Weekly Reports: A Deep Dive into Crypto and NFT alphas
If you're looking to keep up with the fast-moving world of crypto and NFTs, The Alpha Report has got you covered.
Our weekly updates are put together by folks deep in the crypto scene, giving you a clear picture of what's happening without overwhelming you.
Learn about Axie Infinity
Axie Infinity News
NFTs
The developers of play-to-earn crypto game Axie Infinity have released a version of their newest game to Apple’s App Store which doesn’t require users to buy NFTs.
Axie Infinity: Origins is a card game that will initially give players free non-NFT “starter characters.” It represents a shift away from the original Axie Infinity game, which users had to either buy or rent NFTs to play.
“We have been in touch with Apple for about two years now,” Axie Infinity co-founder and COO Aleksander Leonard L...
Business
Norwegian authorities have seized 60 million krone (nearly $5.9 million) in stolen cryptocurrency, according to a statement released today, as part of an investigation into last year’s attack on Sky Mavis and its game Axie Infinity.
It is the largest crypto seizure ever made by Norwegian police, the statement notes, and is among the largest ever cash seizures made in Norway.
"We are working with FBI specialists on cryptocurrency tracking. This kind of cooperation between countries makes us stron...
Coins
The price of Axie Infinity (AXS) is up a whopping 21% over the last 24 hours, currently trading at $12.35, further contributing to its 80% rally that started two weeks ago, per data from CoinGecko.
The circulating supply of AXS, the governance token behind the NFT collectible game Axie Infinity, also increased today, with nearly 2% of the token’s total supply unlocking and being distributed.
While Axie Infinity players use the Smooth Love Potion (SLP) token to facilitate in-game functions, hold...
Markets
The prices of metaverse-related cryptocurrencies including ApeCoin (APE) and Axie Infinity (AXS) have shot up by around 6% in the past 24 hours.
Per data from CoinGecko, APE is up 6.3% to $3.88, Axie Infinity's AXS rose 6.9% to $6.41, while The Sandbox's SAND rose 5.2% to around $0.40. Decentraland’s MANA posted more modest gains of 4.4% to reach around $0.31.
In contrast, the broader cryptocurrency market cap is only up around 1.6% in the last 24 hours.
The news came as APE recently finalized...
Coins
This week in coins. Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.
This week’s crypto market was another mixed bag as the industry continues to navigate the continued contagion from the FTX collapse.
Bitcoin and Ethereum again closed the week basically flat, which might be considered a win considering the losses some of the other top coins experience. As of Saturday morning, Bitcoin (BTC) was up less than 1% over the past seven days, and Ethereum (ETH) was down 1.5%. Most of the top 50 coins by...
Coins
The token underpinning the Axie Infinity gaming ecosystem, AXS, posted a new 52-week low of $8.58 earlier today, according to data from Coingecko.
On a weekly note, AXS has lost nearly 22% of its value and is the biggest loser among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization over the past seven days.
Last week wiped almost $200 million from the token’s market capitalization. As of this writing, AXS has a market capitalization of $890 million, down from $1.13 billion just seven days ag...
Gaming
As Axie Infinity creator Sky Mavis works to further decentralize its Ronin network—a custom Ethereum sidechain designed for NFT-powered games—the Web3 startup has tapped one of the largest Web2 tech giants to help its cause.
Today, Sky Mavis announced that it has reached an agreement with Google Cloud that will see the cloud computing division of the international tech juggernaut run a validator node on Ronin. That means that Google Cloud will help secure the sidechain network and process transa...
Business
Sky Mavis, the developer behind the play-to-earn video game Axie Infinity said that it's preparing to re-open the Ronin bridge that fell victim to a $552 million hack in March.
The re-opening of the Ronin bridge, which was used by players to transfer assets between the Ronin chain and the Ethereum network, is planned on June 28th, “with all user funds returned,” according to the latest community update.
The team also said that a hard fork will be required for the re-launch of the bridge, which m...
Coins
Axie Infinity Shards (AXS), the governance token powering the popular play-to-earn blockchain game Axie Infinity, has soared more than 19% in the past 24 hours to become the best performing asset among the top-100 cryptocurrencies.
Axie Infinity is a blockchain-based game in which players purchase non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of Pokémon-like monsters to pit them against each other in battles. Players can earn a second token, called Smooth Love Potion (SLP), during gameplay and trade them for money...
Business
Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange expressed his disappointment in the way Terraform Labs handled the recent LUNA and UST collapse.
Zhao said that the team behind the Terra network hardly responded to Binance’s request to help them restore the network.
“We requested their team to restore the network, burn the extra minted LUNA, and recover the UST peg,” he tweeted. “So far, we have not gotten any positive response or much response at all”
5. I am very d...
DeFi
While illicit activity has fallen in the broader cryptocurrency community, it’s been rising sharply in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. Of the $1.7 billion worth of cryptocurrency stolen in 2022, 97% of it has come from DeFi protocols, according to a new report from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.
That stat has largely been driven by two huge attacks earlier this year: the $622 million Ronin Bridge at the end of March and the $320 million Wormhole attack in February.
It’s a contin...
Markets
Several NFT-adjacent cryptocurrencies, including ApeCoin and Axie Infinity, posted double-digit losses in the past 24 hours.
ApeCoin (APE), the Ethereum-based token for the growing Bored Ape Yacht Club ecosystem, shed nearly 17% of its value in the past 24 hours and is currently trading at $13.30, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
APE is now the 31st-largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $3.8 billion. Today’s bearish price action now puts the token 66% down from its all-tim...
Markets
AXS, the token powering play-to-earn crypto game Axie Infinity, has dropped nearly 30% over the past seven days.
On the day, it's down roughly 1.2%.
The Axie Infinity governance token is now trading at $30.39, according to CoinMarketCap. Just last month, AXS was worth just under $75 per token. Users who hold this token can participate in various proposals, such as how the platform’s treasury should be spent and in-game mechanics.
Last November, AXS hit an all-time high of $165.37. Today’s pri...
Business
Crypto exchange Binance has recovered a small fraction of the $622 million stolen from Sky Mavis’s Ethereum sidechain Ronin last month, according to a tweet by exchange CEO Changpeng “CZ'' Zhao early this morning.
Sky Mavis is the developer team behind the popular play-to-earn crypto game Axie Infinity.
Zhao tweeted that the North Korean hacking group responsible for the theft began channeling some of the loot on the exchange across “over 86 accounts” and that “$5.8M has been recovered.”
The D...
Business
A new report by DappRadar and the Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) suggests that 2022 will be a benchmark year for crypto games developers.
The report reveals that $2.5 billion in investments was raised in Q1 alone this year, adding that developers could see this figure balloon to $10 billion by the end of the year.
Compared to previous years, these figures also suggest the niche has become a key sector for investors. In 2021, for example, just $4 billion was raised throughout the whole year.
Th...
Business
A funding round led by Binance has raised $150 million to reimburse victims of the recent attack that resulted in $622 million getting drained from Sky Mavis's Ethereum sidechain, the Ronin network.
Other companies in the funding round include Animoca, the company behind the popular crypto game The Sandbox, alongside tech venture capital firms a16z and Accel. Crypto investment firms Paradigm and Dialectic also contributed.
Sky Mavis and Axie Infinity will use the funding and pool from their ba...
Markets
Though "play-to-earn" game Axie Infinity's Ronin sidechain suffered one of crypto's largest-ever hacks this week, investors are still pouring money into gaming, NFT and metaverse cryptocurrencies.
This interest can be seen in the steady rise of cryptos like Enjin Coin (ENJ), Flow (FLOW), Gala (GALA), The Sandbox (SAND), and Decentraland (MANA), all five of which have mounted hefty increases in the past week.
Enjin Coin has risen more than 11% in the past day and a whopping 19% in the last seve...
The Projects
Non-fungible token (NFT) crypto collectibles like artwork and videos exploded in popularity in early 2021, but several blockchain-based video games had already been building in the space before most people took notice.
When NFTs hit the mainstream, the promising crypto game Axie Infinity by indie studio Sky Mavis took off. And when the wider NFT market cooled a bit after all of that hype… well, Axie Infinity got even bigger.
Axie Infinity is inspired by Nintendo’s beloved Pokémon series. It se...
Coins
A day after Sky Mavis disclosed that a hacker stole 173,600 ETH worth $622 million from the Ronin sidechain, the Axie Infinity Shards (AXS) and Smooth Love Potion (SLP) tokens are still reeling.
Sky Mavis is the developer team behind the popular play-to-earn crypto game Axie Infinity. The Ronin network is a sidechain that bridges the game to the main Ethereum network, allowing players to transfer funds in and out of it.
As of Wednesday morning, AXS is down 7.3% and SLP is down 5.1% over the las...
Gaming
The advent of NFT games has transformed the video gaming landscape overnight, adding an economic component to gaming. With games now incorporating scarce virtual items as NFTs, it's possible to offer players rewards that have real-world value.
That's created a new class of player—the play-to-earn gamer, who's able to monetize their time in-game. It's even enabled gamers in some countries to earn a living by playing titles such as Axie Infinity—which became the most-traded NFT collection ever in...
