September 2021, #3
This week we discuss price action of majors, NFT gaming, High gas fee as a barrier for African NFT artists and how to counter it, and spotlight Polkadot and Aleph.im
This Week.
1. Price analysis for Bitcoin and Ethereum.
2. What are NFT (play-to-earn) games?
2. High Gas fees as a barrier for African NFT Artists.
3. Zoom-In: Polkadot (DOT) and Aleph.im (Aleph).
Dear readers,
Thank you for subscribing to eCoinomics. We appreciate your readership and hope you are here with us for many more issues.
When we thought about writing a weekly newsletter, we didn’t think about how you- the audience might receive it. It was more about reminding ourselves to stay the course and not act against our sober minds once money was on the line during the course of trading and those green and red symbols start flashing across our screens.
It’s a reminder not to FOMO or be afraid to take a trade because we fear price might dump past what would have been a good entry. So in a way, that’s exactly what you get by reading eCoinomics.
We discuss macro technical and fundamental analysis away from low time frame noise that helps build a long-term mentality trading wise. You also get news and we discuss the projects we are looking at for the week in the Zoom-In section.
These are letters to ourselves and we hope you can gain some useful insights every time you read them. We are by no means gurus and you’ll see that just by how wrong we expect to be as we go along. But we promise to get better and you’re invited along for the journey.
You may contact us for any reason at ecoinomicsweekly@gmail.com. We host a twitter spaces session called #CryptoRoundUpAfrica with some of our best buds on Twitter every Thursday at 10 PM WAT. Follow us @avogroovy, @oloye__
The eCoinomics team.
1. Bitcoin.
On the last two issues of eCoinomics, we already made our case for the price action we expect this month. The thesis for September remains the same, we expect a close below August $47000 or a single-digit close above it which still puts us around the $51000 area.
Instead of rehashing what we have been saying for the past two weeks, we have chosen to zoom out and adopt a macro view.
Below the current price, a monthly close above $40000 confirms a higher low macro bullish structure and signals the continuation of upward momentum. Above the current level, we are looking at the $50000-$53000 level from where we witnessed the recent bull trap. If that level gets flipped into support, $57000 might be the next area that buyers step in, above that level, we are clear for new ATH. For intraday bias, see the last two issues of the newsletter.
1.1 Ethereum.
Ethereum retested $3k last week and has continued to range between $3000 and $3400 thus maintaining its bullish structure. Invalidation of this structure is a monthly close below $3000. Above the current level, there’s the $4000 resistance and not much else between that price and a new ATH. If Bitcoin maintains its bullish structure or at least continues to chop sideways, we’ll likely see a new ETH ATH as soon as October which is good news for alts.
2. What are NFT (play-to-earn) games?
The question that most crypto developers have to answer is, what is the real-life utility of this project? Play-to-earn games have answered this question perfectly. What are NFT games and why are they important to the crypto economy?
NFT games are simply games that allow players to earn tokens by playing. These tokens can then be swapped into real cash. But how does that happen?
Take Axie Infinity, for example, it has helped entire communities in southeast Asia earn a living just by playing a cute game on their phones, especially as the Covid-19 pandemic raged on and shut the economy of many countries down.
Many people, young and old are able to earn a living just by playing.
They start by buying 3 of these Axies, then play them against other players and earn the Slow Love Potion (SLP) tokens. Which they then swap for Ethereum or Bitcoin, and the sold for cash.
Even when the prices of these Axies became too expensive due to the massive wave of adoption, scholarship systems sprang up whereby, those who could afford the Axies buy them and lend to those who have the time to play with them and earn tokens. The profit is then shared between the “sponsors” and the “scholars.”
The importance of this to the crypto ecosystem is better understood from a network effect angle. These are people who otherwise would have never held a crypto wallet. But playing these games has necessitated doing so and the more they see their lives impacted positively by the technology, the more interest they have in seeking other opportunities in the market. Also, they can get access to other defi services like health insurance and crypto loans. We are seeing a revolution in how people work and live through the impact of the crypto economy.
This Thursday at 2 pm WAT, we speak with @tinytinerz, FTX’s Head of Global Expansion on other Gamify projects and how more people can benefit from the play-to-earn economy. Join us on #CryptoRoundAfrica, also follow @oloye__ and @avogroovy for updates.
3. High Gas fees remains a barrier for African NFT Artists.
The high cost of gas fees for minting art pieces popularly known as Non-Fungible Token (NFT) has been described as an entry barrier for many African creatives. Anthony Azekwoh an NFT artist and creator of the bestselling Red Man NFT Painting disclosed this while speaking on #CryptoRoundupAfrica. Anthony said NFT’s serve as a gateway to bring African art into the global marketplace for digital art and getting compensated fairly. However, he lamented the minting cost saying “I found out later gas fee is a very big challenge for Nigerian artists.”
Also speaking on CryptoRoundupAfrica was Tristan Yver, Head of Strategy FTX US, who expressed optimism in NFTs as a unique representation of culture while noting the significant participation in the space by influencers and celebrities with large followings which has led to great adoption. He also joined Anthony to bemoan the high gas cost saying, “right now the NFT market is very restrictive on the Ethereum side because of the gas fees it takes to get pieces minted on blockchain platforms.”
To break the low entrance barrier for artists caused by high gas costs, Tristan announced that FTX has recently launched an NFT Marketplace. He revealed that “we are excited by the fact that people can list or mint their NFT directly on FTX in a much more cost-effective way and that’s opening up the participation of the NFT market to a much broader audience and we are very open to people coming to listing on FTX directly.”
Nigerian and African artists are urged to embrace the platform because of the ease and simplicity of listing their art pieces on the platform as it alleviates the prohibitive high gas costs that have prevented access and participation. Additionally, Tristan stated that withdrawals and deposits of NFTs are not currently enabled on FTX but will be available in the coming weeks, however, the artist can upload a piece of art and it will be listed on FTX and when deposits and withdrawals are enabled people will be able to withdraw and send to other marketplaces.
3. Zoom-In: Polkadot (DOT) and Aleph.im (Aleph)
This week the entire crypto market has seen sideways, choppy price action without much upside movement for most tokens except for a few outliers that are either showing bullish divergence or holding onto their support levels.
The tokens that have caught our eyes and attention this week which we think have the ability for potential gains and further upward price movement are Polkadot (DOT) and Aleph.im (Aleph). In recent weeks, we have seen parabolic moves by base layer protocols and platforms like Solana, TerraLuna, Cardano, Avalanche and Fantom.
DOT have been lagging for the most part and we think it’s time for DOT to step into the limelight and party. Both DOT and Aleph are showing bullish price action and sitting pretty above high time frame support.
DOT has to successfully break the $38 area of resistance, retest and flip it into support with the target being the all-time high area from which price broke down in May. Aleph is printing massive green candles and the price target is a break of the previous all-time high of $0.78 this week. However, if the entire market dumps, there’s a demand area at $0.5. This area has to hold for a continuation of the bullish uptrend.
It is important to note that the altcoins are still largely dependent on what bitcoin price does and the overall state of the market. If bitcoin remains relatively stable then we expect the spotlighted coins to perform well.
The contents herein are for educational, informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial or investment advice. We are not financial advisers and have no experience in the field. Please talk to a trained finance professional before making any investment decisions.