucks is doing it,
everyone else is,
or they're about to.
Now, if you're interested in getting in on the Starbucks Odyssey NFTs,
it won't roll out until later this year,
but the waitlist officially opened up today.
Alright. That's all I got.
Have a great rest of your night.