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Four blockchain-based metaverse projects generated more than $100 million worth of virtual land nonfungible token (NFT) sales last week, according to data from DappRadar.
A Tuesday post from the decentralized application analytics firm reported that between Nov. 22 and Nov. 28, activity was “booming” on The Sandbox, Decentraland, CryptoVoxels and Somnium Space with a combined $105.8 million worth of trading volume among them from more than 6,000 traders:
“Undoubtedly, Metaverse land is the next big hit in the NFT space. Outputting record sales numbers and constantly increasing NFT prices, virtual worlds are the new top commodity in the crypto space.”
The Sandbox represented the lion’s share of volume for the week with $86.56 million, Decentraland accounted for $15.53 million, while CryptoVoxels and Somnium Space generated $2.68 million and $1.1 million, respectively. All four of these metaverse projects are built on the Ethereum blockchain, although projects on other chains such as Solana are beginning to gather pace, too.
DappRadar noted that “the wave of attention towards virtual worlds like The Sandbox and Decentraland started with Facebook’s rebranding to Meta.”…read more.
Deutsche Bank expects crude oil prices to drop considerably next year, dipping below $60 per barrel in New York, the bank said in a note.
“It would be misguided to think of an OPEC pause on Thursday as bullish, since we have assumed that in our model and still end up with a surplus in Q1,” the Deutsche analysts said, as quoted by Bloomberg. “We would be sellers of a rally in crude on the back of an OPEC pause,” they also said.
Most other banks are forecasting higher prices for crude oil: JP Morgan analysts recently forecast Brent crude reaching $125 per barrel in 2022 and rising further to $150 in 2023.
“OPEC+ is not immune to the impacts of underinvestment…. We estimate ‘true’ OPEC spare capacity in 2022 will be about 2 million barrels per day (43%) below consensus estimates of 4.8 million,” the team, led by Christyan Malek, wrote in a note.
The JP Morgan analysts don’t appear to be expecting a surplus in global oil supply even in the first quarter of next year. Instead, they are noting that OPEC+ might need to add a few more installments of 400,000 bpd monthly to bring the market closer to balance.
Morgan Stanley, on the other hand, earlier this week slashed its oil price forecast on the latest Covid-19 scare caused by the emergence of the highly mutated omicron variant. The bank previously forecasted that Brent will trade at an average of $95 per barrel in the first quarter of 2022—but now this has been revised down to $82.50 per barrel…read more.
Trans Mountain Corp. last week said it hoped to have the pipeline that provides most of the oil, gasoline and diesel for southern B.C., as well as refineries in Washington state with crude oil, back in operation by now.
And Canadian National Railway (TSX:CNR), which can move oil or refined fuels by rail, had resumed some services as of last week.
But it could take a week or two before the Parkland Corp. (TSX:PKI) refinery in Burnaby is back in full production, one petroleum analyst predicted.
Oddly, though some gasoline stations in B.C. ran out of gas, gasoline prices did not spike in Metro Vancouver the way one might have expected.
Gas prices in Vancouver were averaging $1.60 per litre on November 15, when the three-day rainstorm that cut highways, rail lines and shut down the Trans Mountain pipeline ended.
On November 22, the day Parkland announced it was ceasing its refining operations because it was out of oil, gas prices in Vancouver fell by about $0.02 per litre, according to GasBuddy…read more.
Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has expressed concerns over El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender after President Nayib Bukele announced the launch of Bitcoin City.
Bailey argued that El Salvador’s decision to adopt Bitcoin as a currency was alarming because consumers are likely to suffer from the cryptocurrency’s extreme volatility.
Trading around $43,000 on the first day of El Salvador’s Bitcoin adoption as legal tender, Bitcoin surged to a new historical high above $68,000 on Nov. 9. BTC’s price has significantly tumbled since then, with Bitcoin trading at $54,626 at the time of writing.
“It concerns me that a country would choose it as its national currency,” Bailey said at the Cambridge University student union appearance, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.
The governor also questioned whether Salvadorans understand the nature and the volatility of Bitcoin at all, which causes his biggest concern…read more.
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Mike’s Comment
on Sunday, 28 November 2021 10:57
Oh, oh Mike’s ruffled some political feathers but how can you analyze or forecast anything financial or economic without talking politics and government?