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Happy Friday! This is Billy Bambrough, getting you up to speed with the bitcoin and crypto latest.
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24-hour crypto market snapshot
Flashes and firsts 🏆
The cryptocurrency market, despite wild swings both higher and lower this week, continues to search for firmer direction. The bitcoin price flash crashed by about $3,000 in a matter of seconds yesterday before bouncing back. Bitcoin is now trading almost exactly where it was this time last week.

Meanwhile, ethereum has this morning hit a fresh all-time high of over $4,400 per ether and crossed the $500 billion market capitalization barrier for the first time, partly thanks to the memecoin war between dogecoin and the ethereum-based shiba inu. Many bullish crypto investors see ethereum climbing a lot higher in the coming years.

Good to know: Mark Cuban’s Dallas Mavericks are giving away bitcoin—but not for long

The memecoins are struggling this morning after their massive rallies earlier in the week. Shib has lost 12% over the last 24 hours while dogecoin is also trending down. Among the rest of the crypto top ten, Binance's BNB is following ethereum higher, with cardano, solana and polkadot more or less flat.

In macro-land, U.S. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen this morning said that she would still thinks inflation is transitory and that energy prices will moderate in the coming months. The crypto community would largely disagree.

Now read this: First bitcoin. Then GameStop. Now tiny tungsten cubes
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Meet Meta 🤝
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg unveiled his metaverse vision yesterday
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg unveiled his metaverse vision yesterday Getty Images
Metamorphasis: Facebook, the social media giant that counts photo app Instagram, messaging app WhatsApp and virtual reality company Oculus among its brands, has announced its rebranding under the umbrella Meta in order to create its digital metaverse. The well-telegraphed move comes as Facebook hopes to compartmentalize and move away from its recent high-profile scandals and various damaging leaks that have led to intense scrutiny of the company.

Zuck it up: Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg laid out his metaverse plans in a lengthy virtual keynote presentation at the Facebook Connect conference. Facebook's metaverse, expected to take years and billions of dollars to create, will be an ambitious, fully-immersive, almost Matrix-style virtual world. You can watch Zuck's full near 80-minute politician-like presentation here. You can also read Zuckerberg's pre-announcement briefings with The Information, The Verge, and Stratechery.

The crypto connection: Zuckerberg's metaverse plans seem to include a role for non-fungible tokens (NFTs)—enabling all manner of digital media and assets to be tokenized on blockchains. Zuck referred to "digital goods" as part of the metaverse's user experience and said Meta plans to spend $150 million to spur use among its customer base. The Block reports that past comments from the head of Facebook Financial, David Marcus, suggest that NFTs could form part of Facebook's digital wallet Novi, itself a part of Facebook's crypto and stablecoin efforts. "It's too early to talk about our plans, but we're definitely looking at a number of plans to get involved in the space, because we're in a good position to do so," Marcus told Bloomberg in late August.

Not so fast... While investors were broadly receptive to Facebook's plans, not everyone's happy. Writing in the Financial Times, crypto-skeptic Jemima Kelly said: Cryptocurrencies will be as useless in the metaverse as they are now. "As far as I’m concerned, the hypocritical fantasy that underpins crypto also lies at the heart of the metaverse," writes Kelly. "This isn’t about building a decentralized paradise where everyone can prosper and live in harmony; this is about making a small group of people rich." Ouch.

The bottom line: Why run for national office when you can simply create your own digital world and economy?

Now read this: Why your group chat could be worth millions
MicroStrategy can't get enough 👐
🛍️ MicroStrategy, the business intelligence software company that's morphed into a bitcoin acquisition vehicle over the last year, has bought another 9,000 bitcoins—bringing its total to 114,042—and said it's open to buying even more.

✨ The value of MicroStrategy's bitcoin is now around $7 billion, making up almost all of MicroStrategy’s $7.4 billion market capitalization.

😇 The company, led by bitcoin devotee Michael Saylor, said it purchased the bitcoin by "successfully raising capital" and will "continue to evaluate opportunities to raise additional capital to execute on our bitcoin strategy."

Don't miss: Here’s a $532 million NFT trade that wasn’t what it appeared
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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.
Follow me on Twitter or email me.
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