The Taliban are major fudders

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Read time: 5 mins (how long Putin's grand entrances take)

Actually ok given the world is descending into a hellscape.

It's short and sweet this week because I have loads of actual work to do.

But you probably prefer it shorter anyway because your attention span is ever diminishing because you're a slave to Instagram Stories and TikTok.

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

News Hits 🗞

1/ Coinbase's Shiny Documentary 📽

In another vanity-motivated move by the big bald boss at Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, the company are releasing a documentary showing the last three years' progress internally and for the landscape as a whole.

He said:

“We gave Greg and his team unprecedented access inside the company, showing the crazy ups and downs of building a tech startup all the way to us becoming a public company. He shows it all – the good, bad, and ugly.”

Hopefully it's less PR heavy than Manchester City's 'All or Nothing' sham of a documentary. The trailer does look quite promising, with a lot of the content focused around the rise of crypto into the mainstream over what has been a crazy few years.

You can catch it on streaming platforms in the US and other countries soon.

2/ Women, Children & JPEGs! 🚣‍♀️

Starry Night Capital, a nonfungible token (NFT)-focused fund launched by the co-founders of the now-bankrupt hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC), has shifted 300 NFTs out of its wallet.

Starry Night Capital was founded last year by the evasive duo Su Zhu, Kyle Davies and also pseudonymous NFT collector Vincent Van Dough. At the time, the fund planned to exclusively invest in “the most desired” NFTs on the market.

A report from Bloomberg estimates that the Starry Night Capital collection’s total value sits at around $35 million and 300 of these are now safely stored away in a Gnosis Safe, probably for their future offspring to inherit.

3/ Taliban = Major FUD 😒

The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan has had a “massive chilling effect” on the local cryptocurrency market, bringing it to an effective “standstill,” according to a recent report.

Generally, the group are pretty bad for business and crypto is no exception.

The analytics company Chainalysis stated the MENA region saw the largest crypto market growth in 2022 but noted that Afghani crypto dealers had three options: “flee the country, cease operations, or risk arrest.”

The report states after the Taliban seized power in August 2021, the crypto value received in August and September that year spiked to a peak of over $150 million, then fell sharply the following month.

Things were so good this time last year that even the Taliban couldn't discourage people from going nuts on NFTs.

Before the takeover, Afghani citizens would, on average, receive $68 million per month in crypto value, mainly used for remittances. That figure has now dropped to less than $80,000 post-takeover.

Pretty annoying side effect for the crypto bros of 'ghanistan.

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: Bitcoin could be a decent buy at the moment, or certainly forming a part of your portfolio

🤤 The Case:

• Down 70% since all time high, is it attractive at this price or would you be catching a falling knife?

• We have been in a down cycle, which historically happens every 4 years to BTC before wild growth occurs, and this could just be another one of those cycles.

• BTC now accepted in some McDonald’s in Switzerland, which is a small answer to the “crypto has no real use cases” criticism.

• Institutional penetration of the space is still very small and when institutions who do come in enter the space, they are likely to start with the two juggernauts, BTC & ETH.

• BTC will always be the original crypto asset (digital gold).

😬 Risks (boooo, boring)

• Why this cycle may actually be different is why crypto still seen as a massively risk on asset.

• This period of monetary tightening, which is likely to continue in the foreseeable future, is something BTC has never had to contend with.

• Couple that with a likely incoming recession, it could get worse before it gets better.

• And by the time the monetary environment looks better, other versions of BTC could exist (whilst BTC is not the most technically sound cryptocurrency out there however, it will always be the first one) .

Shiny New Toys 👀

Learn-to-earn with Continuum

Continuum is a well-designed platform offering you bite-size learning modules from industry pros across a variety of verticals like crypto, design, fintech, and marketing to name a few.

You even get paid to do so in the form of crypto and NFTs, sponsored by brands wanting to promote their message in what the company says is in "an organic, laid-back way" in order to keep education free.

Looks pretty cool especially with some in-built gamification to track your progress.

(This isn't sponsored btw)

A Digestif 🍸

That's all for now people, enjoy your weekend and touch some grass while you're at it.