1. Yield Guild Games launched their token auction last night at 10pm to stellar results. The sale was for 25,000,000 YGG tokens priced at $0.50 each, and lasted all of 30 seconds by my count. By the time I had refreshed the SushiSwap auction page again, they had raised $12,496,000 in USDC and the sale had closed. And in case I need to spell out why this is exciting: YGG is led by Filipinos. It’s founded by two of my friends, both fixtures in the Philippine startup scene, Gabby Dizon and Beryl Chavez Li. (And one anonymous owl, I might add.)

2. Although it’s not the largest token offering ever raised by a Philippine-based startup, it’s the fastest sale that I’m aware of, and indicates a ton of interest in the Play-to-Earn economy, both here in the Philippines and across the world. There’s a lot to talk about with the YGG strategy and its unconventional approach to its organization, so for now I’ll just say that the plan is to create sub-communities dedicated to generating yield in each new Play-to-Earn game as they rise in popularity. Currently it handles over half a dozen such games already, of which Axie Infinity is the biggest.

3. Right before the YGG token sale, I was on the Axie Alerts PH livestream with Brylle and James, talking about what the future might look like for Axie Infinity in the Philippines.

   

   We talked about everything from taxes to ponzinomics to upcoming Axie economy tweaks to the correct time to sell SLP. I must have answered over a dozen audience questions and had a ton of fun. (Watch the recording here: https://fb.gg/v/6-HNsJHuNi) I think the thing that surprised me the most about the Axie Alerts page was that it had over 240,000 followers, making it larger than even the official Axie Infinity page itself. It’s really impressive to see such a massive number of members in an unofficial page, and it says a lot about how much this game has captured the imagination of young Filipinos.

4. If you’re wondering about that Bitcoin price surge yesterday, it’s looking like a combination of misreported Amazon news (no, they’re not going to accept Bitcoin payments) and what’s known in futures trading as a “short squeeze.” This past month, futures traders have all been betting on the price of Bitcoin to continue going down (we call this “shorting”), and a trickle of good news (the Amazon rumor was one of them) caused the price to go in the opposite direction. You can read in more detail about how short squeezes occur here, but generally traders in short positions have to buy Bitcoin in order to cover their bets, which causes the price to go upwards even more, causing other short positions further up the ladder to close as well. It’s a domino effect that keeps going until you run out of positions to liquidate. This caused the price to hit over $40,500 very briefly before sinking back below the $40,000 mark. It appears to be making another run at it as I’m writing this newsletter though, so we may be in for an interesting second half of the week.

   

5. The rest of the market is nicely green today, with $AXS enjoying a new ATH at $51 yesterday and nearly everything else pumping in tune with $BTC. The biggest gainers are all gaming-related — MyNeighborAlice ($ALICE, +50%), AlienWorlds ($TLM, +27%), and The Sandbox ($SAND, +25%) are double-digit monsters this morning — which dovetails nicely into my closing thoughts about $YGG.

6. I’ve started to look at YGG as as a “basket" investment, i.e., a single asset that represents an entire space. If you believe that Play-to-Earn is worth investing in, your biggest challenge is that the market is fragmented and difficult to read. Right now, it’s basically Axie Infinity and everyone else, but that’s not to say that their lead is insurmountable. Many new entrants will challenge AXS for dominance, and some of them might even be genuine contenders. So instead of ripping into each new game token (of which there will be many), my plan is to just invest in $YGG and let them worry about it. And the fact that the Play-to-Earn phenomenon is so naturally relevant to the Philippines makes it an absolute no-brainer investment. I know that I’m shilling my friends’ company way too hard now, so please allow me to disclose that I hold YGG tokens in my portfolio. I am unapologetically biased about this stuff. Please do your own research. With the initial auction out of the way, the $YGG token will be open to public trading on SushiSwap tonight July 28th, 10pm Manila time. Get your Metamasks ready.

See you all on Friday, cryptofam! And please subscribe to my thrice-weekly newsletter at cryptoday.substack.com if you haven’t already.