‘Fear’ gets the best of Bitcoin; ‘Charlie Bit Me’ is now an NFT | The Daily Forkast

Transcript

Welcome to the Daily Forkast, May 17th, 2021. I’m Angie Lau. Let’s get you up to speed from Asia to the world.

FOMO replaced by FUD in crypto today, fear of missing out, replaced by fear, uncertainty, doubt or FUD. Around 300 billion dollars worth of the global cryptocurrency market cap has been wiped off over the weekend. Bitcoin dipped to lows we’ve not seen since late February and early March.

According to the crypto Fear and Greed Index, which measures the current sentiment of the Bitcoin market and calculated by data aggregator bybt, the current score is 27. That’s kind of low. The index looks at data from the likes of market volume, volatility, and social media, and ranks it on a scale of zero to 100. Zero means extreme fear. Sunday’s score was 20 and it hasn’t been 20 since April of 2020.

“With regard to positions people are holding, we are seeing more people holding short positions. So in the past few months, we very rarely see negative funding rate. But lately, the funding rate for Bitcoin is constantly negative on our exchange.”

Bybit added that a positive sentiment is being observed in their futures contract, though, which are still trading at a premium.

And what did all that lead to? Well, Bitcoin down almost 8%, trading at around $45,000 as of 4:00 p.m. local Hong Kong time, the end of the Asia trading day. And in the top ten for cryptocurrencies, no survivors here as well. Entire top ten in red, including Cardano down 8.5% after reaching an all-time high over the weekend. It’s still trading above two bucks, though.

But NFT is getting a boost. Do you remember this video?

First posted to YouTube in 2007, the “Charlie Bit Me” video has racked up over 880 million views. Now after 14 years, the family behind one of the first viral videos ever to hit the world, including Charlie and Harry, who are now in their teens, are ready to move on. They’re going to be scrubbing the whole movie from YouTube forever and turning it into what else? An NFT.

“We’re embracing something which is coming along, something which is new in the same way we did back then.”

The NFT will be auctioned off by Origin Protocol. Ironically, a handful of the company’s team members were early YouTube employees, including Origin co-founder Matthew Liu.

“There is a bit of this bittersweet feeling around the notion of this video, but we think it’s a very, very innovative way for the creators to make a decision as to what they want to do.”

And finally, this — who doesn’t need a little holiday? We all do. Well, world-renowned artist, KAWS is taking his next project, “KAWS: Holiday” to the sky over the UK. Now, if you want in on it, all you have to do is get your crypto wallet ready to go.

What makes this one different from his previous holiday exhibitions which have popped up in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan? In addition to the fact that his work of art takes you to the clouds in what organizers are calling one of the world’s largest hot air balloons, it will also be the first time KAWS, along with a production company he works with, Hong Kong based, ‘All Rights Reserved’, accept cryptocurrency as a form of payment for the journey.

The artist and his team have partnered up with FTX Pay, a crypto and fiat payment processor by FTX, which is, of course, headquartered in Hong Kong as well.

“I think the behavior is changing into the art world and I think this is a really great opportunity for us to make an experience out of it.”

Taking art literally to new heights in more ways than one.

And that’s the Daily Forkast. I’m Angie Lau. Until next time.