How to get started in the metaverse

Sam.

Hello, friends, and thanks for hanging out with us today on the market report on Cointelegraph. I'm your host Benton, and we are joined again by our resin experts, Jordan Finisith, Marcel Peckman and Sam Borgi. Jordan uses his background in psychology and human behavior to spot emerging trends in the crypto market. Sam Borgi is a business editor at Cointelegraph, where he brings a decade of experience in economic analysis and financial market writing. Marcel Peckman applies his 17 years of experience trading derivatives options and futures to the crypto derivatives markets. Fellas, another bloodbath, another day in crypto. You all were here for the special edition yesterday where we dove into a multitude of topics. What is going on this week? Sam, glad to have you back. What's up, guys? Jordan, we'll start with you today, man. How you feeling?

I'm feeling a little bit better than yesterday. The market's kind of bounced back some way. Is it going to continue? I don't know. Welcome to crypto. Right.

Sam, are we, are we still in for this thing for the long haul? What's going on, man?

Oh, yeah. I mean, moments like this remind you why you're in the market in the first place. And the great thing about bitcoin is that it lowers your time preference. So for those of us who have a low time preference and we're investing to generate wealth, it's still the same protocol it was back in November when It was at 69,000. Obviously what's happening with bitcoin and crypto is more about the macro environment. And that's nothing to take lightly. It doesn't mean it's going to be immune to any other sell off. It most certainly will be impacted. But what's happening right now in crypto is you have some contagion risks happening with everything that's happening around Celsius now and Luna before, and also the broader macroeconomic trend not favorable for any kind of risk assets. And bitcoin is most certainly on the risk curve.

And Marcel, glad to have you back as always. What's going on, man?

I'm just happy that gold is down for the second day in a row. So I don't have to hear Peter Schiff nagging about bitcoin and whatever because gold is stuck at $1.8K for the past decade or so while bitcoin went from 0 to $23,000. So I'm just glad.

And the fundamentals of bitcoin have not changed to Sam's point. So even though the markets are kind of still in turmoil from the macro traditional markets to the crypto markets. We're going to be bringing you some of the latest headlines from Cointelegraph today, starting with our market roundup. Then we're going to get into some of the latest market news which we talked about a little bit yesterday. Going to be diving a little bit more in depth on some of the latest happenings, especially surrounding Celsius. And then we have our top topic for today, which is the Metaverse. What is it? How to get started. We're going to be talking about a little bit of the nuggets that you probably should know because the Metaverse is coming eventually and we're going to be talking about that today, wrapping things up with our markets Pro segment. And guess what, we are giving away $50 to the Cointelegraph store. So hopefully we can bring some light to your dark days with some of our swag from the Cointelegraph store. And while you're at it, if you haven't liked and subscribed cointelegraph here on YouTube, we're here and we're doing special editions of the market report. So make sure you turn on the notification bell there on YouTube. So you know, when we go live, some of those last second shows are popping up a little bit more frequently. So we appreciate everyone for joining. I'm just going to cruise the chat real quick. We have rich new design. Who's back? I see Adrian Kaltura. What's up? And Vikram, glad to have you back. Thanks for joining today's show. We're happy to have everyone here. So let's go ahead and jump into what we have for the weekly roundup this week. Danilo, let's go ahead and run it back.

Foreign.

It's kind of sad to see the the crypto market below 1 trillion. That was kind of like the big benchmark for a while. But some of the latest greatest headlines of what's happened in the space stable coins losing their peg. You see it all over the place. But I want to shift things over to some price action here with bitcoin this week. We're gonna go ahead and pull up one of the articles from Cointelegraph written by William Suberg, writer here at Cointelegraph. So bitcoin price crashes, as we all know, down to 20.8k as deadly candles liquidate 1.2 billion. Sam, you've talked about this previously with bitcoin not going below its previous all time high. Do you think there's a chance where we go below 20k. What are your thoughts here, Sam?

I think it's a probability now it's likely to happen. And I mean for me, 20k was the absolute bottom that I thought was, was likely given the fact, as you mentioned, that in previous cycles we never reached, we never pierced through the previous cycles. All time high. Now that's significant. But I mean in markets we get firsts all the time. You know, this whole idea that it can happen because it's the first doesn't really pan out. So while I am surprised that we're going to go below 20k, especially given the other narratives around adoption and institutional investment and all that, right now it seems like it's likely, perhaps a wick, a sharp wick below. Do I expect it to sustain below that level? Probably not, but I think we're, we're well on that path right now to see another decline. You know, this bear market is really just getting started. So.

Yeah, in a quick note here, the lowest price of Bitcoin since December 14, 2020. Kind of wild to, to actually think about that for a second. Marcel, I see you have some thoughts here though about this, this particular article. Let's hear it.

Okay, Beton, So there's a thing in trader in trading called stop hunt. So if Everybody knows that MicroStrategy had a $200 million loan with a $21,000 liquidation limit, meaning if the bitcoin price felt below that level, he would be forced to either deposit more money or Silvergate bank will sell those assets. So liquidate, force liquid. Liquidate. And celsius also had $400 million open vault. I think it was on Makerdao, I'm not sure. But it was a defi platform which previously faced a similar risk. So either Celsius deposited more money or the defi platform would sell the assets to cover the risk. So those whales, the arbitrage desk and the whales that pressured the market needed a perfect storm. A day with negative news and negative sentiment to try to move Bitcoin below $21,000 and liquidate them. And yesterday the stars were aligned for them as the traditional markets crashed. And Ethereum postponed the proof of stake migration during the weekend. So there were a lot of bad news. Also, Washington is proposing additional electricity tariff for crypto mining. So there were a lot of bearish news. So the whales tried to liquidate both Celsius and MicroStrategy by pushing the price below $21,000. It's called a stop hunt.

Very interesting. And Marcel, do you think we can See more of these stop hunts with other large holders of Bitcoin here in the near future.

I doubt it because Celsius deposited more money. So their liquidation level is close to $17,000 right now. And we all know that MicroStrategy has over 100,000 bitcoins, so if they want they can deposit more margin over there. So I don't see a scenario unless there's something that happens to tether or whatever or Celsius is forced by governments or by the holders to sell their position at market. But unless there's something eventful, which I don't see happening in the next two weeks, there's no reason to try to push the price below $18,000.

Yeah, as I said yesterday on the show, this reminded me of how Sam has been mentioning for weeks now like there was a six thousand dollar range from hell and we just fell to three thousand dollars. And I remember back then, as soon as we went to $3,000, everybody's like, we're going to a thousand. All the people that previously said we're going to 3,000 are like now we're going to a thousand. And it's happening again. Everybody's like, oh, we hit 22,000 or 21,000, now we're going to 17,000, then it's gonna be 13,000, that's gonna be 8,000. And I'm like, oh, I'm just gonna be the contrarian and say maybe we won't go any lower. I don't know, like it's not always gonna go lower, but every time we get to the stage like this, people are convinced it's going to. So at some point it will reverse. Which is again why I said yesterday that I'm, I'm starting to get my DCA mode just because it might go lower. But we're kind of at the bare bottoms here.

The one thing I will add here is, is I think things are a lot different than 2017. Think about all the D5 products and the lending and the leverage and the DE products that we have now in the market that we didn't have back in 17. Do you all feel like that could play into a scenario where we do go lower? Jordan, I'll start this off with, with you here.

It's always possible just because people can do funny things on derivative platforms. But long term, like I said, I mentioned it, if it does go lower, I think it's just going to be a dip and then it'll pop back up. But that could be wishful thinking in my part I don't know. What do you think, Sam?

I think what Jordan mentioned, what Benton mentioned is really important, is that the situation now is. Isn't what it was like in 2017. And I'll be very honest with you, this is the first time that I'm legitimately concerned about the future of bitcoin and crypto. Not in the sense that I think that I'm capitulating or I don't believe in the market. But at some point, you actually have to start addressing some of the concerns. And if we see a bigger decline below 20k, a sustained decline, at the same time, when the Fed is removing liquidity, you have to start entertaining the idea that maybe all of this was a result of one massive bubble. Right. We always talk about bubble in stocks, bubble in the bond market, bubble in real estate. Well, that also seems to have affected the bubble in crypto and in bitcoin. Perhaps that's not my mainstream view. That's not what I necessarily think is going to play out. But I have to at least entertain that. You know, as an investor, when you're faced with new information, you have to at least entertain it. So that's my concern. But I guess overall, we'll see. I still think sub 20k Bitcoin is a good buy, but that concern right now is, is in the back of my head for the first time. And we'll see what comes of it.

Sam, I have no doubt that the Fed printing and negative interest rates caused the bubble to $69,000. That would not have existed if there was no printing and there was no negative interest rates. I have no doubt on that. The issue with bitcoin is that when this bubble bubbles happen, miners cannot produce additional bitcoin. Wow, there's lots of buyers. Let's produce more bitcoin. If you do that to housing markets or to gold or to oil, the producers will go, wow, the price hiked 300% in the last year. Let's simply dig out more gold, dig out more oil, build more houses. So you cannot do that with bitcoin. So when the next bubble, when the hyperinflation steps in, the best assets for you to hold is bitcoin. So I'm not worried if it was the Federal Reserve and the negative interest rates that created bitcoin bubble. That's exactly what I'm expecting.

Yeah, that's a good point. And I think that bitcoin is the most honest form of money right now. There's really no alternative that gives you a monetary supply. That's Based on mathematics that you can't manipulate. However, again my concern is the fact that bitcoin has only ever existed in an expansionary monetary environment. Since 2011, we've had a situation of record low interest rates and money printing. Now we had our opportunity to shine, to showcase, you know what? Now Bitcoin is the inflation hedge. It's going to respond to this acute spike in inflation. People are going to buy it. Looking at as an inflation hedge that didn't happen. That's not a failure on bitcoin's part per se. I mean, bitcoin is a code, it's mathematics, we're mining it, etc. But that shows me where we are in terms of the adoption curve. And perhaps maybe we were overestimating where we were with respect to adoption because right now adoption seems like it's been mostly relegated to speculators and the long term hodlers are there. I'm a long term hodler. I have not sold a single satoshi in my life just to show you where I am and where my mindset is at. But it looks like we're in the minority when it comes to that. And either people don't understand bitcoin to the full extent or it's just not ready yet to take off as the alternative digital asset that we thought because now was the time to shine, guys, and we didn't get it.

Well, that could be said, but nothing is shining right now besides the doll, the dxy, which is like at a new all time high. Something like that seems to be the real thing that's driving all other markets down. How long can the DXY continue to go up? Like, I know a lot of the people around the world are getting, are scared and they're kind of fleeing into the dollar, even though technically it's losing like 8% a year. But how long is it going to like when it, when I guess as a crypto people we're all like, when are people going to get that, that switch in their mind? Like, oh crap, the dollar might be eventually on its way out. We need to find a different currency. And we're all, we're all hoping that they'll go into crypto. I don't really know what's going to motivate them at this point, but I'm just wondering how long this dollar can continue to just hammer every other asset in the field.

But doesn't that speak to kind of like the current environment that we're in, that if people are willing to flock to a currency that's automatically losing 8% of its value. That, that's kind of how dire potentially the situation is.

That's trying to deal with, that's dealing with the people problem, people freaking out when they might be behaving in ways that aren't necessarily the best for them. It's just trying to help manage what people are experiencing. And right now the news is just kind of freaking everybody out.

I mean, everything regresses back to a mean though, right? Like we saw for the last year, the money printing, it was well above the mean. And now we're kind of having this, this consolidation to where, yeah, we have to get back to an average, and now we have to go below that average in order to kind of like float back up towards that. So I, I, I do want to kind of pivot us here into how all of this is affecting DEFI as well, because there's an article written here by Mr. Sun from the editorial team, and he's talking about how this is absolutely just wreaking havoc on the DEFI protocol. So I, I'm curious to hear, you know, your thoughts, Sam, on, on how the impact of, of Bitcoin's price or Ethereum's price is impacting the overall defi market right now.

Well, if, if Bitcoin and crypto are on the, on the risk curve, Defi is farther out on the risk curve. So in voluntary, in volatile environments like we have now, you'd expect the more risky assets to face the biggest liquidation risks. And that's on top of the fact that we're seeing some serious issues with Celsius. We saw the collapse of Terra Luna few weeks ago. All of that adds to perhaps the unsustainability of these early defi protocols and companies that have really promised oversized returns despite the fact that their mechanics don't exactly work properly in a declining market environment, which seems to be the case. I mean, what Celsius was doing was working famously in a bull market. Now you get the kind of adversity that we've seen and take a look what's happening. So I think the broader crypto market is still heavily influenced by Bitcoin. Bitcoin have always written that it has a gravitational pull on the broader market. As bitcoin declines, everything else declines faster, especially as more people then shift from their altcoin positions into Bitcoin. As I mentioned before, I take profits from all coins into Bitcoin. I've been doing that for the past year. But right now what you're seeing is capitulation and Defi is going to be affected much more than other assets in the crypto space. The more dgen you are, right, the further on your risk curve you are, the more likely you're going to see a, a significant decline like we've been seeing.

And just A quick note, AAVE's total value locked has fallen from 33.5 October down to 8.1 billion. That's a article Jordan of the D5 Environment and How the overall markets are affecting that.

Well, I think this reminded me a lot of 2017, 2018 and all the ICOs like D5 got really expanded really quick and we mentioned it yesterday. One of the problems with a lot of these protocols is liquidity. You could have prices tank on one protocol just because there's not really a lot of liquidity there for people to buy and sell. So I think we're kind of witnessing the culling that needs to happen where a lot of the D5 protocols are going to go away because they didn't have enough user base and funds deposited to really make them legitimate and, and long term secure. So we're going to see a lot of the protocols protocols fade away. A lot of people that will migrate to maybe like an AAVE or something compound that are more established or maker and kind of get in on the die action. But yeah, the D5 space is, is hurting right now because the whole crypto economy is hurting. The market cap fell below a trillion. I remember writing that yesterday. I'm like, dang, that's depressing. We're down below a trillion. Everybody was hoping for $3 trillion. So yeah, DeFi is gonna go through a massive culling. It's needed because most of those protocols aren't, aren't necessary and they were offering just high yields on their native token that wasn't really doing much. So we're, this is like a good part of the overall process is just painful for everybody involved.

Marcel, I'm curious to hear your, your take on, on kind of the overall DEFI markets and, and you know, centralized exchanges as well. What they're staking?

Well, Benton, apart from the Binance fiasco yesterday, so the withdrawals on BTC were held for six hours or longer. Things went smoothly. As for Celsius, well, those investors did not read the terms of the contract. It was really clear that Celsius could hold back withdrawals if they had liquidity issues. So I don't think DEFI or centralized exchanges are having issues right now. I see the glass half full there. MakerDAO curve, avi uniswap. They all worked as design. Yes, there was a news on Cointelegraph saying that some vault liquidated Ethereum at $900 on a decentralized exchange. But this is not a system fault. That just shows that there's a lack of market makers or market participants to arbitrage between one centralized exchange and another decentralized exchange. But the system worked as designed. It's just not mature enough. So what Sam said is we lack adoption, but the basis is there, it's working.

The other thing too is with this whole Celsius thing, I just think there's this huge issue where it started with Luna, where they were issuing out their rewards on other stable coins like USDC and using Luna protocol to generate those yields, and then giving you your 5% on a USDC, but then taking 15 for the house. And so that kind of first domino has fallen, which has been part of that ecosystem. And so this kind of leads me to believe that there could be larger issues at stake here. And so it's, it's going to be, I think, what could potentially be a huge moment for crypto if Celsius cannot recover funds or goes bankrupt or cannot pay out their users. I, I mean, is there, is there a situation where Celsius comes back and is able to revive their withdraw? Is that a scenario where everything's. Everything's Sunny and Bright?

Mt. Gox, the exchange that went belly up in, I don't know, 2012 or something, held 7% of the Bitcoin in circulation at the high of Celsius, the end of 2021, they held 0.7% of the Bitcoin in circulation. So even if it goes belly up, and that's not the base scenario right now, I don't think it would be harmful because investors need to understand if they're lending their coins to centralized entities, either they are exchanges or they are those lending and borrowing platforms. They do not have direct access to the coin. So not your keys, Nanja coins. So cryptocurrencies were not designed for that. But Defy is growing, is getting bigger. Investors are getting more confident. We're getting to know better, to better understand the risks. So I think that is the future, not the centralized version.

Yeah, and I think it's not. You don't got to get so dire about it. Bent on. We already saw Nexo jump in there and say they offered to buy all, all of Celsius assets. So there's some big players out there that got money. Again, the whole crypto market's under a $trillion. The US printed $4 trillion in the last few years. There's some wealthy people out there could probably come and buy up the whole crypto space that they wanted. I don't know. I think that there are invested parties that will try and limit the amount of downside that we do see just because they don't want everybody to exit exodus from this, the, the ecosystem. So I think that though, something will arise to try and help mitigate any damages from Celsius. But we just got to kind of get through the next couple weeks and navigate any choppy waters.

So not everything is doom and gloom according to Jordan. I'm glad you have some positive outlooks here, Sam. Any final thoughts here on the topics we're kind of going at?

No, there's some early signs that Celsius may be holding on given its liquidation point and everything and that there could be some positive developments there. But yeah, as, as Jordan mentioned, they did have an offer from, from Nexo. Ultimately, I think if Celsius fails and you got these two massive failures that wiped away, you know, billions of dollars in wealth, that's going to take quite a while to recover from. I don't think it's an indictment on, on Bitcoin or the crypto market in general. I just think it shows you where we are in terms of adoption and how volatile the market is.

Great points and I want to take a second here to check the chat. We have Shalom, who's chiming in and saying during the Weimer Republic collapse the economy looked good on paper. However, the failing or the falling value of currency took its toll on everyone but the rich. So interesting insights from Shalom and we appreciate everyone for chiming in on the chat. Let us know your thoughts. What's your take on the Celsius situation? Is there good things to come? Do you agree with Jordan or, and Marcel and or are you kind of on the dark side with me? Is it doom and gloom? Let me know in the chat and let us, let us know your thoughts. We're going to kind of start moving into the next segment for today though, the quick crypto tips here. We're going to be talking about crypto staking and what is it because this does bring up a good point of when you're staking in platforms like Celsius, what are you actually doing? And we're going to kind of break that down in this quick segment. So let's go ahead and get into crypto staking and what is it so Crypto staking is the process of staking in similar locking your assets up in a bank or earning interest. You lock up your crypto holdings in exchange for rewards or interest from the platform on which you staked assets. So very similar to making a deposit in a bank, you're getting yields for that. Many exchanges and platforms offer staking with both centralized and decentralized options. You can even state crypto for from hardware wallets. The lowest risk option for staking would be staking stablecoins. When you stake stable coins, you eliminate most of the risk associated with price fluctuations of the actual asset. The reason your crypto earns rewards while staked is because the blockchain puts it to work. Cryptocurrencies that allow staking use a consensus mechanism called proof of stake, which is the way to ensure that all transactions are verified and secured without a bank or payment processor in the middle. So your crypto, if you stake it, becomes part of that process. Just one of the things to highlight here is there's different forms of staking, whether that's on Defi protocols or CEFI products like Blockfi or Celsius. So just be aware that you are reading the terms of what you are signing up for. A lot of these centralized finance products will hold your assets, including exchanges. If you're staking them and there is a liquidity crisis support, please be aware and make sure you read the terms and conditions before you start staking on any decentralized or centralized product. So that's going to bring us into Marcel segment today. I know he's got a lot to touch on for Bitcoin and Ethereum, but if you haven't liked and subscribed cointelegraph here on YouTube, make sure you go ahead and do so now. Turn on your notifications because we are doing live shows, breaking news shows for some of the biggest news in the market right down there. Go ahead and like and subscribe. But let's go ahead and get into Marcel's expert segment for today. I know he's got some goodies to talk about. So Danil, let's go ahead and jump into Marcel's expert segment.

Okay guys, so today we're not going to cover any derivatives. We've done that on yesterday's show which was specific about the crypto crash. I strongly recommend you revisit Cointelegraph's YouTube channel. So today I'm going to show you three charts that reflect how traditional markets are at the edge of a decade long bifurcation, meaning it could go either way. Danilo, can you share my screen please? So the first chart shows us how much the US treasury investors are losing versus inflation. Okay, so right now inflation is at 8.6%. And the five year note pays three and a half. So it's a certain 5% loss. That's a number you're seeing here. They're losing 5% per year by holding those treasures. So either inflation is going down by some miracle, or these investors will demand higher and higher yields. Meaning they'll be selling those assets at whatever price. Sure, they can stay hidden there for a couple of years, but that would be meaning throwing away 15 to 20% of the purchasing power away. Thank you, Danilo. And what happens when those investors dump those U.S. treasuries? Well, my friend, the U.S. government is going to have a lot of trouble because the cost to refinance and issue debt will be much higher. So people doubt the capacity of the government of handling the $30 trillion outstanding debt. And the US dollar currency will lose value quickly. So Danilo, I want to show another chart, please. This second chart is the most absurd and mind blowing. It's the Federal Reserve balance sheet. So since 2008, they have bought $8 trillion in shitty assets. So they went out from $800 billion in their balance sheet to $8.9 billion trillion dollars. Since the crisis. Since the crisis. So they bought mortgage backed securities, they bought debt instruments to save the banks and the hedge funds from a total collapse. So basically the entire system has been running on steroids the whole time. Thank you, Danilo. But as the economy entered a grind out due to inflation, investors exited risk assets. So there was no more venture capital money, no more IPOs, no more frenzy hiring on startups. It all disappeared. And the Federal Reserve was forced not only to stop with the assets repurchase, but to promise the US Senate that they would reduce the balance sheet by $1 trillion. So they were forced to to tell Senate, okay, we caused inflation, we bought a lot of assets, now we're going to sell those assets. And guess what was the first month of this new policy? June 2022. Now try to imagine what happened to the cost of financing real estate after the sole buyer of protection, the mortgage backed secures, went away. The needle. Can you share my screen please? So yes, my friend, that's how much you pay on a 30 year fixed mortgage rate. So the rate basically shooted from 3% in the beginning of the year to 5.2%. And that's why the market fears that a real real estate crisis is underway is imminent, causing them to exit all risk markets and crawl back to their moms, even if it means losing 6 to 9% per year. So bitcoin and cryptos are cool, but mama skirt is safer.

Those are excellent insights. Yeah, it's Sam or Jordan. Any questions? I guess for Marcel here to kick.

Things off, Is there ever going to be a point where people fleeing some of these assets that are no longer being bought by the Fed are gonna maybe flee into crypto? Or is that just wishful thinking on cryptocurrency part?

Not in this first phase. If they're fearing that a real estate Crisis worse than 2008 is about to happen, the first thing they do is buy those Treasuries or have cash at home or have real safe investments. But crypto is not perceived, is not seen right now as a risk of assets. Just the opposite. So in the first moment, they'll exit any risk markets.

And Marcel, I mean, given everything that's happening right now, do you expect the Fed to pivot at some point and to maybe, maybe not go full blown reverse course, but maybe start to tone down its rhetoric? I mean, that for me was my, always my expectation, but that was before we saw the CPI hit 8.6% in May, and I think we could probably peak in June, according to a few analysts. So I'm just trying to gauge your insights into what you think the Fed is going to do once the economy starts to buckle and once maybe the shift focuses back to growth and trying to stave off a massive recession.

Well, Sam, I really do not expect them to hike 100 basis points or do anything crazy because they know that this would spiral things out of control and we're going to enter a recession. So they will avoid doing anything that causes recession. But keeping inflation at 5%, 6%, 8%, it's the best solution for them right now. It's not the best solution for the people who are seeing layoffs, who are seeing the price of everything scale up, but for the Federal Reserve just holding back for six months, just increasing the interest rate, the minimum as possible, and pray that by some miracle the inflation comes down is the best scenario because nobody wants to press the button. Yes, I killed every stock market and risk markets in the world. I was the one that increased the interest rate by 100 basis points because I knew that inflation was really harmful for the population and for the people. They're not working for the people population and for the people. They're working for their own interests. And their own interests means the stock market.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I just have a quick question, Marcel. Like the Fed said they're going to reduce their balance sheet by 1 trillion, but is that going to have any kind of impact or like, in your opinion, how much would they have to reduce their balance sheet? And we all know like, that can't just happen overnight. So what do you think they're going to do? I guess over the next year?

They promised doing that over the course of the next 12 months or so. So roughly 100 billion per month. That's simply not going to happen. We know that's a fairy tale and that's not going to happen. But if somehow they manage in the first three months to sell 100 billion worth of assets and do not cause a major housing crisis, then they will restore enough credibility. But I don't think that's going to happen. There's no way it's going to happen because the broader market right now is not accepting a major sell in such important assets as the MBS and the debt instruments that were basically holding back the economy.

Yeah. In the meantime though, it seems like a 75 basis point increase is possible this week. If you take a look at the bets, Fed fund futures prices about almost over a quarter right now of, of the futures traders are, are betting on a 75 basis point increase. After the CPI print that we got and the PPI report came out today, I think too, the purchasing, the producer price index and that was at 10.8%. So factory gate inflation is also high. It seems like the Fed has enough ammo in the short term to really go after inflation. But as Marcel alluded to, whether it can sustain monetary tightening over the long term, I'm highly skeptical of that. So I guess we'll see how it all plays out in the next few months.

If we're talking about 75 basis points now, is there for a point we're going to see 100 basis points? I mean, I feel like everyone's kind of talking 50, then it's 75, then 75 becomes a norm and then 100 basis points now then becomes a norm. Is that a possibility?

I thought 50 basis points was a huge shocker for, for me. I mean, it might be possible depending on how bad the, the inflation. I mean, it looks like the Fed is expecting above average inflation until at least end of 2025. That's at least until when they expect their core PCE to go back to 2%, which is the target. So we're going to be dealing with high inflation for a Long time. It's probably going to be an inflationary decade. And I'll just say this so that I'm on the record saying it. This is probably the worst call in the history of the Fed. This is the biggest, most catastrophic blunder the Fed has ever made. They have access the same data we all have. Their call on inflation was absolutely atrocious. The entire Biden administration really up horribly, horribly. Even when it comes to the way in which they dealt with a reappointing Powell, there was infighting at the Fed that was happening, and that may have prevented Powell from acting on inflation a lot sooner. So it's been a complete disaster. And I don't mean to make it political, you know, I think both parties suck. I'm just saying the situation right now is really, really bad. And it's the worst inflation call I've ever seen.

It's transitory.

Yeah, yeah, use your bunny ears. It's transitory.

Transitory. Wow.

Then they change the definition of what transitory means. Yeah.

Well, I. I do want to shift us into a little bit brighter of a topic today, and we're going to be talking about Metaverse. So I appreciate Marcel, Sam, Jordan giving us your expert thoughts about what actually is happening at the macro level. Bitcoin and Ethereum as well. But we do have some brighter topics to talk about today, and that is the Metaverse. And I know you all are very excited to talk about this because Metaverse is going to be what the future will hold eventually. A lot of theoretical stuff happening right now, but the Metaverse is a topic that seems to be trending here, and I want to dive right into this. So, Danilo, let's go ahead and jump into. We have a little special video for to you today from Cryptopedia explaining to you what. What is the Metaverse. So, Nadello, let's go ahead and jump into our short video today.

Let's break it down. The term Metaverse is not new.

It is a blend of the words.

Meta, which means transcendent or beyond, and verse, which simply refers to universe. The term was original originally coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 sci fi novel. He uses the word to describe a virtual world where the main character socializes, shops and fights enemies through his avatar. Sounds familiar, right?

Today, the Metaverse is quickly becoming a.

Collaborative virtual space where people can put on their VR headsets or control their 3D avatars to interact, play, learn, and even work.

And is also becoming an entirely new economic realm.

The Metaverse is exactly like the current version of the Internet, but is fully immersive.

All right, well, we were having some technical difficulties there, I think with the sound, but kind of saw the, the brief synopsis of Metaverse. I'm curious to hear from each one of you because I think Metaverse is such a broad, all encompassing topic. I want to hear your definition of what is the Metaverse. So we'll start with Jordan. Give us your take. What is the Metaverse and how do you describe it to people?

I think what the concept of the Metaverse is to try to give kind of like a physical graphical rendering of the Internet. Like all what we spend so much of our time searching through information on the Internet, so many different websites, Twitter, clubs, social on all this stuff, it's kind of doesn't exist. It's its own dimension right now. And I think the Metaverse is kind of a play to try and put a way for us to look and access that and give it a physical form and it probably and include obviously blockchain technology to kind of add like a financial layer there built into it. But yeah, overall this is just a part of the progression of bringing the Internet into a more physical realm. To me.

And Sam, what is your definition of the Metaverse and how do you describe it to people?

Well, Jordan said it very, very well. I think it's all about combining physical reality in the digital world through the Internet and to essentially enable what we do in the physical world in a new medium. And that being the Metaverse. So it's that combination of physical and digital. And the important thing why it's so associated with cryptocurrency with blockchain is because these technologies allow for actual ownership of virtual items in the Metaverse. And I think that's, that's going to be really important. I think ultimately what it's trying to do is create an economy in, in the virtual Internet that combines aspects that we're familiar with, with, with, with new concepts and new technologies, but essentially bringing the Internet to life and allowing people to own virtual land as if they would or own virtual properties as they would in, in, in real life using blockchain technology and NFTs and that, that, that sort.

Excellent insights there, Marcel. We'll kick this to you next.

Well, Ben, I think there's two key pieces to make a Metaverse work. And the first, I'm said, is the NFT technology so owners can really own their assets, the buildings or anything they build on the Metaverse. And the second is like we did something that any user can develop so Even if it's Mike Metaverse me, Marcel, can build a custom shop there where I can give sports tip or teach how to eat more meat for anyone who's willing to, to view and participate on that metaverse. So yes, it's a Met, it's a Facebook Metaverse, it's the Nike Metaverse. But a single entity, a normal person, can create a service and get paid for creating that content within that.

So you heard everyone's takes on this and I'm going to share my thoughts on what is the Metaverse. I think the Metaverse is just a parallel reality that's integrating in augmented reality, virtual reality and blockchain technology, which also encompasses NFTs and ownership, like each one of the panels also said. So the Metaverse to me is very nascent, very new. There is a lot to be built and we are just kind of scratching the surface. We saw a lot of the Metaverse projects in the space, which I believe were super overvalued for actually what is actually they're developing and we're going to see in the long term what plays out and which ones will be the winners. But that to me, is what is the Metaverse, Just a parallel reality that we're bringing into the virtual world, like Jordan, Sam and Marcel each kind of touched on. Now, I want to understand where this was kind of a hot topic is, is real estate in the Metaverse? How does this work? Is it the same thing as buying real world real estate? And are you guys going to be potentially huge landowners inside the Metaverse? We'll, we'll start with Jordan here.

Well, I think it will become pretty popular just, just looking over what's happened over the last two years, the younger generations have gotten even more sucked into screens than all of us are. So it's definitely not going to go away anytime soon. Unless they completely go opposite direction. Just shun screens, which I don't see happening. Yeah, I think real estate in the Metaverse will become quite popular. I know you were opining before, like, can't they just always create more land? But ideally, a project will limit the amount of land that can be created in kind of even, maybe even have the Dow or something vote on that to lock it in so that the land that is existing already can accrue its value. I know we just saw Alluvium do their land sale and it sold out. So I think there's a lot of demand there. And once blockchain technology does get a little more widely adopted in society, there will be a greater demand for it. So I think long term, it's a. The value is going to go up. Which project? I don't know.

Yeah. Sam, what's your take on real estate in the Metaverse?

Yeah, well, you're actually starting to see REITs being metaverse REITs being offered. If anyone's familiar with real estate investment trusts, apparently there's some work underway to take Metaverse land, package that up into an investable asset, and give it to investors to get exposure to the Metaverse real estate sector. I consider this to be, in a lot of ways, like the NFT boom. Despite all the, you know, a lot of the exuberance, irrational exuberance in the NFT market, it is a real trend and people really like digital collectibles, digital valuables. I think the same will apply to the Metaverse and to into Metaverse real estate as more people look to live inside these physical virtual realities. You know, we can't knock that if that's not our thing. For a lot of people, it is. And I think in the future, the value that you create in the Metaverse, you can actually reap the rewards in real life, whether it's through tokens that you can then, you know, withdraw and use as real currency. What you do in the Metaverse is going to matter. And I think that real estate will have a market, and we're beginning to scratch that surface right now. Obviously, we're not ready yet, given where we are in crypto, where adoption is. But overall, as. As Jordan mentioned, it does have a bright future.

Marcel, are you going to be buying up, skipping up real estate in the Metaverse?

I just want to remind everyone that we all think that there's only Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram out there, but in fact, there are over 4,000 social networks. The thing is, the biggest four, five, captured 90% of the advertisers and users. So that's exactly what's going to happen on Metaverse and those lands. Everybody will try to be where the biggest viewer number of users years or the biggest economy is. So two or three metaverses will flourish and the assets close to these bigger economies will be more valued, even though there's infinite amount of assets and Metaverse and lands out there.

All great points, and I think I have to agree with you all that there's going to be value. Just like in the real world. If you own real estate, you can rent it, you could lease the land, you can build buildings, you could rent out those buildings. Same thing applies, I think, to the Metaverse, but we're just so early. The user adoption just isn't there. You don't have the masses flooding into that. Jordan, I'll let you chime in here with your thoughts.

Yeah, and I kind of said this for years. It's more like a societal movement that's going on. We've, you see the green movement, sustainability and all this that humans aren't just changing their behaviors. So what? And I've been saying this for years. They're, they're trying to switch our collecting behavior over to digital items that don't like some what's his name said below. He's like you'll own nothing and love it. Like these are technically non physical things that could be considered as nothing. But people like it. They're trying to, they're switching our, our love of buying things over to digital items so we don't have to make them in the real world because we're running out of resources and stuff. So this is just like a, it's a solution to society, a big societal problem that's kind of been manifesting for a while. In my opinion.

The New World Order is, is planting their seeds already as we see. But no, lots of great takes here on, on what is the Metaverse. Hopefully you all got some, some nuggets from that. If you're not caught up to speed on what the metaverse is. I do want to take a second to let everyone know these are the personal opinions of each panelist here on the show. They are not the expressed opinions of cointelegraph. This is not financial advice today. Let's go ahead and take a second and have you click the like and subscribe button, turn on the notifications so you know when we're going live during those shows during the week. Now this week we had two coins that were absolutely ripping and I want to go into our Markets Pro segment next because you should have been watching these two tokens and if you would have had Markets Pro, you would have seen the action and been able to get into it. All right folks, Gala was one of the first tokens that got put onto our radar thanks to the Newsquake Alert, which is an automated alert that instantly notifies users when market moving events happen. Well, what happened, 30% gains is what happened. On June 6, the news quake went out to inform Markets Pro subscribers that Gala Games, trading on the ticker G struck a partnership with Fortnite creator Epic Games. The publishing deal will open up Gala's Web3 titles to more than 194 million users on the Epic Games store. The time of the News Quake, the asset was trading at $0.07. It soon saw a shock sharp rise of price, hitting the weekly high of 9 cents. A few hours later, that's nearly a 30% gainer. That's the power of the newsquake. And now I want to move on to our next token that we were watching this week, trading under the ticker Wing Wing and our Vortex score. Folks, when you see a 99 on the vortex score, that is good. And when we saw this Vortex score above 80, that's considered confidently bullish. And conversely, if it's 30 below historically bearish conditions. And when we see this 99, guess what happened? A price surge went down and the high Vortex score briefly flashed on June 6th. And when it was trading at 4.14. A few days later, after the price reached its peak of the week at 1105, a 166 increase. At the end of the week, Vortex score has a high of 99. Flash to alert the Market Pro subscribers of bullish historical trends extremely similar to current conditions. Present conditions soon match historical ones and the price rapidly shot up from 624 all the way up to 847. That's a 35.7% increase. Absolutely massive. If you would have been trading based off the Market Pro alerts, Vortex score and newsquakes, you could have jumped in on both of these tokens, folks. I do want to remind the crowd watching today, drop your Twitter handle in the chat because we're giving away $50 to the coin Telegraph store. If you want some of this swag from the store, drop your Twitter handle in there. Look, Jordan's got his shirt on today. Layer 2 with the Ethereum logo. Love to see it. Any closing thoughts here? I'm going to allow everyone to give their thoughts and we'll wait for the winner in the chat here. Marcel, why don't you kick us off, give us your closing thoughts for today's show.

Well, I just want to remind everyone that those technologies, the Metaverse and Web 3.0 and even the Defy are doing the baby steps. They're just being created under our eyes and we're fortunate enough to be able to see them developing. So yes, maybe you can earn a lot of money investing some of those tokens, but those are extremely risky. So I would never recommend never ever anyone to invest more than 10 or 20% of their portfolio on such novel technologies. So it's better if you stick with Bitcoin and Ethereum and maybe one of the top five coins that have been there for the past four or five years instead of just diving in a single NFT or Metaverse project or web 3.0. So just go slow on those and try to accumulate maximum Bitcoin. Bitcoin or if you like, Ethereum. Ethereum as possible in the long run.

And Jordan.

Yeah, we've had a rough couple weeks here in cryptocurrency. I recommend everybody take their day of morning, you know, process it and then realize that bare markets are for building. We are. The crypto ain't going to go in the future. It could go down more but like long term it will come back. Topics like the Metaverse. Look for some of these emerging sectors, maybe start doing your own research, diving into projects you like, maybe start playing some of these games or something out there, exploring what's out there. Again, bear markets are for building. It's a good time to accumulate. Look, look ahead, don't look back at the portfolio you lost and just like hang in there.

Sam.

But also all the influencers, all the influencers told me the market won't crash 80% or more again. Those days are over. You know, isn't that, don't listen to all that. I mean, as, as Jordan mentioned, bare markets happen. We are right now beholden to a broader macroeconomic backdrop that's not favorable to any risk on asset unless you're oil. You know, there's really not much going on right now in the market overall. I just think that you should have an investment, I said it before, have an investment thesis and say stick to it. I mentioned earlier that I actually for the first time have legitimate concerns about the market. That doesn't change my thesis. I'm going to need to see a lot more data for me to really confirm that. But I am monitoring things as we speak and ultimately focus on high value assets and invest a reasonable amount so that you're not staying up at night. If this is keeping you up at night, then you're overextended. Okay. And if you're sleeping too well, then maybe you're not extended enough. There should be that right balance where you're sleeping well but not too well. So you know that that's a good, that's a good way to put it. But yeah, stay safe out there and don't, you know, don't let, don't let emotions force you to sell at the bottom.

Great insights from all of our experts here on the market report. I do want to give a special shout out to Shalom. He was Just blowing up the chat today. Dropping historical knowledge about history and all this good stuff in the chat. Shalom, I think if you go ahead and drop your Twitter handle in the chat, I want to you're going to be the 50 giveaway winner today. I also want to reiterate, if you haven't seen the Cryptopedia video on the Metaverse, go to our YouTube channel. We got the full video on there. That one snippet today was just a short, short clip. We got Cryptopedia all over the YouTube page and lots of great nuggets of information in those videos. So make sure you go to those channels on our YouTube. Shalom. Go ahead and drop your Twitter handle in the chat. I'm going to give you 30 seconds here. If you don't, we're gonna go ahead and give it to the next person in line there. My closing thoughts for today is I am bullish on gaming as the next wave to drive the next bull run for crypto. Whether that be the next year, year and a half. I think users are going to live at the dap layer and gaming is going to be that, that big dap that brings a lot of the mass adoption moving forward. So like Jordan said, go dabble with a lot of the games now. Get yourself familiar with that space. I'm super bullish in that area. And Shalom saying that he does not use Twitter. Thanks again for the mention though. Well, Shalom, we appreciate you tuning in. We're gonna go ahead and give this away to the dolo on the YouTube channel. Looks like their, their Twitter handle is poo underscore Crypto. That looks like Winnie the Pooh. That's gonna do it for today, folks. We appreciate everyone tuning into the market report. We love having you here. Make sure you turn on notifications so you know when we have those special episodes. We don't want you to miss out on some of that breaking news. Until next time, over and out. We'll see you next Tuesday.

Poo Crypto.