Hey nice Gross Metaverse Product bro

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Read time: 5 mins (10x longer than I could spend in Walmart Land)

Not that bad.

What are people smoking this week? We've got some real treasure for you.

This is The Reveal, where the fun and, this week, totally mental side of crypto is pumped and dumped into your inbox every Friday.

Top News 🗞

1/ Anonymous (and Empty) Threats 🦹‍♂️

After a supposedly in-depth investigation, the cream of the crop nerd collective Anonymous have come down hard on BAYC and Yuga Labs for their alleged support for Nazism, racism, paedophilia, and simianization, saying that “without a shadow of doubt", Yuga Labs are guilty of malicious esotericism. 

In their YouTube video that has garnered more than 50,000 Schadenfreude-hungry views, a hooded figure with a voice three octaves lower than his real one addresses the allegations and calls out celebrity backers like Tom Brady, Neymar, Kevin Hart, and then also that guy from Drake and Josh. 

The hacktivists-playing-dress-up-superheroes plan to send a snazzy pitch deck for the BAYC team to review and spread, which seems like an odd plan but there you go.

Hopefully they don't have too much on their plate. By one account, Anonymous are slammed with a backlog of admin already:

I can't help but feel that this is run by a teenager as the language is that of an angry Discord fudder, the below taken from their YouTube description:

We are an anonymous, internet-based, international and multicultural team from literally all around the world, and we are constantly growing. 

Literally all around the world bro.

2/ GDP is Dead, Long Live GMP 😩

In what is the most Dubai thing ever, the UAE's top digital bloke has said that they're going to do away with the universal standard for economic measurement, Gross Domestic Product, and introduce the much-needed and shiny measure of Gross Metaverse Product.

"Gross metaverse product will be able to create billions of dollars in returns from Dubai without people being physically in the emirate but experiencing it in the metaverse," said Mr Al Olama, who is also chairman of the Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy.

Sure, but what do you actually mean?

The metaverse is almost a perfect metaphor for Dubai: building things because you can, desperate attempts to stave off insecurity by flexing branded goods, a safe haven for charlatans and a deep-rooted sense of pointlessness.

The minister didn't go into any more detail about what the fuck he was on about when he uttered the soundbite, nor do any of the state-affiliated publications or reporters who became giddy with the big news.

Once again, a perfect metaphor for the mainstream media's understanding of the metaverse: clueless hysteria.

Actually, are we being trolled here?

3/ Walmart Crash Landing 🛩

Moving smoothly on to our next piece of news: in what was probably one of the funniest things to ever happen in the metaverse, not that there's much competition, the CMO of Walmart addressed one person in the crowd to announce their brand new Roblox game: Walmart Land.

The silence at the start, followed by 'hey everyone' is pure gold.

PC Gamer phrased it better than me:

The Executive team that rushed to set up businesses in Second Life have all retired so it's no wonder history is repeating itself with vacuous experiences that hinge on marketing teams' belief that people to immerse themselves in their brand world.

People want to buy stuff from your rank and smelly store, get out and go do things with their friends and family.

Experiences like this would work for some brands but you kind of need to be able to pull it off by having a brand people actually like.

Even the Roblox crowd turned their nose up in the comments under their promo video.

DeFi Guy 👨‍💼

With his face squashed against a train window during rush hour and barely enough room to type, our guy is back with some not financial advice about the safest bet around.

TLDR: stablecoins are the killer crypto use case and here's how to get started 

🧐 What are they?

Cryptocurrencies that are pegged to traditional currencies like the US Dollar or Euro

🤤 The Case: 7 good reasons and more later if you need them

• One of crypto's big promises is to bank the “unbanked”: 1.5bn people who do not have a bank account

• These people can, at the click of a button, gain access to financial services that we often take for granted in the western world

• Their existence has prompted every central bank around the world to research building a central bank digital currency

• Even with the limited use cases shown below, you can earn money that is pegged 1:1 with traditional currencies like the US Dollar with the click of a button

• The future use cases include offering synthetic stocks, shares investing, options and futures trading of real world products

• Put simply, stablecoins are the use case bridge between the traditional finance world and DeFi

🚀 3 things you can do today:Here are the biggest stablecoins for you to peruse.

1) Transfer money: transferring stablecoins allows you to benefit from the advantages of crypto (namely instant global transfers to anyone with an internet connection at a fraction of the cost) without taking on the volatility of say Ethereum or Bitcoin

2) Staking: you can gain up to 7% staking your stablecoins. Here's a comparison of rates – sound better than your bank?

3) Loans: you can invest in or borrow using stablecoins (note you are likely to have to fully collateralise your loan) at these rates.

😬 Risks (the boring bit)

Do your own research into the risks, if the yield looks too good to be true, it is (cough cough Anchor Protocol's 20%).

Shiny New Toys 👀

Gnars, by NounsDAO

Community and good design can get you far.

NounsDAO are re-thinking how extreme sportspeople get sponsored, taking a stance again energy drinks' domination in the market.

We prefer a world where kids aren't sold energy drinks by their heroes. So as a community of action sports enthusiasts, we've formed a DAO to rethink how extreme sportspeople get sponsored.

This is a really powerful cause that has what looks like a strong brand and team working on it, with attractive merch on sale to raise treasury funds and community ownership in place to vote on athlete sponsorship decisions. 

(This isn't sponsored btw)

A Digestif 🍸

Thanks for letting me vent each week, see you on Twitter!