1. You may have noticed that the crypto markets took a collective nosedive this week, with Bitcoin dropping from $68,000 to $57,000, and Ethereum slipping from $4,800 to $3,900. $AXS also slid to $123, which is its lowest since late October. $BTC and $ETH were at all-time highs the week prior, and indeed, many coins like $YGG, $SAND, and $CRO are still enjoying their respective peaks as I write this. Overall it’s been a really good fourth quarter for crypto, and a 20% slide does not appear to be anything we need to worry about. Of course, we also have a lot of newcomers in the space so it’s good to keep repeating this: Volatility is the price of opportunity. Markets can’t grow without peaks and valleys, and you are in crypto because you wanted to invest in something that moved fast and had the potential for exponential returns. Weeks like this one are the price you have to pay for that opportunity.

2. A quick word about $CRO. I’ve been staking $CRO for about 2 months now, but not necessarily because I was a massive supporter of Crypto.com (formerly Monaco). In truth, the only reason I did it was because that was the only way to get one of their all-metal Visa debit cards. Having a crypto-backed debit card means you don’t have to manually trade your crypto into pesos in order to spend them, so this is an interesting solution for those Axie managers who are struggling to figure out how to spend their income. The “Jade Green” Crypto card required me to stake at least $4,000 worth of $CRO, which I begrudgingly did back in September. Ironically, that became my most successful investment this quarter, with the position now being worth about $10,000. Yesterday, Crypto.com announced that they had acquired the rights to rename the LA Lakers’ Staples Center to “Crypto.com Arena” for $700M. Like one of their most well-funded competitors, FTX, has been spending bonkers money on mainstream marketing this year. You can check out the full lineup of Crypto.com debit cards here (not all of them require you to stake $CRO). I should warn you, however, that I haven’t been able to do a full review for Cryptoday because I’ve struggled with their service. Issues included the fact that I lived in the Philippines, some misunderstandings with their customer support, and some other strange software bugs. Once I get this all resolved, I’ll attempt to shift my spending exclusively to the card and see if it’s something I can recommend to my readers.

3. I’m excited to announce a new internal project for the players and managers in the YGG community. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what our Filipino community needs help with, and time and time again the thing that jumps out at me is that there’s not enough high-quality content in the local languages. So with the help of YGG Pilipinas’ newly-formed Ministry of Information, we’re launching the YGG.guide knowledge portal officially today. Initially, we have two important guides already available: for players, we have a Ronin mobile app setup guide, and for our managers, we have a guild setup guide. Both guides are available in Tagalog, Bisaya, Ilocano, Hiligaynon, and English. We’ll be updating the portal several times a month with new content and will also be taking requests from the community regarding what issues they want us to tackle! Speaking of YGG, our token is over $8 for the first time since early October. We’ve been doing non-stop partnership announcements all month, and as someone on the inside, it’s been a challenge even remembering all the games and projects that we’ve backed so far.

4. My NFTart collaboration with Heart Evangelista ended with a nail-biter auction yesterday, with multiple collectors vying for the two pieces Pluviam and Desiderantium. I was glued to my phone for nearly two hours, monitoring the two auctions as their respective clocks counted downwards. The genesis piece, Pluviam, went into overtime thrice, as each new bid extends the auction countdown by an additional 10 minutes. When the dust had settled, the total purse for both auctions topped out at 17.35 ETH or 3.6M pesos. Congratulations to the winning bidders, Goldtree and AxieBoss! I am of course deeply humbled by the interest from all the collectors, but I am most impressed by how many showed up. It was my first time witnessing an auction where every bid was being placed by someone from #CryptoPH, and it made me really proud knowing that our community is capable of throwing down the same amounts of money as the traditional art crowd … if not more! From the bottom of my heart, thank you to 4AA5C2, JanitorNiChizEscudero, Ownly.io, QuirkyNFT, AxieBoss, and Goldtree. WAGMI!

See you all next week, cryptofam!