20th December 2021 > > The Metaverse and NFTs.

tl;dr

Corporates are moving in.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Fears of Omicron induced lockdowns are hitting all risk assets this morning whilst treasury yields tighten even with the end of easy money in sight.

The annual Santa Claus rally does not look likely this year, with vastly reduced liquidity from Wednesday onwards, and virtually none for the whole of the next trading week. Naturally I reserve the right to change my mind, but for now I have pencilled in Jan 4th or Jan 5th as Wall Street buying day.

Occasional Series – Football nonsense

There are so many reasons that letting PIF buy Newcastle United in the Saudi pursuit of sportswashing demonstrates a lack of moral fibre, but this comment is not one of them:

“There is a problem inherent in football: if you win you get more prize money and more people want to watch you, which in turn increases revenue through gate receipts, television rights, merchandise, sponsorship and advertising.”

No prizes for guessing which broadsheet tries to conflate human rights issues with rightful competition.

Before today I was not aware of the direct career trajectory from PE teacher deciding that school sports days could not allow winners in an egg and spoon race to newspaper leader writer.

…

For the record I am a supporter of a team that won the Southern League First Division in 1914-15 and the old Fourth Division in 1977-78. And er, that is it for our trophy cabinet. At least we have one.

I was there for the second of those wins. Sadly this is far fewer trophies than claimed by Luton Town, but we are working on catching up.

But I would not countenance catching up the Newcastle way. That could not be my club.

…

Not incidentally, lovers of football may note that their idols are overly represented in the UK by non-white athletes who are celebrated regardless of ethnicity. And celebrated rightly so. I will always cherish my pre and early teen devotion to Luther Blissett, however ridiculous that statement sounds in writing.

Advocates of the aforementioned newspaper may note that only one of the thirteen-person board governing that newspaper is non-white.

We know that competition will always beat prejudice.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – The Metaverse and NFTs

The rush from Corporates to get involved in NFTs grows by the day.

Pepsi has launched its own first NFT collection to which the PR department of Budweiser responded “Welcome brand friend. WAGMI”. Personally I suspect that Budweiser don’t really understand the damage they can do to their own brand by pretending to be something else but that is their decision and mistake to make.

Nike has launched a metaverse shoe shop. Adidas launched a range of NFTs in association with the Bored Ape Yacht Club priced at 0.2 ETH each and now trading above 0.8 ETH. It’s a successful marketing campaign that pays the campaigner 10s of millions of dollars in revenue.

And of course Facebook have rebranded as Meta, suggesting they are not going to give up centralised control of their customers’ data any day soon. Or at least, not until someone else comes along and does it for them.

Some of these projects are getting a bad press amongst the crypto community, but personally I think that is the wrong approach.

Blockchain tech and cryptos will not only be about total decentralisation. Some of it will be, but some of it will be a hybrid model. That outcome is baked in as it will provide the greatest utility to the greatest number of people.

The hardcore decens may be the most vocal, but they are not the most practical, and nor do they have best interests of cryptos at heart.

Reserve Treasury Protocols (before they all go to zero