TGH Weekly Newcast: April 11th - April 17th, 2022

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Crypto has had yet another week of “eh”, with markets hovering just under $2T for the total market cap. Regardless of the lackluster price movement, we’ve continued to see bullish developments in the space, alongside the continuous outflows of BTC and ETH from exchanges to personal wallets. We continue to make new lower lows on all exchanges, and the push to the downside for price seems to have lost steam. Nothing is ever for certain, but the fear in this range seems to be waning; with that, let’s dive into the news. 

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• BTC saw the largest exchange outflows in 5 weeks as a 25,878 BTC withdrawal was made this week, worth approximately $1.04B. There is also a whale that appears to be buying $1m in BTC a day, every day, regardless of price. 

https://finbold.com/bitcoin-sees-largest-exchange-outflow-in-5-weeks-will-the-price-finally-rise/

https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/22/04/26559648/this-bitcoin-whale-is-buying-1-million-worth-every-day-heres-how-he-does-it

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• The first Ethereum Mainnet Shadow Fork was performed this week, which is another major milestone on the way towards the Merge. This Shadow Fork acts as a stress test against syncing and state growth, and is a critical test in determining the timing of the actual Merge. It was also reported that the Merge will likely not be in June. However, this is not an actual delay, it was a mis-estimate of block difficulty, which is the variable that determines the Merge. 

https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2022/04/11/ethereums-first-mainnet-shadow-fork-goes-live-as-move-to-pos-continues/

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• Inflation has hit the highest level since 1981; this month the reported CPI is at 8.5%, up from the expected 8.4%, which is already ridiculous.  

https://www.fxstreet.com/amp/news/breaking-us-annual-cpi-inflation-rises-to-85-in-march-versus-84-expected-202204121230

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• Circle has recently announced a $400 million raise, alongside a partnership with Blackrock. Blackrock is now the soon to be custodian of the USD that backs USDC. Although a positive sign that institutions are taking crypto seriously, Blackrock becoming custodians over anything has never proven great for retail, we’re looking at you housing market. 

https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/141670/circle-announces-400-million-raise-partnership-with-blackrock

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•  Uniswap is now facing a class action lawsuit from an individual who doesn’t appear to know how Uniswap works. Nessa Risley, of North Carolina, is apparently trying to sue Uniswap for their “rampant fraud” on the platform, and the “thousands of scam tokens”, that I guess are the fault of the creators of Uniswap? If Nessa realized what Uniswap was, a permissionless automated market maker, she should have realized that the creators of Uniswap have no bearing over anything created or added as liquidity onto Uniswap. That’s the point of defi, anyone can make a protocol; it’s up to you as an individual to do the due diligence and determine if that protocol is actually worth investing in. 

https://thedefiant.io/uniswap-class-action/

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• Both Microstrategy and Terra have accumulated more BTC this week. Microstrategy purchased 4,167 BTC this last week and now holds a total of 129,218 BTC. Terra purchased $105m in BTC this week bringing their total up to 42,530 BTC, while also purchasing their $200M in AVAX that they announced the week prior. 

https://zycrypto.com/terras-bitcoin-cache-now-sits-at-over-42500-btc-as-it-chases-michael-saylors-microstrategy/

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TGH Picks News

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• XCAD has recently released their single sided staking pools! These new pools are variable for APR and lock times, but all of them you stake XCAD to get more XCAD. 

• APR: 30%/25%/40%
• Lockup: 90/120/180 Days
• Early Unstake: -30%
• Chain: Zilliqa ($ZIL)
• https://swap.xcadnetwork.com/pool-overview

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•  Wilder Worlds successfully completed their first Wilder Beasts sale! The first mint was the wolves genesis series, each 3d rendered and playable in-game. 3,333 wolves were available, most were minted via whitelisted Wilders, and the remaining ~450 in public were sold out in only 2 minutes. Huge congrats to Wilder Worlds, looking forward to both the wolf reveal and the next mints!

https://app.wilderworld.com/market

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•  Spintop has announced their second IDO! Spintop will be hosting the IDO for Creo Engine, a decentralized gaming platform whose release of the public testnet for Evermore Knights is extremely soon. You can find out more about Creo Engine and the Evermore Knights game through their twitter.  

https://twitter.com/SpintopNetwork/status/1515314659439558663?s=20&t=Pnd4CoQt9aQv2qjnSyxiKQ

https://twitter.com/creo_engine

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• The Unfettered has recently been listed on Spintop’s Gamepedia! This was a multi win for both The Unfettered and Spin, it’s always great to see two of our picks working in tandem!

https://spintop.network/gamepedia/games/unfettered

•  Orion has officially released their new Virtual Order Books (VOBs)! These VOBs are a first in the industry, and will help solidify Orion’s ability to offer a top of the line trading experience for users. For a deep dive into how VOBs will improve trading on Orion, check out this Youtube video that explains everything you need to know. 

http://youtu.be/TMBHNep4oNU?t=63

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•  DAO Maker announced their SHO winners for the step.app this week! Users who won the SHO had until the end of this week to send funds for their allocation. With the recent stunning performance by GMT, as well as the recent rise in FitFi, DAO Maker is offering a good opportunity here for those who may have missed the GMT run. 

https://t.me/daomaker_ann

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TGH Weekly Newscast: April 4th - 10th, 2022

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The market has definitely taken a cool off this week in terms of prices, but the fundamental news has stayed strong. BTC is holding around the $40K level while ETH is holding around the $3000 level, with the Bitcoin Dominance holding steady around 40-41%. Sentiment in the market seems to be pretty wishy-washy; lots of hyper-bulls saying this is the beginning of a super cycle, while a good chunk of bears also think we’ll see much lower valuations from here. It appears that we’re approaching a tipping point of sorts, but that’s up for you to decide; with that, let’s dive in.

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• Both ETH and BTC have been making lower local lows on exchanges across the board. ETH has definitely had greater outflows, but BTC’s outflows shouldn’t be ignored either. 

https://www.cryptoquant.com

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• Ethereum Layer 2’s have hit an ATH for TVL this week, having hit $7.4B! With the L2 space heating up, fees are dropping across the board, and user activity has continued to climb. After a slight drop in February, the total L2 gas usage once again hit an ATH in March.

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https://thedefiant.io/ethereum-the-merge-layer-2s-surging/

https://twitter.com/pseudotheos/status/1511117689720389637?s=20&t=Tj1mlBxTeY1MiMGdSDJ8Ww

https://l2beat.com/

https://l2fees.info/

• Chainlink has recently announced that they will be building an inflation index that will be censorship resistant. One of the primary issues with the Federal CPI values is that they aren’t based on public information, and it’s speculated that many variables important to consumer inflation aren’t even included. As such, Chainklink will be making a transparent, openly available inflation index, in order to more accurately show inflation at the consumer level. 

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/04/08/a-censorship-resistant-inflation-index-is-being-built-on-chainlink/

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• Only 2 million BTC are left to be mined, having officially hit the 19 millionth mined BTC last week. Although an important milestone on the issuance of BTC, just for the impressive fact that blocks have continued to produce for over a decade, it’s important to note that the decreased issuance long term is not counterbalanced by fees right now. It’s not an issue in the immediate term, but in the long term, if fees to miners don’t increase, security goes down as the BTC incentive to run a mining rig goes down. 

https://siqka.com/blog/only-2-million-bitcoins-remain-to-be-mined/

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• Elon Musk buys 9% of Twitter this week, in a rather spur of the moment decision. Musk bought $2.89B of Twitter shares, which have risen significantly since, and is now on the Board. He has since taken to Twitter and asked the community about all sorts of topics, from, “Do you think that Twitter accurately represents a space for free speech?”, to, “Do you want an edit button?” with one of the answers being “Yse”. 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/4/23009622/elon-musk-twitter-shares-free-speech

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1511143607385874434?s=20&t=EVcyxj7_c4FmQLYiKOvRfA

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• In related news, Tesla, Block, and Blockstream have all recently partnered to create a “Green BTC Mining” facility. This BTC mining facility will use solar energy to mine BTC with 3.8 megawatts of power. In comparison to an average coal factory which produces ~600 megawatts of power, the solar mining facility won’t be nearly as powerful. However, this is a great step forward in the move towards cleaner mining. 

https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-block-blockstream-bitcoin-solar-mining-plant-51649437307

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• Robinhood is planning to release a crypto wallet to its nearly 2m users. There hasn’t been a whole lot of information about the wallet, besides that it will be offered to “select participants”, and that they will be able to trade BTC, ETH, DOGE, and a few other assets. 

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/04/07/robinhood-releases-crypto-wallet-to-2m-users-plans-integration-with-bitcoin-lightning-network/

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• Over 3.7 million people have signed up for the Coinbase NFT waitlist. As cited by CroissantEth, via Glassnode on Twitter, this waitlist is nearly triple the amount of wallets that currently interact with NFTs. Although the market has experienced an overall pullback, it doesn’t appear that the interest in NFTs is waning, if anything it appears to be heating up. 

https://techstory.in/3701544-users-signed-up-on-the-coinbase-nft-waitlist/

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• Secretary Yellen had her first speech on cryptocurrency this week. Yellen was careful with her words, approaching from an angle that implied the USA should use blockchain as a technological advantage, and to not merely regulate it away. Overall pretty neutral speech, because she did mention that regulation was a necessary aspect of developing policy, but it wasn’t overtly anti-crypto. The mention of CBDC’s isn’t ideal either, but still quite the flip from last year, we’ll take it. 

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/04/07/treasury-secretary-janet-yellen-calls-crypto-transformative-in-wide-ranging-speech/

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• The Basel-based Bank for International Settlements, aka “The Central Bank of Central Banks”, has released a statement that the world may potentially be on the cusp of an “inflationary era”. To anyone who’s not lived under a rock, this was probably pretty obvious, but it’s a major statement coming from the BIS. With BTC having a hard cap of 21M, and ETH going deflationary post-merge, both are looking attractive relative to the dollar.  https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/05/world-may-be-on-cusp-of-new-inflationary-era-says-central-bank-chief

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• Additionally, the Bank of America has released a statement that we are likely heading towards a recession. In light of the macroeconomic picture, with rising inflation and the need for the Feds to raise interest rates, Michael Hartnett, BofA Chief Investment Strategist, believes that the “recession shock is coming”. In spite of this, in a note to clients, Michael thinks that cash, volatility, commodities, and crypto, will all outperform stocks and bonds. 

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/global-markets-flows-urgent-2022-04-08/

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• USDN, the stablecoin for the Waves protocol, depegged this week. Since the depeg to ~78 cents, the price of USDN has risen to 98.8 cents; however, the price of waves has dropped drastically by 50% on the week.

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/04/04/waves-usdn-stablecoin-loses-peg-drops-15-amid-manipulation-scare/

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• Lastly, Luna’s quest to add collateral for UST has continued with their recent purchase of $100M of AVAX. The Luna Foundation will be using said AVAX similarly to how it is using BTC, to further back and collateralize UST. Adding more assets to the reserve is aimed at reducing long term volatility, and to increase the collateralization of the ecosystem. 

https://news.bitcoin.com/luna-foundation-to-add-100-million-in-avax-to-the-ust-decentralized-forex-reserve/

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TGH Picks News

• Wilder Worlds has released their official game trailer! The entire trailer is shot in the Unreal 5 Engine, which is absolutely incredible. If you haven’t seen it yet, we highly recommend checking it out. 

https://twitter.com/WilderWorld/status/1512285896652984328?s=20&t=Tj1mlBxTeY1MiMGdSDJ8Ww

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• Spintop had their first IDO this week for Bountie Hunter! The sale sold out in less than 1 hour, and Bountie went live on April 8th! A huge congratulations to Spintop for this milestone, a successful IDO is always a great first step; we’re looking forward to the many IDO’s they have planned for the future. (A few are already locked in it sounds like.)

https://twitter.com/SpintopNetwork/status/1512104782135238656?t=xor4bAjbhssTecC4k0VRpA&s=19

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• Husl’s NFT marketplace V2 is officially live! After the successful land sale 2 weeks ago, the team has continued to buckle down to release the new marketplace, and it was well worth the wait. If you want to check it out, or maybe even mint your own music NFT, you can head here:  

https://appv2.thehusl.io/

https://twitter.com/The_HUSL/status/1511764350096138246?s=20&t=Tj1mlBxTeY1MiMGdSDJ8Ww

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• Stepn has had an absolute ripper of a run, launching at sub $10m marketcap, Stepn has risen all the way to over $1B marketcap in merely a month. With massive adoption for the real world use case (since literally everyone walks), the amount of hype around the protocol is so high that it actually started its own fork category. Stepn will also have an NFT sale directly on Binance this week, April 13th, 2022. The NFTs have been created via collaboration with ASICs, a Japanese behemoth in the running shoes industry. 

https://twitter.com/Stepnofficial/status/1510976433119797265?s=20&t=Tj1mlBxTeY1MiMGdSDJ8Ww

http://binance.com/en-IN/nft/event/stepn

• Kompete has officially let players who own more than 8m tokens try out the alpha game! There’s been really great feedback in the Telegram from the users, and the fact that other people are slowly getting added in to play is a brilliant sign. Haven’t seen a timeline on when new players will get to hop in just yet, but we’re on the right track. 

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TGH Weekly Newscast: March 28th - April 3rd, 2022

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With two prior weeks of intense bullishness, we’ve finally seen a bit of a cool off for the crypto market. Eth has recaptured 3400 after bouncing off 3250 due to the European KYC rules, and maintained bullish momentum. BTC has also managed to maintain bullish momentum at the 46K level after bouncing off of 45K from the same news midweek. Which news? Let’s dive right in.

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• Europe has officially announced that all transactions over 1000 Euros, sent to or from centralized exchanges, MUST include KYC for both the recipient and the sender. We at TGH think that this is a massive breach of both privacy and oversight, and is why we also support getting your own wallet. It’s a massively used saying, but, “Not your keys, not your coins.” The Centralized Exchanges will comply with European procedure, so if you don’t want to deal with KYC’ing every transaction over 1k, we recommend getting your own wallets. Cold storage is best, hot wallets are also for active trading, but obviously come with different risks.

https://decrypt.co/96539/eu-parliament-votes-impose-kyc-private-crypto-wallets

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• Grayscale has considered “Flipping the Script” on the SEC, pulling a real life, “No U”. If the SEC doesn’t approve the recent filing for a BTC ETF, which has been filed and updated numerous times over the past year, then Grayscale will simply sue them. This is potentially due to the fact that there isn’t a legitimate reason why there should NOT be a BTC ETF, and thus the SEC is inhibiting the free market and Grayscale will attack from that angle, but it’s up for debate. 

https://decrypt.co/96239/grayscale-considers-flipping-script-suing-sec-bitcoin-etf

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• According to a Quinnipiac Poll on March 24th, approximately 43% of USA citizens think that crypto will become a dominant economic force, while 35% think it’s a short term fad, and 22% didn’t offer an opinion. However, if you look at it by age range, the differences are dramatic. 55% of Americans between the ages of 18-29 think that crypto will become a dominant economic force, and 53% for anyone between 30-49! On the flip side, only 40% of those aged 50-65 think the same, and of those above 65? A meager 21%. 

https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3840&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axioswhatsnext&stream=science

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• The Ronin Bridge was hacked for a whopping $650m last week; ironically no one noticed until this week when a user tried to withdraw Eth through the bridge. This was caused not by a smart contract malfunction, but rather 5 of the 9 validators voted to approve the withdrawal of said money to an external address. How the 5 validators exposed their keys has yet to be published, all we know is that Sky Mavis was 4 of the 5 keys that were exposed, the other being the Axie DAO keys. So how did the hacker get ahold of said keys? Debatable, but it happened none-the-less. Ironically, the hacker then sent the funds to FTX, which is a KYC exchange. We’ll update in the future if this Eth ends up being reimbursed by FTX taking action, or if Axie will have to cover the losses. 

https://roninblockchain.substack.com/p/community-alert-ronin-validators?s=w

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• Saylor takes on a $205 million loan against his BTC that he already possesses in order to buy more BTC. Saylor’s long term bet of continually buying BTC does not appear to be stopping, as he’s repeatedly said he will continue to buy BTC until he no longer can.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/03/29/billionaire-saylors-microstrategy-takes-on-205-million-loan-to-buy-more-bitcoin-as-experts-eye-50000-price/?sh=40417f44685b

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• In similar news, Do Kwon has successfully purchased 30,727 BTC, worth approximately $1.4B, over the past 2 weeks. This BTC is meant to back UST as collateral, and Do Kwon plans to have 40% of UST collateral as BTC.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/terra-founder-reveals-what-will-happen-to-ust-if-bitcoin-price-crises

Terra BTC Treasury: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/bc1q9d4ywgfnd8h43da5tpcxcn6ajv590cg6d3tg6axemvljvt2k76zs50tv4q?page=1

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• The 1+ year HODL wave has reached All Time Highs at 64%. The last time we saw the 1+ year HODL wave at 64% was summer of 2020, right before we went on the parabolic rally to $60k. 

https://www.lookintobitcoin.com/charts/1-year-hodl-wave/

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• Circle (USDC) is becoming a subsidiary of BNY Mellon. Mellon will now act as the primary custodian for USDC, and Mellon is the oldest bank in the USA. Co-Founder and CEO of Circle, Jeremy Allaire, says that this partnership will be able to help further the bridge between traditional financial services and digital cryptographic ones. 

https://cryptopotato.com/americas-oldest-bank-to-become-primary-custodian-of-circles-usdc/

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• Binance signed a deal with the Grammy’s to be the primary partner this year. Yet another huge signing for crypto in the world of traditional entertainment. https://www.cityam.com/binance-signs-deal-to-partner-with-the-grammy-awards/

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• Biden has announced what has been called “The Billionaire Tax”. The proposal includes a tax on anyone with over $100 million dollars, and will also include “unrealized gains”. This has shocked the ecosystem, since taxing unrealized gains has quite literally never been done before. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/26/us/politics/biden-billionaires-minimum-tax.html

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• Metamask has now integrated Apply Pay! Presently, the functionality still runs through Wyre, but Apple has said they plan on creating direct connections in the future. With approximately 1 Billion users of the iPhone, this is a massive move forward for adoption in crypto. 

https://www.business2community.com/crypto-news/metamask-crypto-apple-pay-support-02463344#:~:text=The%20MetaMask%20v4.3.1%20update,commonly%20used%20to%20store%20NFTs.

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• Vietnam is the newest country that is diving into the realm of crypto. The Deputy PM has made calls to create a legal framework for crypto and Bitcoin. 

https://cointelegraph.com/news/vietnamese-deputy-pm-calls-for-building-legal-framework-for-digital-assets

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TGH Picks News

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• HUSL successfully completed their land sale! With 500 land plots available for sale, all 500 sold out within the first couple hours, and the community is super excited to move forward! The HUSL music marketplace is also going to be dropping this week, so make sure to keep an eye out there. 

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• Spintop has finally finished all of their public vesting unlocks! With the Spinstarter coming extremely soon, Spintop is ready to surge and show the market how big of a player they are in the Gamefi space already.

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https://twitter.com/SpintopNetwork/status/1510689580898521093?s=20&t=pheX8XGSOlPyaLfkl6r18w

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• Polygon has recently released the first ever Identity platform powered by Zero Knowledge proofs! This is a gamechanger in the space, and will allow increased privacy, alongside insane speeds, to decentralized digital identities. The idea is similar to Kilt’s digital ID system, and could lead the way towards building actual decentralized, private, social media platforms. 

https://blog.polygon.technology/four-way-polygon-id-will-impact-your-life/

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• Kompete has announced that holders will be able to access the gameplay soon! They’ve released that the first people to access gameplay will be holders of over 8M Kompete tokens. As time goes on, holders with less than 8M tokens will also be able to play, but the idea is to reward the earliest/largest believers in the game. 

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• The Unibright Baseledger is now live! Going live this last week, the Base ledger is the culmination of over 2 years of hard work! Here at TGH we’ve long been supporters of Unibright, and this recent development can’t be understated. With the activation of mainnet, Unibright will now have its entire own ecosystem running on Unibright itself, we couldn’t be more excited for their future. 

https://twitter.com/UnibrightIO/status/1508748878643974149?s=20&t=0zBBP3zVbsWT1WRWzt60cQ

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• Gamefi has launched the newest version of their platform! With this new release we see a LOT of major updates.

• Support 3 more networks and projects developed on them: Avalanche, Fantom, Opera, and Arbitrum One
• Upgrade GameFi Launchpad and Marketplace
• Present GameFi Earn feature in the sidebar
• Introduce GameFi Insight as an information center instead of GameFi.org 

https://gamefi.org/insight/gamefi-orgs-new-version-is-going-live-an-all-in-one-centre-for-gaming-world

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‍TGH Weekly Newscast: Week of 03/21/2022 - 03/27/2022

https://youtu.be/uRmRV5BDTpc

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• LUNA (DoKwon) claims purchase of $2b of BTC to back UST, so far 3 inflows of $125m have been seen. Long term DoKwon says he plans to buy $10B of BTC to back UST. (some speculation behind why DoKwon isn’t doing OTC, and why he would literally announce the purchase of such a large quantity and market buy said BTC; it’s pretty up for speculation) (regardless of speculation why, onchain data shows that the Luna Foundation contains $1.1B in BTC)

https://news.bitcoin.com/luna-foundations-bitcoin-reserve-wallet-now-holds-1-1-billion-in-btc/

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• ETH and BTC both again reaching lower relative lows on exchange quantities; source Crytoquant https://cryptoquant.com/asset/eth/chart/exchange-flows/exchange-reserve?exchange=all_exchange&window=HOUR&sma=0&ema=0&priceScale=log&metricScale=log&chartStyle=line https://cryptoquant.com/asset/btc/chart/exchange-flows/exchange-reserve?exchange=all_exchange&window=HOUR&sma=0&ema=0&priceScale=linear&metricScale=linear&chartStyle=line

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Industry News

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• Yellen - positive comments on crypto, says that it can be rationally regulated to allow for growth and development - watch between 5-10 mins of this for breakdown. Saylor smashes it as usual 

https://youtu.be/HHbxPpEHEZk

However, Biden is also pushing for an “ECash” proposal that would essentially create a CBDC, not ideal.

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• Majority of US Senators are pro-crypto according to a recent set of Tweets and sentiment in the chambers https://coingape.com/crypto-seeing-bipartisan-support-in-the-u-s-skybridge-director-says/

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• Exon mining BTC with flare gas

https://cointelegraph.com/news/exxon-mobil-is-using-excess-natural-gas-to-power-crypto-mining-report

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•  NFL teams now allowed crypto sponsorships, however teams are not allowed to promote specific tokens (i.e. can’t shill and tweet out stuff outside of just having the sponsorship on the jersey or as a brand sponsorship)

https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/22/22991604/nfl-teams-blockchain-nft-crypto-tokens-sponsors-fan-banned#:~:text=The%20National%20Football%20League%20will,to%20a%20report%20from%20CNBC.

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• Crypto.com sponsoring World Cup and also Oscar’s https://fortune.com/2022/03/23/crypto-com-fifa-world-cup-sponsor-crypto-companies-advertising-lakers-76ers/

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• Ray Dalio bridgewater investing in crypto funds 

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/21/ray-dalios-bridgewater-investing-in-crypto-fund-sources/

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• Crypto/Digital assets advertised on Goldman Sachs website (landing page)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-03-24/goldman-s-extends-its-crypto-tentacles-in-answer-to-wall-street-fomo

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• Blackrock ($10T AUM) is considering offering crypto services to its investors 

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/24/blackrocks-fink-says-ukraine-war-could-accelerate-crypto-adoption-report/

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• Google Chrome issues an emergency update to all users. If you have not done so, be sure to update to the latest version. Do so by going to the 3 little dots in the top, going to Help, then About Google Chrome. If there is an update available, please do so. If you are already on Update 99.0.4844.84, you don’t need to do anything

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2022/03/26/google-confirms-emergency-security-update-for-32-billion-chrome-users-attacks-underway/

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• Coinbase will be monitoring transactions, and are now requiring the information of where money is being sent to; this affects users in Singapore, Japan, and Canada. 

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/25/coinbase-to-require-recipient-information-for-crypto-transfers-from-users-in-canada-singapore-and-japan/#:~:text=For%20users%20in%20Singapore%2C%20all,Coinbase%20citing%20local%20Singaporean%20regulations.

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• Gamestop’s NFT marketplace has officially gone live on Loopring

https://wallstreetpit.com/116822-gamestops-nft-marketplace-goes-live/

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Government News

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• Malaysian Ministry has officially proposed to make cryptocurrency legal tender https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-21/malaysian-ministry-proposes-legal-tender-of-crypto-currency

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• Israeli Bank Leumi to offer cryptocurrency services, one of the largest banks in Israel

https://timestabloid.com/u-s-state-florida-set-to-accept-bitcoin-and-cryptos-for-tax-payment/

• Russian Prime Minister Mishustin has called for crypto integration into the economy

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2022/03/26/google-confirms-emergency-security-update-for-32-billion-chrome-users-attacks-underway/

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• The US state of Florida is going to be able to accept Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as tax payments. Additionally, the city of Rio de Janeiro will also be accepting cryptocurrency as tax payments. 

https://timestabloid.com/u-s-state-florida-set-to-accept-bitcoin-and-cryptos-for-tax-payment/

https://cryptopotato.com/rio-de-janeiro-to-accept-cryptocurrency-payments-for-taxes-report/

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• Demand for El Salvador BTC bonds is $500m oversubscribed 

https://dailyhodl.com/2022/03/23/demand-for-el-salvadors-bitcoin-btc-bonds-oversubscribed-by-500000000-report/

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TGH Picks Updates

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• Gamefi has recently released two big updates. The first being the release of their NFT marketplace https://twitter.com/GameFi_Official/status/1507658626718060549 and the second being the release of their fixed and variable staking pools! Aka Gamefi Earn! https://twitter.com/GameFi_Official/status/1507658626718060549 By locking up Gafi for 90 days, you will be able to earn approximately 7% of apy over that time period. This is the first staking pool available and more are sure to be on the way.

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• Ferrum has officially partnered with Crypto.com! Crypto.com has now joined the Iron Alliance, and you can check out info about Ferrum on the crypto.com website here https://crypto.com/price/ferrum-network

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• Reminder that the Husl land sale goes live on the 31st of March, this Thursday. 2500 tokens per plot, unless you provided HUSL/PYR liquidity last month, in which case you are simultaneously discounted to 1500 HUSL, and you get whitelisted guaranteed. 

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• Wilder World has done their final giveaway for the rarest pet available, the Phoenix! The art is absolutely incredible, and each pet is also a one of its kind, no two pets are the same. https://twitter.com/WilderWorld/status/1506450665152806918?s=20&t=YqSCPrPeGJ4mAweeH2ynNg

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• The Unfettered continue to release gameplay footage and concept art, another extremely clean game that we’re super excited to play. Has the vibes of Dark Souls, or Elden Ring for everyone who’s binging that right now. https://twitter.com/unfetteredgame/status/1507256471611920428?s=20&t=YqSCPrPeGJ4mAweeH2ynNg

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• Spintop has announced that the Spinstarter will be going live soon! If you hold 1k or more Spin you’ll be able to participate, so keep an eye out for the announcement of their first IDO https://twitter.com/SpintopNetwork/status/1508451599244533769?s=20&t=HiHFDcfEvoGiJL3GGjJbgQ
• Meme of the week https://twitter.com/c0rellian/status/1508211292624011272?t=NYqmju0IeCB_92adLEZBPg&s=19

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The TGH Weekly News Cast Updates: Week of March 14th - March 20th, 2022

https://youtu.be/_PI3wZo-VoA

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• March 14th, the EU voted against the ban on POW cryptocurrencies
• March 15th marked the Ethereum Kiln Testnet Merge, which successfully produced blocks post merge. Good indicator of a true merge before end of Q2 as stated by the Consensys team (Eth2, but the name changed). ETH merge = Triple Halvening = 90% reduction in ETH emissions, and 99.9% reduction in environmental emissions
• Prysm has some bugs, but they were quickly fixed, and also shows why the multi-client ecosystem of eth is so important
• 2M Eth officially burned through EIP-1559
• Microsoft invested in Consensys with a $450m funding round, raising the total valuation to $7B (will be purchasing eth with that $450m)
• Vitalik named the "Prince of Crypto" by the Times Magazine
• Heavy movement of funds off exchanges (BTC and ETH), with some of the largest USDT dominance in recent history (marked similar other market bottoms), the lowest BTC quantity on exchanges since 2019, and lowest ETH quantity on exchanges since 2018 
• Binance given the green light by Dubai, receiving a Specialist License from their Digital Assets Reg. Authority
• Ukraine officially legalizes the crypto sector amidst over $100m in crypto donations since Russia has invaded
• Interest rates raised by 25 Basis Points to reach 0.50% Interest, Fed predicts up to 7 more rate hikes, but Inflation is still sitting at 7.9%, a nearly 40 year high; Feds claim they want to raise interest more quickly in order to lower the balance sheet and inflation targets
• Total Transfer Volume in Loss made another relative HH compared to prior price lows, historically indicative of market bottoms
• APES token listed directly on Coinbase, Binance, and numerous other exchanges; included an airdrop to holders of the BAYC community (and specific derivatives holders)

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The news was fairly heavy on Eth this week, but with the major Kiln Testnet Merge being a success, it's not entirely surprising. We also saw a massive amount of Eth added to the staking contract, a record 200k Eth in one day after the successful Kiln merge. 

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Both BTC and ETH have weekly bullish engulfing candles, which historically have been great reversal signs after a downtrend. Led by Eth, the Merge could provide the catalyst for the Flippening. 

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Now that we've gotten the main news covered, let's take a look at some of TGH's Top Picks. At TGH we realize the reality that for people just starting off, or if you just don't have a large balance, entering only high caps isn't nearly as efficient for trying to build up a portfolio. That's what we advocate to not only have high caps, but to enter lower market cap protocols that have sound fundamentals. 

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TGH Picks News

• SAND partners with HSBC ($3T AUM) this is the first global bank to enter the metaverse 
• Husl releases their land sale for 2500 HUSL tokens per plot, will happen on March 30th
• Kompete applied and was accepted to the Playstation marketplace, and all token holders will have access to the game beta
• WILD doing weekly giveaways of Pets within the Wildverse, great opportunity to get early access to some rare items
• The Spintop podcast was this week and recently released, be sure to check in to hear about all the development behind the scenes at our Youtube (we would obviously provide links)
• DragonWar Gleam campaign will have finished up over the weekend, with the IDO approaching quickly
• Mention again the 4 Project Europa Whitelist spots being up for grabs
• L2 race is picking up with fees under 50 cents across the board
• Gold Fever has released their Mid-March Developers update, and have also release a few more teasers of the game play and the NFT lootbox interface 

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Overall, it's been a super busy week and this didn't cover it all, but despite the market still feeling shaky, we’re cautiously optimistic. 

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The crypto economy is about to grow!

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‍Mastercard is preparing to make a huge announcement allowing any of its customers and banks on its payments network to incorporate crypto into their assets. This will include Bitcoin wallets, credit and debit cards that earn rewards in Crypto and digital assets, plus loyalty programs where airline or hotel points can be converted into bitcoin.

To do so, the payments network is working with Bakkt, the crypto firm recently spun off by Intercontinental Exchange, which will be the behind-the-scenes provider of custodial services for those who sign up, executives at the two firms told CNBC.

"We want to offer all of our partners the ability to more easily add crypto services to whatever it is they're doing," Sherri Haymond, Mastercard's executive vice president of digital partnerships, said in an interview. "Our partners, be they banks, fintechs or merchants, can offer their customers the ability to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrency through an integration with the Baktt platform."

The announcement could lead to a significant expansion in the ways regular Americans earn and spend bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Mastercard runs one of the dominant global payments networks along with Visa and has relationships with more than 20,000 financial institutions around the world. There are 2.8 billion Mastercards in use, according to the company.

Interest in bitcoin has remained high as the original cryptocurrency surged this year, hitting a record price above $60,000 this month. U.S. regulators have allowed the fund industry to offer a bitcoin-linked ETF for the first time this month, while big institutional investors like bond giant Pimco have said they were considering trading crypto.

That interest has led Mastercard clients to ask the network for help in providing crypto services, according to Haymond. That way, banks can keep customers on their own platforms rather than seeing dollars migrate to crypto exchanges, she said. Shares of Bakkt, which began trading as a public company last week, surged an incredible 234% on the news. Mastercard and Bakkt were set announce their partnership later Monday at the annual Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas.

Besides providing crypto wallets and credit cards for banks, the partnership means that even merchants and restaurants can begin to offer rewards in bitcoin instead of traditional points, according to Bakkt CEO Gavin Michael. Existing points can be converted into crypto at rates set by the participating companies, giving customers the ability to earn a yield, he said.

"We're lowering the barriers to entry, allowing people to take something like your rewards points and trade them into crypto," Michael said in an interview. "It's an easy way to get going because you're not using cash, you're putting something that's an idle asset sitting on your balance sheet, and we're allowing you to put in to work."

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The Ultimate Guide To Crypto By The Gem Hunters

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Starting with a basic understanding of cryptocurrencies

To get things rolling , before we dig in let’s make sure we've got some basic understanding in regards to what cryptocurrencies actually are. A cryptocurrency is a unique, virtual medium for exchanging capital. They use unique cryptographical functions and blockchain technology to conduct online transactions, securely and fast. Cryptocurrencies are completely decentralized, they’re not controlled by any one individiual and in theory they’re immune to government control.

Individuals can exchange cryptocurrencies online with very few (if any) processing fees. This advantage makes them much more appealing than traditional currencies and financial institutions for exchanges. There's  lots of benefits to trading cryptocurrencies. Here are some of the primary reasons why people chooe to invest or trade crypto:

USER AUTONOMY: Digital currencies grant users increased autonomy over their own funds, much more than fiat currencies. Users are also able to control how they spend their money without dealing with an intermediary authority like a bank or government.

SECURITY: Exchanges are made with both public and private keys. This approach keeps things secure and also helps to keep transfer fees low.

TRANSPARENCY: Blockchain technology involves an online ledger that can be sent to all devices. This online ledger makes it easy to verify transactions and encourages all users to be honest.

DISCRETION: Purchases can be discrete. User can voluntarily publishes their  transactions, but purchases are never associated with personal identity, much like cash-only purchases, and cannot easily be traced back to the user.

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ACCESSIBILITY: Because users are able to send and receive using only a smartphone or computer, crypto is theoretically available to populations of users without access to traditional banking systems, credit cards and other methods of payment.

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Storing and Securing Cryptocurrencies

Now that we have some understanding what cryptocurrencies are all about, lets look at how we can safely store our assets using wallets. Its important that we take this seriously and do our homework as keeping our crypto safe should be one of the main priorities for any investor or trader because it is essential to have your crypto wallet before buying any cryptocurrencies. You will need to store your coins within your secure personal wallets. Its not reccomended that investors leave their crypto on exchanges, although they allow users to hold purchased coins within assigned exchange wallets, it’s recommended that you withdraw your crypto and hold them in private wallets. This protects you and your investments from hackers and theft. It is also worth noting that wallet compatibility also needs to be considered. Some crypto wallets to choose from include but are not limited to:

• Coinbase Wallet

• Exodus Wallet

• Jaxx Liberty Wallet

• KeepKey Wallet

• Guarda Wallet

• Nano ledger

• Myetherwallet

• Trust wallet

• Metamask

Before you dive in head first and select a wallet, theirs a few important things to note, which will help you stay on the safe side of crypto:

Only use wallets from a legit source: A growing number of wallets from less reputable sources that offer attractive features are malware in disguise. Nathan Wenzler, senior director of cybersecurity at Moss Adams has identified a number of these landmines which can result in the entire loss of your crypto portfolio.

Cold wallets are reccomened:

Moving onto a basic understanding of Investing and Trading

There is a difference between investing and trading. Investing entails building wealth gradually over an extended period of time through the buying and holding of currencies and stocks. Trading, on the other hand, involves more frequent buying and selling of currencies or stocks, with the goal of generating faster returns. When investing, the currency or stock is often held for a long period of time in contrast to trading, which is  more frequent and can be upto multiple times a day.

For small, retail investors, investing over an extended period of time is far more suitable than trading, because trading involves a near constant monitoring of the currency or stock. Meaning its much more time consuming and will need a lot more effort, exposure to more elements of risk, emotion and a larger stack of capital is also required to trade sufficiently to make the risk to reward worthwhile. Trading also requires far more experience, knowledge and confidence.

Taking the time to understand some basic principles of trading and investing, how the markets work and what direction suits your own circumstances and minset is important. We can guarantee that most new investors and traders are desperate to make their first trades once they have learnt how buy their first cryptocurrency, we’ve all been their and know that feeling. Because its our feelings and emotions that drive us to make decisions and most likely as a new investor or trader you will make the wrong decisions. Now that’s not in all a bad thing because you learn from your mistakes and there is no better way to learn how to invest and trade than by making mistakes, which are inevitably unavoidable.

But by having some understanding of basic investing, trading and market principles before you start will limit those first nasty, costly mistakes and blunt the learning curve allowing newbies to survive the initial baptism by fire. By having some knowledge before you proceed will also assist in understanding why and how mistakes were made and will give new investors and traders a quicker and less costly learning process.

Do you know the basics of blockchain technology and Bitcoin? Do you understand  how exchanges, wallets, private keys,  public keys and Authenticators work?

If you can’t answer these basic questions, you’ll be in trouble quick. So Take some time to prepare yourself, it’s essential to learn the basics. You can navigate our website and find plenty of information to help you get started. But you will defiantly need to find information from multiple sources as this space is vast and now is the time that you’ll start get a clear picture if this is for you or not.

Researching, reading and educating yourself in the crypto space is by far the most important process your going to undertake. So if your too impatient to simply have or take time to read and learn, then you will stack the odds against yourself and the chances of failing will be much higher. Just as the chances of succeeding will be much higher if you prepare yourself with the correct learning and understanding of the space before diving in.

Many experienced investors have been trading, reading, networking, researching and growing their wealth of knowledge consistently, leading to huge amounts of experience. Not only have they chose to dedicate time to learning and understanding to improve their chances of success. But they have used their time management skills wisely to optimise the time they have and fully dedicated themselves to reaching their targets and goals. Not only do they claw as much time into the process as they can, but the time they do dedicate is laser focused with no distractions.

Tip: Many more experienced Investors and especially traders keep themselves very fit physically and mentally meaning they have strict diets and routines to suit their chosen work loads. They don’t indulge in fast food, alcohol or drugs and limit or completly cut out social media, so as to claw back as much time into perfecting their time and focus to investing and trading. So if you think this is going to be a walk in the park, take a look around at what your going up against, because if your not prepared, in top shape, physically and mentally, you will get steamrolled by people who are.

Take action

Every day, potential investors miss out because they aren’t confident about how to get started and this is normal because of course with a lack of experience a lack of confidence is only to be expected. It wouldn’t be normal for someone to be confident on a subject in which they have no experience in. Even experienced investors miss out on  opportunities that could bring significant profits simply from not staying active and taking action. But why are a lot of new investors lacking confidence in general? It could be mainly due to being scared to make mistakes, but what they don’t understand is, that the only way to learn, is by making those mistakes, especially in crypto!

We recommend during the early stages of investing and trading, where most of the mistakes will take place, that smaller amounts of capital are used to control and limit the damage that all the mistakes will make, not only on peoples wallets, but on their mind sets. This is where most people fail, because they have not approached the task at hand with the right mindset and havnt done the basic research and tried to get an understanding of the market or how crypto works. This is exactly where most people get burnt out mentally due to huge losses from stupid mistakes that could have been either avoided or made far less serious from having done some basic research to understand the task at hand. limiting the damage of the mistakes will protect your capital from running dry and keep a balanced mindset that is able to carry on and conquer the task at hand. At this stage we reccomend people take their time to fully understand the space and by taking action and making mistakes is the only way its going to happen.

Tip: Taking Action will result in experience over the course of time and experience will result in better decision making. In fact the experience is all about learning from the mistakes you make. So not only should people not be afraid to make mistakes, but they should aim to adjust their mindsets so as to not be scared to make mistakes, but to embrace and own those mistakes and most importantly, learn from them! limiting the damage of the mistakes will protect your capital from running dry and keep a balanced mindset that is able to carry on and conquer the task at hand.

Formulise investment strategies that suit you

Now that you have spent some time learning and getting an understanding of the space, you can start to formulise and adopt strategies that you feel will suit you, this once again in many cirumstances is only attainable by trial and error and we all know practice makes perfect, so keep that capital on a leash for now, so it can be fully utizlized when you actually have a better idea what you're doing! We are going to break this section into two parts starting with investing.

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The best thing about investment strategies is that they’re flexible. If you choose one and it doesn’t suit your risk tolerance or schedule, you can certainly make changes. But try to make sure you try to fully utilize each strategy by taking the time to understand the characteristics of each and how they suit you're budget, schedule and skill. You'lll be in a far better position to choose one that’s right for you over the long term without the need to incur the expense of changing back and forth without making any progress atall.

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Once you've found a solid investment plan its a good idea to start tracking your investments using a portfolio manager or tracker, we've got multiple templates at TGH so feel free to reach out for a free fully customizable excel template which you can change to tender your own investment requirements. We reccomend that your portfolio should only consist a maximum of 10-15 coins and tokens, any more and you'll struggle to keep track of all the prices, updates, announcements and over time you'll end up losing out on potential returns. We're talking about been as effecient and effective as possible, using the finite amount of time and resources we have at our disposal. Over time you'll start to find a balance as the crypto game becomes second nature, youll become quicker, sharper and then you'll be able to take on more investments and trades. So try starting with 5 investments and learn to track all the news, announcements, updates, as well as follow the twitter accounts closely and join the communities. Most newbies make the mistake of biting off more than they can chew and end up never finding their potential because they got swamped, then burnt out. If you think tracking investments effeciently is an easy practice, then simply try consistently tracking 5 projects for a month, using the above method, we think youll have a shock. Now imagine tracking 15 or even 20, some new investors have over 30 coins and end up forgetting what they bought, at what price, in which wallet, they miss the rallys and end up either selling on consolidation periods or even worse forgetting all together.

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So once again its really important to try to understand, how to play the game from a strong position, then slowly putting yourself into more venrable, stressful situations and growing with them at a rate you can actually sustain, the difference between the people who make it in crypto and the people who dont is exactly this. The people who made it, understood how to understand the game, where as the people who didnt make it, got burnt out or broke because they didnt understand what they were getting into. These lessons may seem obvious, but if you truly focus and try to employ what we have spoke about in this article, then we guarentee you will be around long term.

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Lastly we would like to stress the importance of networking and communicating with others who are in a similar situation, or more advanced than you. Theres an old saying "if you put 6 retards in a room and join them, in time you'll be the seventh". Its really important to network with the right people, not just in crypto but in any industry or areas of interest, our ideas and thoughts are influenced by others, so been around smart, experienced, clued up individuals is one of the most important aspects to progress in any area, but especially crypto! This is one of the fundemental reasons why we created the TGH community, to share ideas and grow with like minded individuals, so feel free to join us and make the most of our free community, to ask, share and learn with others who are on the same journey, we hope this article helped.

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Kind regards

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The TGH team.

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Defi (Decentralized finance) has taken the blockchain and crypto industries by storm over the last few years, but do most blockchain and crypto users even understand what DeFi is? We hope to give an easy to understand explination on what DeFi is and why its currently taking the blockchain and crypto space by storm!

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Decentralized Finance (also referred to as DeFi) is a blockchain-based form of finance that does'nt rely on central financial intermediaries such as brokers, exchanges or banks to handle traditional financial instruments and instead utilizes smart contracts on the blockchain. DeFi platforms allow people to lend or borrow funds from others, speculate on price movements on assets using derivatives, prediction markets, trade, insure, earn interest in savings with decentralized protocols. Which has grown exponentially since 2018, we will now go on to explain just how much DeFi has grown since 2018 and why we expect it to continue its parabolic growth!

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The total DeFi market cap is currently 150 billion, in 2018 the market cap was a mere 100 million. Thats a 1000x rise in 3 years! But heres the best part .... from 2019-2020 it doubled growing from 5.5 billion in January 2019 to 10 billion in January 2020. From 2020-2021 it tripled gaining even more ground, as we saw it increase from 10 billion in to 30 billion & this year it has already quadrupled reaching a staggering 150 billion in TVL value, at its current exponential growth rate we expect to see the DeFi sector reach a staggering 750 billion by january 2023!

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But why is the DeFi sector growing so rapidly? What are some of the causes leading retail, instutional and corperate investors piling their capital into decentralized protocols? Well its simple, as governments continue to print fake money and support a broken financial system - which is currently valued 450 trillion dollars in fiat assets (real estate not included) hyper inflation has already kicked in, leading to more demand for #Defi solutions, to recover retail savings, as well as instutional and corperate balance seets which have seen sharp declines in value due to the inflation of fikat money.

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Jan 2018 – 100 million  

Jan 2019 – 5.5 billion

JAN  2020 – 10 billion

Jan 2021 – 30 billion

Current - 150 billion

Jan 2022 – 180 billion (Projected value)

Jan 2023 - 750 billion (projected value)

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We expect more and more demand will start to appear as retail investors, institutions, corperations and now even banks start to utilize DeFi. We have already seen a paradigm shift in the markets, now we expect the banking industry will follow, as it does the DeFi sector will continue to grow more rapidly!

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As the crypto world focuses on the Bitcoin rally and other trending cryptocurrencies, another type of digital asset has been silently gaining traction in the background. A lot of investors are scratching their heads over the new trend which is  NFT's (non‑fungible tokens) and before we move on, anyone dismissing this as a false craze or worthless punt, dont be fooled these things can demand some serious value!

It’s worth noting that non‑fungible digital assets have existed for years, in the form of domain names, for example, if you are seeking a popular domain name that someone else has, then it becomes a valuable asset! Non Fungible Token is really an indvidually unique blockchain token that  gives the wallet holder exclusive ownership of that asset! unlike LINK for example where every token is basically the same and you only care about the quantity, every NFT is unique in itself, so when people publish art as an NFT that means that specfiic piece is only owned by you!

Brandon Smith CEO of BONDLY explained in detail what value NFT's have and may have in the future, during a recent TGH AMA session!

"the thing is Art and even Digital Lands are just the start to this revolution, because its easy to comprehend your CryptoKitty being an NFT, but within 9 months NFT could be running your whole online profile! Instead of an NFT being an Item an NFT becomes your digitial identity, so your youtube account you use an NFT to login rather than a simple username and password. Why does this matter?  Because theres a HUGE HUGE market that's forming around digital business  sales (outside of crypto) for things like Instagram and Youtube accounts.

So for example how many of you know this insta account : https://www.instagram.com/daquan/  Well it was recently sold for a huge amount to a major media company, if you go on the page you might thing "ok this is just stolen memes, whats the big deal" well to Warner media it was $110m of a big deal! My partner Harry , Bondly COO , and I have been buying and selling digital businesses like Daquan over the past 2 years and we know this market is over $74B right now! but what many don't realize is that trading these as assets is completely possible with NFT so NFT would be the trustless way to transfer ownership of Daquan to another party and this is coming in the next 9 months"

Lots of usecases have arisen so far and they’re even being touted as the future of the gaming industry, the art industry, and even in some cases the real estate business! But what are they? What can they be used for, how do they work, and what are some of the best known projects in the industry today? To give some prespective Companies like The Sandbox are starting to push boundaries with their LAND sale which is coming out soon.  Many of the original properties they had listed for pennies are now valued at $20k+++"

So as seen above, lots of exciting use cases for non‑fungible tokens (NFTs) are cropping up all the time, especially now as this is a hot topic, you will find many projects utilizing them and trying to take advantage of the use case and in some cases you may find projects even just trying to take advantage of the hype, so tread carefully as per usual and do your due diligence!

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How to read Etherscan contracts by The Gem Hunters

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Many users in the Defi space have fallen victim to exploits used within Token Contracts that in turn lead to them losing a lot of money. This is most commonly seen on Uniswap, due to anyone being allowed to launch a Contract, as long as they have the technical know how and the Ethereum to afford it. Unfortunately, this leads to the creation of many Contracts that are malicious in nature.

Thankfully, a vast majority of scammers can be identified by using Etherscan. The following steps can be used to determine whether or not a Contract is malicious. In order to show the difference between a good contract and a bad one, this tutorial will first give an example of what a clean contract looks like, and then malicious examples will be given.

CLEAN CONTRACT EXAMPLE:

1. Go to etherscan.io

2. Enter the Contract Address into the search bar (double check you have the correct address)

2a. if you do not know the Contract Address, you can obtain it through Dextools, CMC, or CG

2b. remember that the Token Address page and the Contract Address page are different,  make sure to be on the Contract Address page.

Below is an example of the Token Address page for Bondly:

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This is an example of the Contract Address page for Bondly (the address highlighted in yellow above):

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3. Click on the Contract button highlighted in yellow above

4. Select Read Contract as shown below:

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5. You now have access to read the contract functions that are available, they should look like this:

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What to do now?

This is the part where it gets tricky, because there are an infinite number of possible functions that could be included into a smart contract. In the example for Bondly above, there are only 8 functions present for the main token, which is a sign of a clean contract. All 8 of those functions are necessary for the token to exist on the blockchain, and they aren’t functions that could rug the user.

In the case that you’re searching for a different token, you can still use these exact same steps to read the contract. There are a few red flags that are common in scam contracts, and these will be outlined below. Now that we know how to access and look at the contract functions, we can determine which are potentially malicious. There will not be any contract addresses shared in the examples because someone might just buy it anyways.

MALICIOUS CONTRACT EXAMPLES:

1. Mint function - this function allows the minting of more tokens, thus increasing the supply and potentially allowing the minter to dump those tokens on the market. This is one of the most common rugs that crashes a price. Disclaimer: Some tokens have mint functions that are dependent upon elastic supplies, but unless a reason for minting, or a programmed rule set, is present, there should not be a mint function. It is important to check who the owner of the mint function is: if the owner is the dev, that’s obviously a red flag; if the minter is a contract based on volume/price, that would be decentralized and significantly less likely to be a scam.

2. Whitelist function - this function should really only be present if the project has a randomized presale that requires the whitelisting of addresses to ensure there is not oversubscription. If the project did not have a presale, and still has this function in the contract, it can be potentially be used to prevent any address not on that whitelist to be unable to sell. I.e. you can buy but cannot sell.

3. Freeze function - this function does as the name implies, and can physically freeze trading of the asset at any time. Although simple, it effectively prevents people from selling the pooled tokens, locking the Ethereum and the secondary token until unfrozen.

3a. if there is also a Transfer Ownership function, and the Contract Creator has control of the  freeze function, then they could potentially freeze the contract and then send the ownership to the  burn address. This effectively kills the Eth and the other token, leaving them to the burn pool  forever.

4. Not a specific function, but the more functions that a token has, the more likely that one can be used as an attack vector. Unless the token’s project has a need for the function, it should not just be arbitrarily added to the code.

Non-Contract Red Flags:

1. An overwhelming large max supply, or, one address with an overwhelming large percentage of the supply. It’s common to see the address that deployed the contract have most of the supply, which is a large red flag.

2. A Univ2 pool that is significantly smaller than the largest individual holder (this does not include staking contracts because they are the accumulation of a multitude of address inputs). This is a sign of skewed distribution, and the potential for a whale to wreck the ecosystem gets higher.

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Note: The difference between a normal address and a contract address is this symbol next to the address:

*The symbol highlighted in yellow indicates that the address is a contract. If the symbol is not there, then the address is a personal address. If contracts appear that have large quantities of tokens, it’s important to know what they are for (like staking, or vesting, or locked team tokens, etc.)

3. An anonymous team can be a red flag, but anonymity should be looked at through the lens of the product. If the product is sound, safeguards are in place, and the developers are transparent about the code/answer questions effectively, then anonymity shouldn’t be a negative factor. In the case of anonymity and the presence of other red flags, the risk increases significantly.

Closing Remarks:

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Overall, Defi contracts on Ethereum are definitely high risk in comparison to investments anywhere else. However, knowing the basics of how contracts function, and being able to recognize the red flags that signal a potential scam, can help reduce that risk. There is always risk when interacting on the blockchain, but investing in contracts that don’t have malicious code will prevent more losses, and will likely help your gains in the long run.

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How to stay Crypto safe

How to stay crypto safe and secure by TGH

Crypto can be a scary place, especially for new comers, everywhere you lookthere’s reports of scams, hacks and malicious activity! One of the key rolesTGH has played since its birth in 2018 has been to keep investors safe byhelping them take precautions to keep their own funds and data safe. We willstart off with some basic security that everyone should follow if they wish tokeep their crypto secure, stick with it as we will slowly move from basic toadvanced as we progress! Don’t forget we’re here to help, feel free to reachout at any time for extra information or questions you may have! Basic securityTips

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1. Never share your passwords.

2. Never reuse passwords.

3. Always use (2FA) two factorauthentication when given the option and DON’T use text 2FA.

4. Back or write down your 2FArestore codes somewhere safe.

5. Never share your backuppassphrase, recovery seeds or private keys with anyone.

6. Store cold storage wallets andbackup wallet passphrases, in fireproof safes.

7. Don’t post your email address,home address or phone number on social media.

8. Never leave your crypto onexchanges.

9. Use smaller transaction sizesand different exchanges to cover for mistakes & hacks.

10. Always use a VPN & antivirus and keep them upto date.

11. Always backup your wallet.

12. Never open web links withoutchecking what it is your opening first.

13. Triple check addresses beforesending funds.

14. Spread funds over multiplewallets incase you get hacked.

15. Remember to only risk whatyou can afford to lose.

16. Never put large amounts ofcapital into projects that look too good to be true.

17. Maintain your privacy!

18.Avoid public WiFi.

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Ok so we have shared the mostbasic security tips that we feel everyone should abide to, but even with thehelp of the TGH community we are sure we have missed a few, so if you can thinkof any we missed let us know on twitter or telegram! Moving on we will covermore moderate security tips which will include tips on how you can keep yourfunds safe and secure! Moderate Security Tips

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1. Use Etherscan to check walletaddresses or contract addresses before sending or purchasing tokens

2.Send test transactions beforesending larger amounts of funds onto new networks.

3. Use metamask to checkrecipient wallet addresses before sending funds from exchanges or wallets thatdon’t have the auto check feature.

4. Use verified crypto walletsthat’s have been certified safe, i.e Bitcoin core, Metamask, trust wallet,Myetherwallet.

5. You can review and revoke yourtoken approvals using these links. https://etherscan.io/tokenapprovalchecker& https://app.unrekt.net/ they are mainly used to disconnect fromsuspicious token farms or scams. 6. Don’t watch porn or open malicious sites ona device you are using to trade or access funds. 7. Don’t connect your Telegramto any airdrop bots unless your 100% sure they are legit

6. Never approve new tokens orcontracts before fully understanding what they are or where they came from,once again use the relevant explorers to check to check details on contracthistory, number of current holders, wallet addresses and price history.

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We will continuously add to the above, if you have any suggestions please contact us via telegram or twitter.

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