Hamster Gambling Mania

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Good Morning,

Crypto markets are slightly down — but, Sam Altman has officially launched his Worldcoin project, which is airdropping ~$60 to recipients in the global south, at a $29B FDV. We’re so back.

In Today's Email:

• What Matters: Hamster gambling mania 🐹

• Products: ICE, mobile mineable crypto 📱

• Charts: Synapse $40B volume 📈

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WHAT MATTERS

Hamster Gambling Mania

State of play: Hamsters.gg, a website for crypto betting on hamster races, launched last week and the price of its token $HAMS has jumped 700%+ in a 24-hour span.

• $HAMS had a $1M market cap and a trading volume of over $15.3M.

• As of July 23, $HAMS market cap reached a peak of over $30M.

• The significant price surge led the crypto price-tracking platform to introduce a new dedicated sub-category on its site: animal racing.

What’s next: The $HAMS team should capitalize on the momentum and double down on their product offerings.

Our take: A week after being released, Hamster.gg daily bet volume has reached $32K with an estimate of $48K monthly revenue.

• It charges a 5% fee on each winning bet and 80% of its revenues are distributed among token holders.

• Stake.com, the biggest crypto online casino is expected to have a $145B revenue by 2030.

• If Hamster.gg can reach just 0.01% of Stake’s expected revenue, it could have $14.5M in annual revenue thus delivering $11.6M to $HAMS holders/year.

For builders and investors: As ridiculous as this whole thing sounds, there are learnings to be taken from the Hamster mania.

• Embrace crypto’s memetic culture, win on social media, and build fun products that people want to use.

• Also, embrace a business-first mindset. We’re no longer in the ZIRP era. Founders should be thinking about: “How can what I build today, make money 6 months from now?”

Take a peek at our referral reward at the bottom of this issue. Share this newsletter and receive our list of 100 smart crypto investors' wallet addresses 👇

PRODUCTS OF THE WEEK

Ice: Mobile Mineable Crypto

A decentralized digital currency that unites communities & empowers individuals. Ice is the newest crypto asset that is mineable using smartphones.

• Ice is available on both Android and iOS.

• Ice is 100% open-source & controlled by the DAO.

• To download Ice, an invitation from an existing trusted member of the network is needed.

Other cool products:

• KAIF, an AI-powered decentralized society (DeSoc) platform.

• Fitmint, a web3 fitness and lifestyle mobile app.

• TransferChain, a secure data storage and data sharing platform.

• Doshi, a crypto wallet made for teens and young adults.

• Obvious, a self-custody mobile-only wallet.

• Swapped Finance, a DEX on Shardeum Blockchain.

CHARTS OF THE WEEK

Synapse Surpasses $40B in Volume

State of play: Synapse, a cross-chain bridge, has amassed 1.5M+ users and facilitates $40B+ in volume.

• GMX and DeFi Kingdoms utilize Synapse's inter-chain network to enable their tokens, NFTs, and applications to operate seamlessly across multiple blockchains.

• Since Q3 2022, Synapse experienced higher bridge inflows into L2s compared to BSC, Avalanche, and Polygon.

• The transaction rate on Synapse has almost doubled since the beginning of the year.

Our take: The cross-chain interoperability competitive landscape is an exciting space to watch with Chainlink’s CCIP, LayerZero, Synapse, and Multichain being the dominant players. More competition is always good for the end users.

Hivemapper: 5% of the Global Road Network

State of Play: Hivemapper, a decentralized infrastructure network, has mapped 5% of the world’s roads via AI and dashcam images. In the past six months, contributors added over 20M km of map data, including 3M unique km.

• Hivemapper boasts over 10,000 weekly active contributors.

• The majority of participants engage in microtasks to train the Map AI, with approximately 3,000 weekly active contributors using dashcams to submit imagery.

• The number of contributors has been up 10x since the start of 2023.

Our take: Hivemapper is one of the few interesting projects under the umbrella of DePIN.

• These projects leverage tokens to subsidize initial resource costs — but they will eventually need to find a way to monetize in order to properly compete with their web2 counterparts.

QUICK BITES

• SEC signals appeal to Ripple ruling.

• Bitfinex hackers reached a plea deal.

• DOJ looks to increase crypto investigations.

• Celsius reaches key settlements to resolve litigation.

• Anchorage sees the institutional crypto pie expanding.

• Worldcoin goes live with $29B in fully diluted valuation.

• Optimism moves forward with two proposals to add zk-proofs.

• a16z's Brian Quintenz said Congress must provide clarity, unlike SEC.

MEME & NOTEWORTHY READS

• Our Network’s read on Real-World Assets.

• Delphi Digital’s read on Uniswap’s new liquidity aggregator.

• Polygon’s read on Polygon 2.0 governance.

They got Alyssa!

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Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advic