👾 Hot take Friday

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Korea is reigniting my love for Pokémon, and I’m scared for my wallet.

Are you ready for Hot Take Friday?

We’re talking about Polymarket, Kraken and more in this week’s roundup.

Also, in case you missed it, make sure to check out my story from yesterday on the Solana-based game Tales of Meteora using Meteora liquidity pools to rethink the P2E approach.

— Kate Irwin

• Kraken is doing a launchpad with ICO startup Legion, because why not.

  • Good for crypto? 👍

  • My hot take: Kraken Launch is marketing itself to buyers as a way to get in early on ICOs and token sales, and is promising more transparency and compliance than other platforms. Any attempt to even the token-trading playing field for non-insiders is something I inherently want to support. But as we know in crypto, nothing’s guaranteed.

• Magic Eden is killing the Slingshot trading app it acquired earlier this year to incorporate its tech into a Magic Eden app overhaul instead.

  • Good for crypto? 🤷‍♀️

  • My hot take: This isn’t surprising. Acquisitions often happen because the acquirer wants the startup’s tech and team, but doesn’t necessarily want the startup’s products to remain separate from their own. 

    • The Slingshot app on Google Play has a lot of negative user reviews. It has a 2.8 out of 5 score across more than 200 reviews. 

    • The Magic Eden app overhaul comes after rival OpenSea’s big v2 update, and after Coinbase Wallet got an expansion and rebrand. Everyone’s competing to be the crypto superapp.

• ICYMI: Polymarket launches stock earnings prediction trading. 

  • Good for crypto? 👍

  • My hot take: This gives prediction trading more relevance in the bigger TradFi picture, but it’s not available to US residents. In effect, this feature is a way for those outside of the US to gain more exposure to the US stock market.

• Robinhood’s adding the ability to invest in private companies. 

  • Good for crypto? 👍

  • My hot take: If crypto startups are included, it’d be a way for retail to invest in teams in a more literal and meaningful way. It could also change how many projects approach token launches if they already have a small army of Robinhood investors. And if Robinhood’s vetting each startup, that could reduce your chances of getting rugged. Win-win.

• Immutable says it’s starting a mobile gaming division

  • Good for crypto?  🤷‍♀️

  • My hot take: This is probably good for mobile-focused crypto game devs who want to build with Immutable, but this news also feels a couple years late to the game. Ultimately, I think they’d need to have some kind of direct relationship with Apple and Google in order for this to really improve how crypto mobile gaming looks right now. Apple and Google’s restrictions around blockchain gaming are still a crucial pain point for the industry.

Brought to you by:

Katana was built by answering a core question: What if a chain contributed revenue back into the ecosystem to drive growth and yield?

We direct revenue back to DeFi participants for consistently higher yields.

Katana is pioneering concepts like Productive TVL (the portion of assets are actually doing work), Chain Owned Liquidity (permanent liquidity owned by Katana to maintain stability), and VaultBridge (putting bridged assets to work generating extra yield for active participants).