We still lack good Web3 games; Bitcoin BTC price drops below $29K

Good morning. Here’s what happens:

Prices: Bitcoin lost the mojo it regained on Tuesday, falling below $29K; ether fell towards $1.9K.

Insight: Valuations for some Web3 games are higher than the lifetime earnings of some successful traditional game companies, and yet Web3 doesn’t have many games that excite gamers.

Bitcoin’s Wednesday Swoon

What Happened to Bitcoin’s Tuesday Mojo?

The biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization fell early Wednesday, first falling below $30,000 for the second time in three days, and hours later, below $29,000 for the first time in more than a week. BTC recently traded at around $28,930, a decrease of approx. 4.6% from Tuesday, the same time, and far from their highs last week when a moderately encouraging consumer price index and renewed investor optimism bolstered markets.

Investors’ mood soured on Wednesday after a sobering UK inflation report and massive sell orders on Binance. “Somehow the warm UK CPI report that we got in today’s European session made the market more vulnerable and may have been the macroeconomic data that pushed the big seller to pull the trigger, leading to a cascade of sell orders as we fell below $30,000,” Matt Weller, global head of research at online brokerage Forex.com, told CoinDesk TV’s “First Mover” program.

Ether continued its mirroring of BTC this week, falling around 7.1% to trade at around $1,945. The second largest crypto by market capitalization topped $2,100 on Tuesday after falling on Monday along with most other major altcoins. The second-largest crypto by market capitalization had been on the rise in the days following the much-hyped Ethereum Shanghai upgrade, the latest step in the platform’s transition from a proof-of-work to a more energy-efficient proof-of-stake protocol.

APT, the token of layer 1 blockchain Aptos, and ARB, the native crypto of layer 2 blockchain Arbitrum, recently plunged by 10% and 13% respectively. The CoinDesk Market Index, a measure of the crypto market’s overall performance, was recently down 6.2%.

Stock markets traded roughly flat for the second day in a row, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rising 0.03%, while the S&P 500, which has a strong technology component, fell 0.01%. Investors have continued to digest unexpectedly strong first-quarter earnings from the financial sector, although a number of regional banks have yet to report. Their results will provide further clarity on the health of the banking sector.

In an email to CoinDesk, Markus Levin, co-founder of the XYO Network, a cryptography-backed oracle network that anonymously collects and certifies data with a geographic component, noted “a huge amount of anxiety in the market right now, especially when it comes to macroeconomic conditions.”

“Britain’s higher-than-expected inflation numbers appear to be hitting a little too close to home, both in the US and in other countries where monetary policy is tightening and fears of a recession are rising,” Levin wrote. “It seems like all these macroeconomic concerns may finally be catching up with Bitcoin.

He added that after bitcoin’s strong gains in recent weeks, “it’s not surprising to see consolidation. Crypto markets have always been particularly prone to price swings, so none of this should be cause for panic.”

For all the billions in market share that Web3 gaming and the metaverse command lack, there is one thing missing: a good game.

The traditional gaming world has tentpole franchises that have not earned in lifetime revenue what individual Web3 games are worth. Still, you can find many people who have played a chapter of Grand Theft Auto, Halo, or joined a multiplayer match in PUBG or Call of Duty.

Some of these games are memes-of-the-moment; PUBG seemed ubiquitous in 2017-2018 with its fast-paced mobile-friendly action, but isn’t that big anymore.

But it’s probably harder to find someone who has done the same for a Web3 game. Mention PUBG around gamers and most people will know. Can the same be said of a Web3 game? In a report from last week, DappRadar argued that Asia will dominate Web3 gaming. It bases this answer on a survey in which 48.6% of respondents said blockchain games “seem interesting.”

But what about after they try them? Are they still interesting?

But the fans are not as sold.

Some of the highest-rated comments in response to the video are overwhelmingly negative.

“How do I dislike a video more than once,” said J Miki. “At this rate, the next Final Fantasy will be final fantasy,” added another.

Bitcoin fell more than 3% in just 15 minutes in European morning hours, starting a slide that sent BTC as low as $29,045.22. Forex.com Global Head of Research Matt Weller joined “First Mover” to discuss. Plus a reaction to yesterday’s exchange between House Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry and SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, who repeatedly refused to answer the congressman’s question about whether ether (ETH) is a security. Former SEC Senior Litigation Counsel Howard Fischer and Linklater’s US Head of Blockchain and Digital Assets Joshua Ashley Klayman discussed. Blockdaemon CEO Konstantin Richter and Scroll co-founder Sandy Peng also joined the “First Mover”.