David Angliss, an analyst with Australia’s leading cryptocurrency investment firm, Apollo Crypto, shares the fund’s regular take on what’s happening in the fast-changing and volatile cryptocurrency space.

With the short to midterm fate of the crypto market seemingly in the hands of US officials at the moment, namely the Fed and the SEC, it certainly seems like a riskier time than ever to be looking at inherently risky altcoins as potential investments.

Having said that, the old Warren Buffet quote (you know the one: “be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful”) springs to mind amid all the negative sentiment and news and price dips.

Upside DAO is certainly spying opportunities, which is its central reason for forming in the first place.

We’ve chatted with David Angliss and Apollo Crypto about this one before, but just a quick recap…

Upside DAO is essentially a collective of high-profile Australian crypto investors who’ve formed an investment-focused decentralised autonomous organisation. And that investment focus happens to be on supporting Aussie founders building Web3 projects.

Let’s take a look at some of the projects the Melbourne-based DAO is supporting, ones which Apollo Crypto, by the way, rates highly. As Angliss reveals, the fund has, in fact, invested in some of the following…

 

Swell Network

What is it? Swell Network is a decentralised liquid staking service based on Ethereum and is a potential DeFi gem. Angliss has described it in the past as “a bit like Lido DAO and Rocket Pool rolled into one”.

Apollo Investment? Yes, as well as being an adviser to the project.

Token? Not yet, although according to the Apollo analyst, its TGE (token generation event) is still in the pipeline and will be happening “soon”. Keep an eye out on the project’s official Twitter account and/or Discord, for more details on that.

Alpha: The project has an airdrop program currently running, dubbed Swell Voyage, and is a means to obtaining the future Swell token.

 

Mirror Planet

What is it? Mirror Planet pitches itself as the world’s first “explore to earn” metaverse/crypto game. Now in advanced state of development, it’s essentially, as Angliss puts it, “a lifestyle GameFi project designed and built to leverage blockchain, NFTs, AR and location-based services (LBS)”.

Angliss also describes it as “STEPN meets Pokémon Go”.

You can read more about it in this Apollo’s Alpha article from last year, although the project has advanced considerably since that time.

Apollo investment? Yep.

Token? It’s coming, yes, but not released yet. Keep an eye on Twitter.

Alpha: According to Apollo, in recent weeks/months, the project has been “actively actively engaged in a multitude of pioneering initiatives. Foremost, the team has made remarkable strides in its game development”, involving: treasure hunting; AR mini-games; and camera functionality for digital characters within the real world. 

 

prePO

What is it? prePO is one of the most unique offerings in the crypto space that we’ve seen. In a nutshell, it’s a decentralised pre IPO/token trading platform.

The PO stands for “public offering”. And the “pre” stands for, er, pre. As its Aussie founder Xavier Ekkel explained to us in a previous article, “prePO is a decentralised trading platform allowing anyone, anywhere, to gain exposure to any pre-IPO company or pre-token project.”

Its mission, adds Angliss, is to democratise pre-public equity – “transforming a world of financial exclusion into a world of permissionless access”.

Apollo Investment? Yes, and adviser.

Token? The prePO public sale has completed but the PPO token has not yet listed on exchanges.

 

Astrolab

What is it? Astrolab is a “cross-chain yield powerhouse”, says Angliss, built on deBridge Finance and the omnichain interoperability protocol LayerZero.

The Apollo analyst has described it to us in the past as: “a crypto yield aggregator 2.0” project, when  considering Yearn.Finance (YFI) as the original archetype in that particular DeFi sub-sector. 

Essentially, Astrolab allows users to “farm” on any blockchain more easliy, “in one click”. Potentially very useful, then, if you’re a DeFi dabbler. And if you’re finding yourself here, you might well be.

Apollo investment? Yes, and adviser.

Token? Yes, with a TGE to be confirmed.

 

Shuffle

What is it? Shuffle is essentially a crypto-based casino platform, offering live casino-style games (blackjack, roulette etc) and a sports-betting section.

You may be wondering if that’s able to operate here… and you’d be right to wonder, as due to licensing restrictions, the site cannot accept players based in Australia.

That said, the gambling industry is obviously very large on a global scale, and digital payments, you would think, ought to be a pretty seamless use case here, in a regulated environment of course.

And, just because the site’s features are unavailable to Australians at this stage, that doesn’t mean investors/speculators here are excluded from making a (high-risk) dabble in the project’s token, when it’s released into the crypto wilds.

Apollo investment? No.

Token? No, “not yet”, says Angliss.

Alpha: The site’s sports betting book is now live (unavailable to Australians), which could see an influx of users. 

 

Reservoir

What is it? “Reservoir aggregates and normalises the whole NFT market into a single unified platform, so you can ship faster,” according to it. 

It’s essentially an open and developer-focused piece of NFT trading infrastructure – also according to it.

Apollo Investment? No, but it sees value in the project nonetheless. Note: there may be a way to invest in this through an equity-deal setup, but Apollo does not invest in equity.

Token? No.

Alpha: Angliss notes that it features “powerful APIs for NFT buying, selling and data” and that its customers include some notable players in the NFT scene: Coinbase NFT, OKX, Mirror, Mintify, Sudoswap, Zapper and Magic Eden. 

 

Portal Gate

What is it? Portal Gate self describes as a “compliant, decentralised and non-custodial privacy solution leveraging zero-knowledge technology to anonymise on-chain trading and capital flow”.

We’ll leave it tantalisingly there on this one for now, as we’ll specifically drill into it in detail with Angliss in the next instalment of Apollo’s Alpha.

 

Want to get involved with Upside DAO?

The Melbourne-based crypto collective has a job opportunity for anyone interested in getting involved. The DAO notes it is “thrilled to announce we are seeking expressions of interest to get involved with Upside’s web3 ecosystem”. 

Find out more here…

Note: none of the views expressed in this article should be construed as financial advice. 

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