🏚 Inflation Hits Basic Needs

July 15, 2022

|In Weekend Recap

|By Osprey Team

On Wednesday, the Consumer Price Index posted a 9.1% YoY increase, its largest YoY increase since 1981.

Consumers’ most basic needs felt the heat. The largest contributors to the 40-year high include; gasoline, shelter, and food.

Here’s the WSJ with more.

🐭 Web3 at Disney

Walt Disney announced the 6 companies participating in its 2022 Disney Accelerator Program.

This year’s class is focused on all things Web3 — the future of immersive experiences, augmented reality, non-fungible tokens, and artificial intelligence characters.

Polygon, Flickplay, Inworld, Lockerverse, Obsess, and Red 6 will work with Disney’s senior leaders and share their findings via a Demo Day this fall.

As the announcement spread, $MATIC, the native token of the Polygon network, ticked a 50-day high. Click here to learn more about Polygon and the Osprey Polygon Trust.

🏦 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland on Lightning

Last month, The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland shared a research piece titled, The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money.

Here’s a quick quote,

We find a significant association between LN adoption and reduced blockchain congestion, suggesting that the LN has helped improve the efficiency of Bitcoin as a means of payment. This improvement cannot be explained by other factors, such as changes in demand or the adoption of SegWit.

Great to see central banks talk bitcoin.

Read the full 18-page piece here and click here to see our past post, What is the Lightning Network?

🇨🇭 Crypto in the Countryside

PostFinance, the banking unit of the Swiss post office, continues to creep into crypto.

It already offers clients exposure to crypto via its app, but PostFinance looks to create an independent trading and custody service by 2024.

Sandra Lienhart, PostFinance head of retail banking, comments,

Our clients want direct access to this market through their house bank. Given the growing institutionalisation [of cryptocurrencies] in the last 18 months, this is the ideal time to enter the market.

Read the full scoop from SwissInfo here.

👯‍♀️ The Sandbox Builds

This week, The Sandbox teased a partnership with Playboy to launch the MetaMansion.

Here’s the tweet,

Tony Hawk also teamed up with the metaverse developer to create the largest virtual skatepark ever!

The legendary skater shared,

I’ve been a fan of new technology all of my life — from the first videogames to home computers with CGI capabilities — so I’m fascinated by the metaverse.

Here’s CoinDesk with details.