State of Russian Sanctions, OpenSea NFT Exploit, DAOs Surging 40x
Nickel Skyrockets, DAO Treasuries, NFT Swindlers
1.) State of Russian Sanctions
Russia attacked its neighbor on Feb 24th. Markets fear Western sanctions will limit exports from the region, resulting in supply shocks. In order to understand how to best stifle the Russian attack, we need to understand what the state of the economy was leading into the invasion.
The current Russia-Ukraine conflict has sowed more seeds of stagflation into the global macro space where current elevated inflationary pressures; the highest in 40 years seen in the US are likely to be reinforced by higher commodities prices. The spread of the US 10-year and 2-year Treasury yields has declined significantly since the start of the year on 3 January 2022 and just broken below the March 2020 pandemic level of 0.36%. It is now trading at 0.30% and getting closer to a yield curve inversion scenario where the rate on the 10-year US Treasury yield is lesser than the 2-year yield.
Russia is a commodity-driven economy, with its major exports broken down as follows:
According to Rystad Energy, Russia is the world's third biggest supplier of nickel behind Indonesia and the Philippines, making up about 13% of global mining capacity.
Singular’s Take: Soaring Nickel Prices could cause automobile manufacturers more supply chain issues in the near future as the world transitions into EVs. Inflation will likely go higher and the conflict will not likely halt the US economic growth.
2.) OpenSea Massive $200M Exploit
Recently, hundreds of NFTs appear to go missing from the OpenSea platform on a late-night Saturday causing an air of panic in Cryptoland.
Crypto has another rollercoaster of a weekend while Pixelmon investors ponder if they should just let their new NFTs use the ‘Run Away’ ability. NFT activity has slowed down in February after boasting a record-breaking January, with Dune Analytics finding there’s been a 27% month-over-month dip in trading volume during Feb on OpenSea – the biggest NFT platform and a competitor to Treasure.
Singular’s Take: As NFT marketplaces like Opensea is migrating to Polygon, the de-factor Layer-2 of Ethereum which makes trading NFTs faster and cheaper. Crypto had a rough Jan-Feb with Bitcoin dropping to its lowest at $36k but we’re seeing a healthy rebound as the Biden administration expressed interested in new regulations for cryptocurrency which could be encourage wider adoption.
Singular’s Action: Long on Dips 👉MATIC, DOT, ETH, SOL. Ethereum could hit and exceed $10k this year. From the White House 👀 Biden signing crypto exec order “Today”
3.) DAO treasuries surged 40X
The total combined value of treasuries, or assets under management (AUM) for the use of decentralized autonomous organizations, increased by around 40 times between January and September of 2021.
DAO membership also surged from 13,000 to nearly 1.6 million participants by the end of the 2021. More and more organizations are opting for decentralized governance over corporate bureaucracy and for token-based treasuries instead of assets custodied by a bank.
DAOs help facilitate true decentralization, giving communities the power and access to create change.
Our previous article about DAOs 💁
Singular’s Take: As more startups are using DAOs as the prominent way for a decentralized team to communicate, DAOs could be a radical paradigm shift making decision-making more transparent and tracked on the blockchain. Singular will be monitor the progress of DAOs whether DAOs will success in attracting talent from all around the world, facilitate more transparent treasuries and save time and labor costs.
Until Next Time,