Apes in court

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. The Pokémon NFT game is fake. The website looks realistic, only to confuse legit Pokémon fans. On clicking the ‘Play on PC’ button, a remote control software will be installed on your device. It looks too real, but don’t fall for it.

The markets were cautious. Bitcoin was at $17,400 and Ethereum traded at ~$1,330 levels. Nasdaq rose in early trade. Back home, Sensex and Nifty ended flat.

BTC Whales Are Back

After a lull, Bitcoin whales are finally back in action. Over the past five days, whales bought more than 20,000 BTC. That’s a possible reason why Bitcoin has gained over 3% in the past week.

A whale boostWhales holding 1,000-10,000 BTC are in accumulation mode. In total, they hold 4.57 million BTC which is almost 24% of the total supply. This comes as relief amidst reports of “whale fatigue”. What the new data means is that:

• Whales haven’t given up on BTC

• BTC’s bear run may be over (lol)

While the price may fluctuate in the short term, the rock-bottom levels can soon become history. Hopefully.

Will this last?Bitcoin’s crossed $17,000 and has largely stayed stable. But the token needs more than just whale activity to move with the bulls. If dormant addresses awaken and buy additional BTC, the token can hold on the ~$17,500 levels.

If BTC clutches on to this price, the next phase of recovery at $18,000 is a possibility.

Meanwhile…While we are on Bitcoin, BTC futures are an outlier. The three-month BTC futures listed on CME are trading slightly higher than spot BTC. Investors bought $241 million worth Bitcoin futures ETFs between January and November 2022.

FYI Spot prices refer to the current BTC prices while futures speculate BTC’s future price.

Did Yuga Open A Pandora’s Box?

Yuga Labs sued artist Ryder Ripps for copying its Bored Apes NFTs. What started as a trademark lawsuit has ballooned into an entirely new animal. Now the court has ordered Bored Apes’ co-creators Wylie Aronow and Greg Solano to testify.

ICYMI Ripps has been chasing Bored Apes for almost a year. He claimed that the NFTs pandered to neo-Nazis and people on the far-right. Then he went a step ahead and sold a copycat collection of 10,000 Bored Ape NFTs. Yuga sued him soon after.

At whose loss?It will get messy for Bored Apes. Its co-founders will have to justify the Ape creations and what exactly makes them unique. This may lead to more disclosures and that will make Yuga Labs very uncomfortable.

Elon’s Twitter Hates Doge

Remember the Twitter Coins project? We now have some more deets on it. And the TL;DR is: Elon hasn’t put crypto or blockchain as part of the plan.

What is new, then?Tech bloggers Jane Manchun Wong and Nima Owji, who first leaked the Twitter Coin design in early December, have found some new stuff. It seems like an in-app currency to support creators.

Buying this Twitter digital currency will be enabled through fiat currency using Stripe.

There is a link to Twitter Awards, which are words of appreciation you will be able to send to Twitter content creators. Awards are words like “Mind Blown,” “Bravo,” “Superlike,” that will be allotted a value in Twitter Coins. Sounds a little like Reddit.

So is it goodbye to crypto from Twitter?It’s a never say never situation here. Elon Musk has never really said he is moving away from crypto. In a December 4 Twitter Spaces event, he said he was still interested in integrating crypto with the social media platform. So there’s hope. But not from Twitter Coins.

Apple’s Metaverse Has A “Reality Pro”

Apple’s mixed reality headset plans will be revealed in the spring. Actual devices will begin shipping by fall 2023.

What’s the big deal?It’s taken them seven years and given Apple’s history of disrupting the product landscape, excitement is expected. Apple has given a glimpse of its mixed, virtual, and augmented reality efforts on iOS and iPadOS, its iPhone and iPad operating systems.

The software enables companies and developers to build cool features. Stuff that lets users do anything from trying on glasses to model furniture purchases in their personal spaces.

Competition much?It’s tempting to say this will be. Meta’s virtual reality headset, Microsoft’s HoloLens, everything is competition. But Apple’s headset is different. Or so is the belief. Because mixed reality augments a user’s environment. It doesn’t replace it entirely with a computer-generated view. Well, let’s see how fun it is.

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