Shares of cryptocurrency mining company Phoenix Group soared 50% on Tuesday following the company’s public debut in Abu Dhabi, Bloomberg reported. According to the article, the company’s stock opened at 2.25 dirhams, showing a significant increase from the 1.50 dirhams it sold during the initial public offering (IPO) on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) under the trading symbol PHX on November 5.

Abu Dhabi’s IHC Acquires 10% Stake in Phoenix

During the IPO, the crypto mining firm raised a total of 1.36 billion dirhams worth around $37 million.

Phoenix said the offering was closed with a massive oversubscription of 33 times more than expected, implying orders valued at $12 billion on November 18. The company had initially estimated a post-IPO valuation of approximately $2.47 billion.

Part of the IPO allocated to retail investors was also oversubscribed 180 times, signaling investors’ confidence in the firm, while professional investors amounted to a 22-fold oversubscription.

Aside from the investors who participated in the public offering, the International Holding Co., Abu Dhabi’s largest conglomerate, controlled by a prominent emirate’s royal family member, acquired a 10% stake in Phoenix in early October before the IPO. 

Phoenix described the just-concluded IPO as “more than an achievement; it’s a launching pad for Phoenix Group’s global aspirations.”

According to Bloomberg, the company’s public offering comes when the appetite for IPOs in the Persian Gulf region has increased in the past two years due to a number of factors, including elevated oil prices, government initiatives to privatize state-owned enterprises, and robust demand from investors.

However, the regional boom starkly contrasts with the global listings market, grappling with subdued activity due to aggressive interest rate hikes and concerns about economic growth.

Expansion Plans and Vision

Phoenix said in a press release on December 4 that it will expand its business in the future to focus on innovation in Bitcoin (BTC) mining, renewable energy ventures, and strategic acquisitions.

“As we approach our IPO, we’re thrilled to unveil our ambitious vision for the future. Anchored by four pillars – innovation in Bitcoin mining, renewable energy ventures, advanced manufacturing capabilities, and strategic acquisitions – we’re poised to redefine the technology landscape,” said Bijan Alizadehfard, co-founder of Phoenix Group.

To further expand its footprint in the United Arab Emirates, the company has entered a joint venture with the Abu Dhabi government to exemplify the successful fusion of public policy and private sector innovation.

Launched in 2017 by Bijan Alizadeh Fard and Munaf Ali, Phoenix has become a key player in the crypto mining and blockchain sector, known for its development of innovative solutions that drive the adoption of the emerging economy around the world. The UAE-based firm has successfully developed and implemented proprietary blockchain technologies and advanced crypto-mining operations globally.

The company is currently working on building one of the biggest digital asset mining facilities in the Middle East.

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This week’s guest on the Cardano NFT Column is a project developing a P2E RPG-style autobattler game that cooperates with other NFT projects: Phoenix Arena.

Last week’s guest was a project that reproduces the DeFi model with NFT and allows staking many Cardano NFT collections to earn HEXO tokens.

This initiative is a point of reference for NFTs on Cardano and every week or two we will invite someone to answer some questions and give us an update directly from within the Cardano community.

Considering that many of our readers are new to the crypto space, we will have a mix of simple and technical questions.

Cardano NFT project: Phoenix Arena

Hey, glad to have you here. Please introduce your team, where are you from, what are your backgrounds?

My name is Oliver and I am one of the founders of Phoenix Arena NFT.

I am based in Glasgow, Scotland. I graduated from law school but found no interest in it. Since then I have worked in management, sales and engineering. 

I have been involved with cryptocurrencies and ADA since early 2019. All the skills from my past work experiences have been useful when it comes to Phoenix Arena.

What is Phoenix Arena and why have you chosen the Cardano blockchain for your project?

Phoenix Arena is a Cardano NFT project developing a P2E RPG-style autobattler game. The core gameplay revolves around players choosing their squad for battle from the character NFTs they own, selecting their items, skills, and attack sequences, and battling against other players.

The meta gameplay revolves around acquiring and developing skills and gear, and developing new hero/squad builds to climb up the leaderboard. Phoenix Arena has sold 3 NFT sets: Max, Diver, and just recently the set called Fluffy.

The NFTs passively reward users with the project in-game currency WARI and other assets. The NFTs will also provide owners with an in-game identity and items for their inventory.

We are drawn to Cardano for its scientific and engineering rigor to deliver a decentralized, secure and scalable blockchain. We believe Cardano will have a deeply positive impact on how humanity organizes itself. We hope to be a part of the evolution of this amazing platform through our modest contribution.

How would you explain the potential of NFTs in gaming to the most skeptic gamers who think NFTs and P2E/P&E (Play to Earn/Play & Earn) are essentially the same as P2W (Pay to Win) mechanics?

As a gamer one of the things that frustrates me the most is that you can grind for a full year e.g FIFA23 build up your squad and then you have to start from 0 again when the next game edition is released. There is no ROI apart from the entertainment.

Not only are NFTs most certainly the future of gaming but they will allow millions of players to interact with and compete with online gamers while earning tokens within a virtual world.

You can now earn while playing and own, collect, and even sell your in-game items. P2E can even be a boon to your budget when you play as a side hustle.

You’re collaborating with several other NFT projects including Cardania and Cardano Lands, can you tell us more about this? Why are these cross-projects collabs important? Is cooperation better than competition?

Phoenix Arena has a collaboration format where their NFT characters have items that have been created in the spirit of the project they are collaborating with. The previous Diver NFT had a collaboration with Cardania where Diver has a set of Cardania-themed items and Cardania-themed Divers also receive Cardania RADTokens as passive rewards. The latest Fluffy NFT drop has themed items in collaboration with Cardania, Melting Moonboys, and Derp Birds.

The token partnerships create a bridge between the different projects and is something unique in the CNFT space. With 1 NFT you can earn up to 6 different tokens, introducing you to potentially 6 different communities.

I am a firm believer that it is wiser to work together rather than against each other. For instance if a project wants to build a marketplace and the initial investment is 50K would it not make more sense for 5 projects to all invest 10k each to build software that could be used by all 5?

Thank you kindly for your time. Any closing thoughts? Where can people learn more about Phoenix Arena?

We are building a P2E game that is appealing to both the casual and the competitive hardcore gamers alike. PA collaboration system has the potential to bring the whole space together and battle in the Phoenix Arena. We are not only building a game, we are building a brand. 

You can learn more via our Twitter.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of the people interviewed are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Cardano Foundation or IOG. Moreover, this content is for educational purposes, it doesn’t constitute financial advice.

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The era of meme-coins is hardly over but the reigning king of meme-coins appears to have a new face.

While dog-themed crypto tokens like Dogecoin DOGE/USD and Shiba Inu SHIB/USD enjoyed their time in the limelight, the crown of “meme-coin king” has been passed to Terra Classic LUNC/USD, according to a report from Santiment.

 Throughout the past few months, the #memeking crown has been handed off to $DOGE, $SHIB, #SAFEMOON, and even $LUNC. We continue to see that social dominance spikes have led to local tops for these kinds of assets in particular. Read our latest insight! https://t.co/GOR16gSAr7 pic.twitter.com/TREwQQRv2p

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) September 12, 2022

The blockchain analytics firm observed that in recent months, DOGE’s social dominance has faltered while LUNC’s spiked to new highs.

“Just observing the price and volume patterns, there’s a very similar structure in LUNC right now to what was happening with DOGE a year and something ago,” stated the Santiment analysts.

“Both had an initial run-up, followed by a flat consolidation, after which the real craze began.”

When it was first created, LUNC or Terra Classic was far from what one would consider a meme-coin – usually tokens that investors pile into purely for speculation. At its peak, the smart contract platform, and its native token, was a well-established part of the crypto economy. 

See Also: Is Terra (Luna) Dead?

The coin’s drastic collapse bore consequences for the wider crypto market and sent Bitcoin BTC/USD, Ethereum ETH/USD and several leading altcoins into a downward spiral.

“[LUNC] had a spectacular rise and an even more spectacular downfall, going literally to 0 and leaving even the most stubborn dip buyers begging for change on the side of the road. But now it turns out, the phoenix has risen from the ashes, and a whole new wave of speculation is rolling up to the crypto shores,” wrote Santiment.

Price Action: At time of writing, LUNC was trading at $0.0003209, up 230% over the last 30-days.

Image: Edited By Kurt Wild (Wikimedia Commons)

Out of the ruins of the TerraUSD (UST) collapse rises a new stablecoin — USDTea, the first of its kind — that is backed by a can of, well, iced tea.

Whether intended as satire or not, USDTea has joined the plethora of stablecoins in the vast crypto wilderness.

USDTea is supported by the “most popular” iced tea brand in the United States, AriZona Iced Tea, which has consistently offered its product for $0.99 since 1996.

Stablecoins are currently taking a severe battering, and the upheaval that occurred this week has thrown the entire crypto ecosystem into chaos with hundreds of billions of dollars in losses from just one token.

The operations of the stablecoin are rather simple, since users just swap tokens and a processing fee for real cans of iced tea (thelcn.com).

USDTea, The Iced-Tea Backed Stablecoin

In these troubling times, the only thing we can count on is that a can of AriZona Iced Tea will cost 99 cents, the same price it has had for the past three decades.

Mossy, a trio of tech artists, believes that an (unofficially) beverage-backed stablecoin can be the messiah of sorts in the ailing crypto economy.

Suggested Reading | Bitcoin And Retirement: U.S. House Bill To Include Crypto On 401(K) Plans

The techy collective says:

We intend to stabilize the fragile cryptocurrency ecosystem by creating a new token backed by a hard asset whose price has been constant for 30 years: AriZona Iced Tea.

While other stablecoins aim to peg to dollar quantities via “questionable algorithms or opaque investment techniques,” Mossy guarantees their liquidity with “sweet and delicious liquid.”

A stablecoin suggests that it should be “stable” since it follows the value of another asset, similar to the gold standard, which has once specified that each US dollar is backed by the precious metal.

TerraUSD was algorithm-based, meaning that there were no physical reserves, which resulted in $400 billion in losses for investors, prompting many to question the “stability” of stablecoins as a whole.

Crypto total market cap at $1.24 trillion on the Tuesday chart | Source: TradingView.com

The Weirdness Of This World

As a result, the group decided to establish a stablecoin backed by “America’s most stable asset” — cans of AriZona Iced Tea, whose owner, Don Vultaggio, has kept the price of a single can stable for 30 years.

The ERC20 token USDTea operates on the Ethereum blockchain. In order to ensure fiduciary obligation, the developers indicated that USDTea will begin operations with an initial quantity of 1,000 tokens and then gradually grow the reserves.

Suggested Reading | Bitcoin Mining Farm – A Psychiatric Clinic – Uncovered In Moscow’s Oldest Prison

The operations of the stablecoin are rather straightforward, since users just send tokens and a processing fee in exchange for real cans of iced tea.

Mossy’s Brian Moore disclosed in an interview with TechCrunch that the group’s token sold out around an hour and a half after launch, which he attributed to the “weirdness of this world.”

Iced tea, anyone?

Featured image from Mossy, chart from TradingView.com