Period: 24th October 2022 – 31st October 2022
· What a great rebound week for the US stock market and cryptocurrency! However, this success was built on the misfortune of others. As the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index slumped to its new low since 2009, funds were flowing out to seek better investment opportunities.
· Clone X - X Takashi Murakami is on its unstoppable spree in October. Following the announcements of a new project and airdrop, Clone X announced its collaboration with the world-famous luxury luggage manufacturer, RIMOWA. The luggage NFT collectibles have successfully sold out within 2 hours, but there’s a catch.
The latest China’s Congress started an economic butterfly effect, both the China and Hong Kong stock markets are at their worst since the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008. Bloomberg’s analysis believes the reveal of the new members of China's Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) heavily affected and frustrated foreign investors' confidence in China's future economic policies and prospects, causing Chinese stock markets to tumble. When one of the global major stock indexes falls, others usually follow, but this time it is the other way round. There is no other better option in the world when we talk about the financial market, the funds from Hong Kong flew into the States, and the second-best option, of course, is no doubt cryptocurrency. S&P 500 was up 3.70% last trading week while bitcoin was up 5.39%.
Besides the China Congress, what catches the eye of all global investors is none other than the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and his newly acquired company, Twitter. The C-suite executives of the social media company were immediately sacked on the first-day Musk moved into the San Francisco HQ. Following Musk’s takeover, Twitter will soon become a private company and its current board will be dissolved. One thing Musk is not expecting is the moon of Dogecoin (or is he?). It is an open secret that the Tesla CEO is a diehard supporter of Dogecoin (DOGE). There isn’t any fundamental news or updates from the DOGE team, but as Musk expressed his desire to make Twitter an "everything" app, investors predicted that crypto could be the payment of choice for the new Twitter and DOGE might be the Chosen One. DOGE price nearly doubled over the past week.
In the middle of October, Clone X aka RTFKT, announced its latest collaboration with RIMOWA. The NFT collection is called the Meta-Artisan Collection which includes a robot collectible and a limited-edition luggage. The robot NFT is a virtual wearable 3D model which I believe is for the use in the metaverse while the latter can redeem for a physical cabin luggage. These NFTs come in a limited supply of 2,222 and 888 with a mint price of 0.07 ETH and 2 ETH (~approx. $3,166) respectively. When you think a suitcase that cost over 3,000 US dollars is outrageous, wait until you see the rarest version. The last sale price of the 5/888 “Mimic” version of RTFKT x RIMOWA was sold for 8 ETH (~approx. $12,664) while the current floor price of this rarest collection was sitting at 24 ETH (~approx. $37,992). No record of sales at this pricing so far.
Despite the huge sold-out success, people were highly skeptical of the raffle’s fairness during the minting phase. It was later found out that the smart contract deployed by RTFKT has a critical loophole: the raffle winners are able to mint the NFT unlimited of times, all they need to do is transfer out the NFT after minting. As the smart contract detects no NFT in the raffle winners’ wallets, it allows them to mint the NFT over and over again. Many may not know about this incident, yet it did somehow ruin RTFKT’s reputation, at least it is what most NFT enthusiasts and collectors have felt.