Weekend Wrap: Bitcoin could return to $10K, warns McGlone, Aptos buddies with Lotte and more

‘Global economic reset’ could push Bitcoin to 2020 levels

A potential “global economic reset” could see the price of Bitcoin (BTC) pushed down to a level not seen since mid-2020, according to Bloomberg Intelligence senior macro strategist Mike McGlone.

On Aug. 25, McGlone spoke to Kitco News suggesting that troubling economic indicators from China reportedly show signs its economy is slowing down — which could be the catalyst for the next big global bust.

https://t.co/UJN4NtW7HT

— Mike McGlone (@mikemcglone11) August 25, 2023

He said such a potential disaster could push the price of Bitcoin down to $10,000.

“Bitcoin was hovering around $10,000 before the big pump of liquidity. I know things have changed, I know on-chain metrics have increased but there’s a potential we can easily get back there if we get the reset I think we’re going to get.”

McGlone added he’s looking at Bitcoin as a leading indicator for most risk assets and even if Bitcoin drops to $10,000 it’s “still probably the best-performing asset ever — so that to me is a problem.”

He said what caused Bitcoin’s past performance was a zero-interest rate environment, however, he still holds some hope it will hit $200,000 unless “we get the global economic reset I think we’re going to get.”

Aptos grows partnerships by a Lotte

Layer-1 blockchain Aptos Network has announced a partnership with Daehong Communications, the marketing business owned by the multi-industry conglomerate Lotte Group.

In Aug. 26 post, Aptos said the partnership is focused on providing the back end for “Super Jelly” a reward system tied to Daehong’s nonfungible token (NFT) collection Bellygom and its upcoming online virtual world Bellyland.

PARTNERSHIP ANNOUNCEMENT

We are happy to announce the partnership with @Aptos_Network

Stay tuned for a whole brand new experience by Aptos & Lotte on the Bellygom ecosystem! https://t.co/8CdtATBSOg

— daehong_official (@Daehongofficial) August 26, 2023

Aptos’ mainnet will host the rewards that are earned through playing various games in Bellyland.

1/ About BellyLand
BellyLand is made of 12 mystical-themed areas. Adorable Bellygom is ready to play with you every night&day in BellyLand. I’m not just saying, Bellygom might be snoring at night and taking selfies during the day. Also, BellyLand is more beautiful at night! pic.twitter.com/RfDVT95Kdd

— Bellygom NFT (@bellygom_nft) August 26, 2023

It hinted the work with Daehong was a starting point and the partnership could see Aptos “explore Web3 innovation across many areas of the Lotte business network.”

Roll up! Roll up! — ETH layer 2’s process 5x more than Ethereum mainnet

Ethereum’s layer-2 blockchains have scaled the layer-1 network by over five times in the past week, according to L2Beat data.

Crypto education YouTuber Patrick Scott first highlighted the change in an Aug. 26 X (Twitter) post and said the scaling factor grew from under 1 times to 5.2 times in under a year.

From a scaling factor of under 1 to 5.25X in 1 year, Layer 2 Rollups, now process 5X the transactions of Ethereum mainnet.

In another year, this comparison won’t even make sense as Layer 2s will process so many magnitudes more transactions. pic.twitter.com/3xkpJM3Uc0

— Patrick | Dynamo DeFi (@Dynamo_Patrick) August 27, 2023

“In another year, this comparison won’t even make sense as Layer 2s will process so many magnitudes more transactions,” Scott added.

Layer 2’s such as Polygon or Coinbase’s Base bundle thousands of transactions for processing on Ethereum to ensure they’re immutably recorded with many boasting higher transactions per second and lower fees compared to Ethereum.

According to L2Beat the largest L2 was Arbitrum with a nearly 56% market share, followed by Optimisims OP Mainnet at 26% and zkSync Era at 4.2%.

Scams using verified accounts are ‘out of control,’ warns ZachXBT

Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT has raised the alarm over copycat verified organizations on X, which are “out of control” posting phishing links to fool unsuspecting users.

In an Aug. 27 post, ZachXBT shared an image of 12 X-verified organizations that were made in the past two days — all impersonations of legitimate crypto projects including Lido, Friend.tech, Synthetix and ApeCoin (APE).

Hello @x @premium the phishing scam spam from fake verified orgs on Twitter has gotten out of control.

These 12 accounts are all just from the past 48 hrs alone.

Verified orgs were intended to make it harder for scammers but it has just created a new black market for accounts… pic.twitter.com/cppyD5cUSj

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) August 27, 2023

Twitter changed its verification system following Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform moving to a paid verification system that allows businesses to pay $1,000 per month for a gold checkmark.

Musk claimed the subscription cost was to “make it expensive for scammers to create millions of accounts.”

It’s unclear how the fake accounts are proliferating but ZachXBT has said the alleged scammers buy the already-verified accounts on Telegram.

X says to qualify for the gold tick an organization must give a matching active account, organization email, address and website domain.

“Verified orgs were intended to make it harder for scammers but it has just created a new black market for accounts with no way for us to report and take down these accounts easily,” ZachXBT added.

Magazine: Recursive inscriptions — Bitcoin ‘supercomputer’ and BTC DeFi coming soon