Cosmos 2.0

Welcome back everybody. It’s been another exciting week in crypto and we’re pleased to bring you the next edition of The Blockchain Review. With the predictable build up to the FOMC meeting all eyes were once again on what Jerome Powell had to say. There’ve also been further mainstream adoption signals and this week it’s the Polygon Matic community which is particularly happy.

The FED interest rate hike came in at 75bps as was expected and Chairman Jerome Powells press conference and comments afterwards ended up spooking the markets a little. The message was clear- their prime concern is getting inflation under control and they’re not worried about over tightening the markets because they have tools like quantitative easing (aka. money printing) to get it going again. So there’s no indication of a policy pivot yet.

Crypto markets have held up comparatively well so far though which is great news. There’s been a lot of discussion around Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter and what this could translate into for the crypto industry and mainstream adoption. Dogecoin isn’t the only altcoin which is outperforming the general crypto market with signs of mainstream adoption either.

Polygon Matic had a flurry of good news. Meta (formerly Facebook) announced Instagram will soon allow users to mint, buy and sell NFTs through an in-app toolkit. These NFTs will live on the Polygon PoS blockchain. The Digital Collectibles feature first allowed users to display their NFTs and now in selected countries they will be able to mint them. If this is successful it’s likely the feature will be further rolled out across jurisdictions.

JPMorgan also began using Polygon PoS this week and executed their first live trade on a public blockchain as part of the Singapore Central Bank’s pilot program ‘Project Guardian’ which is looking into the use of DeFi in the banking sector. Other financial institutions such as DBSBank and Marketnode are also involved.

The trade used a modified version of the AAVE protocol to complete a cross-currency transaction between tokenized Japanese Yen and tokenized Singapore Dollar. In addition they conducted a simulated trade of tokenized government bonds.

JPMorgan mentioned they had wanted to use Ethereum but didn’t because of the high fees incurred in multistage transactions. They are still open to continue thier research on other blockchains too. Still, what a great week for the Polygon Matic community. It’s a further boost to the blockchain following their selection in the Disney Accelerator Program earlier in the summer, when they were the only crypto entity to be chosen. 

Mainstream adoption is fantastic and this is exactly what we need to eventually get the bull market going again. However, we’ll always reiterate there’s no way to know for sure when we’ve reached the bottom though. Good risk management is always the priority, with diversification a way to spread risk and strategies like dollar cost averaging a way to average an entry level.

We’ll always provide you with our research to help with your education. We’ll keep close track of the main developments and evolution of the niches in blockchain so that you get the best of the new knowledge. When you’ve finished reading your report then please remember to fill out the feedback form, your research is valued and we’re always open to suggestions.