Going Ape

Chart of the Day

The wave of enthusiasm triggered by the Taproot upgrade seems to have tapered off, leaving Bitcoin to trade in a narrow range with not much price action to discuss. Currently, all the price action seem to be taking place in the NFT space, with a popular NFT project that was launched in April of this year, Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC), seeing a tenfold surge in its sales volume in the past few days. This is mainly down to its latest collaborations with the Rolling Stones magazine and several other iconic figures in the music industry that will help to bolster the project's ambitious plans to build a metaverse around itself. BAYC's meteoric rise to fame has created much excitement on OpenSea, with the amount of Ether traded daily on the NFT marketplace jumping from $48 million to over $105 million within a few days. This phenomenon is especially impressive if we consider the fact that the buzz surrounding NFTs has been cooling off for about a month now. 

Talk of the Town

The much-anticipated Bitcoin Taproot upgrade has activated at Block 709632, expanding the toolbox for developers to integrate new features on the Bitcoin network. The Taproot upgrade spells greater transaction privacy and efficiency for the network. More importantly, it unlocks the potential for integrating smart contracts into the Bitcoin network that could potentially see them enter the fabled DeFi space in a huge way. Despite the general excitement in the crypto community leading up to Taproot, the actual upgrade failed to generate any material upside price actions in the short-term. In the long-term, however, it will definitely play a much more bullish role.