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	Good Monday morning. Billy Bambrough here, catching you up with the big crypto news and what to look out for this week. 📧 Thank you for reading CryptoCodex! I’d love to hear your feedback, ideas and tips. Email me directly at billy@billybambrough.com.


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24-hour crypto market snapshot

Bitcoin (+2%)

$38,711

Ethereum (+2%)

$2,805

XRP (+4%)

$0.6151

Solana (-1%)

$87.55

Incoming 💣


	Cryptocurrency prices have had a mostly quiet weekend despite a record-breaking non-fungible token (NFT) sale that played havoc with the ethereum network. See below for details. The bitcoin price remains firmly range-bound and is currently slightly higher on this time yesterday, up 2% at just under $40,000 per bitcoin. Ethereum is up around the same. Ripple's XRP is leading the major market higher, up almost 5%, while ethereum rival solana is trending downward after suffering another outage. Cryptocurrency and stock markets are braced for volatility this week with the U.S. Federal Reserve expected to announce its biggest interest rate hike in two decades on Wednesday. Read the full story on Forbes. Looking ahead to the rest of the month, historic market data shows bitcoin traders shouldn't "sell in May and go away." May has been the fourth-best month for the cryptocurrency, averaging 289% gains over 11 years. Coindesk has the details. Now read this: Elon Musk Mocked Legendary Investor Warren Buffett’s Attack On Bitcoin

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Into the monkey-verse 🐒



	The hugely popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection is linked to the Otherside metaverse project. NurPhoto via Getty Images


	Monkey madness: This past weekend, the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) non-fungible token (NFT) collection, Yuga Labs, launched a new block of NFTs representing virtual land in their own NFT collection-combining metaverse, Otherside. The Otherdeed mint was the largest NFT launch ever, raising a staggering $320 million but not without controversy. Know your apes: Prospective buyers had to pass a Know Your Customer (KYC) verification, have their crypto wallets pre-approved on the project's website and pay in Yuga Labs' recently launched apecoin cryptocurrency. The process caused headaches for many, some of whom have accused Yuga of intentionally botching the mint, and caused gas fees on the ethereum blockchain to soar. "We're sorry for turning off the lights on ethereum for a while," Yuga posted in a Twitter thread outlining some of the problems it faced with the record-setting mint. "It seems abundantly clear that apecoin will need to migrate to its own chain in order to properly scale. We'd like to encourage the DAO to start thinking in this direction." Lost in the ether: Some users paid as much as 5 ether, almost $15,000, just to get their transactions through. "We are still working on refunding all Otherdeed minters with failed transactions their gas," Yuga posted to Twitter late last night. Note that you do not need to do anything - we will transfer it all back to your wallet and announce when it is completed. Don't click any links. Aping in and out: The apecoin price meanwhile swung wildly in the run-up to the mint and in its aftermath. A survey of crypto experts has predicted the apecoin price could climb this year due to ongoing NFT "hype." Feel the burn: Meanwhile, the ethereum burn rate spiked to a new all-time high following mint's huge demand on the network. You can see a chart illustrating the massive spike here. A base fee of ether is burned during each transaction on the network following the implementation of the London hard fork, or EIP-1559 upgrade, last year. Good to know: Lego is going digital

Solana goes dark 🌒


	📴 Ethereum rival solana, one of the best performing major cryptocurrencies over the last 12 months, suffered a seven-hour network outage on Saturday night. 🐦 The "Solana Mainnet Beta lost consensus after an enormous amount of inbound transactions (4 million per second) flooded the network, surpassing 100gbps," according to a post on the Solana Status Twitter account. ⚡ The outage, the latest of many congestion-based problems for the network, sparked accusations it is insufficiently decentralized. In September, solana was offline for 17 hours. Now read this: Wall Street reluctantly embraces crypto

The week ahead 🗓


	👀 Look out for these cryptocurrency and crypto-related events this week. 📑 A quieter earnings season rolls on this week with Jack Dorsey's bitcoin-focused Block (née Square) topping the crypto agenda. Uber and Shopify first-quarter results could also be of interest. 🏦 Tomorrow, the Federal Reserve will kick off its two-day policy-setting meeting with markets nervously watching for anything unexpected when the central bank announces its interest rate decision on Wednesday. Fed chair Jerome Powell has signaled a half percentage point interest rate hike is on the table—the biggest rate hike in two decades—and markets are braced for it to begin shrinking its huge $9 trillion asset portfolio as it battles soaring inflation. 💼 Friday brings the latest U.S. employment numbers and is expected to show the labor market has continued to strengthen with employers projected to have added around 400,000 jobs in April—pushing the unemployment rate down to 3.5% from 3.6%. Good to know: The Wikimedia community voted to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations

	Billy Bambrough
	Forbes Senior Contributor

I am a journalist with significant experience covering technology, finance, economics, and business. I write about how bitcoin, crypto and blockchain can change the world.

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