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NFT Me

  • October 15, 2021

Think you missed out on the NFT craze? Think again. In today’s newsletter, we give you the lowdown on Solana NFTs and why they’re so hot right now.

In today’s edition:

🐵 Meet SolanaMonkeyBusiness

🌋Volcanic Bitcoin mining

🪙 How stable are stablecoins?

Monkey Business

Sorry Ethereum, but Solana would like to have a word on NFTs. Last week, a Solana NFT sold for $2.1 million breaking a previous network record.

Here’s what happened: So most of your favourite NFT platforms run on Ethereum, right? Wrong! A new crop of creators are minting NFTs on competing networks, like Tezos and Solana, and they’re starting to get mainstream adoption.

  • An NFT collection from SolanaMonkeyBusiness which was minted on the Solana blockchain sold for 13,027 SOL (U.S.-$2.1 million). This was the most expensive Solana NFT sale to date.
  • Some creators prefer Solana because of its faster transaction time, lower gas fees, and the ability for assets to exist cross-chain on Ethereum as well as SOL.

How to get in on the action? To buy your own SMB, head to SolanaMonkeyBusiness to make a transaction in SOL.

  • The current floor price (lowest price listed) is 315 SOL (U.S.-$49 million)!

What’s next? Expect creators to continue to mint (launch) new NFTs on alternative blockchains, like Solana and Tezos, as Ethereum struggles to scale.

Blowing Up

Big Cat Bukele is at it again: Fresh off their Bitcoin as a national currency rollout, El Salvador announced that they’re mining Bitcoin with volcanos.

Catch-up: El Salvador, one of the top producers of geothermal energy, is using their volcanos to generate energy that will power a new domestic mining operation.

  • Some environmentalists estimate that existing mining operations—which depend on thousands of computers running 24/7, mostly powered by coal-fired electricity—account for as much emissions as New Zealand.

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele tweeted a video of their mining rigs being set-up at one of their geothermal plants.

Takeaway: While the success of El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment is far from certain, efforts to make mining a more green proposition are always welcome.

(Un)Stable Coins

The United States Treasury is releasing a report on Stablecoins and it’s expected to lay the groundwork for more comprehensive regulation.

What’s up with Stablecoins? These are digital assets, such as Tether or the USDT, that are tied to the value of another asset like the US dollar.

  • Stablecoins are supposed to be a digital currency that’s less volatile in price than other tokens.

However, investors and regulators alike have big concerns over whether these tokens actually own enough of the underlying asset, like the US dollar, to tie them to that real-world currency.

Regulators will regulate: But the total value of stablecoins are over $100 billion which is why the US Treasury is starting to take a real look into these assets.

Why it matters? The Treasury’s report will lay the foundation for a new federal approach to stablecoins which could be trouble for stablecoins—even some of the biggest ones—that don’t have their books in order. So buyer beware for investors.

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