92nd Edition

May 6, 2023

Hola, amigos! 👋

Ready to unravel the latest news in the crypto world? Look no further than Flippening, the newsletter that’s as revolutionary as Satoshi’s white paper.

Disclaimer: All price movements are recorded up to 03:30 PM UTC, 05th May 2023

Following the rate hike, the market’s beaten expectations by moving largely sideways, and BNB’s even slightly up, possibly owing to Binance’s BTC reserve hitting an ATH.

Crypto simplified

Who doesn’t like receiving gifts? We definitely do, especially when it's cryptocurrencies.

In case you didn’t get the drift already, we are talking about crypto airdrops! 🪂🪂

Arbirtrum airdrop was a tough one and many were left heart broken when they were not eligible. But this time,we have an easy one - $STARK. ArgentX is running a Starknet Xplorer campaign.

They will airdrop 8 different NFTs over the next 8 weeks to participants who interact with the ecosystem. It is a pretty similar campaign to Arbitrum’s Odyssey program.

All you need to do to be eligible is:

1️⃣Get an ArgentX wallet

2️⃣Add some funds to your wallet. $3-$4 should suffice (depending on the gas fees at the time)

3️⃣Perform a swap. (Swap is exactly like what it sounds.)

“But I already have a Metamask wallet. Why do I need an ArgentX wallet?“

👉🏻Metamask is an EVM-compatible wallet, which is not supported within the Starknet ecosystem. Find the steps to set up the ArgentX wallet here.

💰Once your ArgentX wallet is set up and funds are added, perform a swap on Jediswap (one of the most popular platforms on the Starknet ecosystem).

⏰You need to do this before 9th May.

Eg. Swapping just $1 worth of any token using @JediSwap is enough to qualify for the first week NFT.

Did you qualify for any airdrop in 2023?

Top Highlights of the Week

1. Things are about to go down went down

So the banking system isn’t having a great year.

Last week, First Republic Bank became the third US bank to collapse after SVB and Signature.
With the turn of events at PacWest this week, the stock market is uncomfortable resulting into:

Customers spooked by the bank runs taking their deposits to larger banks.
Traders actively shorting PacWest and other regional banks’ stocks.
Interest rate hikes making it expensive for smaller banks.

2. Up, up, and away we go!

Feels like it was only yesterday when interest rates went up, and it’s already happened again.

The US Fed hiked interest rates by 25 bps yet again (no surprise there).
Unlike previous rate hikes, which were followed by volatility, the crypto market’s remained quite steady this time. BTC held onto its position above $29,000.
The rate hike also saw multiple US banks’ stocks take a steep dive.

Our takeaway: With the banking system wracked with uncertainty after multiple major collapses, even an interest rate hike couldn’t trigger a wave of volatility in the crypto market, which is usually the case as investors move towards less risky assets. Fed Chair Jerome Powell assured the banking system is quite steady but the evidence speaks for itself.

3. Playing for both teams

Mastercard’s been bullish about crypto for the longest time, and they’re not changing it anytime soon.

Mastercard wants to aid mass adoption of crypto by improving trust.
It wants to establish standards to help businesses verify crypto transactions.
It also intends to facilitate crypto transactions, making retail purchases using crypto an everyday thing.

Our takeaway: Mastercard’s got the right idea. The biggest barrier to mass adoption of any asset class is trust. And Mastercard, a firm that processes 74 billion transactions year, has obviously got the trust part locked down. And the timing for this project could not be better, with the banking sector losing trust and consumers gravitating towards crypto. All in all, this has the potential to be a home run for both Mastercard and crypto.

Disclaimer: All price movements are recorded up to 03:30 PM UTC, 05th May 2023

Most sectors stood their ground as well, apart from a couple of considerable declines in DEXs and DeFi. This can be chalked down to the interest rate hike.