Tom Brady got no fans

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Read time: 6 mins (how long it took the Fed to go full rekt)

Green is good!

The world is going to shit but it's nearly the weekend, so just like the sun goes round the flat earth every day, we are here to relieve you of all your anxieties.

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

Top News 🗞

1/ Another Day, Another Hacker 🤑

Wintermute, one of the leading market makers in crypto, was done up like a kipper this week, taken for a whopping $160 million as it becomes another in a long list of DeFi players that have been compromised.

In terms of 2022's largest hacks, $160 million doesn't even get close to a podium spot, sitting in a pretty 5th place after Nomad's $190 million feeding-frenzy loss in August.

Whenever hacks or major losses like this happen, the market sits poised for the shockwaves like a kid waiting for a clip round the ears but, considering the wider retail disinterest in crypto and the Fed hiking interest rates by another 0.75%, it's difficult to tell if this had any effect.

Wintermute did offer a reprieve in the form of a 10% reward to the hacker if they returned the funds so if you're a Reveal reader and did the dirty, consider doing the right thing.

Or just keep it all, they'll be fine. I don't want to say victimless crime but...

2/ OpenSea Actually Does Some Things 😱

OpenRarity is an open collaboration between OpenSea, icy.tools, Curio, and PROOF that standardises rarity across collections and, crucially, make it free for project creators to list rarity so they aren't hostage to the extortionate fees that Rarity Sniper et al charge, which start at 2 ETH just for listing.

Trust me, I've tried haggling it down from there but they don't budge given their monopoly.

Well, the game is up my friends, it's now free and live on the OpenSea site.

Creators have the choice of whether to opt-in to show OpenRarity rarity rankings for their collection on the site, and you can even search by rarity in the same way you can on NFT Init, the comically-named but most advanced and feature-rich analytics platform out there in my opinion.

Now it also appears that OpenSea really have been busy, releasing more features.

First OpenRarity, but we're also being spoiled with support for Arbitrum NFTs on the platform which is huge news for those 20 people who hold them.

Arbitrum NFTs have just $30 million in all time volume according to NFTScan, compared to $29 billion on Ethereum.

Seriously though, wen Tezos? It's becoming a bit silly now. We've been waiting since February last year and it has accounted for 1.5x what Arbitrum has.

3/ PGA Tour Pitching NFTs 🏌️

The PGA Tour is partnering with Tom Brady's company Autograph to launch a collection of NFTs for fans and investors, joining the wealth of other sports league eager to cash in on fandom.

“The PGA Tour is excited to work with Autograph to offer digital collectibles that highlight the most talented golfers in the world and their role in the sport’s history,” PGA Tour Chief Legal Officer Len Brown said.

The partnership will see NFTs leverage PGA Tour video and data, which could be something passionate golf fans go for, if done well.

Autograph recently launch a Tom Brady NFT called “season ticket” that unlocks utility in the form of merchandise and events. There are 2,500 NFTs in the collection with a price point of $750 but at the time of writing only 832 have sold, joining the pile of unsold celebrity NFTs heading to the glue factory:

As usual, a high mint price with vague promises of getting close to a celebrity will only strike a chord with the mega-fan, not your average sports fan and nor any speculators.

DeFi Guy 👨‍💼

He's back on the free tier, suited and booted with not financial advice about a little number called Ethereum that he holds.

In short: ETH is still the most credible bet and looks attractive post the latest dip.

🧐 Why hasn’t it rocketed post merge?

The merge was wildly successful from a technological standpoint, and the macro backdrop and fed tightening seems to have sucked all the money out of risky assets, of which crypto is, of course, the holy grail.

There may have been an element of “buy the rumour, sell the news” especially as it was known months ago that there were unlikely to be any significant delays.

The other key thing to note is that ETH miners have been dumping the coin at record levels, pushing prices down.

🤤 The Case

Here are seven good reasons for why the time is now:

1. Channeling our inner Raoul Paul: ETH is still the best risk-adjusted play out there.

2. ETH is also now going to be only minor inflationary or potentially deflationary.

3. It still has by far the most amount of development activity.

4. A lot of the selling pressure should have been removed by the miner dump.

5. If you believe that only a few chains will survive, it would take a bold person to bet Ethereum wouldn’t be one of them.

6. The energy saving narrative should get the regulators and mainstream media off ETH’s back.

7. ETH now has a great history of pulling off tricky upgrades and show it is willing to move with the times.

It's time to look behind the sofa for spare change and take advantage of those prices!

😬 Risks (the boring bit)

It is still expensive to transact one and thus a whale chain which could hinder future option (layer 2s may be the answer to this plus future protocols)

We are likely to be in a prolonged period of fed tightening so I wouldn’t expect any big upward movements in the near term.

We're getting stuck in.

Shiny New Toys 👀

Niftify, not to be confused with NFTfi, enables you to have your own NFT marketplace on your website, in a bid to power creators bringing NFT operations under their own roof rather than through marketplaces.

What are the benefits of using a third party marketplace?

The key ones are eyeballs and no barrier to entry.

You lose out on fees to varying degrees depending on the marketplace you're using, so if you're starting with an audience of your own, it makes a lot of sense to use this plug-and-play solution to avoid costly bespoke development.

One to watch!

(Not sponsored btw)

A Digestif 🍸

A genuinely useful Digestif this week to get your chops around, but as a general rule, take any advice from someone with a Mutant Ape PFP with a pinch of salt: