ETH and the US Dollar Tighten + VAIL VR finale in Miami
Hartmann Capital Newsletter, Thursday September 29th 2022
Meet the team and portfolio founders on October 1st at Superblue Miami at the VailVR Tournament finale. More information below.
Macro Highlights
This month the two biggest catalysts in the crypto markets were both of monetary policy nature.
On one hand, we saw the Federal Reserve, once again, raise interest rates by 75bps, while projecting that the central bank will be raising rates two more times before the year is over.
Dollar strength has continued to wreck havoc on most international currencies as the dollar not only toppled the Euro but also nearly toppled the British Pound for the first time in history.
Ironically, while the S&P500 recorded a new low for the year this month, Ethereum has been finding support at the $1300 level, nearly 50% up from it’s year-to-date low of ~$900.
Ethereum has performed comparatively well, as it has tightened its own monetary policy even more than the Fed. In fact after the successful Merge on September 15th, ETH has since experienced lower inflation than Bitcoin, with a mere annual increase of .18%. Despite collecting a historically small amount of on-chain fees due to a decline in traffic during the bear market, Ethereum still is witnessing a massive tightening in new token inflation. Should Ethereum on-chain activitiy once again pick up, we are likely to see a significant deflation of the Ethereum supply, which may make it the hardest asset in the world, and perhaps one of the only assets to thrive during a dollar tightening.
Portfolio Highlights
On Saturday October 1st, Hartmann Metaverse Portfolio Company Aexlab will host the finale to their Beta release tournament at Superblue Miami with over 800 attendees. RedpillVR, another Hartmann Metaverse portfolio company will also be present with demo stations. We invite you to join us and experience some of the best VR companies live in person, and connect with the Hartmann team. If you’d like us to secure you a ticket simply reply to this email.
If you cannot make it to Miami but want to watch the tournament from VR, Redpill VR will be hosting a viewing party inside their virtual world!
Podcast Highlights
In Episode 13 we discussed crypto market structure with Dave Weisberger, the founder and CEO of Coinroutes, an institutional algorithmic trade execution platform. We covered the Merge, Celsius, and more:
In Episode 14 we sat down with Hartmann Digital Portfolio founder Sid Powell to discuss the emerging sector or real-world lending, how Maple $MPL has been growing their lending protocol to over $1.8bn in loans originated, and how they made it through the liquidity crisis faced by crypto lenders in Q2:
In Episode 15, Felix interviewed Hartmann Digital Portfolio founder Tor Bair, on how privacy can and must be protected in Web3, what Secret Network does to enable privacy from DeFi to NFTs and more:
All episodes are also available on Spotify and Apple. Over the next 4 weeks we will be releasing interviews with Greg Osuri of Akash network, who is decentralizing cloud computing, Miles Anthony, founder of Decentral Games, the biggest metaverse casino, and Steve Grubbs, founder of VictoryXR, the leading builder of “metaversities” bringing VR education to over 30 accredited universities.
If you don’t yet, make sure to also follow us on LinkedIn, where we share clips from our discussions with founders on a daily basis.
Disclaimers:
This is not an offering. This is not financial advice. Always do your own research.
Our discussion may include predictions, estimates or other information that might be considered forward-looking. While these forward-looking statements represent our current judgment on what the future holds, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect our opinions only as of the date of this presentation. Please keep in mind that we are not obligating ourselves to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events.