Period: 26^th September 2022 – 3^rd October 2022

· Bitcoin showing bottom signal? The US stocks market had another awful week yet bitcoin performed slightly better than stocks and is still striving to survive at its $19K mark.

· NFT volume has jacked up over the past week thanks to Cryptopunks and the incredible comeback of Renga collections. In addition, the mint pass to generated art NFT was the highlight of the week.

Global investors are eyeing macroeconomic data as it determines the ups and downs of the financial market. During the first 3 trading days last week, the financial markets were showing signs of a rebound, anticipating key economic data that were going to release in the next two days. On Thursday, the jobless claims data was the first to release, it showed the unemployment claims fell to their lowest level in five months since May, a bad sign for the Fed, which wants to see a hot job market cool down. Subsequently, on Friday, the US annual Core PCE inflation data was released, yet another piece of data that upset the Fed as the inflation in August was stronger than expected despite their efforts to bring down the cost of living. In view of economic data that went against the Fed’s will, the major stock indexes slumped, with S&P 500 plunging 3.59% in two days while bitcoin flatlining at the same time. Bitcoin was later retraced on the weekend for 1.9% though the trading volume was not that much.

Speaking of altcoins, Terra Classic (LUNC) continues to be the highlight of all cryptos. The price chart of LUNC is no different from the rollercoaster at Disneyland, up and down and up again. Here is what happened. Initially, Binance, the largest crypto exchange in trading volume, announced the exchange will not support Terra's tax burn plan. Moreover, the CEO of Binance CZ restated his stance that he will not comply with the tax burn during a Twitter Space AMA. Not long after, the community of LUNC stood up and started the #BoycottBinance riot on Twitter. The rebel gathered steam so quickly that Binance has no other way but to concede. LUNC won and its price pumped.

Besides LUNC, the native token of the Reserve Protocol, Reserve Rights (RSR), has been enjoying a rise in value over the past 2 weeks in anticipation of its upcoming Ethereum Mainnet launch on 10^th October. A little bit of context here, RSR is the protocol token used to facilitate the stability of its algorithmic stablecoin, the Reserve token (RSV). Before the protocol launch on Mainnet, Reserve has been focusing on hyperinflationary countries in Latin America and providing services to more than 18,000 merchants. With the Mainnet launch, the full capabilities of the protocol will be enabled, including the ability for anyone to create stablecoins backed by baskets of ERC-20 tokens.

While most of the new Ethereum-based NFT projects are struggling to find sales, the blue chips are not. A rare Ape CryptoPunks was sold for 3,300 ETH, or $4.28 million, making the highest ETH value sale for a non-alien CryptoPunks in history. Daniel Maegaard, a famous crypto investor, sold this ape to an unknown buyer whose wallet was idle for more than 5 years.

Although the current landscape of NFT market is not friendly to new projects, QQL, a generative art project managed to get out of this dilemma. The project comes with a limited supply of 999 NFT mint passes, which were successfully sold out and garnered $17 million in sales on its launch day. Co-created by Art Blocks’ Fidenza creator Tyler Hobbs and Archipelago co-founder Dandelion Wist, the QQL Mint Pass allows holders to mint official art under this project. What is so special about QQL is that the minter is also the curator at the same time. Minter can generate hundreds or thousands of artworks until he or she finds the perfect piece of art and proceed with the minting.

Can’t afford to buy one? No worries! You can generate the artwork here at https://qql.art/create and right-click to save afterward

Disclaimer: This article is an update on the top-performing crypto & NFT for the past week. Any views, opinions, research, analyses, or other information contained in this piece is provided as general market commentary and does not constitute investment advice. Every investment involves risk, please conduct your own research when making a decision.