#129 - How bullish is this market uptrend? 📈

GM and welcome to Decentra Daily.

We're the web3 newsletter that's out on bail, fresh out of jail, WAGMI dreamin’. Soon as we step on the scene, we hearin’ degens screamin’.

Today,

• What's the verdict on recent crypto market trends?

• How did NFT God get hacked?

Top 24 hr NFT collection volume

via CoinMarketCap

1. CryptoPunks - 11 sales earning 737.19 ETH (0.11%)

2. MAYC - 16 sales earning 258.82 ETH (0.06%)

3. BAKC - 20 sales earning 176.76 ETH (0.59%)

4. Otherdeed - 38 sales earning 163.63 ETH (0.13%)

5. Pudgy Penguins - 22 sales earning 123.24 ETH (5.46%)

Is the bull market back? 🐂

Crypto markets are making a comeback this week.

Here are the headlines:

• Crypto as whole regained its $1 trillion market cap

• BTC and ETH are both ⬆️ over 20% since the start of the year

• BTC 6-month calls overtook puts

As always, it's not 100% clear why things are pumping – and it's anyone's guess whether those line graphs will continue to climb.

But here are some events and trends we can associate with the latest market rally.

Inflation is slowing. The US has seen 6 straight months of falling inflation rates, while the Consumer Price Index dropped 0.1% for December.

The specter of FTX is fading, letting crypto markets realign with stocks & the macroeconomy.

BTC mining reached record difficulty – historically a good sign for prices.

Solana and Cardano, two smaller blockchains, are doing big transaction numbers.

And the native coin for Polygon is ⬆️ $0.25 thanks to soon-approaching upgrades.

Plus, exchanges liquidated millions of shorts. OKX closed $256 million on traders who took out positions against the market.

Meanwhile, over in the world of NFTs...

Holders are liquidating their assets into ETH, to take advantage of rising prices.

Although tokens tied to metaverses & gaming NFTs are outperforming almost everything else:

Now, before you dust off your credit card and ape in...

We're still way, way below the heady days of 2021.

BTC may be pushing $21K (at time of writing), but that's less than a third of its ATH.

There's also the fact that Bitcoin’s Relative Strength Index hit 90% over the weekend.

RSI is a measure of how "overbought" coins are ...and 70% equals overbought. 😬

Tweet of the day

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On the web3 wire

• $SHIB releasing layer 2 network Shibarium to ⬇️ fees and ⬆️ speed

• Metaverse tokens are the best-performing web3 sector this year

• 3AC founders are building a new crypto exchange called GTX 😲

One of the biggest NFT influencers got hacked

Prayers were uttered this weekend on Crypto Twitter as one of its biggest players, NFT God (or Alex, if you prefer) got taken down by hackers.

In a thread, the influencer revealed that his digital empire was "hacked and used to hurt others."

So what happened?

How does one of the biggest NFT names get compromised? Turns out, it was a classic case of human error.

🐳 The whales are just like us!

NFT God was looking for the software OBS – a widely-used video streaming tool. A quick Google and download later, and the God thought he was ready to stream some miracles.

But, it turns out he clicked on a sponsored ad above Google's search results, instead of the official website. The ad was fake – and contained a malware link.

Downloading that malware unleashed hell on the God's desktop, giving hackers access to his Twitter, Substack, Gmail, and Discord.

– Plus, because NFT God had recently set up his wallet on a new computer, (a big no-no if you hold significant assets) the hackers also got the seed phrase to his crypto & NFTs. 🤦‍♂️

What did they steal?

Etherscan data shows the sinful hackers stole over $27K in ETH and a bunch of NFTs, including Alex's iconic mutant ape.

(Which one of his followers later found, bought, and sold back to NFT God).

The attackers moved the crypto through multiple wallets before swapping them for unknown currencies.

Then the hackers really started phishing

Like many crypto personalities, NFT God has a newsletter on Substack.

The day after the initial hack, Alex's account was breached and the attackers sent out phishing emails to all 16,000 of his loyal followers...

It's TBD how many of NFT God's subscribers got caught by this second layer of phishing.

What are phishing scams?

• A type of cyber attack that tricks people into downloading software or handing over personal info

• Phishing scams often take the form of legit-looking websites or counterfeit versions of messages that you might be expecting (i.e. a fake parcel tracking update)

How do you avoid phishing scams? The truth is, sometimes they can be really hard to spot.

But try to stay super vigilant about any site that's not 100% official – and be skeptical of any link that arrives unsolicited in your inbox.

Cya tomorrow 👋

Meme of the day

Preach 🙌

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