Category: TRENDING

According to data compiled by Coin Metrics, the number of stablecoin wallet addresses with account balances over an equivalent $1 million USD has recently surpassed 12 million — up from 4 million one year ago. The stablecoins counted in the analysis include Tether ERC-20 (USDT), Tether TRC-20, Binance USD, DAI, GUSD, HUSD, PAX and USD Coin (USDC).

The vast majority of addresses holding more than $1 million came from Tether TRC-20 (approximately 8 million), followed by Tether ERC-20 (approximately 3.4 million), and USDC (approximately 1 million). Save for a sharp but brief decline last May, such addresses have increased regularly in the past 12 months.

The number still pales to the number of major cryptocurrency wallets holding more than $1 million. Data from Coin Metrics indicate that there are over 102 million wallet addresses meeting this criteria, denominated in either Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), or XRP Ledger (XRP). Most notably, the number of “millionaire” BTC wallet addresses has largely remained stagnant since May 2021. But the same cannot be said for ETH or XRP.

Limitations of the data include its basis on all wallet addresses — not unique ones, meaning that the number of individuals holding such wallet balances is likely significantly lower than north of 12 million. The use of stablecoins has advanced drastically in recent years. Having started out as a way for investors to cash out during volatile periods, they can now be used, among other items, for interactions with various types of decentralized finance protocols, such as that of Terra’s Anchor. 

Bitcoin (BTC) is witnessing a see-saw battle near $40,000 with both the bulls and the bears trying to gain the upper hand. The volatility could remain high as the markets await the United States Federal Reserve’s policy decision due on March 16.

Analyst Willy Woo suggests that Bitcoin could witness a capitulation event based on a cost basis, a metric that indicates the transfer of Bitcoin from inexperienced to experienced traders. Such sharp declines usually suggest the formation of market bottoms.

However, Glassnode believes that a capitulation has been avoided because the sell-offs have been absorbed by a relatively strong market. Although 82% of the short-term holders’ coins are in loss, Glassnode considers this to be a late-stage bear market behavior where investors hold their coins until they turn profitable.

Could the Fed’s policy decision start a trending move in Bitcoin and altcoins? Let’s analyze the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin turned down from the moving averages on March 15 but the long tail on the candlestick indicates strong demand at lower levels. The bulls continued their buying and have pushed the price above the 50-day simple moving average (SMA) ($40,151).

If bulls sustain the price above the 50-day SMA, the BTC/USDT pair could rally to the overhead zone between $45,400 and the resistance line of the ascending channel. The bears are expected to mount a strong defense in this zone.

If the price turns down from the overhead zone, the pair could extend its stay inside the channel for a few more days. The flat moving averages and the relative strength index (RSI) near the midpoint also suggest range-bound action is likely in the short term.

Contrary to this assumption, if the price turns down and plummets below the moving averages, it will suggest that bears continue to sell at higher levels. The bears will then try to sink the price below the support line of the channel and resume the downtrend.

ETH/USDT

Ether (ETH) bounced off the support line of the symmetrical triangle and the buyers are attempting to push the price above the 50-day SMA ($2,763).

If they succeed, the price could rise to the psychological level at $3,000 and then to the resistance line of the triangle. The bulls will have to push and sustain the price above the triangle to signal a possible change in trend.

The RSI has also formed a symmetrical triangle and a breakout from it could signal that buyers have the upper hand.

This bullish view will invalidate if the price turns down from the current level and breaks below the support line of the triangle. That could open the doors for a possible drop to $2,159.

BNB/USDT

The buyers are trying to push BNB above the moving averages but the bears are likely to have other plans. They will attempt to stall the recovery near the moving averages as they have done on the three previous occasions.

Both the moving averages are flattening out and the RSI has risen above 48, indicating that bulls are attempting a comeback. If buyers drive and sustain the price above the 50-day SMA ($388), the BNB/USDT pair could rise to $425 and thereafter to $445.

Contrary to this assumption, if the price turns down from the moving averages, it will suggest that the sentiment remains negative and traders are selling near resistance levels. The bears will then try to pull the price below the strong support at $350.

XRP/USDT

Ripple (XRP) turned down from the downtrend line on March 12 and dropped to the moving averages. Although the bulls have defended the moving averages, they have failed to achieve a strong rebound off it.

Both moving averages have flattened out and the RSI is near the midpoint, indicating a balance between supply and demand. The buyers will have to push and sustain the price above the downtrend line to gain the upper hand. The XRP/USDT pair could then rally to $0.91 and later to the psychological level at $1.

Conversely, if the price turns down and breaks below $0.69, the advantage will turn in favor of the bears. The pair could then slide to the strong support level at $0.62.

LUNA/USDT

Terra’s LUNA token broke above the overhead resistance at $94 on March 14 but the bulls could not sustain the higher levels. The bears pulled the price back below $94 on March 15.

The bears will now try to pull and sustain the price below the 20-day exponential moving average (EMA) ($84). If they succeed, the LUNA/USDT pair could drop to $70. Such a move could suggest that the bullish momentum has weakened.

Contrary to this assumption, if the price rises from the current level or rebounds off the 20-day EMA, the buyers will again attempt to push the price toward $105. A break and close above this resistance could indicate the resumption of the uptrend. The pair could first rally to $115 and later to $125.

SOL/USDT

The bulls pushed Solana (SOL) back above the breakdown level at $81 on March 14, indicating that the recent breakdown on March 13 may have been a bear trap.

The buyers are attempting to push the price above the 20-day EMA ($86). If they manage to do that, the SOL/USDT pair could rally to the downtrend line. This is an important level to keep an eye on because a break and close above it will suggest a possible change in trend. The pair could then rally to the overhead resistance at $122.

This positive view will be invalidated in the short term if the price turns down from the 20-day EMA or the downtrend line and plummets below $77. Such a move could indicate the resumption of the downtrend and the pair may extend its decline to $66.

ADA/USDT

Cardano (ADA) is attempting to rise above the 20-day EMA ($0.85) but the bears are expected to mount a strong defense at the resistance.

If the price turns down from the current level, the ADA/USDT pair could drop to the strong support at $0.74. This is an important level for the bulls to defend because if it cracks, the pair could decline to the next support at $0.68.

Alternatively, if the price breaks and closes above the 20-day EMA, the pair could attempt a rally to the psychological level at $1. This level is likely to act as a strong resistance. If the price turns down from this resistance, the pair may remain range-bound between $1 and $0.74 for a few days.

Related: BTC price cracks $41K as hopes of peace in Eastern Europe send Bitcoin higher

AVAX/USDT

Avalanche (AVAX) has been sustaining below the uptrend line since March 13 but the bears have not been able to capitalize on this weakness and sink the price below the immediate support at $64. This indicates a lack of sellers at lower levels.

The bulls are attempting to push the price back above the uptrend line and the moving averages. If they succeed, the AVAX/USDT pair could rise to the downtrend line of the descending channel. This is an important level to watch out for because the bears have successfully defended the resistance on four previous occasions.

If the price once again turns down from the downtrend line, it will suggest that the bears are in no mood to relent. The sellers will then try and pull the price back below $64.

Conversely, if bulls drive the price above the channel, it will suggest that the downtrend could be over. The pair could then rally to the psychological level at $100.

DOT/USDT

Polkadot (DOT) has been trading close to the 20-day EMA ($17) for the past two days, indicating that the bulls are buying the dips.

The flattish moving averages and the RSI near the midpoint suggest that the bears may be losing their grip. The bulls are again expected to attempt a rally above the overhead resistance at $19.

If they can pull it off, the DOT/USDT pair could rise to $23 where the bears may pose a strong challenge. A break and close above this level would complete a double bottom pattern.

This positive view will invalidate if the price turns down and breaks below the strong support at $16. That could drag the price down to $14.

DOGE/USDT

Dogecoin (DOGE) turned down from the 20-day EMA ($0.12) on March 14, indicating that higher levels are witnessing strong selling by the bears.

One minor positive factor is that the bulls have not allowed the price to break below the strong support at $0.10. This could keep the DOGE/USDT pair range-bound between $0.12 and $0.10 for a few more days.

A break and close above the 20-day EMA could be the first sign that the selling pressure may be reducing. The bulls will then try to push the pair above the 50-day SMA ($0.13) and clear the path for a possible rally to $0.17.

Alternatively, if the price breaks below $0.10, the selling could intensify and the pair may drop to $0.06.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Market data is provided by HitBTC exchange.

NFTs are blamed for everything from tacky art to economic inequality and environmental destruction. But, the arguments by critics don‘t add up, writes Something Interesting‘s Knifefight.

“For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Toward the end of January, one of my favorite content producers on the internet Dan Olson (aka Folding Ideas) published a video titled Line Goes Up — The Problem with NFTs outlining his complaints about nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. At the time of writing, Line Goes Up has accumulated over six million views — almost twice as many views as his next most successful video. That’s an impressive reach for a 2.5 hour documentary with very little marketing behind it.

In the film, Olson lays out the following argument:

1. Cryptocurrency is useless except to sell to a greater fool.
2. NFTs, DAOs and play-to-earn games are just ways to find more fools.
3. The fools who buy in become accomplices in marketing the scam.
4. NFTs are ugly, centralized, pointless, exploit artists and damage the environment.

To be honest, the movie bums me out. It is not because Olson doesn’t like NFTs — it is perfectly reasonable not to like NFTs. It bums me out because one of my favorite things about the Folding Ideas canon was how much sympathy he brought to previous subjects. Consider how hard Olson worked to humanize flat earthers or 50 Shades of Gray. In contrast, Olson describes NFTs as “incomprehensibly tasteless” and cryptocurrency enthusiasts as “terrible people” with “poor judgment” and “low social literacy.” He calls Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin a “butthurt warlock.” He summarizes the entire space as “Amway but with ugly ass ape cartoons.”

In short, NFTs make Olson angry. He is not alone.

super normal discourse pic.twitter.com/ejLsaOmGMH

— 𒐪𒐪𒐪 𒐪𒐪𒐪 𒐪𒐪𒐪 𒐪𒐪𒐪 𒐪𒐪𒐪 𒐪𒐪𒐪 (@SHL0MS) January 28, 2022

To be clear, I agree with a lot of Olson’s criticisms of the space. It attracts gamblers, fraudsters and fools. Motivated reasoning and dishonest marketing are everywhere. I have written extensively about what I think are the fatal flaws of Ethereum, I am very skeptical of DAOs and I don’t think the current generation of P2E games is compelling.

Olson describes a lot of examples of shitty behavior and, for the most part, they are accurate descriptions — there are certainly plenty of similar examples that he could have used to make the same points. The history of crypto is littered with failed projects and overt scams.

The problem is not that Olson is wrong about the examples he identifies, the problem is that he is wrong about the conclusion he draws. Some people misunderstand cryptocurrency, but that doesn’t make cryptocurrency useless. Some people make bad art with NFTs, but that doesn’t make NFTs bad art. Explaining the value of NFTs by finding the worst possible examples of how they are used is like explaining the value of the internet by making a list of the worst possible websites.

Olson sampled the NFT projects he describes by accepting random spam discord invites — roughly like evaluating average website quality by clicking on every spam email link. It’s a foolish way to measure average quality and average quality is a foolish thing to measure in the first place. The quality of the “average” website doesn’t really mean anything and doesn’t matter anyway — what matters is the quality of the websites you choose to interact with. The same is true of NFTs.

There is no such thing as NFT art

A common complaint about NFTs is that they are ugly. In Line Goes Up, Olson describes them as “fugly,” “garish” and “incredibly cringeworthy.” But, to anyone who understands NFTs, it is immediately obvious that the criticism makes no sense. Not just because art is subjective and no one has the authority to dismiss a genre of art as unworthy, but because NFTs are not a genre of art at all. NFTs don’t look like anything. They can be associated with literally any visuals or with no visuals at all. NFTs aren’t a style of art, they are a tool that artists can use.

There are NFTs for portrait photography, generative art, songs, virtual real estate, poems, memes, mood stones, video game items, financial contracts and athletic accomplishments. There is even an NFT that represents a work of 1010×1010 transparent pixels arranged recursively. Anyone who tells you that NFTs are ugly is telling you more about the limits of their imagination than about the limits of NFTs. It is like someone who has only ever watched Marvel films confidently asserting that movies are inherently unrealistic.

Cryptocurrency is useful — that’s why people use it

Olson opens Line Goes Up with a description of the 2008 mortgage crisis and how Bitcoin emerged from it. His criticisms of Bitcoin are weak but are mostly not relevant to the argument he is making about NFTs — if you are curious to explore the case for Bitcoin in greater detail, I recommend Letter to a Bitcoin Skeptic. It is interesting, though, to examine the broad strokes of the argument he makes because it is symbolic of how he misunderstands NFTs. According to Olson, Bitcoin does not solve anything. As he puts it:

“Crypto does nothing to address 99% of the problems with the banking industry, because those are problems of human behavior. They are incentives, they are social structures, they are modalities. The problem is what people are doing to others — not that the building they are doing it in has the word bank on the outside.”

It is true that Bitcoin does not eliminate banks or the excesses of capitalism but, in fairness, I am not aware of any technology that does that. The idea that Bitcoin was meant to eliminate banks is a weirdly ahistorical strawman argument. Satoshi himself talked about how banks would use Bitcoin. The purpose of Bitcoin was never to fix every problem in the economy — it was to make it impossible to debase wealth or censor transactions. Reasonable people can disagree about whether those problems are worth solving, but Bitcoin does solve them.

Bitcoin may seem useless to Olson, but it is useful to Alexei Navalny and the political opposition to Putin. It is useful to citizens of countries with struggling local currencies like Nigeria, Venezuela and Turkey and to ordinary people trying to flee Ukraine and Russia. It is useful to feminist protestors in Africa who were debanked by their governments and to women in Afghanistan who are not allowed bank accounts at all. Olson calls Bitcoin “the hobbyhorse of a few hundred thousand gambling addicts,” perhaps because he does not know that Coinbase alone has millions of active users worldwide.

You don’t have to believe that Bitcoin is good to believe some people find it useful. But, anyone claiming that Bitcoin is useless is ignoring the many ways it is already being used. Line Goes Up keeps returning to variations on this flawed approach: Olson lays out a problem he says NFTs were meant to solve, shows how that problem isn’t solved and then concludes that NFTs are therefore useless — without examining why people are actually using them.

NFTs are not pointless, they are pointers

Olson argues that NFTs are pointless because they do not work as advertised. The images they reference can be lost or replaced. The same image can be minted into more than one token or into tokens on more than one chain. NFTs don’t prove that the token creator was the artist and they don’t stop anyone else from having access to the image even without the token. Olson (correctly) points out that NFTs are not useful for proving authenticity and then (incorrectly) concludes that they aren’t useful at all.

NFTs cannot prove the authenticity of art because authenticity is a subjective assessment by the audience, not a quality of the art itself. Different people can disagree about which version of a work of art is the most authentic or how much authenticity should matter. There is no technology that can prove authenticity because authenticity is not a technical property. That was never the point of NFTs.

What NFTs can prove is who made the token, who has held it and who owns it now. Olson explains that isn’t the same as authenticity — but that doesn’t make it worthless. Documenting provenance for fine art is an expensive and valuable service despite its limitations. NFTs can provide the same service with much stronger guarantees.

When viewed through that lens, it becomes clear as to why the critiques above are not interesting. Some NFTs have malleable images, some have permanent images and some have no images at all. Whether there are images and whether they can change is not a property of NFTs is the result of choices made by the artists. Concluding that NFTs are useless because the artist might surprise you with their choices is like concluding that paintings are useless because Banksy shredded one at an auction once.

There is nothing evil about Etsy

Of course, the argument that NFTs are pointless and bad art would be incomplete by itself because there is lots of pointless and bad art in the world — there is nothing wrong with that. Two-thirds of Etsy would qualify as pointless and bad but no one would make (or watch) a two-hour-long documentary about it. Arguing that NFTs are not good is not enough. Olson’s real argument is that NFTs are bad. He argues that NFTs are bad for three reasons:

1. NFTs are harmful to the environment
2. NFTs are dangerous to users
3. NFTs exploit artists

Let’s consider them one at a time.

The environmental impact of JPEGs

The environmental impact of cryptocurrencies, in general, is a large and complicated topic that we don’t have space to do justice to here. If you are interested, I’ve written in greater detail about the energy impact of Bitcoin mining and why we don’t need to be alarmed by it. But, for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that proof-of-work mining was bad for the environment. What would that mean for NFTs?

How much energy miners spend to validate the network is a function of how much money they make mining — the better miners are paid, the more willing they are to mine. Anything that increases miner revenue will increase the network’s energy footprint, and anything that decreases miner revenue will reduce that energy footprint. To reduce the environmental footprint of proof-of-work mining, make mining less profitable.

When users trade NFTs back and forth they pay transaction fees to miners, which somewhat increases the revenue for mining. But, those fees are in proportion to how often/urgently NFTs move, not to how valuable they are. For example, the most expensive NFT collection at the moment, Bored Ape Yacht Club, has generated around 200 transactions a day since its launch. For context, Ethereum processes around 1.2 million transactions per day.

On the other hand, NFTs are priced in ETH — so anyone buying an NFT is selling ETH. When a lot of NFTs go up in price that means a lot of people are selling ETH, and a lot of people selling ETH pushes the price down. Miners are paid in ETH, so anything that puts pressure on the price of ETH is putting pressure on their revenue. In other words, every time an NFT project goes up in price it is actually bad news for Ethereum miners. Want to discourage people from mining Ethereum? Buy some monkey JPEGs.

Of course, the real story is more complex. NFTs get a lot of mainstream attention, which attracts more users to Ethereum. Different NFT projects will have different prices and create different transaction volumes. Even the same project may look different over time as it evolves. Anyone who tells you a simple story about an economic system is oversimplifying. But, NFTs are only one part of a large and complicated ecosystem, and it is far from clear whether they make mining more profitable or less overall.

Don’t confuse tools with the hands that wield them

Over the course of Line Goes Up, Olson swings back and forth between contempt for the people who own NFTs and a paternalistic fear of being taken advantage of by scams and fraud. He can’t seem to decide whether he’d rather blame the technology or the user base. Personally, I think we should blame the scammers. Frauds and scams predate NFTs and would be here in a world where NFTs never existed.

Overpromising naive investors and pocketing their money is nothing new and didn’t particularly transform when scammers started adopting NFTs. Fyre Festival didn’t need NFTs and neither did WeWork. The (still) unlaunched MMORPG Star Citizen raised more than $400 million since its initial Kickstarter in 2012 before NFTs even existed. There are definitely scammers using NFTs to execute old playbooks in a new market, but NFTs aren’t really enabling anything new or different about the scams. NFTs are just a trend scammers are attaching themselves to.

Part of the fear here seems to stem from a technical misunderstanding where Olson claims that NFTs can contain hostile code that will “live in your wallet forever like a landmine” — that is fundamentally not the case at all. NFTs don’t contain code and they don’t exist anywhere. When someone sends you an NFT, what actually happens is that a record is sent to the blockchain that causes the smart contract for that NFT to give your address new permissions.

Nothing is “put” anywhere and the NFT itself is just a record written into the blockchain, not a payload of potentially dangerous code. The goal of scammers who send unsolicited NFTs is not to inject code, it is to convince victims to go to an attacker’s website and sign a malicious transaction. An NFT like this is like a spam email that lures victims to a phishing site — it’s not the attack itself. It’s just the bait.

Olson (correctly) observes that bad people are using NFTs and then presents that as evidence that NFTs must be bad — but, that is the wrong conclusion. Bad people use lots of tools that good people use, too. Drug dealers use dollars, terrorists have cell phones and Hitler wore pants. When bad people use a technology, all that tells you is that the technology must be useful.

Lots of artists have made money with NFTs

The last major argument that Olson makes against NFTs in Line Goes Up is the idea that NFTs are actually bad for artists. That’s a commonly held belief, but it is also an extraordinary one given that the third-highest paid living artist of all time (Beeple with $69 million) made his money almost exclusively from selling NFTs.

Olson’s argument is that the Beeple sale shouldn’t count because a buyer of Beeple, MetaKovan, is also the creator of a fractionalized Beeple token called B20. That’s a funny argument for a couple of reasons. First, regardless of how sincere you think the valuation was, Beeple received $69 million of actual money. This sale was undeniably good for the artist.

Second, if you look at the relative valuation of B20 and Beeple’s $69 million-worth Everdays NFT, there is absolutely no way that MetaKovan turned a profit by flipping B20 tokens. There was just never enough volume to make that profitable. So, it is reasonable to think MetaKovan might have been biased, but it was ultimately MetaKovan who paid for the bid.

Finally, another bidder was ready to pay that price: Justin Sun of the Tron network posted a video of him trying to outbid the winner but hitting a website error. So, even if you ignore MetaKovan entirely, there was still a buyer ready to pay $69 million to Beeple for the Everydays NFT. $69 million may be a surprising price, but it was real.

Olson uses the example of the Beeple/MetaKovan sale to build toward a broader claim that most sales in the NFT space are wash trades, where the seller buys from themselves to fake interest or price in their art. To someone unfamiliar with NFT markets, that might seem like a legitimate concern, but it is pretty naive to anyone who knows the space. A little more investigation into the mechanics of the proposed trades would have made that obvious.

OpenSea charges a 2.5% fee per transaction plus miner fees, so wash trading is quite expensive. NFTs are also subject to capital gains taxes, so anyone creating fake profit for themselves is also creating very real tax obligations. It’s also largely pointless — it is much easier and cheaper to fake Discord and Twitter activity for a new project that hasn’t launched yet than market volume for a project that has. There is a lot of shadiness in NFT markets, but there isn’t that much wash trading.

That means most of that money is really going to the project creators, which is why so many artists like Beeple have found NFTs to be a lucrative new opportunity. Olson asserts without evidence that most artists have lost money in NFTs, but it is hard to see how. Minting NFTs has always been cheap to do and, more recently, has become possible to do for free. Not everyone finds the NFT market is lucrative for them, but making NFTs that never end up selling is not expensive. If an artist is losing money in NFTs, it’s as a buyer — not as a seller.

Stolen NFTs don’t make sense

So, artists who sell their own work are benefiting from NFTs — but what about the artists who haven’t or don’t want to create NFTs? Art theft has been so rampant in NFT markets that DeviantArt had to launch a dedicated tool for detecting stolen art and issuing takedown notices. Doesn’t that mean that NFTs are being used to exploit artists?

Art theft is reprehensible but blaming NFTs for stolen art is like blaming RedBubble piracy on the existence of t-shirts. The problem is the theft of art, not the medium stolen art is sold on. NFTs don’t make art any easier to steal and they don’t make stolen art more valuable. In fact, NFTs are actually less useful to thieves: It is impossible to distinguish between a print sold by the artist and one sold by a pirate, but it is possible to know conclusively who created which NFT. Anyone who cares about whether they are buying the authentic version will buy the original and anyone who doesn’t can mint their own version for free. The art thief doesn’t have anything useful to sell.

Stolen NFTs make very little sense. They are like buying a certificate of authenticity from someone who has no authority to issue them, like John Cleese’s NFT of the Brooklyn Bridge except less funny:

Hello! It is time you meet my alter ego “Unnamed Artist” I’m delighted to offer you the opportunity of a lifetime. I’m selling my 1st NFT. Though bidding starts at 100.00, you can “BUY IT NOW” for 69,346,250.50! https://t.co/Vuyx4trvPE pic.twitter.com/aC4oSVfGHF

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) March 19, 2021

More sophisticated scammers don’t focus on selling stolen art so much as using stolen art to sell a broader scam, like pretending it is concept art from an upcoming video game. But, just like more primitive RedBubble pirates, the problem is the art theft and fraud — not the specific thing fraudsters trick their marks into overvaluing. NFTs aren’t critical to the scam at all, they are just a way of getting the attention of a group of wealthy potential targets.

No one needs to be angry about NFTs

To be clear, I am not arguing that everyone should understand or value nonfungible tokens. It is entirely reasonable to not care about them and not understand why other people do either. But, I don’t think anyone should be upset about NFTs and I think Line Goes Up is a particularly good example of how that misunderstanding happens.

Throughout the movie, Olson blames NFTs for everything from tacky art to economic inequality. The result isn’t a coherent argument against NFTs so much as a long list of things Olson dislikes about the world and personally associates with NFTs. Guilt by association has led him to the wrong conclusions. NFTs don’t cause scams, theft or ecological disaster. They are good for artists and often genuinely loved by collectors. They’re not bad art because they are not a type of art at all. They are a tool artists can use.

NFTs are not the final boss of late-stage capitalism. They’re just a file type. If you’ve never been angry about JPEGs, then you don’t need to be angry about JPEGs people can own.

As the growing digital economy undergoes a transition from Web2 to Web3, oracle and data providers are becoming an increasingly important sector for ensuring the reliable sharing and transfer of information. 

The Graph (GRT) is one protocol that is spearheading the integration of blockchain technology with data management and retrieval through the creation of open APIs known as subgraphs.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since hitting a low of $0.3155 on March 13, GRT has climbed 38.6% to a daily high of $0.44 on March 15 where it is now attempting to flip this major resistance level into support.

There are three underlying reasons behind GRT’s price rally: the ongoing migration of subgraphs to the Graph mainnet, the launch of grants to help projects build on or migrate to the decentralized network and the upcoming Graph Day 2022, which will take place on June 2.

Migration of subgraphs

The biggest development surrounding GRT is the ongoing migration of Ethereum subgraphs to the decentralized mainnet of the Graph network.

The Graph ecosystem is championing decentralization as Ethereum subgraphs continue to migrate to The Graph Network

Here’s an update shedding more context on the state of migration, query fees, & resources to help you migrate your subgraph today! https://t.co/Z26rrISXas

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) March 10, 2022

Subgraphs are open application programming interfaces, also known as APIs, that are designed to make data more accessible and can be composed into a global graph of all the world’s public information.

According to The Graph, subgraph migrations are up 30% quarter-over-quarter. Currently, 282 subgraphs have completed the migration process, with more undergoing the process each week.

Projects that have made the switch represent a variety of the top sectors in the crypto ecosystem, including decentralized finance applications, music, art, analytics, wallets, nonfungible tokens, video streaming service and social media platforms.

Migration grants

A second development that has helped provide a boost to GRT and mainnet migrations was the release of The Graph Grants by The Graph Foundation.

For a limited time The Graph Foundation is awarding grants to help migrate Ethereum subgraphs to the decentralized network.

Improve the reliability of your dapp with The Graph Network! Grants will be reduced by the end of March so apply now ⬇️ https://t.co/01xommj13D

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) March 11, 2022

The grant process gives interested parties the ability to receive funding as they migrate to the decentralized mainnet. The grants cover costs related to gas fees, technical know-how, migrating expenses and marketing. Migrating protocols are also eligible to receive support from solutions engineers from within the community. 

Protocols interested in migrating are encouraged to apply for a grant before the end of March as funding amounts will be gradually reduced and eventually phased out.

Related: The Graph (GRT) gains momentum as Web3 becomes the buzzword among techies

Graph Day 2022

A third factor bringing extra attention to The Graph was the announcement that the project will be hosting this year’s “Graph Day” beginning June 2 in San Francisco.

The event includes a day of presentations from leading protocol and DApp developers in the crypto industry who are focused on expanding the Web3 community and will be followed by a three-day hackathon where hackers and developers will attempt to find vulnerabilities in the project. This is the first official hackathon for The Graph and will take place between June 3–5.

VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for GRT on March 7, prior to the recent price rise.

The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historical and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points, including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.

As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for GRT hit a high of 73 on March 7, around five days before the price increased 38% over a three-day period. 

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