What are the top social tokens waiting to take off? | The Market Report

Sa. Sam.

Hello friends, and welcome to another episode of the Market Report. I'm your host, Benton and we are joined by a resident expert today, Jordan Finisith, Marcel Peckman. Sam Borgi. Well, Jordan uses his background in psychology and human behavior to spot the emerging trends in crypto. 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. Guys, this has been a hell of a week for crypto. I don't know how else to put it. It's blood in the streets, it's craziness. USD losing its peg from a dollar. Is the sky falling? What is going on? How are we feeling right now, guys?

Well, Benton, if that's the worst that happened, that can happen with crypto throughout the year. Considering the global crisis and Fed increasing the rates and etc. It will be perfect. It will be the best year of our lives. But I don't think that the worst has already happened. I think if a general crisis on traditional happens effectively take place and S and p falls another 20%, things are going to get much worse. Worse than that. But let's pray for that doesn't need to happen. Maybe Fed was gonna save us, but considering the scenario, the macroeconomic scenario we're living right now, we should be fine.

I know. I see rapid price falls, scammy type projects, things falling apart. I'm like, this is crypto. This is. Crypto's being really crypto right now, right? Like, wow. That's why we're all here though. Like this is, this is kind of par for the course folks. If, if you're new to crypto, welcome. You got like a nice refresh introduction. This is how it goes most of the time.

Well, amid USD losing its peg, Bitcoin crashing below 30k, we're down 1.4 trillion from the peak crypto market cap as a whole stock sell off. Fed tightening. I'm here to talk about Steam today.

Steam.

So, you know, that's really, really good timing. I just, I mean, I, like I've been saying before, like it sound like a broken record. I don't see any scenario in the short term where crypto rallies or recovers. You take a look at what's happening with the Fed, the writing's been on the wall. We could talk a little bit more about what they could do, you know, as something eventually breaks. As you're seeing with the stock market they're hiking rates into a recession or into a recessionary environment. It's not looking good for the prospects of a continued rate hikes. But that's why tomorrow's CPI report is going to be really important so we can touch upon that as we go along.

Exactly. We're going to be diving into a lot of these topics today. Marcel is going to be lending us his intel of what he's seeing in the markets and hopefully being that steady rock for you during these trying times. I want to welcome everyone that's tuning in. I see Koro is back, Luciana, even Jackson Dumont. Welcome back to the show, Vikram. Glad to have you here as always. Adrian, thank you for tuning in. Don't forget to like and subscribe Cointelegraph we're here on Tuesdays at 12pm Eastern. So a lot of stuff to dive into. And one thing I want to add though is it seems like if you've been around for the last year, you have kind of witnessed the full psychological cycle of the markets, whether that's the euphoria of being at 60k. Now we're kind of in this depression slash disbelief and so does the bleeding stop? Does the pain end? Are we at the bottom? This is all gonna be stuff I think we're gonna get into today. And then we're also gonna be talking about some social tokens that during this time, maybe you're reevaluating your portfolio and when this kind of headwind comes for a more bullish market, maybe you take a look at some social tokens. So we're gonna be talking to you about potential projects that we believe have have longevity even through bare markets. But first things first, we're going to get into our weekly roundup to get you caught up on some of the latest headlines in the Twitterverse this week. So go ahead, Danilo. Let's go ahead and jump into our weekly roundup. I see Luciano was digging the electro swing soundtrack on this week's weekly roundup. So well done to our video team for that that recap what's going on this week. So a lot of ust headlines in there. But before we get into a lot of that stuff, I want to hand this over to Marcel because he's going to give you the information to sleep, make you sleep well at night. I think he's going to be very eye opening with some of the stuff he's going to tell you today. So I will go ahead and let Marcel give you some good news. We need the good news, Marcel. So Danilo let's run it back. Let's let Marcel do his thing.

First of all, zoom out. Sure, some traders excel at short term swings, but the vast majority of investors will get completely wiped out using 15 minute and one hour candle charts. And there are two reasons for that. The first one is that we are emotional human beings and crypto has a high daily volatility, meaning it's quite normal for 5%, 7% fluctuations on a single day. So basically, every time the price goes against you, there's a gigantic pressure to close the position at a loss. Humans were not made to endure losses, especially financial ones. Second reason, algo traders, those firms with deep pockets using bots, the algorithms are very good at manipulating the short term prices and they can withstand the pain for days and weeks, but not across several months. So it's definitely painful to watch bitcoin go down 25% in five days. But in the grand scheme of things, that's really nothing. And to prove my point, I'm gonna show you the top, bottom and weekly performances over the past three years. So, Danilo, you can share my screen, please. So here on Investing.com we can check the weekly performance of Bitcoin. For instance, in March 2020, on a single week, it went down 41%. On May 2021, we had two consecutive weeks of 20% losses. On the other hand, we also had multiple weeks of 20% and higher gains. So a 25% move, it's not that bad. It's not the end of the world. So what's the big picture here? So this chart I'm going to show you is the total cryptocurrencies market capitalization right now near $1.8 trillion. So if you see the moves during 2018, 2019, we got desperate at the time. Yes, the market capitalization went from $500 billion to $120 billion. Yet it was the worst thing in the world. It went down by 75% and it was agonizing. But those who managed to survive, not to get liquidated using futures, were rewarded with 20x gains. So the chart we're seeing is the 90 day moving average. To remove distractions from weekly performance, we're watching a three months average price. So we got 20x gains for those who stood alive. Thank you, Danilo. So you probably have two questions. The first one, suppose the 2.5 trillion. The recent peak of market capitalization is going to be the biggest number for the next two or three years. There's the cycle theory, Bitcoin and etc. So isn't it easier just to wait outside for two years and then re enter at a lower price? Yes, you could do that. But crypto rallies are not evenly distributed throughout the months. For instance, if you are an Ethereum investor and you missed the best three months out of the past two years, your gains were 40%. If you stood for the whole two years, your gains were 950%. So if you stay out of the market, you're not gonna get those months of exciting pumps and gains. And the second question, should we be buying aggressively here now that bitcoin and cryptos dropped 25% in five days? And the answer is not really. For instance, in September 2021, the crypto market capitalization dropped from $2.5 trillion to 1.9 trillion. In December, just three months later, it dropped from 2, $2.6 trillion to 2 trillion. So you are basically setting up yourself to buy after the rally when the corrections happen. And that's not the best strategy. Maybe you should be buying regularly, every month. So in a nutshell, do not try to time the market, do not do short term trades, do not use leverage.

Why?

Because humans have a natural tendency to close the position at a loss and crypto is too volatile. So the only way out is to average by every month, which you call dollar cost average or dca.

Love it. The golden rule of all things crypto. I. So I guess like you had some great insights there, Marcel. And like, I just want to kind of like emphasize this to the audience. It's like for those that live through the 2017, 2018 cycle, they, they benefited greatly and immensely just by waiting an extra year or two for this last run. You know, who knows what's going to happen if this could go lower or we are an extended bear market for the next two years. But like have the light at the end of the tunnel. If it is, you know, this four year cycle, you know, 2024 is around the block and if you are getting in now, you know, Marcel made awesome point about dollar cost averaging now. So that when the next big wave comes, you know, who ready for that and you're not even kind of worrying about your position. You're, you're picking your kind of like cryptos that you love and that you believe in long term. And then when the next wave, you know, comes in, you're ready to ride that wave and you're all kind of set up.

So.

Excellent insights this week, Marcel. Any questions, Jordan or Sam on that?

I was going to just point out like, yeah, that's a really good focus on the psychology part of it and like really kind of establishing a plan and putting it in place beforehand. Because once market started moving and we catch that fomo, it can be really hard to not like jump in. So yeah, buying, finding projects you like early on, dollar cost averaging into them. That way when you, when you like for me, when I start to feel that fomo, that's actually my signal that I now take like, take profits. Because it's like going up and I'm like, okay, it's running, but it's, it's so backwards that you gotta really be on top of your psychological game to, to come out on top.

Yeah, those of us who live through the 2017, 2018 bear market, you know, we're, this is, this is all, you know, comes naturally to us now. You know, you can hear the pain in my voice slightly. You know, I'm still human. I haven't acted on anything. I can still feel bad. Okay, listen, if I want to feel bad, I can feel bad. It's my, it's a free world. I can do whatever, whatever the hell I want, but that's not going to affect my decisions in my portfolio.

Right.

So I guess, Marcel, I can ask you, what's your perception of where the market is headed the next three to six months? Given the Federal Reserve, given inflation, I don't really see much upside anytime soon. But I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Well, Sam, I think the risks right now are bigger than the potential gains. For example, we have regulation in United States, we have Europe. They're trying to set up their cbdc. They're trying to mitigate the impacts of Russia and Ukraine. So there's a lot of uncertainty on the macroeconomic scenario, which is bad for crypto. A lot of people say, well, when a crisis come to happen, a global crisis, whatever cause, it's going to be good. For cryptos, it doesn't work like that because people when they get scared, when they think, well, maybe there's going to be a crisis longer or worse than expected, they want safe investments. And crypto is not yet considered for the vast majority of investors as a safe investment. So they want to want cash, US dollars or Treasuries or global bonds, but they're going to diversify away from risk investments. And that's exactly what we're seeing right now in play. Tech stocks and mortgage backed securities. People fear that the housing market is going to collapse. They just exit them at a loss. So even if Bitcoin is trading at a Very cheap price, like $20,000, for instance. During a crisis, people are going to keep selling because they're gonna be scared. They're gonna go to the options they are more comfortable with. And right now, Bitcoin is only a reserve status asset for the minority of people, 5%, 10% maximum, of people understand Bitcoin and cryptos as something safe and sound. So I think the risks right now are for the downside.

I just want to chime in here. Shelter Corey says regulations that prevent users from shorting are criminal, limiting population to being bag holders for the rest of the world. I thought that was a pretty interesting insight. The other question I have for you, Marcel, is so you kind of answered the short term. What's kind of causing the macro level of where we're at right now? But, like, are we in the midst of what could be potentially a Black Swan event with this whole Terra Luna de pegging? Considering that Bitcoin is such a large part of their treasury, it seems like Bitcoin and Terra Luna are very intertwined. Is this maybe the Black Swan event that nobody kind of saw coming? What are your thoughts and if you wouldn't mind, just kind of tell us what is going on with Terra Luna right now, from what you know.

Okay, so Terra has, Luna has algorithm stablecoin, which is the ust, backed partially by Luna, backed partially by Bitcoin and Ethereum. And if the Ethereum and Bitcoin price go down and Luna price go down, there's not enough reserves to back those stablecoins, so they're forced to sell those assets to raise cash. And they have been tested recently as the crypto markets went down. And right now we're not sure exactly how much money they're missing over there. So if Bitcoin and Ethereum don't. And Luna don't recover, it's going to be a big risk. But $1.5 billion, it's not enough. A sale of $1.5 billion, not enough to drive the price from $32,000 to 25. That's simply not gonna happen. There's enough liquidity for that. Maybe at 27, maybe at 28, maybe at 30, we don't know. But there's enough liquidity to buy this sale. So not the Black Jordan.

Okay, Yeah, I would call it a White Swan event. I call it a White Swan event because a lot of us saw it coming, right? Maybe, maybe not to this extent. Obviously I don't have a crystal ball, but, you know, there was a lot of issues with, with the backing, in my opinion. And you're, you're backing your asset with another asset of a different risk profile. And we saw a drawdown in Bitcoin and look what happened. So I think it was a white swan event because a lot of, a lot of people had talked about the potential shortfalls. Of course no one can predict when it's going to happen or how it's going to materialize. But these issues have, have been at the forefront for a long time. So you know, the, the BTC reserves made a lot of really good headlines. You know, we wrote about it, I wrote about it, but there's a lot of structural underlying issues there and we're starting to see it now.

And I think the thing that like people don't take into account is the fact that we're trying to eat the lunch of a bigger player, which is the US dollar. They're not just going to sit idly by and let a whole new financial system arise out of nothing. And rise rates have great heights. It's not, it's not without the outside of the realm of possibility that even central banks could have had some influence in this whole thing because we hear all this talk about 90 of countries around the world launching CBDCs. They're not, they want crypto to look bad so that, that can look good because they're like banks are the trusted entities. So there's a whole lot going on here and we just kind of buckle up folks and hang on for the ride.

And this does kind of bring up an interesting question. I see Vikram in chat here says how are stable are algorithmic stablecoins? And from my experience, I have never seen algorithmic stablecoin work. They just literally have all failed at some point. Whether, you know, it's been a six month run, a month, you know, 10 days, they have all failed. There's not been a successful sustainable algorithmic stablecoin. So we will see what happens with ust. You know Marcel just noted before we we jumped on the show today, do Kwon tweeted, you know, a plan is coming so stay tuned so we will see. Hopefully it doesn't drag the entire market down. But so I guess Marcel, from what you're seeing, I know you like to show like the chart of like the percentage rates but like what are professional traders doing right now? Are they kind of sitting tight? Are they hanging on the sidelines? You know, what are they kind of doing and assessing when we're kind of in this downfall?

You muted, Marcel.

Oh, sorry. So the futures premium which measures how much more money they are willing to pay for contracts. Three months and six months advance is at 2% per year, which is, yeah, low, but it's not negative. So they're not excessively bearish. They don't think the price will continue falling. There's no real demand for short selling. So doing leverage bets that the price is going to keep going down, it's simply not happening here. Maybe people will expect the market to recover to $40,000. And then I said, well, I can make a sale here, 40,000. I bet it's gonna go back to $30,000. But at $30,000, there are simply no sellers around.

Jackson Dumont is Do Kwon, the new Justin Sun. You guys have questions for Marcel? I mean, this is a big topic this week. It's like a lot of people are scared. A lot of people don't know what to do. Maybe this is your first time going into a 50% dip. You know, Curious to hear Jordan and Sam. How are you all approaching this, this type of scenario? Are you kind of reallocating funds? Are you looking to get in at these levels? Do you think this is the bottom? Jordan, I'll ask you first. What, what are you kind of doing in this, in this position?

Well, this is actually the first time in a while that I'm considering putting money that I earned from working into the market. But I still at this one, that, that's that fear part. Like, is it going to keep going down? I know that's he's kind of got a bite the bullet and stick with the DCA just this much every week, this much every month or whatever and put it in. But yeah, I'm looking to accumulate some projects that I've been, I like for a long time now. But I'm not going to say that the market's not going to go down anymore either. So.

Yeah, I've, I've been fully allocated toward my crypto for, for a long time now. So, I mean, I, I envision myself adding at some point in the future, but I don't think we've bought them just yet. Given just how quickly things have kind of gone sour. I think the next few months we will probably see a bottom materialize and at that point we can kind of reassess where we are in terms of the bear market. Really. I'm looking forward, I'm just taking it day by day. Right now, looking at the Federal Reserve tomorrow, there's going to be a CPI report that is going to be really important because if the CPI shows that inflation peaked the previous month. We could start to see some changes in market perception in the sense that if inflation already peaked and we're going back down or the rate of growth is slowing, the Fed might not be as aggressive moving forward. And I put all that because the market is still intricately tied to the Fed. It's still intricately tied to risk perceptions. So we haven't seen that decoupling yet. All I know is that I'm not really going to sell at, you know, capitulation levels. I don't really see any, any point in that. Now, obviously, if you're overexposed, you might not have a choice, but that's why it's important. Allocation size relative to your net worth is really important.

I. Danilo, if you can pull up my screen real quick, I just want to show something. These are the, the top 2018 tokens from 2018. So, like, I, I do want to kind of like zoom out and give perspective like Marcel is doing. You saw XRP was the second biggest crypto at the time. Bitcoin, Cash, Nem, Tron, Stellar, Iota, dash. Like, some of these coins are not even in the top 20 anymore. And so kind of zooming in now today, it's like, look what we have and what's changed and evolve over two years? What's. What's kind of the, the cream of the crop that stayed around during the previous bear markets. You know, you see Bitcoin and Ethereum, they're always in the top three. So when you're kind of looking at these times, it's like, it's also important to keep that in mind, is that two years from now, the landscape is going to look completely different considering kind of where we're at. So thank you, Danilo, for sharing my screen there. Do you have any other questions for Marcel, though? I see we have the chat going on today. A lot of people want to know the skinny with what happened with Luna. So if you're just tuning in, essentially there has been a run on their stablecoin, their algorithmic stablecoin, and they are starting to sell off a little bit of their bitcoin in their treasury to help back up that, that stable coin. But. Yes. Any other questions for Marcel, Jordan or Sam today?

No, I'm, I'm done for now. I don't want to talk about this anymore.

This is too depressing. It's too depressing. God. All right, well, we do have some good news for you. So if we are getting out of a bear market, eventually you may want to consider looking at some social tokens. And I want to also emphasize that these are the personal opinions of each panelist. This is not the expressed opinion of cointelegraph. So these are the personal opinions of each folks that are talking about these projects today. And I know Sam has a real great project, Steam. If you haven't heard of Steam, now you have. Sam, I'm going to let you take this away to talk about what's going to be the best social token for this year.

Well, I never called it great, but I called it the OG Social blockchain. You know, it's the moment everyone's been waiting for. We're going to talk about some social tokens and I'm going to be talking about Steam. A lot of you who are new to crypto, you probably haven't heard of Steam, but you have heard of social tokens, you know, social blockchain, all that stuff. Well, Steam was the OG social token. It came into being really during the last major bull market phase, had a lot of Momentum back in 2017, huge numbers in terms of involvement on the actual platform. Obviously that's not the case anymore. But I think that as attention shifts back to social, which I think actually will Happen maybe in 2023, 2024, I think a project like Steam can have some potential for upside. So the goal of Steam as a social blockchain is to support social media by giving value to content creators and creators to contribute to the platform. It's a scalable blockchain with a fee less token that allows people to earn tokens using what they consider to be the proof of brain concept. And the proof of brain is based on a pool of tokens that incentivizes content creation and that also leverages the wisdom of the crowd to access value of content and how the token should be distributed. In terms of what I look for for investing in a project like this, again, it's not the flashiest name and there are a lot of issues with to maybe lower adoption the fact that its price never really recovered anywhere near 2017 levels. But some factors I look for are things like low market cap. It has a tight trading supply and a relatively reasonable inflation rate. It's never been hacked. Right. It's really important it has a good block time without much disruption. It's a proven chain. It's an older chain, but it's a proven chain. So that's why we shouldn't always just scoff at older technology. It's older, but if it's still being used and has a good use case because we're seeing recently a lot of new technologies with the bells and whistles haven't really panned out. They've had a lot of real, a lot of significant issues with hacks with downtime, etc. Having a reliable blockchain that, that has been around for a long time is potentially very valuable. People have also forked the system in the past, creating airdrop opportunities. The Tron team is actually behind Steam, which also leads to more resources potentially being put into the ecosystem moving forward. I think as more attention shifts to social tokens, any interest in that space is going to be beneficial for Steam. On the flip side though, any kind of sell off is going to be negative for it as well. So I look at it as a fairly low risk, moderate reward social token that could have potential in the next leg of the bull market. Especially as more attention is being paid to social tokens. I think it might be a viable option for those of you looking to diversify your holdings in the social blockchain sphere.

Sam, you had me at Justin Sun. I, I, my question is this, like it seems like they kind of took a page out of the, the Binance smart chain playbook with the proof of authority consensus mechanism. Do you see that as a, a pro or a con when it comes to the Steam blockchain?

I think the governance has always had issues with respect to the delegated proof of stake. It's not, I mean it sounds really good. I mean a lot of the issues early on in blockchain was how do you create consensus and what are the best ways in which you can do that. DPOS has its own issues, I've always flagged those for Steam. But you know, I just try to look at other factors that could potentially be a good, that could offer a good investment profile. So governance right now in my opinion probably isn't the strongest. But you know, that can change as the ecosystem continues to evolve. If it does evolve, that is.

Sam, I have a broader question here. So how can a social network compete with Meta Facebook, a company with $120 billion of annual revenue? I mean, what's the 10x advantage for the users to move out from Instagram, Twitter or TikTok to a decentralized application such as Steam?

Yeah, I think the competition right now is there's not very much competition because Meta obviously has a huge advantage and I don't think anyone denies that. I think where the social chains can really become beneficial, aside from the aspects related to censorship and that's A different subject. I think what these platforms do is they incentivize monetarily, content creation. So they're allowing you to earn tokens that have monetary value by contributing to the platform. So that, for me, is a potential value driver for the ecosystem as a whole, not just for Steam. The ability to monetize your behavior, to monetize content creation, to monetize content curation, I think it's gonna be one of the biggest driving forces moving forward. Even before people understand things about decentralization and censorship resistance, I think the monetization aspect is going to be huge.

What do you think blockchain platforms can do to attract people from like a Twitter or Facebook that are already so prevalent and not so crypto focused?

Well, I think, I think Facebook is already losing a lot of its luster. You know, you know what they say, they call it boomer book now. So I think a lot of people are, you know, trying to get away from Facebook. I think, honestly, if they can really incentivize or they can show the monetary incentives, you know, being able to monetize, we're always looking for ways to monetize our behaviors. If you can give people an easy way to understand how they can monetize their blogs, how they can monetize their contributions, their upvotes, you know, their, their, their posts, I think it's going to be a really attractive value proposition. But marketing is going to be an aspect of it. Creating an actual interface that's usable, which Steam. It's not there, man. This ain't it. You know, this ain't it. If you're looking for usability, the Steam blockchain is not it, in my opinion. So all these things have to come together to give people a really good user experience, also demonstrating the monetary potential of holding that asset.

So I do have a couple questions, Sam. You know, there's competitors to this platform like Hive or Blurt or whatever the heck that other one is, where, you know, people are incentivized to post and they get paid and create the content. But what is really going to give Steam that network effect? Right? We've seen from web2 with the examples of like the impact of having the network effect. Oh, all my friends are using this, so I need to use this. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera. You know, with the incorporation of NFTs now happening on Facebook, Meta and Instagram, like that, I think gives opportunities for creators to monetize what they're doing. How does Steam kind of compare to that and how do you get that network effect on a platform that maybe has other competitors or just isn't providing maybe as much Value as the Web2 right now?

Yeah, the hives and the blurts are actually forks of, of Steam. So that's really interesting how that turned out. But I think right now the. I think the issue is, I mean, Steam had a really strong network effect back in 2017. If you took a look at the monthly users of Steam, it was absolutely incredible. Back in the day, I was writing for Hacked and I gave them an ICO score that was really high. I was really excited about Steam. I really thought that they can disrupt centralized social media. It didn't turn out to be the case. I think right now the network effect is you have to create a functioning, a very, very good functioning interface. That's the number one. And again, being able to market your offerings around monetizing your behavior, I think that's huge. I don't think anyone's really doing that properly. The idea that I can contribute to social media and earn actual financial rewards, not just through donations, but actually through my work, I think is a huge value proposition.

Jordan, did you want to get another question in or Marcel? Because we do have one audience member, Jackson, who has a question, so if you guys don't. All right, cool. So, Jackson Dumont, loyal audience member, he wants to know, do you think this has the potential to replace ad revenue on platforms like YouTube? Sam? So this is about Steam.

I think that's a really interesting, really interesting question. I think ad revenue for a lot of platforms has really declined over the years. I mean, I was in the business of Google Ad revenue for various websites and we saw that plummet because we were beholden to the Google algorithm. With Steam and a social platform like that, it changes the monetary value proposition of social networks. So I think it absolutely can. It might not be Steam that does it, but, but the idea that users can actually monetize their behavior, you know, think about that. Monetizing my behavior, monetizing my social contributions. I'm not just getting money, I'm getting money for providing real value. Right? That's where I think the real value proposition is and where I think this whole social, crypto, social blockchain phenomenon can really take off. No one's done it the right way yet, though, in my opinion.

I think that's one of the interesting things with web3 is how this advertising model is going to be flipped on its head where the users or content creators are going to be put at the forefront. So seems Like Steam is trying to kind of like tackle a lot of that stuff. But great insights today, Sam. You know, I think you're on a five week win streak, so hopefully it ends today. He wins the hearts, hopefully he wins the hearts and minds of all of our, our viewers today. But great presentation on Steam, I gotta say, very enticing. Been familiar with the platform before, but now, you know, because of all this info, I may go take a second look. All right, thanks, Sam. Now don't forget folks, we are giving away that one month free of subscription of Markets Pro. So go ahead and drop your Twitter handle in the chat. We're gonna be selecting at the end of the show. We'll also open up the poll at the end of the show to see what project you're most bullish about. Go ahead if you want to just go ahead and get Markets Pro. We got the description discount in the Description. Sorry, that's 20% off. So huge discounts all around Markets Pro giving that away. We're going to be diving into that a little bit later. But I want to get into my segment today because I have a social token that I think you might want to consider looking at once we get back into a bull market. So let's go ahead and jump into Whale this week. All right, well, what is Whale token? Well, there's a 10 million supply of whale token ever created and the launch value of each whale is being underpinned by a basket of some of the rarest and most sought after non fungible tokens in the industry. So these NFTs include God's Unchained, Rare, digital art from crypto art, crypto Voxels, sandbox, avastars and crypto motors. Well, Whale is in return a true tangible asset backed by currency which is NFTs. That is instead using gold like previously done with the US dollar and using digital art and collectibles to back that whale token. So it's seeking to strike a balance between wealth preservation and growth speculation through a well balanced basket of some of the rarest NFTs in the game. So to me, this is where I want to kind of see the evolution of NFTs and I think Whale is pioneering that in the space right now. So one the mechanisms that they use is called a whale vault. This is where they lock all the NFTs into the protocol and then issue out the whale tokens from there. So Whale claims to be the first social token backed by NFTs and it was launched in May 2020. So perks for some of the Whale holders include NFT rentals. You can purchase exclusive NFTs with whale token, participate in Whale Liquidity Mining, purchase digital and physical swag. You can vote in the Whale Dao and purchase selected NFTs. The vault so I want to touch on this vault system again because I think this is an important point. And so when you're involved or, or staking or earning from the vault, some of the key features means that you can acquire and retain capital appreciating NFT assets. The sale of the NFT assets only happen at the right prices. They generate rental income from the rental of NFT assets in this vault and creation of sales, generating related projects. And you can reinvest all the revenues to purchase more NFTs for, for the Whale vault. And so this vault is audited once a month by non fungible dot com. So I think there is a nice system of checks and balances. And so for me, I think Whale is innovating and I love to see the innovation. To me that's the most exciting part. If you look at the token on the chart, it's in the garbage just like every other one. But you know, this could be a good opportunity to just get in and, and get ready for the next bull market. But I'm going to finish a little bit early with a little bit of extra time. So that is Whale toke Whale project. Any questions?

So the main thing is that they have NFTs backing the value of the token. But like as we've seen with Luna, like if the value of your assets falls, the value of your token will fall too, kind of a thing. What, like what's guaranteeing that the Whale Token price will stay up and like the NFT market ain't exactly liquid in my opinion. Like there's not. Like how are you gonna, like how are they valuing all these different NFTs and whatnot?

So when it comes to the value that's gonna be, you know, dependent upon the market, I guess what they did was kind of curated this select NFT collection. So they also have like top shots, some of like the highest price top shots in this vault as well from NBA. And so what they did was kind of create this basket. So I do think there is some flaws to this because, you know, it's not as rare as gold yet. Some of these NFTs do have value. I think they're on to something. Is it, you know, completely 100 figured out? No, because I think there are some flaws like you're pointing out. Like what happens if all of a sudden, you know, cryptopunks or gods unchained floor price drops to like, you know, 0.1 eth. That could destabilize the whale token. So yes, there's definitely some flaws, but to me, I think if, if you can find some of the most rarest NFTs that do hold their value and have a proven track record, that could be a sustainable model.

Sample large whale token holders to manipulate the votes and buy NFT from themselves, like paying an unreasonable price. So we all know that governance systems work in theory, but in practice, not much people vote. So if, if a whale gets, I don't know, 5 or 10% of the outstanding coins, he's gonna dominate all the, the voting procedures and can use that to benefit himself. So what's stopping that to happen?

Yeah, so when it comes to like the wash trading of the actual NFTs in the vault, is that what you're saying? Yeah, I don't know how that works. I have not been like heavily involved with that ecosystem to see like the ongoing mechanics between the buying and selling of the assets in the vaults. But to me, from what I read through the white paper and some of the docs is like, those assets are kind of like there for a long, long period of time, unless the DAO decides to vote to either sell or I guess, buy other NFTs to add into that vault. So it's a valid question. I just don't have a 100 answer for that one. Yeah, Luciana, throwing shade today, looking at the pretty website. Yeah. Did you see the website always throwing shade about the website. God, can't catch a break.

Yeah.

Any other questions will go ahead. Sam?

Yeah, just about. About the community. I don't know much about this project. Can you say a few words about, you know, the size of the community, the participation? How does that look like?

Yeah, so when it comes to the, the, the Twitter account, I'm gonna pull that up real quick. They have 20, 000 followers on Twitter. So this is kind of a burgeoning community. You know, I think considering the token supply as well of that, that 10 million, they're kind of trying to go, I think with this niche area, if you look at the overall participants in the NFT space, it is extremely small compared to the overall crypto market. So like this is like a niche within a niche. And so I think it is kind of a very small community right now with, with kind of like a lot of potential, in my opinion.

How is this a social token versus like a dow it seems like it's an NFT DAO more than like a social platform.

Well, according to Coin Market Cap, this was listed under the social tokens. So you have to take up your beef with, with Coin Market Cap. Jordan. I think the, the social component of this is like when it comes to, to like how the, the platform is interacting with the, the community, the NFTs, the governance model, it kind of creates like a little bit of this like social layer. It's not going to be like your Web2 platform, like a Facebook or Instagram where you're creating content. I think the content is like the NFTs, which is kind of technically more under the, the social realm. So that could be potentially why Coin Market Cap decided to list this under a social token. All right, well if there is no further questions, I am gonna go, I'll.

Suggest we did we deduct two votes from Benton on the voting process because I don't really think that's a social token. He's tracked trying to do some gimmick around here. So I, I suggest you vote Adrian.

Just being penalized today. You know what I got, I got Luciana in chat just barking up my tree. I got Marcel call me out for not having social to. Today's a rough day folks with the markets are red. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. But what we are going to do is I'm gonna let Jordan talk about his social token for this week. Jordan's got a little pick called Rally. So he's going to give you some of the insights of why Rally could potentially be the best social token for the rest of this year. Don't forget like and subscribe Cointelegraph, YouTube, drop your Twitter handle and chat. We're going to be giving away one month subscription markets Pro. That's a hundred dollar value. All right, so now Jordan, it is your time to shine some light on the Rally token. What's going on there?

All right, so the coin I picked this week for the top social token waiting to take off is Rally. I don't know if anything's ready to take off right now, but that's for another conversation. Get Rally. The RLY token is a governance token for the Rally ecosystem. It's a social token protocol that allows creators to interact with their communities at a greater level. This is kind of different from even a Steam or Facebook type platform where it's just again, open social media type experience and it's more focused on the individual creators and their communities. Around them. It allows creators to build their own independent digital economies. Creators can launch their own branded cryptocurrency to use to interact with their ecosystems. This is really good for streamers, artists, musicians, gamers, athletes or general content creators. It cuts out the middleman and that does little more than extract fees and allows again people to interact directly with their communities. It also allows for the creation of NFTs with utility. I know we just talking about NFTs and so when they're taking entities from other places, Rally allows creators to create NFTs. Even say you want like a, you're a musician, you can create a song, you can sell it as an NFT to your community and it can have perks as such as other NFT drops in the future, access to future album or stuff like that. So again it introduces NFTs with utility. One of the great things about the whole ecosystem is even though Rally is on top of Ethereum, they've built their own side chain to allow for all the tokens within the ecosystem or NFTs that get traded to trade on the side chain for free. So there's not. It kind of cuts out all the fees that are so generally associated with Ethereum. Like so I said fee this to mint and exchange NFTs allows influencers to act with, interact with like minded individuals without the fear of censorship or removal. We know we've seen that recently with Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. People getting deplatformed after they spend all this time building out the communities. That's not really possible here. And you kind of attract your own general community that is actually focused on what you're presenting. So there's less chance for that to happen. And with the money aspect of it, if people don't want to be there, that don't pay to be there or interact with this person kind of a thing. Rally, as I mentioned, Rally operates on the Ethereum side chain and uses utilizes a proof of authority consensus mechanism. All creator tokens, which are referred to as coins on the network, are launched on the sidechain, helping significantly reduce fees. Fans can purchase crypto tokens using crypto or credit cards. So you don't have to be crypto native or really crypto savvy to get involved with Rally or one of the influencers. You could actually use your credit card to buy the token on there. So it's kind of helping usher in a new crowd, not just focus on the crypto crowd. I mentioned that before, I think with Sam. How do we attract people outside of the crypto Crowd. This could be one way again, especially if you have like musicians or sports people and stuff like that. Launching their tokens. And members of engaged communities can earn weekly community rewards paid in rallies. So there's a community fund. If your community is really active, there's a fun set aside where ROI tokens can get distributed to the members of that community. So it offers a way to earn income on the side for activity. I think that it's just a different take on the whole social engagement platform and creator focus. So I think it has a lot to offer and should do well in the future, in my opinion. Yeah, go ahead, Marcel.

Go ahead, Marcel.

Okay, cowboy. So just let me understand how the process works. I understand that an artist can launch a token and capitalize by selling NFTs or exclusive products and services to his audience. It also makes sense. But is the project integrated with other social networks? For example, the holders of my token have exclusive assets, access to my telegram group or to my YouTube channel. Is the project integrated with social networks?

I don't know if they have that integration fully built out yet. It is still in early phases by invitation only. But those are the things that you can actually build into the NFTs. So that's why I say NFTs are utility. You will be able to have like even now with the board, a yacht club or something where there's a. There'll be a telegram group that's only accessible to people that hold the nft. I see that within the realm of possibilities for sure. I think that's the whole point of having the NFT or the creator created tokens to allow for the creation of specific or more exclusive groups and stuff.

So I have a question, Jordan. So yeah, with these platforms and even this kind of folds into like Steam as well. Like how do people moderate the content? Like, what happens if you get this flood of false information or you get some alt left or alt right, like extremists, kind of like casting these content or creatives. How is it being moderated or governed when it comes to a lot of these platforms, like Rally, how much does.

It need to be governed in that sense? Are we. So should there be like a content police going out there and saying like, this is not allowed. Like if it's a comm. If there's people doing something in a community that's not, that's not liked, it likely won't get much support, that community won't grow. There won't be a lot of people in there. Unless you just got like trolls going back and forth at each other and that let them do that in their own little isolated community because then the rest of us can get out here and do what we want to do without their opinions. So I think because there's a financial aspect to it and people can kind of invest in the community, it will help separate that out and, and weed that out. And the thing, the people that want to get involved with that can. And the rest of us can kind of go somewhere else. But this is like why do we need to censor everything? And why can't those people find their own little corner of the Internet to do their nastiness and allow us to be over here doing what we want to do kind of a thing.

I see Vikram has a question. Can crypto social channels take down videos the way that YouTube took down bankless HQ channel? Is this something that could happen on. On rally? I guess this folds into the governance or moderator.

I have to look into more like what's capable. Can they host videos on top of the network? Because if that's the case, probably not. I think when you get into any of these more public domains with the YouTube and stuff, they're going to get a lot more censorship here. But then this is more going to be a private community. Whenever there's a fee or any kind of membership dues, you can do a whole lot more because you're a private community now. So I think that kind of cuts out a lot of that. But yeah, we'll see what happens. We're. We're in. We're entering a new realm as far as the whole digital space. What can be censored, what can't be. I think the point of trying to integrate blockchain with a lot of these things is to make it so they're censorship resistant. I know a lot of people don't want to hear that, like, I don't know, racist people or people that want to say negative things should, can't. Should be allowed to have a space. I don't know. But like if, if we don't all have to be exposed to it, let them do their thing over there kind of a thing and. But hopefully I would hope that you can't be so censorable and they can't just remove things on here, but if they are connected to like a YouTube or Telegram, they might always kind of fall into the purview of those. And if YouTube doesn't approve of something that could be censored or possibly. I guess so, yeah.

I have a question that applies both to Your project, Rally, and to the NFT market in general. What stops a scammer from impersonating a famous artist? So is Rally going to implement some manual checking? How can we be sure that this artist posting this content is the real person behind it?

Well, right now there is a, like I said, it's by invitation only or you have to apply to people, become a creator on there. So I'm assuming that they do a, a more in depth vetting process. What, what happens in the future when that opens up? I don't know. It might be similar to how right now, even like on Twitter, you have to institute like a blue check mark kind of a thing where they find some way to verify that the, the creator isn't stealing somebody else's image. I don't know that if it grows to a large enough size, maybe that's something they can deal with in the future, but we'll see. I don't like. That's a good question. And how do they come back against that? I know, like I said, they are invitation only currently, but how does that change in the future? I'm not too sure. Yeah, I've been to.

I've got a hot question from, from Jackson Dumont. So if Elon Musk puts Twitter on the blockchain, would you buy that social token? This is completely unrelated, but are you buying an Elon Musk Twitter token if it's on the blockchain?

Maybe when it first comes out. And if there's a big pump, I'd sell it because I'm learning anytime there's a new coin and it pumps like, sell that, sell that.

Sam, Marcel, you guys get in on, you know, the blockchain Twitter, Twitter token.

Probably no initially, but stranger things have happened.

Okay, dude, fair enough.

I love Twitter. I think it's a very useful social network, but I rather pay like 5 or $10 per month, so I don't have ads and stuff like that. And I can block users that have less than 10 followers, for example. But buying a token for Twitter, I don't think I would care for that.

Yeah, Jackson seems pretty bullish on this Twitter token, especially if he claims if he puts it on Tron. So I mean, hopefully, maybe, maybe Elon Musk, Justin sun, collab, who knows? It's crazy.

I think that's more likely to be on a dogecoin than on a Tron.

Right? We can only hope for, for the sanctity of, of the entire universe. All right, folks, well, we're going to open up a poll here shortly, but in the meantime, we're going to get you some of the tokens that you should have been watching on the Markets Pro platform. And we want to remind you these are the personal opinions of each panelist. This is not the opinion of cointelegraph, but go ahead and drop your Twitter handle in the chat. You're gonna win. The first person that does it today is going to win a one month subscription of Markets Pro. And we're about to get into why you want to start using Markets Pro. Because bear markets, bull markets, Markets Pro doesn't matter or it doesn't care. You're gonna, you're gonna get the information you need to trade. So let's go ahead and dive into some of the tokens that we want to highlight this week. First one being Lido Dao token trading under the ticker ldo. What happened? Well, our Newsquake, which are automated alerts, these notify users instantly with market moving events. What happened this week? Well, 20, 26% gains is what happened. That's huge. A Binance listing has once again produced one of the largest news driven price spikes of this week. When Markets Pro subscribers received the alert of LDO's listing on the platform, the token was trading at 2 dol 73 cents. And in just one hour that price soared up to $3.46. That's a 27% gain. That's huge. Especially during these times. I think anybody would take that. Now the next token that we're going to be talking about this week is coinos trading on the ticker K O I n the Vortex score, which is a comparison of the current market and social conditions of the past. This one got set off because it struck green. And so what happens? Well, the score is 80 or above. It's confidently bullish, 30 or historically bearish. And this week Coin's Vortex score went green on May 8th against the price of 33 cents, signaling that trading conditions around the asset became pretty favorable. Just three hours later that huge upside kicked in when Coin went all the way up to 39 cents. That's huge. That's the power of Markets Pro is the Vortex score and the news quakes. That's your bread and butter bull market bear market. Markets Pro doesn't care. It's going to give you that intel. You need to make the moves fast and make sure that you are trading like the professionals. So go ahead, drop your Twitter handle in the chat. It's coming. We're giving away that one month subscription. Don't miss it. So first things first here. Let's go ahead. The poll is open. I, I want to close today's show out. Kind of wrapping things up here. Are we bullish? Are we bearish? Give me the next month's outlook. What are your thoughts? I want to start with Jordan.

Man, I don't know. I don't like, I don't, I'm not. I think I saw the, you know, the fear and greed Chart 1 was like extreme fear, extreme greed. And then there's like they drew another circle is on the bottom. It's like I don't care anymore. I go, I'm there. This is the crypto market. We had a nice run last year. Like, damn it, are we in for another three year bear market? I guess I can accept that if that's the truth. I don't want that to be the case, but I accept the worst so that if it changes and it's positive, like it's a, that's it's beneficial. So that's where I'm at.

Short term bullish or bearish?

Okay, so like a good Canadian. So it's dedicated to Sam here. You got to be able to withstand the long winter. Maybe it's gonna last two months, maybe it's gonna last nine months. But one day people will understand the value of cryptocurrency, of being censorship, resistance and being a scarce digital assets. And this is gonna be. It won't matter if you paid $25,000 or $50,000. You just got a hold on for the winter and it made last longer than we expect. So for the next month I'm kind of bearish. I think $28,000 can be tested for bitcoin.

Yeah, I'm definitely bearish in the short term. Again, that doesn't say anything about my long term horizons for bitcoin and crypto. But in the short term, I don't really see any catalysts. We could see a bounce tomorrow if CPI moderates and that could change perceptions about central bank policy. But in the next month or so, I think we're going to really start finding our footing on the leg, on the next leg lower to see what the bottom is going to be. I don't think we're going to be out of it that quickly given the macro factors. So bearish in the short term for sure.

I would agree with that. I am also short term bearish. I think we're going lower, folks. Believe it or not. I think we could see things ranging for bitcoin, especially in the mid to potentially low 20s, all the way back up to 30s. You know, I think that's where we're at. Like Sam said, the Fed, rising interest rates, inflation, the war in Ukraine and Russia, so many events happening right now that kind of, I think is creating this perfect storm for where we're at. So buckle up tight. Hopefully you have packed your bags correctly, consolidated your bags and feel like whatever you're holding is going to be a long term play over the next five years. Where is the bottom? Adrian asks, can you all give your bottom number? Is there a number floating out there? Vikram wants to know, do you guys feel comfortable sharing a bottom number for, for bitcoin? Sam shaking his head.

Anything toward 20 is a possibility. Anything below 20 would be a shocker for me. But again I know that's not much of a, much of a number, but anything below 20 would be a huge surprise for me at this point.

I would stick to $24,000 for Bitcoin and I think that's about. If you take Tesla's and MicroStrategy average price, which is roughly $30,000, it's still a 20% loss for them. So it's going to show, show the public that even With Bitcoin going 20% below the Tesla's and MicroStrategy ever priced, they're not selling, they're long term holders. So it's going to be a good advertising strategy for bitcoin if that happens. But I think $24,000 is the lowest price you're going to see for the next 12 months.

Yeah, I was looking at the trade chart just now. I think it's, it's very, very possible we go below 29, but I do see pretty strong support here at 29 with previous bounces ranging, you know, anywhere from May 2021 all the way through June really last summer when we just kind of went sideways for, for two straight months, it just kept bouncing off that 29000 mark. So we'll see if it holds. I think if it goes below that, I think it'll be very kind of short term, maybe a few days. But that, that to me is screaming just buy, buy, buy. I love, I love the bitcoin at this, at these prices right now. So even though a lot of people are suffering in pain, I think in the long term we're all going to be happy. Well folks, the, the poll is wrapping up. I, Sam, I don't know what you're doing man. You're just, just paying off the audience in social tokens. Sam has won Today's poll with 72% of the the votes. Any, any kind of closing thoughts for today? Then we got to pick our winner for Markets Pro. I'll let Sam jump in here first since he gave such a wonderful presentation about Steam.

Sam.

I think Crypto Social is a really interesting use case and you're probably going to start hearing more of it in the next couple of years. I really think gamefi is the next big thing, but crypto social probably 2023, 2024 and that's where you'll probably see a lot more projects coming into the space for sure.

And Marcel or Jordan, any closing thoughts? And we'll pick our winner for the Markets Pro.

Well, our message should be if that's your first cycle, if that's your bear market, you gotta question yourself, why did you buy cryptocurrencies in the first place if you think that's something different from traditional investments such as stocks, bonds and gold and there's advantages, you gotta really think are there enough incentives for other people to see what cryptocurrencies should be valid right now. So once you understand that, it's just a matter of time until more people realize the effectiveness and strongness of the blockchain and why cryptos are scarce digital assets, it's a matter of time before we go back to fifty thousand and one hundred thousand dollar price for bitcoin. So don't worry, we all been through this. In 2017-2019 it went down by 75% and here we are.

Exactly right.

Jordan, I just like to say to anybody that is new, welcome to Crypto. This is what it's like. This, this is why like all last year I was like, take your profits folks, take your profits. Because having profits makes times like these a lot more bearable. So yeah, every time a coin takes off, take some profits. Dollar cost average, when the market's low like this, long term outlook on crypto still positive. So don't lose the faith. Yeah, just hang in there. I know it's going to be rough, but we'll get through this.

Very good. And Jackson wanted, wanted us to show the chart. So Danilo, if you wouldn't mind just pulling up my chart real quick, I'll give you my closing thoughts and I'm going to tell you why we could potentially hold this 29,000 mark. You see back here, May June, what we're kind of talking about here, this level right around 29, 28k had a lot of bounces ranging and now we're kind of reaching that area. If we Get a lower low does tell me. I think we can go a lot lower, but things seem to be kind of stabilizing right around 31k. We're at 31k right now. Real quick, I don't want to show this chart. This is just an absolute. Just wow. This is luna. Folks, look at this chart. This is nuts. 24 hours just off a cliff, just elevator straight to hell. That's brutal. All right, thank you, Danielle, for pulling up the chart there. For all the folks tuning in from around the globe, we appreciate you here on markets pro. Looks like the first literally you can. All you have to do is drop your Twitter handle in the chat. You're gonna win. It's guaranteed win today for the Marcus pro giveaway. So I'm gonna wait just a couple seconds while we have our our final thoughts for today. Go to store.cointelegraph.com we got sweet swag in there. Shirts, hats, hoodies, shoes, flip flops, socks. You name it. You need a new mouse pad. We got bitcoin mouse pads. Check it out. Store.cointelegraph.com we got a lot of cool stuff in there. Make sure you go shopping. You got, you know, father's day coming up in a couple months here in the states. You got birthdays. Whatever you need, we got it in the store for cointelegraph. But that's gonna do it for today, I think. Looks like nobody wants that market sprout wait is up. That's somebody giving a price prediction. Thanks for tuning in. We appreciate everyone here on market report. We will see you next week. Until then, thank you.