Period: 11^th October 2022 – 18^th October 2022

· What a miracle day for the global financial markets! The monthly CPI data has once again crushed the stocks, the cryptos, and the bonds, however, all of them rebounded strongly after the US stock market opened.

· A community-driven NFT project shined through the current bear market. It’s been a while since a free-mint project hit the 1E floor, Genuine Undead might probably be the next one. Let’s check out the backstory behind these pixelated zombies.

If you think that “fear, uncertainty, and doubt” (FUD) could happen only in crypto then you are so wrong. The stock markets encountered one of the biggest FUD moments in recent years due to the hotter-than-expected CPI data. Just like what happened in September soon after the CPI data was released – major stock indexes recorded the worst one-day performance in two years - all three indexes had once again wiped out more than 2%. When everyone was still figuring out what happened to the inflation in the States, the selling pressure stopped and begin to recover slowly. 2 hours into the announcement of CPI, the investors digested the inflation reading, turning the market upside down by pulling one of the biggest intraday reversals in the history.

13^th October 2022 marked the 5th-largest intraday reversal from a low in the history of the S&P 500. Source: Twitter @sentimentrader

The crypto market, on the other hand, had the same fate. Bitcoin saw a $600 swing in the first 5 minutes of trading, hitting the lowest price of $18,183. Following the footsteps of the S&P 500, bitcoin recovered from its loss and rebounded to the $19K mark, where it was prior to the release of CPI. Overall, the performance of large-cap cryptos was a little flat, the highlight was the altcoins. Arweave (AR), a Decentralized Storage Network (DSN) that is designed to provide scalable, cost-effective, and permanent data storage, made it back to the top 100 cryptocurrencies after its publication of a 13 pages paper titled “Fair Forks”, talking about forks, DAOs, and futarchy. Not to mention the announcement in September that the development company of Arweave, Community Labs, has secured a $30 million funding round.

While the NFT market is still in its slump, an army of the undead rises and conquers. As of the time of writing, the floor price of Genuine Undead is standing still at 0.8 ETH, looking forward to breaking the 1 ETH wall. Starting as a free-mint project in August, the PFP NFT collection was gaining traction for its fine 24 x 24 pixel art. However, the road to 1 ETH of the undead is never smooth. Undead’s floor price hit 0.1 ETH floor in the first week of its launch and was once dumped below 0.1 ETH. It then floated between 0.1 ETH and 0.2 ETH in the rest of September, and only began to soar in October.

The floor price of Genuine Undead. Source: NFTGo

Just like the thousands of free-mint projects out there in the Ethereum blockchain, Genuine Undead comes with neither roadmap nor utility. The sudden frenzy of NFT enthusiasts had also placed the founder in shock. What’s more shocking is that the founder gave access to both Discord and Twitter to the community instead of being the leader himself, making “community” the utility of the project. People were buying because of art back then, but now it’s all about community.

“Community is utility”– Genuine Undead, 2022