Bitcoin ($BTC), Ethereum ($ETH) – Tickets on the blockchain

Cryptocurrencies have shown broad resilience since Powell’s hawkish comments last Friday.

Actually Bitcoin BTC/USDEthereum ETH/USDand the rest of the gang have collectively done better than stocks in the last week.

Bitcoin is also showing signs of maturity as intraday price swings have been compressed, suggesting a possible floor in sight.

Finally, Meta META trying to win back a place at the cool children’s table.

The social media giant is rolling out digital collectibles to showcase NFTs on Facebook and Instagram.

That being said…let’s get to it!

1. Tickets on the blockchain

2. Institutions have a BTFD mindset

3. Former founders raise new funds

1. Ticket sales on the blockchain

Each year, Ticketmaster sells ~500 million tickets to concerts, games and events that generate billions of dollars in revenue.

Over the past 6 months they have been quietly running a pilot program that has seen 5 million Ticketmaster tickets minted as NFTs using Dapper Labs.

This week, the company announced that Dapper Labs Flow will be the exclusive blockchain on which it creates future NFTs—which serve primarily as digital memories but also shareable proofs of attendance—for select events.

The move sets the stage for the possibility that all tickets will eventually become NFTs, although that is something that has yet to be determined.

“The data will eventually show it, the user behavior will eventually show it”

– Dapper Labs

2. Institutions have a BTFD mindset

While we’ll never know exactly who coined the phrase “buy the damn dip,” we all know which group of investors is most likely to keep it as a mantra.

Still, as we approached the merger, there have been institutions using the BTFD mentality for Ethereum as opposed to retail investors.

Cross-crypto trading desks have reported higher-than-usual interest from large funds, which recently accounted for 62% of buyers at trading company B2C2.

This figure is usually around 50%.

The retail trade, on the other hand, has blinked.

BlockFi reports that its customers have been net sellers since even before Powell’s speech a week ago.

It won’t take long to find out which camp is right – the launch date for the merger is next Tuesday, September 6th.

3. Former founders raise fresh funds

In another sign of institutional bullishness for the crypto space, two former founders have raised $227 million for their new respective crypto funds.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s VC firm Seven Seven Six, which has managed $750 million across 3 funds since 2020, has just launched its first crypto-focused fund, Kryptos.

The new fund’s mindset and plan for the newly raised $177 million can be summed up by founder Holloway:

“It’s on sale. Everything is for sale.”

Meanwhile, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal just raised $50 million for his new fund, Symbolic Capital.

The Web3 fund will invest in early-stage companies and consumer-facing decentralized apps, while offering consultancy, recruitment, PR, marketing and audit services to its portfolio companies.

I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times, I’ll say it again: builders build!