What's Driving Token Prices? September 6, 2023

GALA (-20%) - Blockchain gaming project, Gala Games, is facing a scandal because of a new lawsuit from the CEO, Eric Schiermeyer, claiming that the project’s co-founder, Wright Thurston, stole and liquidated $130M worth of GALA tokens before the company could stop him. The same lawsuit accuses Thurston of founding and mismanaging projects. In a countersuit, Thurston claims that Schiermeyer waded into the CEO position at Gala Games in order to use company funds for personal purchases such as a private jet. Although the saga is still unfolding, the GALA token has taken a big hit on the news and is down 20%.
OP (-11%) - USDC launched on Optimism Mainnet and Base, the first 2 of its 6 launches that will span over September and October of this year. As with Arbitrum, there is the potential for initial fragmentation as “Ethereum-bridged USDC” gets gradually phased out in favor of “native USDC” as a reserve asset. The cross-chain functionality of USDC increases security because it does not need to be bridged with pegged assets, which is common practice of issuing assets on other chains. Additionally, Base experienced a new block production halt yesterday for about thirty minutes before coming back online.
SOL (-6%) - Solana becomes the second blockchain that Visa has integrated with (after Ethereum) to settle transactions for merchant banks. Visa cited Solana's speed and cost as key differentiators in their selection. Since this integration comes directly from Visa, who is partnered with two merchant banks, WorldPay and Nuvei, Solana can immediately be useful for settlement. This news comes on the heels of Solana’s recent partnership announcement with Shopify.

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