The CoinMarketRecap podcast offers an easy-to-understand wrap of this week's crypto news — and we're joined by Nischal Shetty, the CEO of WazirX, India's biggest crypto exchange.
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CoinMarketRecap, hosted by Connor Sephton, aims to break down the week's crypto news in a fun and accessible way.
Research continually shows that consumers find cryptocurrencies difficult to understand — and we're determined to change that.
News Roundup: Meta Mayhem and NFT Naysayers
Bitcoin rallied as the week drew to a close — pumping by $2,000 in two hours and breaking $40,000 for the first time in two weeks.
The cryptocurrency remains closely correlated to the stock market… and Wall Street is continuing to suffer from a bout of volatility. BTC felt the pain during a bruising trading session on Thursday that saw tech stocks fall precipitously. But equally, both asset classes enjoyed a rebound a day later.
CoinMarketCap's Molly Jane Zuckerman joined us to focus on two stories: Meta's mayhem, and why there's so much visceral hatred toward NFTs.
Meta lost $251 billion of its market valuation on Thursday — the biggest single-day wipeout for a company in stock market history — as investors were confronted with stagnating user numbers, the growing threat of rival social networks such as TikTok, and big losses in its metaverse division. To add insult to injury, intellectual property related to Diem — its doomed digital currency — has now been sold to Silvergate Bank. Twitter's former CEO, Jack Dorsey, later described the project as "a waste of time and effort."
But here's the million-dollar question: will Mark Zuckerberg's big bet on the metaverse pay off? As Connor and Molly Jane discussed, Meta has got little to show when it comes to its efforts to build a virtual world — while blockchain-based rivals including The Sandbox and Decentraland are already live and thriving.
There's been a lot of big headlines in the NFT space, too. Kanye West has declared that he is refusing to create digital collectibles, Team17 was forced into an embarrassing climbdown over its plans to launch NFTs inspired by the Worms video game, and criticism over these tokens is growing by the day. In a sign that NFTs are a "love or hate" asset, Disney's former CEO Bob Iger is among those who believe digital art can have a lot of potential.
Is the chorus of condemnation that surrounds companies trying to experiment in NFTs going to stymie innovation, and prevent compelling use cases from coming to the fore?
Has India Avoided a Crypto Ban?
In other news, India has announced that it plans to tax profits from crypto trading at 30%. Virtual currency gifts will also be subject to this tax, and losses can't be deducted from other gains.
So: does this mean that an outright ban on cryptocurrencies in the country isn't going to happen — and the threat of jail time and eye-watering fines for people who own them has subsided? Will this 30% tax prove prohibitively expensive and stop people from getting involved in the space?
Nischal Shetty is the CEO of WazirX — India's largest crypto exchange — and joined us to give his perspective. He believes the rules offer clarity for businesses and investors alike, and signify that a ban is less likely.
He revealed that WazirX is now expecting a big surge in demand from investors who have been waiting on the sidelines for the government to make a decision — and Nischal is especially enthusiastic when it comes to the digital rupee, which is due to be released by 2023:
"It's just going to be amazing. I just fail to understand how that can be a bad thing for India … If India launches a CBDC, we overnight go from 20 to 30 million people knowing about crypto to maybe 100, 200, 300 million people in India … I think everyone would know how to operate a crypto wallet … and that is amazing education which in turn willa actually grow the public crypto markets."
Looking ahead, he wants the government to focus on educating the public — and ensure younger generations are fully familiarized with how blockchains and cryptocurrencies work.
