Qrafty is brimming with news and updates: BTC dips to $24,740, PayPal + Ledger = ❤️ and a story with a wizard explaining RWAs

***Qrafty happily waving and smiling*** Aloha, you beautiful soul! It’s Thursday, as in pre-weekend and a beautiful new day blesses us with joy and sunshine!

I, Qrafty the Crypto Lovin’ Honey Badger 🦡, graciously welcome you, dear reader, to Coinqraft – your dedicated companion through the labyrinth of crypto adventures! Picture it as a treasure trove brimming with priceless crypto gems, custom-crafted for the keen intellects and the endlessly inquisitive souls.🌟

🦡 Let’s dive in, because Qrafty just got back with news 📰 and insight🔍 from the crypto jungle, so here’s what’s today letter is about:

1. PayPal integrates with Ledger Live

2. China’s province big dreams on metaverse and blockchain

3. U.S. 30 year mortgage rates go to 7.4%

Bonus: As Qrafty mentioned yesterday, BTC had a huge dump today and flushed the market of about xxx millions in liquidations, the biggest since the FTX crash that market the bottom.

🙃 Qrafty had a hunch yesterday and Bitcoin dipped pretty well today, in a move that was 18% to the downside

A good giggle… priceless. For everything else there’s… laughing hysterically.

Here are the main news of the day

1. PayPal integrates with Ledger Live

For most in crypto, this is the same old scenario of trashing PayPal or indifference. But this is a huge move for PayPal and Qrafty is happy to tell you why. And Also, PayPal is kinda forced to do this move. But the fact that PayPal is open to integrations is big news.

Qrafty wrote about PayPal’s PYCOIN in a previous edition. They issued their own coin called PYCOIN and gave access to crypto (more specifically, the Ethereum network) to their base of over ~ 430 million accounts. True, the number may be smaller, but it is still enourmous… that’s what she said 😘 Qrafty will see himself out…

Now, Ledger is the company that issued the Ledger hardware wallet. It’s the size of a USD stick with some small button thingies, there’s an app you use called Ledger Live to connect to it. And a cable, duh! It’s decent in terms of ease of use and interface and you get used to it quickly.

That’s nice, But there are other wallet providers, right?

Of course, yet they’ve been around since 2016 and have had exactly 0 hacks. Qrafty isn’t being paid to say this, it’s just an opinion. A true one.

Their advantage? Huge customer base as per their statement, over 6 million crypto customers. 6 million is a huge number of anything, from feathers or failed attempts at parallel parking up to failed attempts at assembling IKEA furniture. It's like trying to herd cats wearing disco ball collars – entertainingly impossible.

Wrangling 6 million rubber bands could lead to the world's most epic office prank or accidentally launching a rubber band spaceship to Mars. And imagine owning 6 million pairs of shoes – you'd have more options than a chameleon at a color wheel convention.

Qrafty, are you ok?

Yeah, I get carried away by large numbers sometimes. Getting back to the PayPal and Ledger live integration, this will allow US peeps with verified PayPal accounts to buy: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash (Heaven knows why…), Litecoin (not even Heaven knows why…). But that might bring a lot of liquidity for Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin, so it’s worth keeping an eye out for them. Ethereum is definitely going to benefit from this integration. 100%

Just to be clear, to have a verified PayPal account means that you must send them your ID. I mean… by using PayPal you are already using either a bank account or credit/debit card. So welcome to the PayPal crypto bank, if you get Qrafty’s point 🙂 

It’s not really hard to understand, all crypto exchanges serve the role of gateways of access from fiat money to crypto. They need to verify their user’s identity, as they must adhere to the local legislation of KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML(Anti Money Laundering). So they are the banks of crypto because they offer deposits and withdrawals, services like coin exchange, investment tools like trading spot or futures or other financial instruments like derivatives.

Just like banks, that are the gateways from crypto to fiat money and adhere to the same legislation. It’s just that banking started from the need of safekeeping physical value and exchange of goods, whereas exchanges started because of degenerates gambling online on vaporware magical cards and then magical internet money aka cryptocurrency.

Now, by integrating with Ledger, PayPal will have opened up 6 more million potential customers who will be able to buy and have their coins directly in the wallet. Ledger has other integrations for crypto purchasing like Mercuryo, Ramp, Transak, MoonPay or Simplex. So it’s like, you open a door with some code and BAM! 6 million more potential customers.

Why is this important, Qrafty?

It’s not really obvious at first, but very important: this way of buying coins eliminates counterparty risk. Especially if PayPal decides to add more coins or even make an exchange with which you can interact directly from your wallet.

When you buy coins or hold coins on an exchange, it might crash or it might disappear with your money or it can be shut down by authorities, etc. A lot of things can happen and there are a lot of examples with exchanges that went under. Or you can have your funds locked and it’s a hassle to get it back.

But the genius of this move between PayPal and Ledger is that you can buy from PayPal and get the coins straight to your wallet. Ledger knows security and storage, PayPal knows secure payments. It’s a match made in heaven.

Finally, exchanges in general don’t have a fabulous reputation. Unless you’re trading, you want to buy/sell directly from your wallet. And that is a big part of the market.

P.S.: please remember that PayPal has almost double the number of accounts compared to Binance and Coinbase combined.

2. Sichuan pivots from mining to metaverse

The province of Sichuan in China is the largest one in the western part of China, a place where 80 million souls live, was the place to go for mining Bitcoin. China banned crypto and mining in 2021, for the umpteenth time…. And the Sichuan and Yunnan provinces were hit the hardest, because these were the bitcoin and crypto mining hubs of the country.

So China doesn’t like crypto, so what Qrafty?

Oh, don’t think for a moment that China isn’t planning on becoming an authority in crypto and blockchain, they are actively developing and improving on all fronts. It’s just that China is a simp for Bitcoin so much that it bans is from time to time, along with everything crypto related. You know what they say… don’t stick your crypto in crazy… or was it stake? Qrafty can’t really remember, that was a wild night…

What do you mean?

Well guess what? The local government of Sichuan is issuing a plan to help companies interested in developing for the metaverse. They plan on creating the infrastructure for developing the currently mostly infant metaverse market to a 250 billion yuan by 2025.

In US dollars, that’s around $34 billion with a “b”, mkay? And they plan on evolving this market from close to 0 up to $30 billion in less than 2 years by building 50 research and development institutions.

That’s not just ambitious, it’s the script of a movie if this actually happens.

The authorities plan on making a multi sided effort, focusing on industrial parks for metaverse related ventures with both local and central government support. And the central government is in on it too, since they also issued a whitepaper name the “Innovation and Internet Development 3.0“ earlier this year, in May. Initially, Qrafty thought that was a joke, since the budget allocated was set to 100 million yuan per year until 2025, which is like $14 million a year, to “establish Beijing a as a global innovation hub“. That was a really funny joke, as 14 millies a year is probably just the budget for electricity of an smallish industrial park and coffees for security guards.

So what’s the catch, Qrafty?

This move is interesting and important to keep an eye on and it makes the whole picture clearer. This isn’t about making NFT’s for plebs or issuing coins for dumbasses to simp on. They’re tackling fundamental, structural aspects like security, cross-chain interoperability up to those NFT’s and gaming, which is top level applications.

From the whitepaper, Qrafty notices that they divided the Internet 3.0 (or, cooler, Web 3.0) architecture into four layers:

1. Infrastructure layer

2. Interactive terminal layer

3. Platform tool layer

4. Application layer.“

This is very similar to the model upon which the whole Internet relies, called the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, which describes the 7 layers that computer systems use to communicate over a network.

So, to have a clearer view, what they are aiming for is to develop their own infrastructure on top of which everything else will be built. They are starting from the conceptual stages and iterating on top of that framework.

There are multiple factors to follow around China, with the Evergrande bankruptcy just announced today, recent hiding young unemployment rates, structural problems with the economy oozing from the real estate sector and all the way up to the technology developments they’re working on. Qrafty will keep a close badgery eye on them for you!

3. Philipine National Police warns against Axie Infinity play to earn “scheme“

It’s a weird flex from the Philippine National Police Anti-Cybercrime Group (PNP ACG) saying that Axie is a “model used to extort money” because the game requires the player to initially purchase 300$ in game assets knows as Axie characters, in order to be able to generate income in the game.

ALL the players KNOW this! It’s not like someone dragged them out of their parents basements and forced them to do that… They just stole their mom’s card when she was sleeping and bought the damn freaking pixels, like all of us do!

Definitely worth being grounded for life and just playing quietly, huh? Talk about mastermind…

****Qrafty is joking about everything written above 👆️👆️👆️ and it is purely meant as a funny stupid story. Don’t steal your mom’s card, don’t do nasty stuff and don’t listen to politicians****

But all jokes aside now, you wanna know what’s funny?

At the same time, the same police is saying that the traditional gambling industry is oky doky, because the average per user there is only $100. Pretty cool way of thinking, huh?

Aaaanyway, the truth is that there is a lot of risk in crypto gaming too. A lot of fake coin contracts and a lot of NFT stealing and wallet mangling has been going around lately. So yeah, just like with any transaction on the blockchain or when taking out cash at the atm, you have to pay attention and be careful.

Make sure you store your coins properly, make sure you keep your card cand your pin separately, be careful where you send or buy your NFT’s from, cover your hand when you are entering your PIN number at the ATM or at the P.O.S… you get the idea.

Aside from that, Axie Infinity is one of the cooler play to earn games of the crypto GameFi. It has a great community and it’s constantly adding new things and improving.

Yes, all crypto carries risk, it’s a weird new domain with a lot of assholes vying to extort you and get your money. But there are also beautiful places and people and it’s worth it.

4. US 30 year mortgage rates increase to 7.4%

Yowza….!

Once upon a time, in the land of Homeville, the 30-year mortgage rate jumped to 7.4%. Homebuyers, who usually paid manageable sums, suddenly found their monthly payments ballooning like enchanted pumpkins. This left them with less money for other things, like going out to eat or buying magical gadgets.

The Real Estate Market Square turned gloomy, with fewer buyers strolling around. Houses stayed unsold, like lonely castles waiting for knights. Even the Economy Castle suffered as people spent less, and construction goblins had less work building new homes.

Fairy tale businesses like furniture and decor shops had fewer customers, and the local café saw fewer wizards sipping potions. People started saving gold coins instead of spending, making the economy sleepy.

Eventually, wise leaders realized that such high rates were casting a spell of gloom. They worked together to bring rates back down, and Homeville became a happy place again, reminding everyone that mortgage rates and happy endings are closely linked in this economic fairy tale.

Let’s hope this will be a “they lived happily ever after“ ending!

5. Stellar buys minority stake in Moneygram

Yup, it’s that Moneygram that you also know. Stellar just opened their wallets and got in on the boat, meaning they bought enough to get a seat on the board of directors.

While Ripple had an attempt at working with Western Union and WU didn’t want to continue, Stellar went on the same direction and tapped Moneygram.

Why did they approach the same type of business, Qrafty?

Because these businesses have a capital intensive operating model which can be improved by a digital currency like XLM or XRP.

How so?

Well, both WU and MG have physical locations in a lot of countries with cash in different places all over the world and those countries. Different countries means different currencies, which means they need to hold all of those currencies.

So they need a constant supply of currency and they need to keep the right balances. So that’s a headache by itself.

Especially for cross border transfers, instead of buying and holding all those different coins which carry volatility risk, you could own a single one, XRP or XLM, and just acquire whatever coin you need to balance your capital wherever you need it.

That’s a pretty cool stunt! You hold one coin instead of many, right?

It’s the original purpose for which XRP was invented, and obviously XLM, since Chris Larsen was on the same boat with Jed McCaleb and David Schwartz as the founders of XRP and Ripple Consensus Network. But Jed McCaleb went on and basically forked XLM out of XRP and made his own network.

Bottom line: yes, Stellar made a good move here with MoneyGram. They’ve been working together for a while and it seems that they’re on a nice path of improving MoneyGrams treasury operations and liquidity controls with XLM.

Hey hey 🙃 Qrafty hopes you are enjoying the experience here and would like to regularly get Qrafty’s letters!

If so, please click on the button below. Qrafty is really really grateful to have you here, so thank you!

Stock traders are vanilla… Crypto folks are hardy folks! NFT folks are just cuckoo!

Qrafty’s thought of the day

Other stories from today worth noting

• 23% of Australians now hold crypto

  And if that wasn’t enough, it’s written with bold letters: “Australian Crypto Survey 2023: Women Continue to Profit More From Crypto Than Men“

  Aside from that, it seems that Aussie crypto traders report profits. Would ya look at them…

• 10% of Indian women have owned crypto!

  Power to you, sisters! India ranks globally on the third place when it comes to women owning crypto. More than 63 million women in India have interacted with cryptocurrencies. That’s beautiful to see!

• It’s still on? The SEC was granted the appeal against XRP

  As Qrafty mentioned a while ago, the SEC appealed and now we find out that it was granted the appeal for the area of the trial which XRP won, which stated that in the case of public sales (such as on exchanges), XRP isn’t sold as a security.

  It’s back up in the news because initially the judge said that the SEC can file a motion to appeal. Now it’s saying that they can actually appeal. Ripple has until September 1st to reply to this.

• A lot of scam tokens on the Coinbase Base blockchain

  It would seem that there are over 500 fake coins on the newly released blockchain from Coinbase. Bloomberg says, according to the research from Solidus Labs, that scammers got away with over 2 million dollars.

  Of course, Coinbase kindly asks all its customers to do due diligence and inform themselves before buying a coin bllablablalaablabalala.

  Hopefully they will address this… quickly!

• Evergrande files for bankruptcy in New York

  It’s important to keep an eye on China. Things aren’t going too smooth there economy wise, and this might be just the beginning of a larger wave of problems. Or not, Qrafty always hopes for the best!

  Evergrande just filed for chapter 15 in Manhattan, which is a way for non-US companies to get protection from creditors who want to sue or block assets in US. No, it’s not chapter 11, it’s 15, a different thing.

  This can be considered contagion after the Country Garden, before 2023 China’s top real estate developer, went downhill quickly and racked up a lot of debt, currently being unable to pay $22.5 millions on August 6th, 2023. That kinda spooked a lot of people.

• KuCoin will require ID verification starting September 1st, 2023

  KuCoin was a small exchange that slowly developed and gained some traction. By the end of August 2023, “users will need to upload their identity documents and complete face verification to pass the standard identity verification“, as they state on their website.

Feel that? What….? Your crypto IQ rising?… No no, not that! Nvm, let’s just focus on the crypto IQ, okay?

Qrafty, what are “RWAs” and what is their purpose?

We will start with the boring explanation and then Qrafty will tell you a story, okay?

So, Real World Assets (RWAs) in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) refer to tangible, physical assets like real estate, art, or commodities tokenized on a blockchain. This digitization allows for fractional ownership and trading in the DeFi space, enabling wider access and liquidity.

RWAs bridge traditional assets and blockchain, expanding investment opportunities while maintaining transparency and security. Of course, challenges include accurate valuation, regulatory compliance, and maintaining the link between tokens and the underlying assets.

Qrafty knows a really cool story for this… Once upon a time, in the fantastic world of DeFi Land, an ingenious wizard named Tokenius had an ingenious idea. He decided to bring Real World Assets (RWAs) into the blockchain realm, turning them into digital tokens that could be traded by anyone, anywhere.

Tokenius transformed a majestic castle into countless shimmering tokens, each representing a piece of the castle's ownership. As word spread, villagers far and wide joined the DeFi Fair, where they bought these shimmering tokens of the enchanted castle. Even the village jester owned a piece!

The villagers took care of their properties and the castle and started trading with other villages, while investing in the castle. It became a big market for trade and other tokens of other castles and even lands!

A lot of people moved in, the village flourished and turned into a town, as the once-impractical castle turned into a bustling market of tokens, making ownership as easy as catching fireflies. Now, those who owned the initial tokens for the castle realize that their value has increased considerably.

And so, DeFi Land became a place where RWAs danced on the blockchain, proving that in the realm of DeFi, even castles can moonwalk into the future of finance! 

Or… you know… the villagers would drink themselves to death and destroy the crops and the castle, which is not the kind of tales Qrafty like to tell, mkay? 😇 

Market Whispers

Weeell… Qrafty had a feeling yesterday. 29k did not hold this time. Usually after long periods of consolidation in a tight range we see impulsive moves, either up or down, depending on the market. We had our ups, not it’s time for downs.

Today BTC chose the red side and jumped out the window down to 24581$. The bounce seems to be doing its job, in 15 min it went up to 26400$. The rollercoaster day should have been today 🙂

$769 million liquidated from the crypto market in 30 minutes. Cool, huh?

This is how it started…. 🥶 🤢 

This is how it ended… 😲 😱😱😱

For this kind of market, this is a classic, but Qrafty loves it!

That’s all from Qrafty 🦡 for today! Qrafty thanks you and wishes you to live each moment as if you are listening to the music you love most!

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