This Week in Web3 - Read this before you buy Bitcoin or gold.

GM folks! ✨

This Week In Web3 reporting for duty. It’s 11:00 AM IST and we are ready to take you on a journey. Our screen time has been wild this week because we have many hot topics for you. 🔥

Let’s get into it; this week we have:

  • Is Bitcoin > Gold?

  • Solana’s SMS mystery and crypto phone reveal

  • Wealth & Work in Web3

  • Read of the week & Sketchnote

Estimated reading time: 3:55 minutes

Sunday motivation to buy the dip! 💸

This week in crypto 📈

Bitcoin Won't Replace Gold, Not Soon

It’s been more than a week since reports of Uganda about a massive gold ore discovery got out. And questions have been rising since then. Here’s the rundown. 👇

  • Bitcoin has periodically laid claim to being digital gold because of its strict supply limit. But if Uganda has 31 million metric tons of gold ore, might not that lower the price of gold — and make it less secure?

  • People are sceptical of Uganda’s claim. But the BTC community is also divided; on one hand, people are using this event to “promote” BTC, and the other side says BTC is not yet there.

Microstrategies CEO Michael Saylor, tweeted “#Gold is plentiful. #Bitcoin is scarce." Vijay Ayyar, VP of corporate development and International at Luno, says “While Bitcoin has all the properties of potentially replacing gold, this may still take some time.”

And the World Gold Council spokesperson commented:

“In the absence of formal ore reserve/resource declarations, we would not expect these ‘discoveries’ to contribute materially to mine supply in the foreseeable future.”

What do we think? 🧐

Well, we agree with Vijay Ayyar. Bitcoin’s market penetration is <1% globally but it has been only 10 years. And the current market will define the asset class it’ll become.

So, if Uganda’s claims are right, what’s your take?

Weekly web3 wrap 🗞

Solana’s SMS mystery and crypto phone reveal 🤳

This Thursday, Solana sent the web3 Twitter into a frenzy with a tweet: What is SMS?

Within minutes stranger replies started showing up: “Solana mast samosa”, “Solana might shutdown”, “send me SOL”, and whatnot.

Hours after, the rest of the thread revealed that Solana had played us to introduce something pretty cool—A CRYPTO PHONE and Solana Mobile Stack (SMS). 🛠

They’re calling the phone SAGA, and here’s why the idea came up:

  • It’s high time for a crypto to go mobile.

  • Web3 devs should start building for mobile usage instead of around it.

  • The app store policies of Google and Apple haven’t evolved for web3.

Here are some features of the Phone:

  • Solana Mobile Stack: To allow developers to create rich experiences through an SDK with a new set of libraries.

  • Built-in Solana Pay: Shop and pay just by scanning Solana Pay URLs via QR codes, NFC taps, messages and web browser interactions.

  • Seed Vault: Keep your private keys, seed phrases and top-secrets secure on your phone.

  • Solana dApp Store: A new app distribution system on Android for decentralized apps, that will take no fees.

SAGA will be released early 2023 and cost $1,000. It can be pre-ordered with a $100 deposit.

We’re pumped to land a phone built for Web3, but is Solana the best to execute this, given their downtime? We’ll have to see, touch and experience it ourselves in 2023! 🤳

More web3 crunch you should bite into 👇

🎊 NYC NFT's report card is a 50-50. While artists were happy and the parties rocked with Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Lil Baby, the panels saw little to no attendance.

🛒 Shopify is including an exclusivity feature that lets merchants token-gate their websites with NFTs. Brands reward devoted customers with access to personalized experiences —> increase in utility of the NFTs.

🎭 Actor Bill Murray to launch an Ethereum NFT project in July. The NFTs include artwork and stories from his life and career, access to events and a Discord community.

📲 Meta is planning to do NFT testing on Instagram Stories. The NFT feature uses Meta's Spark AR platform.

Work in Web3 👩‍💻

💻  Product Designer at CakeDeFi

🛠️  Web 3 Engineer Climate Solutions at Open Earth 

🔗 Blockchain Product Manager at Panther Protocol

Wealth for Web3 💰

🌐 Bitliberte, a DAO-based FashionFi ecosystem of exclusive NFTs, fashion products & metaverse assets, to raise USD 1.76 million—India’s first Web3 startup to raise this amount.

🎮 Bullieverse, an open-world metaverse platform, has raised $4 million from investors led by Web3 venture funds to help build an arcade of play-to-earn games.

👩‍🔬 Molecule, a platform where medical research projects can receive funding via DAOs, has raised $13 million in seed funding in a round led by Northpond Ventures.

Sketchnote ✍️

Time to learn a web3 concept in a sketchnote! This week’s topic is ✨Metaverse.✨

Read of the week 🤓

a16z, an investment firm, recently released its "State of Crypto" report, which noted that blockchain adoption is in its early stages.

Web3 Fundamentals 🧮

When it comes to web3, you need a friend to navigate you through the journey. Here’s your one-stop guide to everything web3, Web3 Fundamentals. Benefit from our masterclasses and resources to get on the first lane to your web3. Start your journey 👉 here 👈, NOW!

But there's no need to be overwhelmed, you can start learning by joining our Twitter Spaces. This week we talk about Gaming in Web3 on Wed, Jun 29 at 8:00 PM.

Set your reminder 👉 here 👈

That’s a wrap for This Week in Web3, see you next week!🚀

💻 If you’re an early-stage Web3 builder going from 0 to 1, holler at our creative-capital studio Spacekayak and let’s create something extraordinary, through design!

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