FT Cryptofinance: Meta tries to revive the NFT party

Hello and welcome to the newsletter from FT Cryptofinance. This week we take a look at Meta's advance into non -funni tokens.

If it was a painful year for the possession of cryptocurrency, it was even worse if they had spent money on buying a unique digital collector's item that is not known as a fagi token.

While the flagship tokens Bitcoin and Ethereum have only lost about 70 percent of their value, the average price of all traded NFTs observed on the markets, according to data tracker Nonfungible.com, fell by 85 percent this year to $ 154 in the third quarter.

These tokens usually represent art or memorabilia, so that artists and sellers have more control over the property and sale of their works. In theory, there is more financial freedom, even if art are only questionable pictures of listless monkeys.

But the floor fell out of the market when the crypto bubble burst, buyer lost money and got a better understanding of what it really means to have a digital image online.

In view of such profound uncertainties, it would require a special kind of bulletproof optimism in order to get out great on the NFT market. Enter meta platforms.

This week the company, which was once known as a Facebook, said that developers can create their own NFTs and sell them directly to fans, both on and outside the Instagram platform.

If someone is inaccessible for doubters, then Meta. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has so far spent almost $ 10 billion for the development of Web3 and metaverse this year and will spend even more next year. Investors have reduced the value of the company by 75 percent this year, horrified by the amount of its experimental bets, but it continues. The FT reported for the first time in January about the company's intentions, so Zuckerberg and Co. had enough time to rethink their plans.

Charles Storry, co-founder and growth leader of the crypto index platform Phuture, told me that Meta's decision was a "attempt by Meta to save himself before another terrible quarter.

Of course it will need more than a hug from NFTS to bring in the $ 89 billion from the market capitalization of META, but the company seems to be committed.

The announcement was carried out together with the Creator Week, a meta-initiative that offers events that are intended to help developers grow, network and build their careers. Over there on Facebook, the company's “star” function is expanded so that users can pay the creators if they rate their content.

Could Metas be interested in the NFT market? A well-known buy-in with massive distribution could deliver the missing thrust that is missing in the NFT country these days. But Ether and Solana, the tokens that are most connected to NFTs, are flat.

Questions about timing - and indeed to the meaning of NFTS - are still just as relevant. The burned small investors no longer flood the markets.

As far as there is still an NFT market, the social media giant is pushing into a market full of competition, including established crypto-native marketplaces such as OpenSea, Rarible, Superrare and Looksrare. . . The list continues and continues. The competing social media platform Reddit also started a “collective avatar” marketplace in summer. Instagram doesn't even get the first-mover advantage.

And then the brand call from Meta must be taken into account. Operators of NFT marketplaces have to be careful of insider trading and whether certain people receive a tip on upcoming NFT sales. Another risk is wash trading if the same party is both a seller and buyer and generates additional fees without an economic purpose. Supervisory authorities have long had concerns about metas engagement for data protection and ethics. It has to show that it has changed.

The problem for the market is: Who is larger than Meta? If the hug from NFTs cannot save the market, then everything may be over forever. But what do I know? Maybe I enjoy staying poor.

What do you think of Metas new NFT guidelines? Will it give the niche market an urgently needed resolution? Mail me to scott.chipolina@ft.com .

Weekly highlights

• A rare M&A deal. The digital-asset platform Bakkt has agreed to acquire the APEX Crypto crypto platform for a price of up to $ 200 million. Gavin Michael, Chief Executive from Bakkt, said that the takeover would expand the company's crypto customer tribe and may even enable the company to open up opportunities that appeal to the “next generation of consumers”, such as B. Nfts.

• Goldman Sachs, MSCI and cryptodata company Coin Metrics announced the introduction of "DateTonomy" to look at a new classification system for digital assets that could help people look at the complex world of cryptography.

• hack of the week was at the crypto exchange Deribit, which published a tweet on Wednesday, in which it was said that Hot Wallets were compromised worth $ 28 million . The year is becoming worse for the Crypto platform based in Panama, which was watching, as Three Arrows Capital, which was in liquidation, could not repay a loan of $ 80 million in the summer.

• The withdrawal train of the crypto-C suite continues to roll. The Chief Product Officer from Coinbase, Surojit Chatterjee, stepped down and claimed that it was "now time to get out of the journey and to get to breath". He plans to "help coin base with growth" by acting as the consultant of the CEO Brian Armstrong.

• The search for an ideal "crypto hub" continues because the exchange platforms Huobi and OKX switch to the Caribbean. The former plans to move his headquarters there, while the latter secured registration on the Bahamas and opened a regional hub in Nassau. Both enter the footsteps of Sam Bankman-Frieds FTX, who moved from Hong Kong to the Bahamas in 2021. Read our story here.

Soundbite of the week: Ethereum's co-founder beats at Elon Musk's Twitter-Blue-Check-Pitch To

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin spoke this week about what was spoken about the "digital city square" this week: whether Twitter should demand money for those who have a "verified" blue checkmark against their profile (I also have one).

Apart from a "more actual review", warned butterin that the allowance of users to buy blue ticks could impair the "anti-scam role" of the function.

"How well this works depends on how many due diligence is carried out to make sure that blue checks are for which you spend." Pay $ 8/month and call yourself "would damage the anti-fraud roll of the blue check."

Data mining: Dogecoin. . . To the moon?

The price for wit crypto token Doco is increasing when Elon Musk completed his takeover of Twitter.

Musk has been a fan of the dog money for a long time and his ascent to the "Chief Twit" has inspired Dogecoiner.

Numbers of the data provider Cryptocompare show that the value of the token has increased by more than 100 percent since the beginning of October.

"Some people take Musks tweets as a sign of the intention of combining Twitter and Dogecoin, which leads to an enormous increase in activity," said Edmond Goh, chief dealer at the crypto liquidity provider B2C2, by email.

If only a small time frame, this is also in a strong contrast to the "serious" cryptocurrencies that have been in a post-crash-freeze for months. It also shows what a semi-coherent narrative for crypto tokens can do-the type of special sauce that has been missing from the more popular coins in the industry for months.