TL;DR

• Follow the Hustle and the Nexus Twitter accounts for the latest news.

• Web3 gaming and tech: $PIRATE x Coinbase, Pixelverse raises $5.5M, Paradigm raised $850M, $ATH, UNA launch, RCADE ecosystem expansion, BrilliantCrypto, and more news.

• Macro news: CPI remains flay, interest rates remain unchanged, Biden accepts crypto donations, Robinhood acquires Bitstamp, and more news.

🎮 Web3 Gaming and Tech

• Paradigm raised its third fund: $850M

  • The fund will be focused on early-stage crypto projects

• Pirate Nation launched the $PIRATE token yesterday

  • Two interesting developments happened after the token’s launch:

    • They got a Coinbase listing, around 18 hours after it launched

    • Because the airdrop wasn’t linear, and whales, felt disadvantaged, they revisited the distribution and gave whales another allocation

  • The token is now trading at a $333M FDV, up 109% from its launch.

• Aethir Cloud launched its ATH token this week

  • The launch was pretty surprising, as the token went up to $4B FDV, and currently, the token is at $3.1B FDV and a $280M market cap

• Boomland released the details on its upcoming BOOM token

  • Forging, upgrading, staking, summoning, renting, and more are among the token’s utilities

• Pixelverse, a Web3 game, that also managed to launch a clicker game recently raised $5.5M

  • They managed to attract 15M “users” in less than a month

    • “Users” as at least 40% would be bots here, however, still impressive

• Unagi launched the UNA token this week

  • Both Persona holders and holders of CHAMPS (a rebrand) in their game Ultimate Champions received UNA tokens

  • It is now trading at a $82M FDV

• Delphi Digital shared some interesting data on how TON flipped ETH’s daily active addresses

• The Beacon’s New Frontiers Quest reached more than 110K DAU

  • A fun game and a very well-executed P2A campaign so far

• Alpha Wolves returns with Jonny on the panel

  • Lots of market talk about what happened this week, expectations, and what’s being looked at

• Seedworld released a guide to NFT staking

  • Holders earn points for soft-staking their NFTs, which represent an allocation to a SWORLD token pool

  • The Seedworld Vanguard and Mounts collection have both seen increased trading volume in the past weeks

• Phantom announced that it will be supporting the Monad chain with its wallet extension

• Revolving Games announced an ecosystem expansion

  • The RCADE chain, a node sale, a new utility for the NFTs, and a new game in development are among the highlights

  • Furthermore, there was a specific announcement when it comes to Immortals: “IP-Ascension awaits” (new art)

• Unite announced they secured an additional $3M in Seed Extension

  • This company aims to solve the obstacles of Web3 mobile gaming, bringing infrastructure and tooling for developers

• Brilliantcrypto raised $212M in Coincheck IEO (seems like the actually raised $10M, but $212M was the TVL)

  • Additionally, they announced an airdrop of 2M $BRIL tokens

  • The confusing part of it all is the game itself, simply take a look at it…

• The MOBA Brawler Sparkball returns after months of absence

🕹️ Gaming Narrative Play

• The democratization of token launches: Meme tokens have done incredibly well this cycle, in contrast, gaming token launches haven’t done too well. Meme tokens do fair launches, but with gaming tokens, the upside is mostly privatized (by VCs and early-round participants).

• I believe there’s a slow shift happening, that is starting to be more lenient toward players and retail investors (see Pirate Nation). This means a lower FDV on launch, but more potential when buying in, plus unlocks and allocations that are more skewed toward retail.

🚀 Nexus V1 Alpha Launch

Nexus updates:

• Nexus is now mobile and tablet-friendly, allowing you to access the platform from anywhere

• The NFT section of the platform saw a huge update with many added QOL features

• You can now filter NFTs in your portfolio by any chain

• Added Ordinals support to the NFT portfolio tracker

• Added new chains to the portfolio trackers and game section

For a more detailed breakdown, make sure to check out the Discord.

Before the public launch (which is really getting close now), this is how you can get involved:

• Get a Nexus Pass NFT now for exclusive and immediate lifetime access.

When we launch publicly, you can:

• Subscribe for $49/month to unlock the full potential (live at a next-stage launch), or

• Use the free version (limited in features) of the platform

Don't miss out—follow our journey on Hustle's Twitter, YouTube channels, and Nexus Twitter.

📈 Macro Cryptocurrency News

• In May, the CPI remained flat compared to the previous month and rose 3.3% over the prior year. This marks a slowdown from April's 0.3% month-over-month increase and 3.4% annual gain.

• Following the positive CPI reading, the Federal Reserve decided to keep its key interest rate unchanged and indicated that only one rate cut is expected before the end of the year.

• Former U.S. President Donald Trump expressed support for Bitcoin mining during a recent meeting with several Bitcoin miners at Mar-a-Lago.

• Not to be outdone, President Biden's campaign is in talks to accept crypto donations through Coinbase Commerce. 

• Zk-Sync finally unveiled its airdrop checker this week. While a generous 17.5% of the token supply was allocated for this airdrop, nearly 90% of addresses that interacted with the blockchain were excluded from the rewards.

• The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the world's largest lender, issued a detailed analysis exploring the dynamic landscape of digital currencies.

• Trading platform Robinhood agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based crypto exchange Bitstamp in a $200 million deal that’s set to close in the first half of 2025.

• The Crypto airdrop party hasn't stopped in 2024! With several major airdrops still on the horizon, the total value distributed so far has already reached a staggering $4 billion. Leading the pack are Jupiter, Starknet, and Notcoin, each airdropping tokens worth around $1 billion based on the number of tokens distributed and their subsequent average market price.

🌟 Token Spotlight by Hustle

• Coin of the Week: $BRETT

• Market Cap: $1.45B

• What is BRETT? Brett is the character from Matt Furie’s Boys' Club comic. The meme coin launched back in February on BASE and grew to be the largest meme on the chain. Recently it got listed on various exchanges, which is expected to push the price of the token further.

• Delve into Hustle's market wisdom with his “Daily Watchlist” and deep-dive analysis available on the TTOO Discord server and through his “In the Game" show. 

✍️ NFT of The Week

• Pick of the Week: Avarik Saga Universe

• Why?

  • Launching a token soon

  • Gaining traction with its P2A event

  • Running a marketing campaign

  • Novel game concept: idle anime-battler leveraging LLMs

  • In development for over 2+ years

  • Upcoming art upgrade

• Utility

  • Accumulate points passively, which translates into a token allocation

• Catalysts

  • Avarik Saga has a pretty promising game on its hands, which is pretty far along its development cycle. The launch of the actual game, which isn’t too far away, will bring more attention to the project

• Counterpoint: Larger collection size of 8888 NFTs

Nexus Market Talk Tweets

See you next week!