GM Seedphrasers 👋 The crypto newsletter made by the people actually IN the space. We do it so you don’t have to.

📓 Today’s Agenda:

• 👧 Opensea the Jealous Ex

• 🔥 Hot Headlines

• 🥵 SEC wants all the Smoke

👧 OpenSea: The Toxic Ex?

Last week, Blur injected the NFT space with a ton of hype and enthusiasm by rewarding its users with free money (Blur token airdrops).

The surge was hard to ignore on Twitter and in the markets, with a total of $430 million in trading volume.

Plus- there’s no one who loves free money more than a degen. It kinda felt like this:

While most will only talk about what happened between OpenSea and Blur, no one is talking about this one specific issue.

📕 But first, here’s a brief summary of what happened:

• A few days ago, Blur surpassed OpenSea in daily ETH volume.

• Then, Blur declares creators can’t earn royalties on both Blur and OpenSea. So they decided to block trades on OpenSea.

• In reaction, OpenSea made an announcement declaring 0% service fees & optional creator royalties, in an attempt to be more competitive.

• The floodgates of Hell were opened on Twitter.

The majority of the NFT community took Blur’s side, viewing OpenSea as reaching for relevancy and failing. Many have been quick to call OS’s downfall already.

But others had something else in mind.

Many want to see OpenSea develop a token and airdrop like Blur, and some others think OS should stop chasing Blur and do its own thing.

👉️ The part people are missing: the Degens are the main characters.

Blur: The pros’ favorite. Blur’s marketplace may be a little intimidating and hard to navigate for newer traders. But, it’s used by virtually every serious NFT trader.

OpenSea: The market’s favorite (up until now). OpenSea grew in popularity because of its sleek and user-friendly design. Pretty much everyone uses it from small to big NFT project creators, degens, traders, and even the web3 curious.

They both seem like good services that the space needs- so why can’t we just all get along?

Frank DeGods said it best: marketplaces are competing for market share. They don’t seem to care about anything else, and market share is solely based on buyer activity. More users = more sales = higher market share.

That means traders hold the power.

🧩 What about the creators?

Creators feel like they’re getting f*cked.

But don’t take our word for it.

How it usually goes: creators set royalties and buyers decide if they want to buy. Now, marketplaces are intervening in that process.

This is a serious problem for many creators, as royalties are how they generate revenue initially.

Marketplaces are taking the power away from the creators, the lifeline of the NFT economy.

⚜️ Our takeaway:

In the end, competition is a good thing.

It allows for cutthroat decisions to be made. It creates market diversity. And it also allows for better discovery of a product-market fit. While this is starting to get ugly, in the end, we’re optimistic it will only make this space stronger with better products.

 🤝 Together with The Average Joe

The “IKEA Instructions for Investing”

Assembling IKEA tables got you feelin’ like the Steph Curry of furniture?

We’ll turn you into the Marie Kondo of investing. Organized, calm, and ready to conquer the markets.

The Average Joe’s newsletters (aka the “IKEA instructions for investing”) are short, simple and concise — filled with market trends and insights.

But you don’t read IKEA manuals on your spare time and you wouldn’t read financial publications for fun. Until now…Here’s what one reader is saying: “Content is relevant, very current. Love the entertaining delivery and use of images to invoke emotion. Creates engagement. With all the other morning newsletters, this one is moving to preferred.”

🔥 Hot Headlines

📉 Crypto & The Markets:

• New YouTube CEO is BULLISH on web3. And he’s the same dude that invented NFT integration. - Read more.

• Hong Kong just announces highly anticipated crypto policy shift - Read more.

• Bitcoin headed for $25,000? - Find out.

• Instagram takes a note from Twitter and starts a paid verification system - Read more.

• Bitcoin surpasses Visa market cap, for the third time. - Read more.

• San Francisco to develop CBDC - Read more.

🖼️ NFTs:

• Yuga Labs caught in a copyright infringement debate - Read more.

• Frank DeGods says Bitcoin is the best crypto out there - Read it

• Rarible announces 0% fees using a savage meme - Check it out

• Gemxyz: OpenSea’s real plan of attack on Blur - Check it out

• Puma mint on 2/22 (yes, the billion-dollar brand) - Enter here

🤖 Ai

• Podcasts can now be 100% generated by AI, thanks to podcast.ai - Check it out

• Read this nerdy article on how to prompt Ai to get the output you want- Big Brain Energy

• Bing’s AI compares user to Hitler - Wtf

🤐 Jump Crypto Gets Exposed

The SEC did it again. They’ve created more drama like the Real Housewives of Washington D.C.- they just can’t get enough chaos.

👉️ Here’s what we know:

• Feb 16: The SEC files suit against Do Kwon & Terraform Labs.

• The charges: securities fraud, misleading customers, selling unregistered securities that devastated investors, and a few more fun things like that.

• The filing has a lot of sh*t in it. You can read it here.

• The chaos: the complaint reveals someone made $1.28 BILLION ON TERRA BEFORE THE COLLAPSE.

• While the complaint doesn’t name Jump Crypto, Bloomberg sources confirmed that it’s Jump Crypto.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, crypto has a way of surprising you.

Here’s what they did: Jump Crypto had an exclusive market-making agreement with Terraform Labs, which allowed them to purchase heavily discounted LUNA tokens.

LUNA tokens were the asset supporting UST. With only $62 million deployed, Jump Crypto managed to earn a staggering $1.28 billion by selling off the discounted tokens according to the terms of their agreement with Terraform Labs.

Here’s what’s wrong with it: Everything. Terraform and Do Kwon misled investors about the most important part of the Terraform product: the stability of UST.

They claimed it was an algorithmic stablecoin, meaning only a computer code controls it. But when UST lost its peg to the dollar, Jump Crypto swooped in to manipulate the market and save it. Then they all lied about it, claiming the recovery shows how strong the algorithmic stablecoin model is.

The SEC director had this to say:

TLDR; Jump Crypto, Terraform Labs, and Do Kwon were highly unethical and misled investors about the stability of UST. The SEC is now steeping in to make them pay.

😂 Meme of the day: