Last week in Crypto October 24th 30th

Hello everyone, welcome to another edition of our weekly cryptocurrency news roundup. So it’s the last week of the month and approximately six weeks away from Christmas. So stay informed, Busha Tribe and plan for the new year!!

​​ELON OWNS TWITTER
This has been the most talked about takeover this week, and it was met with significant excitement in the cryptocurrency community; at least, we are sure of that. Elon Musk, the CEO of Electric cars Tesla and SpaceX, has bought Twitter, making him the official owner of the social media giant, and it's no longer a publicly traded company. According to reports, Musk purchased the 'free speech social media platform for around $43 billion after several weeks of legal issues and back-and-forth on the topic of spam and bots on the network. Musk is a pro-crypto supporter, and there was jubilation on Twitter about the takeover.

Binance confirmed that it invested $500 million in Elon Musk's Twitter takeover. This and several other anonymous support directly to Musk from the crypto community showed enthusiasm towards the new Twitter landlord. Some even suggested that one of Elon's long-term plans is to move the platform from web2 to web3 and several other speculations.

In no time, Elon Musk went straight to action after the takeover became official. He has announced he intends to sack 7,400 Twitter staff and change the core codebase of twitter to be similar to that of Tesla. He has also sacked the current CEO of Twitter, Parag Agrawal and some of the head committees over Twitter and instated himself as the new CEO. He mentioned that his reason for his latest acquisition is that "It is important to the future of civilisation to have a common digital town square, where a “wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence". He also talked about how he plans to take the giant media platform to a new level.

Musk prided himself as the king of memes as he tried to make the takeover in the most lighted way you can imagine. One of two instances was a video showing him entering the company with a new sink and following it with a caption,' let it sink in. Another instance was changing his bio to 'chief twit'. He's hilarious, and we are interested in the new shape Twitter will take in the following months.

Elon Musk's favourite crypto coin, Dogecoin, also took its uprising and entered double digits per cent increase. Dogecoin (DOGE) continued its bullish price action for the second straight day, with the leading meme coin jumping to a new monthly high of $0.08022 at the time of writing, according to data from Coingecko. The price spiked up 16.7% over the past 24 hours. Trading volumes also spiked by 196% over the same period. This new spike is due to the Twitter announcement and the coin’s on-metrics positive growth pattern the coin is taking.

Are you excited about the takeover?

VISA TO LAUNCH CRYPTO WALLET
Last year, Visa partnered with over 60 leading crypto companies like Binance, Crypto.com, Coinbase, etc. This month alone, they have partnered with FTX to roll out crypto debit cards in over 40 countries and also agreed to offer a crypto debit card to Blockchain.com. It's obvious Visa is invested in the new digital currency trend and may be looking to create a crypto wallet and an NFT base.

On Oct 27, licensed trademark attorney Mike Kondoudis revealed the latest trademark applications for credit giant Visa. Global credit card giant Visa has made several recent trademark applications hinting at a more extensive move into crypto markets. The applications suggest that the firm is looking to develop or launch its digital asset wallet. The two trademark filings included software for managing digital, virtual, and cryptocurrency transactions, and cryptocurrency wallets. The filing document making its round on Twitter has kickstarted the rumour that Visa is about to launch its own crypto wallet. The filing also made provisions for auditing cryptocurrencies, utility tokens, and blockchain assets.

More reports suggest that Visa wants to go full-fledged metaverse with NFT and has made fillings for a trademark on "non-downloadable virtual goods" such as NFT collectables. The description for the trademark goes: "Providing virtual environments in which users can interact for recreational, leisure or entertainment purposes accessible in the virtual world". That sounds like they intend to have fun with the metaverse rather than the usual traditional financial service operations they're known for providing.

It is clear that the company has big ambitions in the crypto space, so its own digital wallet would be the next logical step.

FREEWAY HALTS SERVICES
Freeway, a crypto platform, has announced via a series of tweets that it will be halting some of its services like withdrawal. The crypto platform claims that "the unprecedented USD rally" and market volatility were the reason for the failure of "one of Freeway's trading strategies." which caused a 'substantial loss'. The announcement made on October 23 noted that it is halting buys and deposits and will "not be buying Supercharger simulations until our new strategies are implemented."

Freeway is a centralized platform that combines traditional finance with DeFi. Users can deposit fiat currencies and crypto, which are placed in regulated brokerage accounts that are leveraged for returns. According to the Freeway website, its Superchargers product can offer up to 43% annual yield rewards.

Freeway has not provided any specific details about its new strategies but announced plans to "diversify its asset base" and "manage exposure to future market fluctuations and volatility."

In its 22-tweet threat, Freeway identified four independent recovery plans. The first plan mainly focuses on growing, managing, and maintaining the remaining funds. The second plan outlines the strategy of applications "started back in June as a diversification opportunity."

The third recovery plan focuses on issuing new funding to an entirely new project with "impressive projected profitability." Lastly, the fourth recovery plan focuses on "getting Earn and Protect(a product that helps users safeguard their funds in a vault) off the ground, with all of its user protections safeguarded by the AuBit Reserves Foundation."

In the wake of other high-profile issues with crypto firms and exchanges, users have expressed their concerns on social media and in the Freeway Telegram group. The two most prominent are whether withdrawals will be honoured and if Freeway will follow other high-profile crypto platforms in permanent closure.

FACEBOOK IN FREE FALL
Mark Zuckerberg changed the name of Facebook to Meta to reflect his aggressive goals for establishing a new computing platform that incorporates virtual, augmented and mixed reality, dubbing it the "metaverse." His goal was to use the massive profit and revenue tossed off by social networks Facebook and Instagram to get to the next generation of computing before rival Apple Inc. Still, it seems his problem started from that decision alone.

One could suggest that Mark didn't expect the economic upheaval from every angle that threatened Meta's social media position. A new report shows shares of Meta suffered their second-largest daily decline on record Thursday, plummeting nearly 25% as Zuckerberg detailed the latest effects of his metaverse push.

While all these have been happening, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has yet to move toward the 'hasty' steps on his metaverse mission while still costing this media-industry billion of dollars with no endpoint in sight. To make it worse for Mark, the company's significant shareholders seem to object to the entirety of the metaverse idea. Still trying to figure out his mission, Mark was quoted saying any investor not interested in the project could use the door.

The company was worth as much as $1.078 trillion last September after becoming one of just six in the U.S. ever to top the trillion-dollar mark. But Meta's time in that vaunted group was short-lived, as the company's market cap has seen a steep fall over the past year: Meta finished Thursday with a $263 billion valuation. The last time Meta was valued at under $300 billion was Feb 19, 2016, per Dow Jones Market Data.

Meta isn't backing down on its plans to spend up on the metaverse, even as the company faces numerous pressures on its primary business. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg disclosed that he expects Meta's spending on Reality Labs efforts to "increase meaningfully again" next year. Executives also anticipate that overall capital expenditures could grow from $34 billion to $39 billion in 2023 from an estimated $32 billion to $33 billion in 2023.

Is Facebook on a course to fall off, or this metaverse project will change the dynamic of social media platforms forever?

EVOLUTION OF BITCOIN ATM
It’s been nine years since the first Bitcoin ATM was installed in one Canadian coffee shop. Now, we have nearly 39 000 crypto machines worldwide, and the numbers are expected to continue growing massively from there.

Since the first ATM was installed in Canada, the global installation hub has shifted to the United States. The United States now houses nearly 88% of the world's supply of crypto ATMs, taking credit for 90% of all newly installed ATMs over the past few months. Canada comes second with 6.6%, and Spain comes third with 0.6% of the total crypto ATMs worldwide.

However, like many crypto-related products, crypto ATM installations have been challenged this year due to the crypto bear market. Crypto ATM installations slowed between January and May before a slight recovery between June and August. Still, September saw net crypto ATMs drop globally for the first time, after 459 machines were removed from the global network.

There's an expectation for spontaneous growth in these numbers as we approach the Bull market. In early October, U.S. authorities warned crypto ATMs were emerging as a popular method for scammers to receive value and defraud victims, most often in "pig butchering" scams where the attacker poses as a potential romantic partner, gains trust and asks the victim to send them money, or in some cases, cryptocurrency.

MEME OF THE WEEK
We are coming back up 🥲

https://twitter.com/jigsaw_mcgraw/status/1584540922171490309?s=46&t=O-SyPrvuqOQed5AutHiUIw

On today's episode of 'Bolu Answers', let's take a quick look at a fun topic - Meme coin.

WHAT'S A MEME COIN?
Suppose you look up the word "meme" in the dictionary. In that case, it's a humorous image, video, or piece of text that is copied, usually with slight variations and spread rapidly by internet users. If I also go through your phone gallery, there's a significant probability that >50% of it contains memes and funny pictures. Crypto has its own meme coin, and unlike the ones on your phone, this is an investment technique and has quite the value in bulk form. So what's it? Should you even consider investing in it?

A meme coin is a cryptocurrency term for popular currencies, sometimes depicted with comical or animated "memes" supported by enthusiastic online traders and followers—sometimes holding a billion-dollar value. While these characteristics suggest that meme coins offer some underlying utility or value, the truth is that nearly all of them lack anything like fundamental value or unique use cases.

Bryan Hernandez, a co-founder of trading and investment platform Structure.fi, made a statement concerning meme coins that I like; he says, "Meme coins are designed like any other cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin or Ethereum. The difference is their existence tends to be centred around a viral moment or funny idea, and their value depends largely on how much momentum that concept can generate."

Even though over 300 meme coins exist, many are not actively traded and are effectively worthless. Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Dogelon Mars, and Baby Dogecoin are the only currencies in the meme category with more than $1 million in daily trading volume. All are generally considered risky and volatile trading assets. This is because this coin is highly speculative and rests on an engaging social media community. Making it highly volatile.

Before we round up, let’s take a quick look at the pros and cons of meme coins.

That said,

If you’re wondering whether or not to buy a meme coin, there’s a minimal chance that you could pick the next big asset before online fans “send it to the moon”. However, you should proceed with caution when it comes to risky coins.