Brandverse Insight #2

This week, the majority of focus has been around BTC ETF drama. We’ll cover the drama a bit more below, but this week marked a watershed moment for the Web3 industry. We’ll most likely look back at this week as the time when the world institutionally recognized crypto.

Though much of the conversation has been centered around Bitcoin, the ETF ruling the SEC has far wider implications for both institutional and mainstream adoption. Coming off two years of scandals led by FTX, Terra, and other bad actors, this ruling denotes a turning point in how both regulators and the public will view crypto. We’ll discuss the implications in greater detail below.

This Week in Web3

💴 Spot bitcoin ETFs surpass $4.5B in trade volume on the first day of trading! - Read more on Cointelegraph

🪶 Robinhood App lists all 11 approved Bitcoin ETFs, including BlackRock and Fidelity. - Read more on The Block

✅ On Jan 10th, the SEC finally gave its approval to allow Bitcoin ETFs to begin trading in the U.S. - Read more on Reuters

🏦 SEC Goverment X-Account was compromised at 3:11, which led to a fake post announcing all Bitcoin ETFs were approved. This was immediately recounted by SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who admitted that the SEC X account had been hacked. This quick yet expensive saga led to both short and long liquidations. - Read more on Wall Street Journal 

📧 OpenSea introduced a new self-custody wallet option that allows users to sign up with email only. - Read more on OpenSea

🐻 NFT project, Killabears reveals new short movie called "The Hunt" - Read more on Killabears

🎮 Pixelvault’s new game BattlePlan went live on Jan 10 with the grand prizes for Season 1, including a Tesla Cybertruck. - Read more on NFT Culture

🟠 ThankYouX teased an upcoming drop of Bitcoin Ordinals with Magic Eden. The targeted launch date is January 18th. - Read more via ThankYouX

🤝 Polygon Labs & FOX partnered to introduce Verify, an open-source protocol for authenticating media content via blockchain. - Read more on The Block

🐵 BAYC’s Otherside Metaverse teased the launch of the new platform & will invite their community to the platform on Feb 24’. - Read more via Otherisde

👾 Elon Musk announces he’ll launch a competitor to Twitch via X livestream monetization. - Read more on Readwrite

🕹 “Ninjalerts CEO Unveils SNES Emulator on Bitcoin Blockchain to Preserve Classic Games” - Read more on Bitcoin.com

🚀 Axiom Space, a commercial space company, in partnership with Web3 stalwarts Transient Labs & Nifty Gateway, announces they are collaborating with 8 world-class artists to send their one-of-a-kind art to space on Ax-3. Read more on Axiom Space

The Impact of BTC ETF Approval 

The approval of a Bitcoin (BTC) Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) marks a historic moment for the cryptocurrency industry. On January 10th at 3:55 PM EST, the SEC officially approved the majority of the filed BTC ETF applications. Geoff Kendrick, the Head of FX Research at Standard Chartered, suggests that this could propel BTC's price upwards by more than 300% by the end of next year. This development holds significant importance for the crypto industry for several reasons.

Wth is an ETF? 

• A financial offering that allows investors to get exposure to BTC without actually taking on the risk of custodying the asset 

• The SEC has never approved a crypto ETF before 

• ETFs are publicly traded on the stock market 

Why is this important? 

• The shares will be publicly traded on the stock market, opening up an entirely new audience of buyers to the cryptocurrency. 

• The regulated nature of the ETF is attractive to more traditional and institutional investors. 

• It adds a layer of credibility that has been sought after in the crypto industry.

• Traditional investors who were hesitant to deploy capital into crypto assets now have a regulated way to gain exposure to Bitcoin.

• Bitcoin will not be the only asset to get the ETF stamp of approval.

This is a key piece on the journey to mass adoption for crypto. Mainstream investors will be able to invest in BTC from traditional brokerage accounts, it validates BTC as legit to the market, and it will increase the amount of BTC volume traded overall. The days of crypto being reserved for neckbeard-dwelling slobs are numbered, and we’re witnessing the transformation in real-time.

What’s next?

• Now that Bitcoin ETFs have been approved, people now have their sights set on Ethereum ETFs.

• With Bitcoin and Ethereum having been established as L1 (layer-one blockchains) with true utility, there have already been conversations about the SEO approving new ETH ETFs.

• As we get more inflows into crypto assets, we should see interest in the asset class grow as a whole.

• Each regulatory win acts as a stepping stone to overall mainstream acceptance and usage.

For you, let us know what you think about the new ETF approvals. How will this affect Brands’ willingness to experiment with the Web3 world?

With Web3 love,

Mina & Roman