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  • Summer? Sounds more like a Crypto Winter. 🥶 More on the Celsius situation, Marina Ambramovic’s NFT drop and metaverse Lamina1

Summer? Sounds more like a Crypto Winter. 🥶 More on the Celsius situation, Marina Ambramovic’s NFT drop and metaverse Lamina1

GM! 🌞

It may be Summer, but there is an ongoing Crypto Winter.

Are we in the 70’s or in ‘29?

Either way, with the worst crash since 2018, we made it to the end of a week we won’t forget anytime soon….

Here is this week’s recap ✨

🎨 NFT News

✨ Marina Abramović is launching her first NFT collection

Serbian contemporary artist Marina Abramović may have been initially skeptical of these new virtual artistic mediums, but has taken a u-turn as she is ready to welcome her very first NFT journey.

Her very first NFT journey, is a project tied to the revival of one of her most iconic works, “The Hero” (2001) : an iconic video dedicated to her back then recently deceased father who had stood out during the Second World War. Within this clip, Abramović is seen riding a white horse while holding a white flag.

An iconic piece that will take over billboards from London to New York this summer, from June 13th to August 13th,  thanks to the collaboration with the Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Art (Circa) in London.

For the realization of this NFT, Marina Abramović will rely on Tezos Blockchain, the most sustainable on the market, and use the profit to support Circa, to finance art projects.

✨“Ready Layer One”: ‘Snow Crash’ Author Neal Stephenson reveals Lamina1 

Cyberpunk author Neal Stephenson made us daydream with his novels, but is now officially stepping into Web3 to revolutionize the concept of “open metaverse”.

This week, at the Consensus conference in Austin, Texas, Neal announced the launch of Lamina1: a "free metaverse" aimed at “helping get artists and other value creators paid properly for their work, helping the environment, and seeing a truly Open Metaverse get built instead of seeing the Metaverse vision co-opted by monopolies.”

Lamina1 is still taking its very first steps, as it is raising funds and hiring, but we should expect a beta rollout in the fall.

To keep up with updates, you can join the official discord at:discord.gg/lamina1.

✨ Lacoste launches UNDW3: a Web3-based digital experience and NFT collection

Lacoste dipped its toes into this world not too long ago thanks to a collaboration with Minecraft for its first immersive virtual world but now, it took a deep dive: Lacoste is launching its very first Web3 experience, UNDW3.

UNDW3 is meant to be "a journey allowing community members to experience collaborative fashion in a new creative way", where owners of the NFTs not only will have access to exclusive physical products but also be able to co-design.

✨ Bitcoin plunges around $20K: the lowest we’ve seen since 2020

This week has been tough, as Bitcoin (BTC) suffered one of its worst price declines of the year alongside ether (ETH) and all altcoins amid a new wave of panic and sell-offs.

BTC has been falling for 12 straight weeks, a record, falling from nearly $49,000 in March 2022 to around $20,000.

Whereas Ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain, plunged to around $1,000.

✨ Crypto firm Celsius pauses all transfers causing widespread panic

It’s been all over the place, and probably even worse than the Terra event last month. The latest sell-off of Bitcoin and Ether can also be linked to an unexpected announcement on behalf of crypto lending service Celsius.

On Monday, Crypto lending service Celsius announced it would be pausing withdrawals, citing "extreme market conditions." with no timeline guaranteed. (Everything is still paused at the time of writing)

"We are working with a singular focus: to protect and preserve assets to meet our obligations to customers. Our ultimate objective is stabilizing liquidity and restoring withdrawals, Swap, and transfers between accounts as quickly as possible. There is a lot of work ahead as we consider various options, this process will take time, and there may be delays," cites the Tweet.

But that’s not all: not only are withdrawals blocked, but also fund transferring - resulting in the liquidation of users who are not able to pay back their loans.

Needless to say, the price of Celsius's CEL token has since then fallen over 50%.

Shortly after, in a letter to Celsius, Cryptocurrency lending platform and competitor Nexo mentioned it was particularly interested in Celsius’ collateralized loan portfolio and that it was looking to acquire “mostly or fully of collateralized loan receivables secured by corresponding collateral assets, as well as brand assets and the customer database."

✨ From Web3 directly to Web5: Jack Dorsey announces TBD’s plans to build a new decentralized web

Last Friday, Jack Dorsey announced that TBD, a subsidiary of Block Inc., is building a new decentralized web: Web5.

So, why Web5 and not Web4? And especially, why are we jumping onto something totally new when we are still laying down the foundations of Web3?

Web2 + Web3 = Web5.

Practically, Web5 is based on the idea that both Web2 and Web3 don’t have what it takes to build a solid decentralized web. For Dorsey, Web3 compared to Web2 certainly has good intentions and is fighting for the right cause, but is lacking when it comes to using the right tools.

That’s why unlike Web3, Web5 will only leverage Bitcoin and sound computer science technologies in order to bring to life a whole new ecosystem of decentralized identities, data storage and applications that will all be exclusively in control of the owners, with no intermediaries.

From a more technical standpoint, this will be possible thanks to the usage of software components and services such as decentralized identifiers (DIDs), decentralized web node (DWNs), self-sovereign identity service (SSIS) and a self-sovereign identity software development kit (ssi-sdk) which an article on Bitcoin Magazine explains perfectly.

Curious to see what Web5 will look like.

“Web5: An extra decentralized web platform

https://t.co/LDW3MZ8tON”

🍿 Events this Month

MetaVanity. A meta-exhibition.

📅 Ongoing exhibition.

📍HADEM.

📚 Book of the Month

This month’s book is a recent release by one of my favorite futurists in the space, Cathy Hackl, who collaborated with Dirk Lueth and Tommaso Di Bartolo to bring “Navigating the Metaverse: A guide to limitless possibilities in a Web 3.0 world” to life.

A must-read for anyone who wants to stay up to date on the Metaverse, whether already deeply in, or just getting acquainted with it!

🐥 Highlights of the week