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Bitcoin

SEC Rejects Bitcoin ETFs Proposals

After authorizing futures-backed bitcoin funds in October, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) refused two plans to create bitcoin exchange-traded funds, a shock to market players who had thought the agency would approve the endeavor.

Both the plans to list and trade shares of Valkyrie Bitcoin Fund and the Kryptoin Bitcoin ETF Trust failed to fulfill the markets regulator’s threshold, according to a notification dated Wednesday.

The Valkyrie Bitcoin Fund’s clearance has been delayed many times this year, and market watchers were hoping for a positive outcome. The Kryptoin ETF was a bitcoin ETF that traded on a spot basis. This comes little over a month after the VanEck bitcoin spot ETF was rejected.

The SEC has been exceedingly reticent to approve any cryptocurrency-related investment vehicles, citing two key reasons: investor protection and market manipulation.

For investment fund providers, launching the first spot-Bitcoin ETF remains the holy grail, since such products are seen as an entry point into crypto for millions of individual investors. ProShares Bitcoin Strategy, the first Bitcoin futures ETF, garnered $1 billion in investor inflows immediately after its debut.

The SEC is scheduled to make a ruling on First Trust/proposed Skybridge’s spot-Bitcoin ETF on January 22, followed by Fidelity’s on January 27. According to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart, who joked in a meme picturing the SEC as the Grim Reaper knocking on First Trust and Skybridge’s door, the chances of those getting authorized are slim.

According to Bloomberg Intelligence statistics, the number of crypto-tracking investment vehicles has more than quadrupled to 80 from just 35 at the end of 2020. Assets increased to $63 billion from $24 billion at the beginning of the year.

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Bitcoin

BITCOIN ABOVE $51K

On Friday, Bitcoin rose beyond $51,000, mirroring the positive tone in other financial markets as investors shrugged aside Omicron worries and the holidays approached.

As we enter the last week of December, cryptocurrencies, like other risky assets, look to be on track for a Santa Rally and a high year-end performance. Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, burst past $50,000 late Thursday after two weeks of being stalled below the psychological mark. According to CoinGecko statistics, it was trading 5% higher at $51,191 at the time of latest check on Friday.
The impact of the Federal Reserve’s decision to reduce assistance for the US economy, as well as the rapid spread of the Omicron coronavirus variety, has been a source of concern for investors this month.

These concerns spilled over into the cryptocurrency market, putting downward pressure on bitcoin and other currencies.

December is known for having a cushioning impact from the eleventh month of the year. In 2018, for example, bitcoin dropped 32% in November and then 9% the following month. The same thing happened in 2019.

Another important feature of the month in question is the stability that the top currency has throughout this time. The price’s stability can be attributed to a drop in trading activity, since most traders are away for the holidays.

Based on the above remark, we may deduce that any spike at this time is likely to be temporary and will not endure as long as many people expect.

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Altcoins Guides & Tutorials

Algorand (ALGO): The Blockchain for FutureFi

What is Algorand?

Algorand is an open-source blockchain technology that aims to revolutionize the way coins are created. This is accomplished by enhancing transaction speed, lowering transaction time, and improving blockchain security without jeopardizing decentralization. ALGO is the Algorand network’s utility token, which can be staked and used to gain rewards on the Algorand ecosystem. The ALGO token is used to make all payments in the Algorand community.

History

Algorand Inc. is the legal name of the corporation that operates the Algorand blockchain platform, which was founded in 2017 by Silvio Micali. Silvio is an MIT computer science professor who has won the Turing Award and the Gödel Prize.  Silvio is a well-known cryptographer and co-inventor of one of the most essential technologies in the crypto industry, zero-knowledge proofs, which are especially critical for many private currencies.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Sapienza Università di Roma and a doctorate in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. Silvio also has a University of Toronto Postdoctoral Fellowship. “A first-of-its-kind infinite transaction platform, Algorand achieves the promise of blockchain technology by addressing the “Blockchain Trilemma”: enabling real decentralization, scalability, and security,” Silvio writes on LinkedIn.

How it Works

Every cryptocurrency network’s inventor juggle between decentralization, scalability, and security. Even Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, admits that a blockchain’s developers are obligated to prioritize two of these three requirements. 

The blockchain trilemma is a word used to explain the three traits that a project must have in order to be considered acceptable. Scalability is usually hampered by a decentralized and highly secure network. Furthermore, the majority of decentralized and scalable blockchains are hackable. Finally, genuine decentralization may be impossible to accomplish in a safe, scalable network.

For transactions to be authorized, Algorand just requires two-thirds agreement from validating parties. You’d need more than one-third of Algorand’s token supply to have a chance of effectively breaking the system. With a market capitalization of over $9 billion, that seems doubtful.

Pros 

  • Innovator in the crypto world: Many nations have jumped on board a recent wave of central bank digital currencies, which are digitized representations of the country’s fiat currency. The Marshall Islands were first, followed by China, Ukraine, South Korea, and Nigeria… these are just a few of the countries that have introduced digital fiat currencies, with many more on the way.
  • Shorter scaling time: When you think about decentralized finance (DeFi) and smart contracts, the first thing that springs to mind is probably Ethereum. Ethereum has so far dominated the DeFi field with decentralized apps such as Uniswap, Aave, MakerDAO, and Yearn Finance.

Cons

  • Regulations: Attempts have been made all around the world to keep cryptocurrencies from becoming popular. China, Japan, the United Kingdom, and other nations have enacted legislation or regulations to affect the adoption of cryptocurrency on a local level, either directly or indirectly.
  • The never-ending Ethereum threat: Algorand would have been the first system to implement smart contracts and DeFI. Unfortunately, Ethereum takes the prize once more. When developers wish to work on a DApp, the first thing that comes to mind is Ethereum, which will continue to be a significant and necessary component in the DeFi area. Over 300 developers are now working on new Ethereum-based projects.
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Blockchain News Technology

Justin Sun is Going to Space on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin

Justin Sun, founder of TRON and Permanent Representative of Grenada to the WTO, is going to space on Blue Origin’s space launch next year.

Sun just revealed that he is the anonymous bidder of $28 million–where he outbid 2,600 people–for a ticket to go to space on the Jeff Bezos’s spaceflight back in June. However, he was unable to make the travel due to undisclosed issues.

To make up for the trip he missed, Sun will be traveling some time next year with five other crew members whom he will help choose and pay for to accompany him in the flight.

These crew members are likely to include a member of the TRON DAO community and long-term holders of TRX, BTT, JST, SUN, NFT, and WIN. The TRON founder said that even though he missed the previous launch, his love for space travel did not went along with it.

Also, he added that the voyage has no financial or commercial links to the Tron Foundation because the funds will be coming directly from his own pocket.

Brief Background of Blue Origin

Blue Origin is a spaceflight company launched by billionaire and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos that successfully went on its very first flight, which carried four passengers; Jeff Bezos’ himself, his brother Mark, famous aviator Wally Funk, and 18-year old Oliver Daemen in July 2021.

In October, it launched its second crew, which carried astronauts Chris Boshuizen, William Shatner, Glen de Vries, and Audrey Powers. And just ten days ago, it completed its third launch. Blue Origin has a vision of millions of people living and working together in space to benefit the earth and humanity in the future. 

The news about his travel is coming in a week after Justin Sun announced that he would no longer be actively administering the Tron foundation and that he would be the new Grenada government’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

He believes that the community has taken a new direction, allowing him to promote close engagement between the blockchain sector and international organizations.

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Blockchain

Elon Musk Blasts the Metaverse

Despite the fact that metaverse and Web3.0 are now undoubtedly the trendiest topics in the blockchain industry, not everyone appears to be fond of them. In a recent interview with The Babylon Bee, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, stated that he does not anticipate a future in which the metaverse would entirely immerse humans in virtual reality, like its proponents are promising.

According to the Tesla founder/CEO, the only way people will be able to experience virtual reality is through Neuralink, Musk’s own neurotechnology company that surgically implants a microprocessor that can be inserted into the brain in order to improve physical skills.

One of the reasons Musk feels the metaverse’s future potential may be hampered is because of its negative consequences for individuals. Motion sickness is triggered by wearing a virtual reality headset, especially while playing video games, and he humorously implied that he has never seen someone wearing a screen to their face all day.

Furthermore, Musk, who last year changed his title to Tesla’s Technoking, stated that the metaverse is in contrast to the cautions he heard as a child about the dangers of sitting in front of the television. The billionaire’s remarks came less than three days after claiming that Web 3.0 is more of a marketing gimmick than a reality.

“I’m not suggesting that Web 3.0 is real – [it] seems more [of a] marketing buzzword than reality right now – just wondering what the future will be like in 10, 20 or 30 years. 2051 sounds like a crazy futuristic,” Musk tweeted on Sunday.

Elon Musk’s stance on the Metaverse and Web 3.0 seems pretty clear at the moment, but are his opinions likely to change in the future? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Categories
Bitcoin

Donald Trump Warns About a dangerous crypto explosion

Former US President Donald Trump has reiterated his pessimistic view of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general, anticipating a future cryptocurrency boom. Trump also claimed that his expected crypto boom will “make major tech explosion seem like baby stuff” on Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday Morning Futures on Fox News.

When questioned by Fox News presenter Maria Bartiromo about his opinions on cryptocurrency, Trump stated: “Well, I never loved it, because I like to have the dollar, I think the currency should be the dollar, so I was never a big fan. But it’s building up bigger and bigger, and nobody’s doing anything about it. Look, I want a currency called the dollar, I don’t want to have all these others — and that can be an explosion someday like the likes of which we’ve never seen. It’ll make the big tech explosion look like baby stuff. I think it’s a very dangerous thing.”

This would not be the first time Trump has made public attacks on digital goods. In August, the former White House senior official described cryptocurrencies as a disaster waiting to happen, adding that he had never been a fan of them. Since leaving the office, his statements have had less impact on the crypto market, with the most recent being in July, when his proposals for stronger restrictions prompted a 1.3 percent drop in Bitcoin’s value shortly after he made them.

While Trump seems unconcerned about the rising popularity of blockchain technology, his wife Melania appears to be exploring new ways to use it for the greater good. Melania Trump debuted her first-ever NFT line last week, making her the first ex-first lady in the world to do so. Melania Vision, her art project, is a lofty attempt to gather money for the human capital development of foster children.
Trump wishes Melania luck in his response to the initiative, saying that she is going to do terrific since people adore the former first lady.

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Altcoins Guides & Tutorials

Everything you need to know about TerraUSD (UST)

Terra’s stablecoin, UST, has overtaken DAI, its stablecoin counterpart developed by MakerDao, the industry’s oldest decentralized stablecoin, climbing to fourth place in terms of market capitalization. Terra, a layer 1 smart contract-enabled network created with the Cosmos software development kit, launched UST in September 2020. Terra’s ecosystem includes the LUNA governance token, which is now the 4th largest layer 1 blockchain. By topping DAI, UST has now surpassed DAI as the most popular ‘decentralized stablecoin,’ or one backed by cryptocurrencies rather than fiat assets. UST currently has a market capitalization of $9,216,965,278, while DAI has a market capitalization of $8,969,084,150. Here is everything you need to know about the stablecoin.

History

Terra, the company behind TerraUSD, was founded by Do Kwon and Daniel Shin in April of this year. They launched TerraUSD on Bittrex Global on September 12, 2020. TerraUSD has been a huge success since its launch, outperforming competitors like Gemini’s GUSD and Paxos’ PAX, which are both backed by fiat money kept in real banks and subject to issuer control.

Terra, TerraUSD’s native blockchain, is Terraform Labs’ creation. The Terra Alliance, which comprises of 16 e-commerce enterprises scattered across East Asia, owns the latter. Do Kwon and Daniel Shin, the company’s founders, are both accomplished professionals. Daniel Shin is a talented entrepreneur and economist. Do Kwon is a former Microsoft Corp (NYSE: MSFT) and Apple Inc (NYSE: AAPL) software developer who has founded other firms such as TMON and Fast Track Asia.

What is TerraUSD (UST)?

UST is a decentralized, scalable, interest-bearing, algorithmic stablecoin with a variety of functions. It is particularly well-known for its monetary policy, which is largely endlessly expandable. Since its inception in 2020, the stablecoin has matured into its position as the ultimate scalable stablecoin. With the growing popularity of stablecoins, it became evident that the majority of them are not truly scalable. As a result, a stablecoin like TerraUSD was required. It was supposed to take on DAI, the market leader in stablecoins. It provides a scalable experience to the DeFi sector, despite the fact that many traditional chains have serious scaling concerns.

How it Works

Let’s say you plan to mint $100 worth of UST—which is worth 100 UST at the peg—you’ll need to exchange an equivalent monetary quantity of LUNA tokens in order to mint the UST. Terra will then burn the tokens you supplied. So, if LUNA costs $50 a coin, the algorithm says you’ll need to burn 2 LUNA to get 100 UST. Terra formerly just burnt a fraction of the tokens issued, but with the Columbus-5 update, Terra now burns all of them.  Terra tokens can also be used to mint LUNA. Burning 100 UST would be required to mint $100 of LUNA (2 LUNA). Even if the market price of UST isn’t $1 per token, the minting conversion rate regards 1 UST as $1. TerraUST’s price stability remains due to this exchange mechanism.

Pros

  • TerraUSD is highly scalable and offers various innovations that other stablecoins do not have
  • TerraUSD has experienced success from its launch
  • The association with Terra and LUNA further provides TerraUSD with credibility
  • TerraUSD also incorporates yield-bearing and interchain technology

Cons

  • There is a lot of competition in the field with new projects being launched frequently, each incorporating existing and new features in a different way
Categories
Bitcoin

El Salvador Buys 21 BTC on 21st December 2021

After adopting Bitcoin (BTC/USD) as legal tender in September of this year, El Salvador has continued to accumulate BTC to commemorate various anniversaries. President Nayib Bukele announced yet another purchase of the flagship cryptocurrency, stating that the nation purchased 21 BTC on December 21, 2021 to commemorate the day. These funds are now valued $1,021,742.61 (£767,650.55) at the time of writing.

And today is the last 21st day of the year 21 of the 21st century https://t.co/9BitXCyDVs

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) December 22, 2021

According to Reuters, the Central American country had 1,120 bitcoins in its treasury before the transaction, bringing its total to 1,141 bitcoins. El Salvador aims to purchase another $500 million worth of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency by market value, with the money coming from the sale of $1 billion in tokenized bonds.

The largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC), was trading at $49,017.39 at 5:30 p.m. IST, up 0.59 percent in the previous 24 hours. Bitcoin’s market share in the cryptocurrency market is now 40.38 percent, down 0.51 percent in the previous 24 hours. Ethereum (ETH) was trading at $4,031.25 and had gained 0.27 percent in the past 24 hours, while Binance Coin (BNB) was trading at $537.08 and had gained 1.10 percent. Solana (SOL) increased 3.69 percent to $185.99, while Cardano (ADA) increased 8.69 percent to $1.36.

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Bitcoin

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Believes that Bitcoin will Replace Dollar

Jack Dorsey told famous rapper Cardi B that Bitcoin will replace the US dollar in a recent Twitter discussion, reiterating his unshakable support for the king crypto.

Cardi B came to Twitter to share her latest curiosity by asking her millions of followers whether they think crypto will replace the dollar to which many reply with different opinions, but the one reply that stood out the most was Twitter’s own former CEO Jack Dorsey himself where he simply stated: “Yes, Bitcoin will.”

Jack Dorsey Criticizes Web 3.0

Dorsey also took aim at web 3.0, the next generation of the internet, in another tweet. According to the Twitter founder, web 3.0 is just a centralized entity with a different label. He went on to say that it’s critical to concentrate on stringent technologies that are actually owned by people.

Jack Dorsey proceeded to remind people that they don’t own web 3.0. The venture capitalists (VCs) and their limited partners (LPs) do. It will never escape their incentives. Ultimately, it’s a centralized entity with a different label. You should be aware of what you’re getting yourself into.

He is of the belief that despite assurances over web 3.0 restoring many of the founding concepts of the internet, such as freedom and decentralization, the technology would eventually be owned by venture capitalists. 

Twitter’s co-founder and former CEO is a huge advocate of cryptocurrency, and he’s been a proponent of bitcoin since at least 2018. He has stated that he believes Bitcoin will be what unites the deeply divided America, and eventually the world.

Inflation in the United States

Following the start of growing inflation in the United States, the most striking comparison between Bitcoin and the US dollar quickly made headlines. With the rise in inflation, prominent figures have come forth to warn the public about the impending crash of the US Dollar, which would be followed by a precipitous drop in Bitcoin.

The world will have more monetary units if people continue to use Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. And this will have an impact on the stability of one incumbent, the US dollar. Because of Bitcoin’s extreme volatility, the impact could be even more severe.

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Bitcoin Blockchain

Ledger Partners With FTX, Coinbase and Rarible to Unveil Crypto Debit Card

One of the largest hardware wallet makers in the industry, Ledger, has made several exciting announcements recently. The statements were made by the company representatives at a special Ledger Op3n conference in Paris. One of the biggest announcements of the company was the unveiling of their new crypto debit cards.

As the Ledger VP of Payments, Iqbal Gandham noted, the new offering was released on the basis that there is a need for the crypto industry to focus on spendings. As the presentation noted, the debit card issued by the company will be a Visa card and will be released by Baanx.  It is an affiliate of Contis Financial Services.

The debit card will be named Crypto Life card. It was also announced that the new debit card will support numerous different cryptocurrencies and it will also be available to be tracked through the Ledger Live. It is a software companion to the hardware wallets issued by the company.

During the conference, it was also announced that the company has already started a waitlist ahead of the exciting launch. According to Gandham, the debit card will be working in a very simple manner. It will convert to crypto at the point of sale, and the owners of the debit cards will also have the opportunity to request an interest-free credit line for as much as 30 days.

This will be based on the crypto they own. Another very exciting part of the recent announcement is that the company noted that the cardholders will have the opportunity to have their salaries sent to their accounts and have them automatically converted into cryptocurrencies.

Ledger, Coinbase & FTX – A New Collaboration

Amid the announcement of the new offering, the representatives of Ledger said that the offering would be available to clients as a result of a collaboration with Coinbase and FTX, one of the leading crypto exchanges in the industry.

To make things easier for individuals, Coinbase Wallet will be adding support for Ledger. The non-custodial wallet of Coinbase, called the Coinbase Wallet, is planning to provide special support for Ledger.

As a result of this collaboration, the users will be able to directly interact with blockchain applications using the web browser, while also using their hardware wallet. VP of product at Coinbase announced that they are already working on building support for hardware wallets within the non-custodial wallet.

According to him, this will start by offering a browser version of the wallet. Ledger also introduced FTX into the lineup, which will expand the trading options of Ledger. The first function available for clients will be the non-custodial swap.

Thanks to the collaboration with FTX, users will be offered full exchange functionally. As a result of this collaboration and partnership, those owning Ledger will no longer have the need to send their crypto to the exchanges for making trades.

Collaboration is very important for many traders around the world, as both Coinbase and FTX are very popular in the market. FTX is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the market, offering traders access to numerous digital assets.

Among many other great offerings that this exchange has for its clients is FTX automated trading opportunities. The clients of the company can use third-party robots to connect with their exchange account and let it analyze the market in a very short time.

By using an FTX trading bot, it is a lot easier for traders to invest in the market. You can simply go on with your day, while the bot makes profits for you. Also, trading robots can analyze huge amounts of data in a very short time, while, on the other hand, there always is some type of limitation for people when it comes to market analysis.

Ledger & Its Plans on NFT

It was also noted that the company will be focused on securely and safely sending NFTs between the wallets. The VP of product at Ledger, Charles Hamel, announced that the company will be focused on making NFT transactions easier, as well as safer.

The currently used method is that individuals are basically blind sign their transactions, which means that they simply don’t see data they are agreeing to share, or see a huge amount of data.

The alternative was offered by Ledger, which is to break down the transactions and show everything that is going on on the mobile app of the company. A demo was shown by the company, which provided different types of details of the transaction. This included the destination address as well as the token that is being sent.

The company also announced that it has recently integrated the Rarible into Ledger Live. As a result, the owners of Ledger will be able to access the NFT market for making NFT transactions, while also using the hardware wallet.

The recent steps taken by the company for the future development of its services are very important. This will offer individuals the opportunity to stay connected with their Ledger wallets in a more convenient way and will simply make things a lot easier for them.

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Bitcoin Blockchain Business News

Crypto Gifts for the Holidays

The Christmas holidays are upon us. If you are like many people you may be anxious about all the gifts you need to organize for the people you care about. For crypto enthusiasts, this may be a wonderful time to get your fellow enthusiasts gifts only they can appreciate. Here are some of the most interesting crypto gifts that you can give your loved ones. This will be likely loved by them if they like presents that are non-conventional.

Tickets to Crypto Conferences

There are quite a number of crypto conferences.

Bitcoin Miami Conference

One of the most prominent cryptocurrency conferences there is out there is the Bitcoin Miami Conference. This gathering manages to attract all types of investors: newbies and veterans alike. The next conference is slated for April 2022, to take place between the 6th of April and 9th April. The venue for the conference is Miami Beach Convention Center. The conference promises to have some great speakers. Some of the speakers to expect on the stage include President Bukele of El Salvador, Michael Saylor of Microstrategy, Adam Back of Blockstream, Andrew Yam the ex-US presidential hopeful and entrepreneur. At present, tickets can be purchased from US$ 99 up to US$ 13,999 with various privileges attached to them.

The North American Bitcoin Conferences

This is another conference worth attending in the crypto space. The conference is scheduled for January 2022, from the 17th to the 19th. Some of the expected guests that will attend the conference include some big names such as the Mayor of Miami – Francis Suarez and Mark Cuban, the Billionaire.

Literature about Cryptocurrency

Another type of gift you can look into for your beloved crypto enthusiast is that of literature related to cryptocurrency.

“The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains”

One book worth considering as a gift is that of “The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains”. This is a book by Antony Lewis. Lewis’ books offer you an in-depth discussion about how cryptocurrency markets operate and the tech that supports it to make that possible.

“The Infinte Machine”

If the person you want to gift a crypto book to likes to follow the historic flow of events, you may find “The Infinite Machine” a great option for them. This book by Camila Russo offers readers the path that has led to the growth of the international blockchain ecosystem from inception.

Devices that are Hardware Wallets

If your loved one still uses hot wallets and exchange wallets to keep their crypto, a hardware wallet might be the best gift you can give them. Not only is this gift extremely affordable, but it is also ideal because it lets users work in the realm of decentralized finance, nonfungible tokens, and also crypto trading.

Brands you could check out include the Leader Nano S which is going for sale at US$ 59. The Trezor One is another great option. It is currently selling for US$ 63. Since technology is forever improving, you can get a hardware wallet that has additional features like OLED display panels, Bluetooth connectivity, and other features.

Clothing

We expect brightly colored jerseys and other such paraphernalia during Christmas. You can even purchase for yourself or a loved one such item. These clothing items such as hoodies, sweaters, and pullovers can be festively themed and include crypto-related branding such as that of Ethereum and Bitcoin. They can also feature crypto lingo that some may find appealing such as “FOMO” and “BTDF”.

Gift Cards

When in doubt, gift cards can do the trick. It certainly is a lot less stressful than agonizing over what to get someone you feel has everything. You may even save yourself from the stress of trying to gift someone that is notoriously tricky to please. With a gift card, you eliminate all that pressure and put the power in your loved one’s hands, quite literally.

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Business DeFi News News

Lambda 256 Raised US$ 60 Million

Lambda 256 has managed to raise new funding to the tune of US$ 60 Million. Lambda 256 is a company under Dunamu. Dunamu runs South Korea’s crypto exchange called Upbit. Lambda256 is the company under Dunamu that focuses on blockchain technology.

About the Funding

The company made an announcement on the 15th December 2021. There they stated that they managed to raise the stated funds in a Series B round. During the round, the firm was valued at approximately US$ 300 million. Lambda 256 engineers its on blockchain protocol named Luniverse. The firm also directs its attention towards chains of an enterprise-grade nature that are designed for businesses.

Participants in the Funding Round

Some big names in venture capital featured as participants at the funding round that these funds were raised. These participants included SBI Investments, KB Investments, Shinhan Venture Capital, DSC Investments, Daelim, Yanolja, and Hanhwa Systems.

New Investors

Some of these investors are not traditional investment firms like Daelim which is a bikes manufacturer. Another example of a non-venture capital firm that participated is Yanolja, a travel tech startup. SBI Investments is also a new investor. Both SBI Investments and Daelim already work with Lambda 256 in some capacity. They both benefit from Lambda 256’s blockchain-based system, tokens, and chain.

Purpose of Funds Raised

The Chief Executive Officer of Lambda 256, Jay Jaehyun Park stated that the finances would allow the firm to create a path to the diversification of their talent pools. Park also said it would allow them to quicken their way to blockchain in various international ecosystems. Therefore, essentially this US$ 60 Million will help extend the company’s Blockchain-as-a-Service offering.

About Lambda 256

The firm is a subsidiary alongside Upbit. According to CoinGecko, Upbit manages to handle approximately US$ 4 billion per day in total trading volumes. This cryptocurrency exchange was launched in 2021. Lambda 256 has nonfungible token technology that they own the rights of and utilize for Upbit NFT. Dunamu, their parent company, announced some days ago that the company aimed to implement its plan for international expansion. This was according to Chief Executive Officer Lee Sirg-oo. Sirg-oo stated that this is is a partnership for NFT ventures with HYBE. HBYE is a South Korean firm in the entertainment industry.

Other Developments in Technology Advancement

Towards the middle of this year, Lambda 256 released a new solution. The company released an innovation called VerifyVASP. VerifyVASP is a solution for virtual asset service providers. It also happens to be regulatory compliant. VerifyVASP helps to guarantee the integrity of data in regards to travel rules and requires compliance. It also addresses AML(anti-money laundering) regulations set by the Financial Actions Task Force.

About Dunamu

As stated, Dunamu is the parent enterprise of Lambda 256. The founders launched Dunamu in 2012. After its establishment in 2012, the firm acquired funding from Kakao Ventures, after which the company established its Securities Plus for Kakao product. Since then, Dunamu has launched a number of services and financial products. These include Lambda 256 which is an international lab that focuses on blockchain. They also launched the Upbit Digital Asset Index in 2018. Later that year, they managed to obtain certifications.

These certifications included that of the International Organization for Standardization for information security, cloud privacy, and also cloud security. They were also certified by the South Korean authorities for the South Korean Internet and ISMS (Security Agency for Information Security Management System). The goal of the company is to create an environment in the financial sector that provides access to effective investment tools to anyone. Their catalog of current products and services include blockchain, Upbit, UBCI, Luniverse, Securities, Stockplus, Stockplus Unlisted, Maplus, Upbit Safe, and Upbit enterprise.

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Business DeFi News News NFT

Nexo & Three Arrows Launch NFT Service

Three Arrows Capital and Nexo have partnered together and released a service. Nexo is a platform for exchanging and borrowing cryptocurrency. Three Arrows Capital is a hedge fund. The service that these two companies have launched is a lending desk for nonfungible tokens. The lending desk provides services for clients over the counter. It allows its clients to give cryptocurrency credit that is supported by nonfungible tokens. A number of service providers exist that offer services where clients can borrow cryptocurrency. Nexo is one of the first that offer this service. So far, it allows users the opportunity to borrow Ether, stablecoins, and a number of other cryptocurrencies. Users can even utilize some nonfungible tokens as collateral for their loans.

Collateral Options

At first, the firm stated that people could use CryptoPunk NFTs and Bored Ape Yacht club nonfungible tokens as collateral. They have also stated that they will accept more collections in the future. Users can utilize given lines of credit as a way of financing art. They have to first process more nonfungible token purchases with the monies that they borrow.

Statement from Nexo about NFT Lending

The Managing Partner and co-founder of Nexo, Antoni Trenchev gave some statements to Cointelegraph regarding this development. Trenchev stated that their partnering with the hedge fund was a clear move to offering financial services and native Web 3.0 MetaFi. The co-founder of Nexo added that they proceed to unearth the total capabilities of this asset class. He thereafter stated that providers like Nexo’s lending will tap into nonfungible tokens underlying value as users keep ownership of them. Trenchev stated that for that reason, their lending service will be in great demand.

The goal of Collaboration on NFT Lending

Nexo stated that their intention for partnering with Three Arrow Capital was to make expansion possible. The expansion is of the existing issuing of cryptocurrency credit. This was orchestrated by offering the nonfungible token lending desk with hedging of risks, means for liquidation, and valuation mechanisms. This development has also gone down in history by making Three Arrow Capital the very first lending desk client of nonfungible tokens with the acceptance of NFTs as collateral for Nexo cryptocurrency credit.

Comment by Three Capital on NFT Lending Service

Kyle Davies, the Director of Three Arrows Capital stated that their company was satisfied with their partnership with Nexo. Davies added that this partnership showed that they recognized the promise of nonfungible tokens as an instrument in the financial sector. He added that this instrument was one that was fully leveraged, of high quality, and appropriate for user needs.

The Future of the NFT Lending Service

There are plans for Nexo to grow its catalog of services in the next months ahead. They intend on making these services investment-grade with accessibility and security being paramount to the users of the nonfungible token market. The company made these statements.

The market continues to grow for finance solutions that accept nonfungible tokens as collateral. So do the number of companies stepping into the space to offer their services. These companies that offer services much like Nexo include ETNA Network, NFTfi, and Drops Loans.

About Nexo

Nexo is a firm that has the goal of addressing inefficiencies in the markets for lending. They intend on accomplishing this by designing convenient, innovative, and sustainable solutions whilst making use of blockchain technology. At present they are working on establishing a novel digital finance system.

Three Arrows Capital

Three Arrows Capital launched by its founders back in 2012. It is a registered hedge fund that directs its services towards offering risk-adjusted returns to its client base. The founders of Three Arrows Capital are Kyle Davies and Su Zhu.

Categories
DeFi News News Technology

US Lawmaker thinks DeFi is Dangerous

Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Senator criticized decentralized finance technology with concerns about the safety of investors that are affected by the demand for stablecoins.

Concerns about Stablecoins

The Senate Banking Committee of the United States of America met on Tuesday. During the proceedings, Warren asked Hilary Allen what would happen if there was a run on stablecoins. Allen, a professor from the American University of Washington College of Law stated that an “en masse” run would affect the decentralized finance system but would not have “systemic consequences” for conventional markets.

The Senator responded by stating that because stablecoins was the essence of the decentralized finance ecosystem outside of regulated markets, she felt their value would depreciate rapidly when the market would most need it. She added that the result would impact traditional finance markets.

According to Warren, decentralized finance is the most unsafe part of the Crypto world. She added that decentralized finance is also where there is hardly any regulation. Warren added that swindlers, scammers, and cheats, therefore, abound there among genuine part-time and full-time crypto investors and traders. The Senator added that when using decentralized finance, you can not even tell if the person is a terrorist.

Professional Response

Allen addressed the senator’s concern about decentralized finance. She stated that decentralized finance may have these problems in the future. She however did not address the concern the senator raised about the possibilities of dealing with a terrorist unknowingly via DeFi. Allen stated that she did not think that decentralized finance could continue to advance in the absence of stablecoins. She felt that furthering the technology in its absence would be a struggle. However, she added that she felt there indeed was a genuine threat when decentralized finance expands outside its current containment. Thereafter, it may be hard for the technology to not cause financial instability. Allen added, the threat may be especially once it becomes part of traditional finance.

The Stablecoins Discussion

The Senators and other stakeholders held these discussions at a hearing that they dubbed “Stablecoins: How do they work, how are they used, and what are their risks?”. This discussion came after a request by the committee chair for cryptocurrency businesses to release their information on user protection on stablecoins. Witnesses that were present at the hearing included Allen, Alexis Goldstein, Jai Massari, and Dante Disparte. Goldstein is the Director of Financial Policy at Open Markets. Massari is a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell.

Previous Discourse

In the past, Warren has utilized such hearings and public statements to make claims about crypto that are mainly associated with activities of an illegal nature. Earlier this year at a hearing regarding CBDC, the senator stated that the world of crypto had no protection for consumers. She referred to many tokens as fake investments. Warren has also previously criticized the Ethereum network’s significant transactions fees when the price of Ether was high.

About Senator Warren

Senator Elizabeth Ann Warren is a United States senator and also a former law professor. She has been in the house of senate since 2013 and serves the state of Massachusetts. Recently, the Senator and one of the world’s richest men, Elon Musk were in the middle of a heated argument on Twitter. The Senator supports increasing taxes for the wealthy by structuring taxes on the assets of the richest in America. Following Musk being declared Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year”, the senator responded that Musk should be paying more taxes.

Musk responded with a number of personally directed comments at the senator. It appears the senator could be right. Musk is worth approximately US$ 251 billion, based on Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires. However, a report from ProPublica states that Musk and a few other wealthy people did not pay anything by way of taxes in 2018.

Categories
News Regulation Technology

CBDC Pilot Project in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan has published the outcomes of a pilot program for hits digital teng. This nation is responsible for one of the biggest sources of power for Bitcoin mining hash. A report published on Wednesday states that the NBK (National Bank of Kazakhstan) stated that it was official that they may implement a central bank digital currency (CBDC) for retail purposes. The Central Bank Digital Currency would be on technology for a distributed ledger. So far, the National Bank of Kazakhstan piloted the offering to its citizens. It assessed how its citizens may choose to use the digital tenge. They looked at its application for offline payments and also how programmable the solution is.

About the Testing

In a number of scenarios of a hypothetical nature, the National Bank of Kazakhstan tested how the central bank digital currency could be utilized by second-tier banks and also external users. The pilot also attempted to investigate how the currency can work for cases of cross-border transactions within the framework of Kazakhstan’s regulations.

Report Outcomes

Some of the outcomes of the findings of the investigation state that NBK should consider increasing the scope of the participants to include market participants and infrastructure-level participants. These participants would help play out different scenarios. They would also assist in clarifying language to be utilized by the NBK and other regulators. The NBK also suggested the launch of a Digital Tenge Hub. The Digital Tenge hub would facilitate collaboration between market participants and the development team for the central bank digital currency.

Further comments from the report

The report stated that the National Bank of Kazakhstan would work at guaranteeing the development of a complete model. The model would help in deciding on introducing the digital tenge and the performance of a presentation of interim results of the study. They would also aim to have discourse with stakeholders next year in July. Thereafter, Kazakhstan would make a decision on the necessity of having a digital tenge introduction next year, in December. This would take into account the complete results based on the comprehensive study and a completed model.

Back in May, the country stated that a central bank digital currency would not become the replacement for cashless payments or cash. This is when the country initiated discussions on the possibility of the introduction of a digital tenge. However, since then, many cryptocurrency miners that left China after its ban have made Kazakhstan their new business premise. These new developments have also contributed to news of Kazakhstan experiencing power problems from this and the positive contribution of additional revenues.

About Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan is considered part of Euro-Asia. The nation of Kazakhstan is comprised of a very diverse population. Its residents include Kazakh, Russian, Usbek, Ukrainian, Tatar, Uighur, and German. It happens to be a member of the Euroasian Economic Union. This alliance includes Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Russia. The urban areas of Kazakhstan actually have more foreigners than nationals. These foreigners in the urban areas tend to mainly be Slavs. Kazakhstan is the home of numerous natural resources. They manufacture rolled steel, cement, chemical fertilizer, consumer goods, and cast iron among other things in Kazakhstan.

Even though manufacturing is a big part of their industry sector, only 10% of its citizens are employed in it. Many foreigners from neighboring countries work in this industry in Kazakhstan. It manages to export manufactured goods, chemical products, agricultural products, and raw materials. Some of the exports that the country delivers are natural gas, various metals, and oil. The nation has good trade relations with Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, and China. Kazakhstan also imports various goods from China, Russia, and other nations. These goods include metal, chemical products, machinery, and food.

Categories
Blockchain News Technology

GraphQL Developer Wins Graph Award

The Guild has received the honor of being awarded a US$ 48 million grant from Graph Foundation. The grant is a funding grant to facilitate The Guild’s advancement in usability and the platform’s performance. In particular, The Guild platform’s performance of the network subgraphs.

The Guild joined as a core network developer. The service will offer wide expertise. This expertise is from its time management and contribution towards the growth elements in GraphQL’s ecosystem. GraphQL is a programming language. This language was created by Meta back in 2012. The Guild will take its attention on increasing subgraphs features like that of analytics, mutations, and composition.

The Graph began in July 2018. Thereafter, it was officially launched in the mainnet in December last year. The Graph happens to have a Web 3.0 query and index infrastructure. This infrastructure aids in developers engineering application programming interfaces. In addition, the infrastructure also helps to deploy Web3 services as subgraphs, internally.

Users of Subgraphs

Some big names in decentralized finance protocols utilize subgraph indexing. These include Panoply, Ethereum, Uniswap, Arbitrium, and Avalanche. So far, Graph has awarded many projects over the duration of the year. They have awarded US$ 248 million to the core developer network in that period. Semiotic AI was the most recent awardee of Graph’s award process. Semiotic went away with a US$ 60 million grant. The service will use it for accelerating research and development initiatives in artificial intelligence and cryptography.

Eva Beylin, the Director of The Graph Foundation revealed some insights into The Guild’s potential over the network. Beylin shared that the service could have an impact on many Web 3.0 sectors. These sectors would include the metaverse, decentralized finance, and decentralized autonomous communities. Furthermore, Beylin said that the Guild will work with developers in The Graph ecosystem during the 4 year funding period. In that time they will develop new subgraph features and make improvements to The Graph Node’s capabilities for queries. This, Beylin stated, will help developers efficiently make feature-rich applications utilizing The Graph.

About The Guild

According to The Graph, The Guild is a leading open-source developer group. The Guild has experience in developing GraphQL tooling. This tooling has been utilized by Fortune 500 companies and various open-source communities. The Guild designs and maintains some of the most widely adopted GraphQL resources. Further more, they are also an official core member of the GraphQL Foundation.

About the Graph Foundation

The founders of the Graph Foundation registered the body as a not-for-profit organization. It does not offer commercial licensing for graph technology that it maintains or manages. The community made this structural choice with the intention to ensure it works only with organizations that it aligns with. Subsequently, this ensures that they do not end up misaligned just because of the need to pursue revenue over other important objectives. The Graph is community-driven. The members of the organization guide and govern The Graph Foundation. This allows it to offer anyone fully cost-free and open source graph software.

At present, the community is diversified, very connected, and international. The foundation aims at offering opportunities for coordination, collaboration, and unification for its software. They aim to build these efforts around essential projects like that of OngDB. Therefore, in the case of OngDB, when users download and install it, they have the opportunity to work with software that offers a database engine that is high performance, native and open source. Benefits of utilizing OngDB include having access to an intuitive query language and an enterprise-ready engine.

One of the other main benefits is that you will not ever have to worry about paying any compulsory license fees to utilize the software. For developers that value transparency and visibility when it comes to governance of OS code that they utilize, The Graph is a great solution for that.

Categories
Blockchain Business News

Some Crypto ads Banned in the UK

The United Kingdom’s Adverting Standards Authority or ASA, has banned more advertisements of crypto. The Advertising Standards Authority is the nation’s advertising regulator. ASA has removed from circulation some advertisement campaigns belonging to a number of top players in the cryptocurrency space.

Developments in Advertising in the UK

ASA issued out a series of violations of its advertisement regulations. It issued these violations on the 15th December 2021. Quite a number of cryptocurrency-related companies were liable. The firms responsible for these violations included eToro, Coinbase, Coinburp, Luno, and Kraken crypto exchanges. Coincidentally, the ASA also revealed violations of a similar nature of Papa John’s pizza services.

Reasons cited

ASA stated that these companies acted irresponsibly. This resulted in the regulator removing their ads. The irresponsibility, they added, was based on how these companies were “taking advantage” of consumers’ inexperience. The rulings by ASA also stated that these companies did not take efforts to show the risk of the investments that consumers could make.

Examples of the Violations

The Ruling Against Coinbase

The regulatory body stated that Coinbase’s Europe offices placed an advert that was misleading to consumers. Coinbase placed this advert back in July of this year. The company’s advert carried text that said that 5 pounds of Bitcoin crypto in 2010 would end up being valued at over 100,000 pounds in January of this same year. The regulator stated that the advert by Coinbase made it seem as though people purchasing Bitcoin at that time would definitely be able to increase the value of their investment over the next decade with the same value. ASA added that Coinbase failed to make clear that how Bitcoin performed did not guarantee that the cryptocurrency would perform like that on an ongoing basis.

The Ruling against Kraken

Kraken also got in trouble with the regulator for an advert that it run in August 2021. The service provider placed this ad as a digital poster at the London Bridge Station. According to ASA, the digital advert did not include an adequate warning as a disclaimer regarding the risks involved. They also stated that the time of the advertisement’s disclaimer was too short at only a 1-second length when the ad run for a full 20 seconds duration.

Ruling Against Luno Exchange

This cryptocurrency exchange placed its advertisement in May. The crypto exchange run the advertisement all over the London Underground network and on London buses in 2021. The advertisement was on posters that displayed an illustration of Bitcoin saying that it was time for onlookers to buy Bitcoin if they were seeing “Bitcoin” in the underground.

ASA Cracking down on the UK Crypto Industry

The authority has been working on closing monitoring and addressing any violations by advertisers in the crypto space. They have not only hunted down but shut down these ads as well. Other than those companies stated above, Coinfloor exchange is another one that had its advertisements banned.

About Coinbase

Coinbase is a company that runs a safe online service for purchasing, selling storing, and transferring various types of digital currency. They state that their mission is to design a financial system for the globe that is open. They hope to lead the world in assisting people to change their digital currency into and out of their domestic currency.

About Kraken

Kraken happens to be one of the world’s longest-running and biggest exchanges of Bitcoin on the globe. The company was established in 2011. It is a United States-based cryptocurrency exchange. It is often ranked as one of the preferred marketplaces to purchase and sell cryptocurrency. The exchange does a number of things including providing market price information to Bloomberg. It also allows users to trade fiat currency and cryptocurrencies.

Categories
Business Ethereum

Contract on Ethereum Holds US$ 33.5 Billion

A contract on Ethereum is holding 33.5 billion dollars worth of Ether. This translates into 8,641,954 Ether. The enormous sum of money is being left untouched because the funds can not be sent or even utilized. These funds are for a Beacon chain contract. It is also believed that this is a case of the world’s biggest contract on Ethereum that has billions held unused inside it.

About the Beacon Contracts

This 33.5 billion dollar contract is an Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain staking contract. This contract was initiated back in November last year. The funds, unfortunately, can not be utilized without a hard fork. What is even more intriguing is that the terms and conditions of the hard fork are not yet agreed upon. All the people that submitted their Ether into the contract were told of this and accepted it. The likelihood is that the terms and conditions of the hard fork will be agreed upon when Beacon Chain integrates with the Ethereum mainnet.

Ethereum is attempting to move out of a proof-of-work mining consensus. Instead, it wants to go to a proof-of-stake one. The Beacon Chain is the initial element at carrying this out. Traders must stake no less than 32 Ether to become a validator. Therefore, the fact that many users submitted their funds towards this end, shows that there is a lot of trust from users in the viability of Eth2.

Call to Test

Over two weeks ago, developers of Ethereum requested the Ethereum community to test out the Eth2 merger. The testing phase itself involves 3 stages. One phase is for users that are not technical in nature. Another stage is for developers with some but limited experience. The third phase is for developers that are extremely experienced and technically proficient.

What this merger may mean

Beacon Chain’s merger with the Ethereum mainnet would be the final aspect of the move to PoS Eth2. According to the official website for Ethereum, there is an indication that the merger may be finished by the first or second quarter of next year.

About Beacon Chain

Beacon Chain’s official web page on Ethereum.org states that Beacon Chain will not change how Ethereum is used. It however will allow for the coordination of the Ethereum network. Beacon Chain will present to the Ethereum ecosystem proof-of-stake capabilities. According to the site, this can be considered the “Phase 0” of the project’s technical roadmap.

The Ethereum website adds that Beacon Chain will allow for the coordination and conduction of the expanded network. Beacon Chain will accomplish this using stakers and shards. However, they do add that this will not be like Ethereum Mainnet. Its limitations include smart contracts and accounts which it can not handle. Ethereum’s website states that the role of the Beacon Chain will evolve over time. However, it is highlighted that regardless of this evolution, the blockchain would remain sustainable, secure, and scalable.

Establishing Shard Chains

The next upgrade after Mainnet becomes integrated with Beacon Chain is will herald the usage of shard chains. These shard chains will help grow the capabilities of the blockchain network. The shards will also help increase the speed of transactions by furthering the network to 64 blockchains. It is necessary for Beacon Chain to be first introduced because it is the only way shard chains can work securely for staking.

At a later point, Beacon Chain will handle stakers through random assignments for validation of shard chains. This is also another important step that the initiative will take. The reason is that without it stakers have the capacity to collude. However, with it, the technology makes it very difficult for that to be at all possible. According to the Ethereum blockchain, once the technology is running it will make it less than a 1 in a trillion chance for successful collusion.

Categories
Blockchain Business Ethereum News NFT

NFT Collection and Rarible integration with Tezos

Rarible, a reputable marketplace for nonfungible tokens recently declared their integration of Tezos. This announcement from Rarible came on Wednesday. Texos is a blockchain exchange that conducts proof-of-stake.

Benefits of this Partnership

This partnership will allow the marketplace to showcase nonfungible tokens from Tezos on its marketplace. In addition, it will also facilitate the secondary sales of Tezos projects that are live. This will all be possible as the platform allows users to mint low-fee nonfungible tokens. This partnership that involves integration is the third of its kind on Rarible. Others that are supported on the service are Ethereum and Flow. Flow is a blockchain network that is owned by Dapper Labs. This network is where the National Basketball Association runs Top Shot.

What’s Next?

As the service continues to make new partnerships and facilitate integration with its various partners, it has plans to integrate with a number of other entities. These partners include Polygon and Solana. This is based on a response to a media outlet by Rarible’s Chief Executive Officer, Alexei Falin. Falin stated that their company believes that nonfungible tokens of the future will be cross-chain and interoperable.

The CEO added that this interoperability would be the integral aspect of creating a streamlined and efficient nonfungible token ecosystem. Falin stated that they had witnessed a number of blockchains gain users in the nonfungible token space because of their unique offerings. One of these, Falin stated, was Tezos. Ultimately, Falin highlighted Tezos because of its energy efficiency in minting using proof-of-stake validation. He also highlighted Tezos for its low costs.

How Rarible will do Implement Integration

According to Rarible, the two companies would do the process of integrating in two stages. At present, users can mint already. In addition, users can also sell and buy Tezos nonfungible tokens. Thirdly, users of Rarible can also trade these nonfungible tokens on the secondary market. The first offering is that from Ubisoft which is in-game metaverse collectibles. Ubisoft is a long-time-running gaming enterprise. The company named these collectibles “Digits”.

Blazing Future

The partnership released a collection titled “Blazing Future”. This collection is by Rarible and Texos and happens to be their very first offering together in the nonfungible token space. These NFTs were co-curated by Diane Drubay, the “We Are Museums” founder. Drubay curated it with a minter of nonfungible tokens that is on Hic ET Nunc. This collection showcases rare work from Tezos-based artists. The Blazing Future collection is also exclusive to the platform.

Comments from Rarible CEO

The CEO stated that his aspiration was for their company’s users to enjoy benefits from a superior experience on their platform. As a result, he hoped the access users would have to more nonfungible token projects that were initially only accessible within the Tezos network would help achieve this.

The infrastructure that has made this integration feasible is that of the Rarible Protocol. This protocol is cross-chain and open source in nature. Rarible Protocol is also an NFT community-governed protocol. Rarible.com also runs on the Rarible protocol.

About Rarible

Rarible is a service provider running on the Ethereum blockchain. This company allows for the designing, selling, and buying of ownership to digital art. This is all done through NFTs. Users of Rarible can generate income from purchasing and trading nonfungible tokens on the platform. The services allows users to buy tokens on the marketplace that they think are undervalued. These users then stay patient before selling them again after they think that the market would offer a better price for them.

The platform has facilitated integration with OpenSea. OpenSea facilitates the selling of items to a wider market. At present, Rarible takes a fee of 2.5% for every nonfungible token sale and purchase. Rarible allows the person selling to opt to take on the fee. If they do, Rarible charges the user 5% of the price of the completed sale.

Categories
Blockchain Business DeFi News

Crypto Developments in the USA

Early in December leaders in crypto service provision met with the United States lawmakers on the 8th December. These leaders met with legislators in the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee. The meeting that took place between these two groups was regarding digital assets and regulations and policies of the US surrounding them. Some critics believe the general feel of the meeting was more talk than action. However, the overall consensus is that the meeting was a positive development for cryptocurrency matters.

Mainstream media also helped thrust this story into the limelight. It is worth noting that this meeting is unique for the industry and a first of its kind. Never before have these leaders in cryptocurrency businesses ever met the leaders of the US and talked candidly about their concerns: both fears and hopes.

Which Crypto Moguls were invited

The list of crypto enterprise leaders that were present at this meeting included the Chief Finance Officer of Coinbase, the Chief executive officer of Bitfury, the chief executive officer of FTX, the Chief executive officer of Circle, and the Chief Executive officer of Paxos.

Which Legislators Engaged

The talks saw a number of lawmakers take a keen interest in engaging with the industry leaders. These lawmakers included Pete Sessions, Gregory Meeks, Patrick McHenry, Brad Sherman, and Maxine Waters.

Main Points

A point brought on by Circle’s executive, Allaire brought an example of his company’s experiences with professional investors who are utilizing their business offerings for various payments for SMEs, remittances, and even payments for remote professionals. He added that the United States currency would soon enough become as accessible to anyone as text messages and electronic mail.

On the other hand, Brooks highlighted concerns involving Meta (formerly known as Facebook). Brooks has shown a light on the decentralization propensity of cryptocurrency as well. The CEO took the opportunity to focus on the importance of the humanitarian impact of digital assets and their potential to impact the world when it comes to development. One top executive presented crypto as a very impactful tool for access to democracy.

The stakeholders from private enterprises presented a clear perspective. They attempted to make it clear that the government needed to stop being suspicious of the industry and instead change the rules of the game to make it a better working environment for these types of enterprises.

Current Supervision of Crypto in the US

Crypto is being supervised by a number of agencies at present. The regulations that are set on an individual basis in each State of the US are all over the place. In addition, the Securities and Exchange Commission is tightly holding the reigns with the classification of digital assets as a type of security.

Political Disagreement in the House

The differences in ideologies regarding cryptocurrency and its regulation have caused a split among lawmakers. Members of the Democratic party are honing in on how investors can be protected and their investments secured from instability.

However, based on the pattern of the nation’s system for electoral votes, insight can be taken. Republican legislators are estimating the likelihood of them winning overall in Congress over the elections that would happen mid-term.

In Conclusion

The meeting in general had a very positive feel. This is actually opposite to what the world has seen. The opposite usually happens when it comes to the United States instituting certain regulations that affect cryptocurrency. Some of these actions that look opposed include when the SEC disallowed WisdomTree’s application for a fund that would have been exchange-trading.

Many hope that this hearing is only the beginning of continued dialog. That is, dialog between the government and the leaders of this industry. McHenry said that congress should take on this initiative wholeheartedly.

Categories
Blockchain Regulation Technology

Cyprus Official Promotes Crypto

Like many other nations, Cyprus is making moves in the cryptocurrency space. The country is going towards regulating the cryptocurrency industry. To this effect, the nation’s ministry published the country’s risk assessment regarding cryptocurrency.

The Documentation

The Finance Ministry’s document offers an assessment of the risk for the country. This risk is pertaining to the money laundering problems related to digital asset transactions and service providers of virtual assets.

Comments from the Finance Minister

The top leader noted that currently, the authorities in Cyprus did not have a wide enough understanding or even experience of money laundering when it comes to cryptocurrency in their country.

The statement that was released adds that the CySEC (Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission) and the local arm of law enforcement have allowed a refined level of understanding for the sector. The Finance Ministry added that the governing authorities should continue to look at the market and acquire deeper training on crypto-related matters. The ministry added that this would be for the purpose of enhancing their skills set.

The government ministry also advised private enterprises in the financial technology sector to create and utilize policies and procedures that would ensure their compliance. The compliance is that of electronic transfers procedures for digital currencies. At present, the government intends to commence maintaining and sharing data that is for virtual asset service providers and virtual currencies. The ministry added that though activities were still low, this level of activity would help establish a baseline for future purposes. This is with the idea that these activities would probably increase. They hope that their monitoring now will help them detect problems of risks or alarming changes to risk levels later.

International Corporation would be critical

The Ministry pointed out that the nation of Cyprus would benefit from working together with others that were more experienced in the cryptocurrency industry. The idea is that the authority could therefore acquire more knowledge from those relationships. Additionally, the authority would be in a position to then be able to determine the best practices required.

The Surprising Change

Cyprus, as a nation, was very uncertain about cryptocurrency. Now we see that the nation has changed towards supporting the adoption of cryptocurrency-supporting regulations. Back in September of this year, CySEC was said to have revealed new information regarding cryptocurrency regulations and policies. They were said to be intending on furthering crypto by including it with the EU’s AML (Anti-money laundering) regulations as their country’s law.

The Crypto space in Cyprus is linked with a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity. The apprehension is evident as a number of banks blocked transactions for Bitcoin during 2021. This information is based on social media reports.

About Cyprus

The nation of Cyprus is a small island in the Mediterranean Sea, on the Eastern side. Historically, Cyprus was acclaimed for its generous deposits of natural resources. The country also has the capacity to create exquisite wine and produce, as well as the natural beauty of the nation.

Back in the 60s and 70s, Cyprus ran an economy that was essentially a free-enterprise one. The economy was largely focused on agribusiness and trade. With its efforts, it managed to sustain a living standard that was notably better than some of its neighbors. Of course, their progress can also be attributed to the help that they received through the UN (United Nations), in particular, that of the United Nations Development Program. This island nation is one of the globe’s largest producers of energy generated by the sun. However, Cyprus happens to be completely dependent on imports for petroleum. The petroleum is required for vehicles and the generation of power.

Categories
Blockchain Business Ethereum

Application to Aid in Minting NFTs

The marketplace for nonfungible tokens called Mintable recently made an announcement about their alliance with Immutable X. Immutable X is an enterprise on a StarkWare-based layer-two solution. This solution runs on Ethereum and focuses on offering minting services. The goal for this partnership between Mintable and Immutable X is to create over 24 million nonfungible tokens on Immutable X available for sale on the marketplace. The interoperability will allow those that use it to send ETH and ERC-20 tokens with confirmations that they will receive immediately. Users will also enjoy the added benefit of no gas fees for the same.

The marketplace for nonfungible tokens, Mintable stated on their official Twitter account that they and Immutable X were sharing a vision. This vision they share is to scale nonfungible tokens marketplaces. They aim to achieve that by giving the general public access to nonfungible tokens.

The Announcement

Mintable stated in their announcement that they were thrilled to enter a partnership with Immutable X, a leader in the layer 2 infrastructure for nonfungible tokens on Ethereum. They added that all their tokens were now available for trading purposes on their platform. The three benefits they outlined in their tweet were zero gas fees, instant secure trades, and 100% carbon neutral.

Limitations

Though Mintable announced that there would be zero gas fees, this is not for all tokens. Files that are above 300 megabytes will attract gas fees. Files that are below 300 megabytes will not.

Immutable X states that the project guarantees that the nonfungible token activities on Immutable X’s protocols are entirely carbon neutral. However, it is worth clarifying that carbon neutral and carbon-free are two different matters. Rather, their statement of being carbon neutral means that they will purchase carbon credits to offset the gas that they end up using upon Ethereum.

Immutable X’s Take

The President and co-founder of Immutable X, Robbie Ferguson gave comments regarding the development. Ferguson stated that they wanted to be where lovers of nonfungible tokens were to be found. The executive added that Mintable’s efforts to pioneer in the space by providing audiences with smart contracts was “mind-blowing”. Ferguson added that they were very happy to welcome new users and the opportunity to work with the Mintable app to further the marketplace for nonfungible tokens.

More from Mintables

The nonfungible tokens marketplace also runs a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization). It happens to have also pioneered as the very first decentralized autonomous organization to operate on nonfungible tokens. They run on nonfungible tokens as opposed to ERC-20 tokens. Mint-voting NFTs is what the Mintable Nonfungible tokens DAO depends on. At present, holders of mint can trade their voting nonfungible tokens on the Mintable open marketplace.

About Minting

Minting is when a nonfungible token is incorporated as part of the Ethereum blockchain. This process of minting involves validation or authentication of the information. It also requires the creation of a new block on the Ethereum blockchain. Finally, this information for the nonfungible token needs to be recorded onto the blockchain. So, essentially the process converts a digital file into a nonfungible token on the Ethereum blockchain. The Ethereum blockchain is a ledger in the public that can not be changed or tampered with.

The process of minting is very much like that of when metal coins are minted and then incorporated into the circulation of legal tender in a territory. Likewise, nonfungible tokens are basically tokens that become minted upon creation. These files that are converted into tokens, can be almost anything digital. This includes music, a fashion design by a designer, drawings from an artist, and even your very own brain scan. This token is incomparable and non-interchangeable.

Categories
Bitcoin Business Regulation

Bank in Ukraine Using Stellar to Launch Project

A bank called Tascombank is commencing a pilot project. Tascombank is one of Ukraine’s longest-running banks in the commercial sector. The project that they will be piloting is on Stellar. The project is for the country’s national fiat currency called the Hryvnia.

About the Launch

On Tuesday, the project’s owners commenced the start of the project. It will be a private electronic hryvnia pilot. The commercial bank is doing this project in conjunction with one private sector company called Bitt. Bitt is an enterprise in the fintech space. The National Bank of Ukraine is overseeing the project’s pilot phase. The project is also added by the country’s Ministry of Digital Transformation (MDT).

The Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Digital Transformation, Oleksandr Bornyakov stated that the initial phase of the project would offer a technological foothold for the issuance of digital currency. He also said it would give the next steps to further innovation of payment and financial infrastructure in the country.

The chief executive officer of SDF, Denelle Dixon informed the media that the initial phase of the project had already begun. Dixon stated that this initial phase included programmable payroll for employees of the state at Diia. Diia is a national information technology solution provider. The Ministry of the Digital Transformation also sustains this organization.

About Regulation

When commenting on regulation, Dixon stated that holders would utilize the regulated electronic money ncy or e-money on blockchain technology. These advancements, according to Dixon, are under the country’s presently applied e-money rules and regulations.

The goal of the Project

The intention of this project is to assess the issuance of electronic currency on the open blockchain ecosystem. The project tasks the commercial bank, Tascombank, for establishing and assessing the electronic hryvnia on Stellar. The intention is to thereafter release it on Bitts transaction network. Bitts transaction network is known as the DCMS (Digital Currency Management System).

Distribution of Responsibilities

According to the chief executive officer of Bitt, the Digital Currency Management System will include a number of capabilities. These capabilities include the ability for the platform to mint, issue, store, redeem and distribute the electronic hryvnia. Dixon stated that SDF would orchestrate the commercial bank’s configuration for their asset control requirements. At the same time, it will maintain the interoperability and flexibility of an open ledger.

The Ukraine Governments Previous Efforts

The government of Ukraine has attempted to explore Stellar for implementation of Stellar for e-money. Back in January of this year, the Ministry of Digital Transformation teamed up with the SDF. Their collaboration was for the purpose of creating digital assets and infrastructure-related strategy or the bank’s digital currency. Dixon added that they would not stop giving input and direction to the Ministry of Digital Transformation on their strategic efforts. However, Dixon did include that the hryvnia is an independent workstream.

About Ukraine

Ukraine is a European country that is located on the eastern side of Europe. It happens to be the largest after Russia. The capital city is Kyiv, which is located in the north-central part of Ukraine. Ukraine suffered after it attained independence. This suffering caused its leaders to attempt a slow plan for economic recovery. The country’s national bank, the National bank of Ukraine also acts as the nation’s central bank. The bank attempts to keep the country’s currency stable. The government brought the national currency back in 1996. Over the years, several banks have offered financial products to private individuals and to institutions. Investors can purchase these securities from the nation’s stock exchange.

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Business News Technology

Engineering, Finance & Legal Experts On-Demand in Crypto

When it comes to cryptocurrency and related industries, business is booming. Crypto has flourished over the last years, even as the world grapples with managing the Covid pandemic. As crypto booms, the experts that lead cryptocurrency businesses are in high demand. Firms in the crypto space are in desperate need of leaders as they grow their enterprises.

The industry is now growing at a break-neck speed. In the past, the industry was considered nascent as a market, by many. Now the market draws a lot of talent to it. One expert on the matter, David Richardson, spoke to Cointelegraph about these developments. Richardson is a partner at Heidrick & Struggles. Heidrick & Struggles is a firm that carries out searches for executives. Richardson stated that the demand for executives is put into motion by the growth rate of these enterprises. He added that the growth rate is also sustained because of the need to hire top executives that can assist them in continuing to grow and keep the momentum with the growth rate in the business.

What are Firms looking for?

Cryptocurrency businesses are on the search for expert leaders who have proven capabilities in scaling businesses to a point of success. According to Adrianna Huehnergarth, the engagement manager from Heidrick & Struggles stated that these companies are willing to hire these experts even if they do not have any previous knowledge of cryptocurrency or digital currency. Huehnergarth said that they are witnessing a lot of demand for heads of engineering. She highlighted those that have a track record of delivering in terms of scalability.

Most in Demand Fields

Professionals stated that the highest in-demand skills are for the C-Suite. These are leaders in engineering, finance, legal, corporate development, and go-to-market. Other than this expertise, firms are looking for low-ego executives who have shown their abilities in several aspects. These aspects bring passion, excitement for growth, the mission of the space. In addition, firms are looking for executives that are adaptable. Adaptability is a key area worth dwelling on since the industry is so fast-moving. All firms attempting to stay profitable and ahead of their competitors need to remain adaptable, not only to thrive but to survive as well.

The Importance of Legal Expertise

As the world slowly begins to embrace cryptocurrency more and more in the mainstream, the need for regulators to put in place regulations that work well also translates into a need for firms operating in this space. Firms need to stay on top of these regulations. Huehnergarth stated that a lot of firms that they worked with had more of a regional focus as opposed to a centralized type of setup, typical of a more traditional type of business.

The Remote aspect

The opportunity to work remotely in crypto has been a very attractive element of incentivizing experts. This was according to Huehnergarth. She added that many firms had removed the requirement of having a headquarters. In addition, these companies in the crypto space are capable of keeping employees happy with their capacity for giving out incentives and cash compensation. This translates into these happy employees staying to work at these organizations. Heuhnergarth added that these companies were making offers of employment to senior talent and giving them lucrative offers that are extremely difficult to not take.

According to Richardson, some companies focus more on one aspect between technology and finance. He added that the culture that the founders made for each company determined which field that company focused more on. Richardson said that as a business matures, a lower level of technical competence can be enough. However, when the technical barrier to entry into the industry is not so high, it allows many more talented people to join cryptocurrency and become part of experts in the industry.

Categories
Blockchain Business Regulation Technology

USDT Stablecoin Becomes Legal Tender in Myanmar

Myanmar has made some breakthroughs in cryptocurrency adoption. Myanmar’s government has made the USDT (United States Dollar-based stablecoin Tether) an official currency. This is a development by the (NUG), National Unity Government of Myanmar. The NUG is led by Aung San Suu Kyi.

The National Unity Government will allow payments by USDT for its political fundraising. They are attempting to oust the present military leadership in Myanmar. In addition, the shadow government managed to collect US$ 9.5 million. These funds were raised through the “Spring Revolution Special Treasury Bonds” sales. This sale was made available to all Myanmar’s in the diaspora. At present, they intend to fundraise up to US$ 1 billion. The National Unity Government intends to collect up to US$ 1 billion by selling the National Unity Government-issued bonds.

Myanmar’s Recent Announcement

On Monday the National United Government’s Ministry of Planning, Finance, and Investment announced their new development on Facebook.

The National Unity Government’s announcement to accept USDT actually goes against the cryptocurrency ban put in place by the Central Bank of this nation back in May 2020.

Privacy Concerns

Many people have privacy concerns in regards to USDT. At present, some people are also concerned about the seizing of finances by the present government. The Finance Minister for the National United Government stated that the main reason for Tether’s incorporation is for utilization within Myanmar. The currency would create ease in trading, services, and payment systems. The currency would also speed things up.

Politics in Myanmar

The National United Government was acknowledged as Myanmar’s official government by the French Senate and the European parliament in October of this year. However, one economic powerhouse – the United States – has not recognized Myanmar’s new government. The National United Government’s reason for accepting and using Tether stablecoin could prompt discourse among countries. This would be a very interesting development as countries such as the United States begin to implement very stern policies for stablecoin issuance.

About Myanmar

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma is a nation in Southeast Asia. It has a very diverse populace, consisting of 100 ethnic groups. Its neighbors include Thailand, Laos, China, India, and Bangladesh. The country boasts rich reserves of natural gas, oil, gems, and jade. The nation also has ample renewable energy. Studies show that it has the biggest solar energy potential in comparison to some of the other countries in the region. These countries in particular being the Great Mekong Sub-region. Myanmar happens to be the biggest country in mainland Southeast Asia.

Ethnic issues have overwhelmed Myanmar for the majority of its years of independence. The country held general elections last year where Aung San Suu Kyi emerged as the winner by a clear majority. Following this win, the Myanmar military took power through a coup d’etat. The coup resulted in numerous protests around the country. In addition, the military apprehended Aung San Suu Kyi. Kyi was handed charges of crimes that may consider “politically motivated”. Some of these crimes include violation of covid protocols and corruption.

Memberships that Myanmar is in

The nation of Myanmar is a member of a number of international alliances. These alliances include Non-Alignment Movement, ASEAN, BIMSTEC, and East Asia Summit.

Income

As of the year 2013, Myanmar’s gross domestic product stood at US$ 56.7 million (nominal). Whereas, the country’s purchasing power parity was at US$ 221.5 million in the same year. The wealth of Myanmar’s people is distributed very unevenly in Myanmar. This makes for a huge income gap. This gap puts it as one of the worst gaps in the world. At present, the majority of the economy is under the control of the military government’s supporters.

Categories
Blockchain Business News

Assembly raises US$ 100 Mill in Investment

The organization, Assembly, managed to raise investment of the value of US$ 100 Million. The organization announced this development on Friday. Assembly happens to be a network. The network has a decentralized layer one smart contract infrastructure. The funds raised came from private investors. Some of these private investors were HyperChain Capital, LD Capital, and Huobi Ventures.

According to Assembly, they will utilize the finances to quicken the development of DeFi (decentralized finance) protocols. Other uses of the funds are to invest in nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and also play-to-earn gaming products. ,

Comments from Iota

The Internet of Things (IoT) organization IOTA is a blockchain. The organization engineered this blockchain for allowing internet-of-things transactions. This innovation is proprietary and includes a system of graphs that can integrate into various vectors. The graphs are acyclic. Due to this, the block can do validation of two other blocks on the first block is new. This leads to transactions being self-sustainable in terms of verification. It also purportedly leads to the end of transaction fees. Another reported advantage of this infrastructure is that it uses minimal energy to work.

Pending Launch

Assembly mainnet will commence next year. The Assembly mainnet will really focus on the community. At present, the network keeps 70% of the network’s native ASMB tokens for incentivizing developers. The organization also keeps the tokens for community-governed DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) and grant programs.

Comments from IOTA co-founder

The co-founder of the IOTA Foundation, Dominik Schiener informed Cointelegraph that he thinks there are currently too many Ethereum virtual Machines. He added that eventually all of these machines would encounter issues with fees, interoperability, and scalability. He added that since most of them lacked a unique element, they would ultimately fail.

The IOTA Foundation founder stated that developers can customize each smart contract chain for their specific project’s needs. This was in response to what the uniqueness of the Assembly blockchain was. He added that the Assembly is fully compatible with Ethereum Virtual Machines. Schiener also confirmed that it can already support WebAssembly, TypeScript, Go, and Rust.

Comments from Investor

HyperChain Capital’s founder, Stelian Balta stated that the crypto market has always needed a feeless network that is highly scalable. He added that Assembly has led the way into new frontiers regarding crypto ecosystem advancements for as far back as 2015. He added that he was confident that Assembly’s experience is worth their confidence.

More about Assembly

Assembly is essentially a multi-chain network that is permissionless. The network allows one to build, connect and install smart contracts. Anyone can create sharded smart contract chains on the protocol. There is a level of flexibility that one can enjoy. Designers of contracts can choose what is important in terms of parameters, validation requirements, and virtual machines. What is worth noting is that each smart contract chain is engineered on Assembly is a completely sharded network. The network is limited only by throughput. The network benefits from the shared trustless interoperability and shared security of the international network.

According to Assembly’s Wiki, the protocol is still in development. Specifications that are available in its wiki are pure to illustrate a research prototype and may change. Users are encouraged to check the documentation for the most up-to-date versions of the documentation for build purposes.

Why Assembly uses Smart Contracts

Sometimes mediators are required to handle deals. Traditionally, outside of tech, people and organizations in various fields would engage them to make sure deals happen smoothly. These would be in all types of sectors including art, finance, and even trade. Smart contracts are the new age of this. They allow a number of validators that are independent to process the contract. This allows that no concerned party can manipulate the result. The arbitration in smart contracts, however, is fully automated.

Categories
Business Regulation Technology

South Africa’s Authorities plan on Protecting Investors in Crypto

In a bid to protect vulnerable investors of crypto in South Africa, the authorities have decided to make more efforts to ensure investors are exposed to less risk. The commissioner of South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority – Unathi Kamlana stated that the authorities would institute a framework for crypto that would focus on mitigating any possibilities of risks.

A report released on Bloomberg on Friday stated that the Commissioner, Unathi Kamlana stated that their institution intended on presenting a regulatory framework next year. The intention of them doing that is to help protect investors from high-risk crypto assets that they may be exposed to. Kamlana added that any framework for crypto matters would be designed in collaboration with the Prudential Authority and Financial Surveillance Board of the nation’s Reserve Bank.

The goal of the intended framework

The authorities stated that they want to be able to aid investors when they identify potential risks that customers may not properly comprehend, in terms of the level of risk those assets may possess. He added that they would exercise caution to ensure not to legitimize everything.

These statements come after the country’s Fintech Working Group stated month’s ago that it would establish the groundwork for the “phased and structured” regulation of crypto in the nation.

South Africa’s Cryptocurrency Policy

So far, South Africa has focused on a noninterference type of approach regarding cryptocurrency. They of course did caution the general public that there was no protection or remedies for them in the event they as investors were to be scammed or defrauded.

Case of AfriCrypt

AfriCrypt is a platform that was based in South Africa. It was a crypto investment platform where one of the co-founders suddenly disappeared with billions of the users’ finances. Unfortunately, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority was unable to take any action. They stated this was the case because the crypto assets were unregulated in South Africa. Binance challenged the South African body with the argument that the best institution to handle these matters was South Africa’s Financial Intelligence Centre. According to Binance, the Financial Intelligence Centre would be the best-suited organization to ensure businesses operating in South Africa’s crypto industry are compliant with local laws.

Other Related Advancements in South Africa

Earlier this year in May, the South African authorities began a study. This study was by the South African Reserve Bank. The study was designed to explore the rollout of a central bank’s digital currency. The central bank digital currency or CBDC is a digital currency whose value would be controlled by the authorities. This central bank type of bank is also being explored in other countries around the world. These countries using the central bank aspect include Australia, Malaysia, Singapore. They are all piloting global settlements utilizing central bank digital currencies.

About South Africa

South Africa has traditionally been a contender in regards to the trade of minerals such as diamonds and gold. For this reason, he has acquired significant investment from investors internationally. The country also boasts of robust manufacturing industry. In some years, South Africa ranked highest in growth among all the nations in the world. However, the nation has grappled with problems emanating from the apartheid policies. This causes countries to withdraw their investments. Foreign investment picked up after 1994 when apartheid was dismantled by the new government.

The country’s economy is based on the private sector but has notable support from the South African government. The nation has a well-developed financial sector. The financial sector is overseen by South Africa’s Reserve Bank. The bank is the only issuer for the South African rand which happens to be the country’s national currency. It makes up the country’s monetary policy and handles forex transactions.

Categories
Bitcoin Blockchain Business DeFi News

Stack’s Executive on DeFi Bridges for Bitcoin holders

Bitcoin has a robust framework with various elements comprising it, including Stacks. A collection of independent components, developers, and members of the community collaborate to create a user-owned internet on the Bitcoin blockchain. This collection is the Stacks ecosystem. As the very first Security and Exchange Commission-qualified token, the Stacks’ STX cryptocurrency was shared with the public in the United States.

Cuevas’ “Ask Me Anything”

On the 2nd December 2021, Mitchell Cuevas, the top executive for growth for the Stacks Foundation conducted an ask-me-anything event. It was done in conjunction with Cointelegraph Markets Pro users. During the event, he talked about the Stack blockchain’s technology and capabilities that it has. He also discussed future growth possibilities and major developments.

Security on Stacks PoX

The users asked Cuevas about proof-of-transfer and whether it matched BTC security or if there were any vulnerabilities. Cuevas stated that Stack’s consensus recycles proof-of-work already completed to secure Bitcoin. It accomplishes this via Proof of Transfer. Proof of Transfer is a mechanism in mining that allows a new take on consensus. It, therefore, facilitates proof of work chain to be capitalized upon and extended.

For this reason, Stack transactions are all settled on Bitcoin. This allows Stack transactions to be strengthened by Bitcoin’s security.

When Will Integration Be Extended

The Cointelegraph Pro users also asked when smart contract capabilities would be integrated with NFTs, gaming, and the metaverse. Cuevas stated that these capabilities are already available at the moment. He referenced how US$ 6 – 7 million is transacted upon on a daily basis at present. The executive added that the present minting costs were US$ 0.14 to US$ 0.50. He stated that Monday games were creating a fun metaverse style open-world gaming experience. Cuevas also stated that Jologom was handling a number of efforts that would help the metaverse.

Why there are only a few protocols integrating with BTC?

Cuevas believes that there are only a few protocols integrating with Bitcoin because of how challenging the integration is. He added that it took them quite some time to make Proof-of-Transfer work with the efforts of his engineers and the Blockstack team. In addition, he stated that it was currently more lucrative for newcomers to create their own chain because it was easier and more profitable.

Congestion Issues with Stacks

Cuevas acknowledged the congestion issues that Stacks had experienced. He stated that the main issue had been the popularity of nonfungible tokens and the infrastructure of the API on the stacks-blockchain. Cuevas stated that the architecture had changed over time. Numerous read-only API nodes can be initiated during high traffic events.

What Multi blocks are

When the executive was asked about multi-blocks, he stated that multi-blocks are not a scalability solution. Rather, they let transaction confirmations occur. This is an element designed to help solve transaction latency. They allow transactions to be confirmed in a matter of seconds on the chain before they are settled on Bitcoin.

Energy Usage of Stacks

When it comes to Stacks, Cuevas said ecosystem usage was a straightforward matter. PoX recycles PoW that has already been utilized on Bitcoin. As a result, Stacks does not burn or consume electricity for its transactions. The chief technology officer added that he had been working with some NFT artists on a personal basis. They are excited about the possibilities of Stacks in regards to zero or minimum carbon footprints for Stack.

Further Plans for Integration

When asked about plans for more integration with other blockchains, Cuevas said an emphatic yes. He added that there are a number of bridge efforts. Some of these bridge efforts are for Ethereum, BSC, Klyaton, SOL, Polygon, ICON, and Orbit.

Categories
Business News NFT

Ubisoft’s New Game Getting Hate

A new game by Ubisoft is having a hard time even though it was newly released. Ubisoft Entertainment also called just “Ubisoft” is a very profitable French gaming company. The project that they released is titled “Quartz”. Quartz is enduring a lot of negative criticisms from gamers from around the world.

The Beta Launch

The game was launched in its beta version on Wednesday. They made the announcement through a short Youtube video. The intention of the gaming project is to mesh NFTs and blockchain technology with other elements. These other elements are some AAA game titles. They also announced the very first game to integrate NFTs officially. That game was Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint.

About the Video

The clip presents Quartz as a resource where gaming enthusiasts can collect their very first playable and energy-efficient Ubisoft NFTs. These NFTs have been referred to as “Digits”. The video has raked in a whopping 37,000 dislikes, equating to 95% of those that rated it. That means, only 1,400 liked the video.

Comments from Viewers

One user, OperatorDrewski that was made on the video has managed to garner 2,600 likes and zero dislikes. This particular comment criticizes Ubisoft’s NFT project. He refers to this name game as a capitalistic attempt by Ubisoft to make quick money off gamers without improving the gaming experience for them.

Feedback on Youtube

OperatorDrewski said that this release is a clear signal that Ubisoft is “milking” the Ghost Recon franchise for everything without making an actual effort with the game itself. He added that he would not use a game like this in the future if their goal is to create games like this particular one. Unfortunately, for Ubisoft, this is not the only scathing comment left by viewers of this video. It would appear that his opinion is shared by the majority of those that viewed the video. The comments coming through from Twitter threads support this estimation. Some commentators even stated they would consider uninstalling the company’s games and stop purchasing more games from them in the future.

Feedback on Twitter

One Twitter user, Sukaaaily, said that based on his personal views of nonfungible tokens he would go ahead and uninstall anything that relates to Ubisoft. He added that he would no longer buy the company’s gaming products. He encouraged other users to stop purchasing from Ubisoft if they too did not like Ubisoft’s current marketing approach.

Feedback on Reddit

On a subreddit page for r/gaming, the community seems to be mobilizing towards boycotting the same game. Titled “Do not support ‘Quartz’, the new NFT Ubisoft marketplace”, more and more people are chiming in. One user, u/WolverineKuzuri93 has racked in at least 2500 comments. He also has been upvoted at a 93% ratio by 13,400 other users. This user said that users have to stand against this practice. His comments were similar to that of sentiments left on comments for the Youtube video. He adds that this new game is just another means for the company to get more money with cosmetics and no real quality of the product itself.

The redditor did add that he was not completely against the idea of utilizing the NFT style system for digital gaming. He added that there would be value in such an approach if he got to actually own the copy with the permission to resell and not just a license. u/WolverineKuzuri93 added that would be the future of gaming in the digital age. He did highlight that what he was not in support of was the in-game items.

Other Instances of Mass rage

Other firms have tried and failed to incorporate NFTs into their worlds. Discord is one example of such. It had let go of its project on Ethereum that was attempting to incorporate NFTs.

Categories
Business News NFT

Pepsi partners with VaynerNFT and More NFTs News

There are several developments in the world of NFTs including Pepsi’s new nonfungible token collection and more.

Pepsi’s Mic Drop NFT Collection

Leading soda drink company, Pepsi unleashed their new collection of NFTs. Pepsi’s collection is called “Mic Drop genesis NFT collection”. This collection consists of 1,893 NFTs. The NFTs are designed in such a way that they show the styles from different generations. The NFTs are available on the Ethereum blockchain. The total number of nonfungible tokens gives a nod to the year Pepsi was founded. Pepsi has set it up so that people wanting to purchase the collection only have to pay gas fees. In addition to that, Pepsi has put in place a means for people to get on a waitlist. The waitlist process is available for those interested up until the 14th December 2021.

The symbolism of the NFTs Collection

The Pepsi brand depicts different designs involving a microphone. The NFTs are in blue silver, red and black. All these are the colors the brand is known for and the different flavors associated with their range of products. These colors are classic blue, sliver, red and black, amongst others.

About Creators of the Nonfungible token collection

The creators of this collection are VaynerNFT. VaynerNFT is a firm in the VaynerX holding company. The chief executive officer of Vaynerchuk, Gary Vaynerchuk told Cointelegraph that this digital asset would transform the culture of value creation. He added that it was an exciting time for the brand to grow loyalty and bring greater value to its community and fans.

Environmentally Friendly Program

On top of these newly released NFTs, Pepsi has been up to some other things too. The company intends to start a carbon offset program. Their goal is to use this carbon offset program to ensure a net carbon footprint of zero for Pepsi Mic Drop NFT.

Mystery Box by 1inch and Parts of Four

In a collaboration, 1inch and Parts of Four have unleashed a new offering. This is their Mystery Box. Their Mystery Box is to be launched on the 13th December 2021 on the Binance NFT Marketplace. The box will include 22,000 NFTs. These NFTs will have 31 versions and the versions will be minted across 7 levels of sophistication. In addition, these NFTs will be offered at 25 BUSD.

About the NFTs collection

The NFT collection will be an element in a game directed at purchasing and forging limited wearables. These are wearables that will be for usage on P4s Greater Metaverse. The expansion for P4 will start in an ERC-20 community token. Thereafter, it would be towards an NFT space that runs on Binance Smart Chain. The plan that Parts of Four has is to utilize interactions with the physical world by incorporating technology augmented reality and bi-directional swaps through the P4 platform.

Athlete Unleashes NFTs Collection for Holiday

The athlete, Tom Brady, released a set of NFTs recently. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback made his comments on the Autograph NFT platform. The platform is named “Live Forever: The Tom Brady Origins Collection”. The collection includes 16,000 collectible sets.

This set of NFTs gives highlights from the commencement of his football career. This set encompasses a resume he made before his 2000 draft selection, cleats, a jersey for the NFL, and a stopwatch among other things.

The Novelty

The novelty of it is that the NFTs will be a mystery until the moment that they are being bought on the 14th December 2021.

Initiative on Color of the Year by Texos and Pantone

The brand, Pantone has partnered with Texos blockchain to create the Color of the Year 2022 through a nonfungible token collection. The color for 2022 is Pantone 17-33938. Polygon1993, a Paris-based artist will design the artworks inspired by this shade of periwinkle.

Categories
Altcoins Bitcoin Blockchain Business Gaming Interview News Opinion People

What is Glosfy Blockchain? Find your place in one search

Innovative Blockchain Technology in the real world

Glosfy is an innovative tech company
with companies and artists to discover the best places to go out all over the world and connect with them. Their goal is to be the world reference for people, artists, and companies providing the best solutions for their needs.

UNIQUE SELLING POINT WITH UNIQUE FEATURES

Glosfy is unique because is the only app working on this sector using the blockchain for its own services no other online solution provides a targeted service for the needs of users, artists and event companies, and engagement journey beyond “just one search”, and a chance to build up rewards for users paid in our own token, and a strong profile for event companies where they can hold amount of tokens. Artists can keep their followers up to date, with their dates and engage with them where they will be by their location, so they won’t miss any Event from them. Companies will have their own profile where they can publish also jobs, and information to keep their clients up to date. At the same time they can create events for those who need the ticket management system and extra functionalities. Glosfy is free for everyone, only pay as they go for selling tickets or ads.

What are their targets?

We will be targeting to have 500 companies registered to the App
across the territories. Most of their use of the App and income
generated will be from promoting their events and selling their
tickets. We are targeting around 60% of these businesses to take
advantage of the opportunity to promote the event on the App,
raising the profile, and 15% to paid-for advertising across the site
and App. We expected these numbers to build in the following
years, but we will need to build up a User following, and marketing
reach in order to have the stats to sell these opportunities

You can find their websites here:

📲 Website Blockchain: https://glosfy.network
📲 Website App ( Alpha Test Product ): https://glosfy.com
📲 Telegram Ann: https://t.me/glosfy
📲 Telegram Chat: https://t.me/glosfychat
📲 Twitter: https://twitter.com/glosfyapp
📲 Facebook: https://facebook.com/glosfy
📲 LinkedIn : https://linkedin.com/company/glosfy
📲 Instagram : https://instagram.com/glosfy

Categories
Blockchain Business News

Quirky Hero Plans to help Haitians in Maimi

Haiti probably does not come to mind when we consider cryptocurrency or even blockchain technology. We may think of progressive nations in the west, Asia, and other parts of the world. We probably do not consider a nation like Haiti. Haiti is a small country in the Caribbean that has faced many challenges, including natural disasters, ineffective leadership, and poverty. Even now, the nation is one of the most poverty-stricken countries in the world, in regards to gross domestic product per capita.

Efforts by Nandy Martin

Nandy Martin is working to make a change for the small nation. Martin is an entrepreneur based in Haiti. He is known for going around the country dressed in a costume as a superhero. His costume includes a shield, perhaps reminiscent of “Captain America” for some people. As a result, people there know him as “Captain Haiti” because of his outfit. Martin founded the Little Haiti Coin on the Cardano blockchain. He established in Maimi’s Little Haiti. The goal he has is to use it to make his community better and also increase crypto usage for business. In addition, he would like people to use it as a means of marketing Haitian imports. Martin was interviewed by Cointelegraph and shared a few insights. He shared ideas around Little Haitian Coin and the path ahead for the project’s future.

The inspiration behind the Little Haiti Coin

When asked about what inspired Martin to create this coin, he told the news outlet that there are many organizations involved in trying to help Haiti. However, over the past 60 to 70 years the situation in Haiti has worsened, regardless of all the efforts, these organizations are trying to make. Martin said that is why his approach is 100% capitalistic with the aim of making it integrate into the global economic systems. His creation of the coin is to help the Haitian community tap into the crypto era. He would like to see Haitian goods and minerals reaching the global market through the trade vehicle that a coin like his could allow. At the same time, the coin could also assist the community with programs designed to improve society.

Little Haiti Coin Acceptance

In response to how he would turn this vision into reality, Martin had several comments to make. Martin said that they had designed a 1 million Little Haiti Coin on the Cardano blockchain and they intended on purchasing and partnering with a 5000 square foot facility in Little Haiti. The idea would be that the inhabitants of that area would be able to come and get a wallet. With that wallet, they would be in a position to buy goods in the community that comes from Haiti. The purpose of the token is to offer people from that community and the world various discounts from 10 – 100% on goods from the Carribean nation.

How Little Haiti Coin will Help

When Cointelegraph asked Martin about remittances from Haiti and what value came in thereof, Martin said that they hoped to capture 25% of the funds from remittances from Haitians based all over the world. According to statistics, Haiti’s remittances are 36% of Haiti’s gross domestic product.

The initial goal of the project is to get local businesses to adopt the coin as tender. Businesses that agree to accept Little Haitian Coin, would be publicized by the coin on their advertisements as places where the coin is accepted. Martin said to accomplish this, he discussed the matter with the authorities in Maimi District 5. The Commissioner of the area, Jeggrey Watson granted funds to the tune of US$ 200,000 to 40 local enterprises. The idea of granting these funds to these local businesses is to assist them. The assistance is so they import goods from Haiti. When these enterprises import these goods, Haitian products can be made accessible to tourists that decide to visit Little Haiti.

Categories
News Regulation Technology

Puerto Rico: Fighting Corruption with Blockchain

More controversy erupted in Puerto Rico recently. This scandal has caused Puerto Rico’s government to consider blockchain technology to curb corruption. The speaker of the house of Puerto Rico’s legislators, Rafael “Tatito” Hernandez stated that the politicians would arrange consultations with local blockchain community members this month. The goal of these meetings will be to talk about the possibilities of adopting blockchain technology to address corruption.

The Potential

If blockchain is utilized in such a manner, the infrastructure involving blockchain and smart contracts has the potential of improving the situation in Puerto Rico. The situation can be improved because of the increased transparency and accountability that blockchain technology and smart contracts offer users. The lawmaker, Hernandez, made these comments on the 6th December 2021 to Bloomberg, at a conference. The conference was for the Puerto Rico Blockchain Trade Association.

He stated that they had a genuine credibility challenge and the blockchain infrastructure could solve this problem. Additionally, Hernandez stated that there is a wider goal for their government to establish Puerto Rico as a center for crypto and blockchain innovation. The lawmaker stated that this could be one way that their struggling economy could develop by investing in this emerging industry.

Puerto Rico’s Economy

The official referred back to the state’s economy in the 1960s and 1970s. Furthermore, he mentioned how Puerto Rico had a better economy in the past due to a niche in manufacturing. Now, the state has the opportunity to create employment and new opportunities via cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

More people are anxious about the territory’s corruption challenges. Therefore, Hernandez made these comments in this climate. One such case of corruption in Puerto Rico is that of a local mayor that accepted responsibility for an act of corruption. Ultimately, that mayor pleaded guilty to taking a bribe of the value of US$ 100,000 last week, in cash.

Other nations Turning to Blockchain Technology

At present, this small nation is not the only nation that is turning to blockchain technology and digital currency. Some other countries that are looking at the opportunities that blockchain technology may offer include Denmark and also Kenya. In the case of Denmark, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs made statements on the potential that they perceived was available for blockchain. In other words, they believe it too can combat corruption in the government’s administration and politics. This was last year. In the case of Kenya, they received advice from the United Nation’s drugs and crime agency. The agency advised this African nation to consider utilizing blockchain technology to fight corruption in government. The UN organization offered Kenya this advice by the UN agency back in 2020.

Other Nation’s Policies

Currently, a number of countries do not allow their government officials to hold cryptocurrency. One such country that does not allow its public officials to own crypto is Russia. The Russian authorities cite corruption challenges as the reason for this legislation. However, some people think that Russia could curb corruption by using cryptocurrency. Maria Arganovskaya offered her comments on the matter. Arganovskaya is a legal expert and fintech professional. She is based in Duma, in Russia.

Arganovskaya explained to a news outlet that blockchain could be a solution to this problem. She said that cash is actually more recognized for illegal activities. These illegal activities include corruption. Arganovskaya added that if the Russian government was to incorporate the Know Your Customer protocols and AML at the beginning, this could help. The expert added that with these measures in place, cryptocurrency can easily be traced for law enforcement purposes. They indicated that tracing by law enforcement of the crypto would be possible if these important and appropriate rules are established.

About Puerto Rico

At present, the small territory generatelaw enforcement agencieslaw enforcement agenciess the bulk of its revenues through the manufacturing and service industries. Historically, it depended on agriculture. With the statements by Hernandez, we can look forward to seeing what investing in blockchain technology can do for the nation’s economy.

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Bitcoin News People

Report by SPLC on Extremists and Crypto

The organization, SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) has released a report on extremists and their use of crypto. This report looks at the significant connections between the far right and Bitcoin currency. Many of these extremists have established substantial fortunes through digital currency.

The Hatewatch report was published on the 9th December 2021 by the SPLC. This report included findings on how these white supremacists and extremists converse and utilize crypto. They say that many have raised millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency donations.

About the Hatewatch Report

This Hatewatch Report is titled “How Cryotocurrency Revolutionalized the White Supremacist Movement”. The report found and aggregated an excess of 600 cryptocurrency addresses that it connected with white supremacists and other radical groups. This aggregation is how the publishing body arrived at these conclusions.

Major Claims

The report states that it was challenging to identify a leader internationally for the far right that had not yet started using cryptocurrency to some level. In contract, only 25 % of Americans utilize cryptocurrency.

Reasons why these groups used Crypto

These radical groups tend to utilize cryptocurrency for two main reasons, it seemed. Essentially, the report found that these groups used crypto because they just wanted anonymity for their transactions. Secondly, these far-right extremists don’t use regular banking is that banks debanked them. As a result, they still needed means of making a financial transaction.

History of Extremists using Crypto

For starters, Wikipedia states that Stefan Molyneaux, is said to have been utilizing cryptocurrency for the past 8 years. This information is according to Wikipedia. The extremist receives donations from his supporters through it. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Molyneaux may have first obtained donations in a Bitcoin wallet from as far back as 2013. That is to say, the Hatewatch report estimates that Molyneayx’s followers have so far managed to donate approximately 1250 Bitcoin to him since then. The far-right leader has obtained about US$ 3.28 million from the US$ 1.8 million in cryptocurrency. Molyneaux’s funds far exceed other extremists that the study looked at as well.

Karl Thorburn (originally named Greg Johnson) receives large donations too. He has received an excess of US$ 800,000 just from cryptocurrency. Thornburn established the site called CounterCurrents, which many consider controversial. The founder of the site requests donations in various cryptocurrencies, amounting to 12 of them. At the moment, CounterCurrents is attempting to fund raise up to a US$ 200,000 target. The site states that these funds are for its political agenda.

Crypto Critics Commentary

Author and crypto critic, David Gerard told the SPLC in an email that not all crypto was being used by supporters of extremists to fund extremists. He did acknowledge that these extremists were raising surprising amounts of money. Gerard added that Bitcoin was established on right-wing libertarian principles. He went on to add that this does not imply that it holds a neo-Nazi subculture. Gerard added that the proportion of Nazis in the Bitcoin subculture can not be a random probability.

Criticisms of the Report

The report is extensive. At the same time, the report leans on previous events in history and particular incidents more than not. Such incidents include that of the Daily Stormer referencing a Bitcoiner TV host’s view from 2017. Primarily, the opinion of the host was that crypto was a means to free its readers from what they considered a centralized banking system controlled by the Jewish people.

Additionally, the report also connected Andrew Auernheimer (aka “Weev”) to Monero. Monero is a privacy coin that allows for private and untraceable financial transactions. This coin manages privacy more than Bitcoin does. Auernheimer said in a podcast back in 2017 that his “big thing” had become stockpiling on Monera, this privacy cryptocurrency. He stated that at the time he already had a large amount of Monera in his ownership.

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Business News Regulation

Greener Bitcoin Mining Possibilities in Brazil

Lawmakers in Brazil are considering a new proposal regarding green Bitcoin mining. The proposal is for taxation exemptions for mining that utilizes green energy sources. The proposal also calls for taxation exemptions for crypto mining rigs.

About the Proposals for Green Bitcoin Mining

Seudinheiro, a Brazilian media house reported on Saturday that the Brazilian Congress was looking at a number of fresh proposals that could help lower the criticisms that cryptocurrency gets in Brazil. Another proposal that the lawmakers considered was that of changing the status of cryptocurrency there. As of now, the government considers it a commodity. The proposal suggests that it becomes regarded as a currency. In the event that this proposal is accepted, exchanges that trade in cryptocurrency will now be allowed to offer financial services. These crypto exchanges will also be able to give loans to people living in Brazil.

The Senator who made these proposals to fellow lawmakers was Irajá Silvestre Filho. At present, it is unknown what the other lawmakers thought of these proposals that were presented to them by Filho. However, regardless, these proposals do have significant support drawn from the cryptocurrency community in Brazil.

Comments from the Brazilian Crypto Mining Community

The chief executive officer of Arthur Mining, Ray Nasser considered these proposals a welcome development. He stated that if Brazil managed to pass these tax exemptions into law, then it would set up Brazil favorably. The executive stated that it would place Brazil in the position of being something of a “Mecca of Mining”.

Becoming Legal Tender in Brazil

If cryptocurrency becomes legal tender in Brazil, new possibilities will open up. One of the main matters is, that of CBDC (central bank digital currency). The Central Bank of Brazil will then have the opportunity to conduct issuances of digital real CBDCs. If Brazil does this, it will rank them among the number of countries that allow issuances of CBDCs to their populaces.

The Power situation in Brazil

As of now, this Latin American nation manages to generate 50% of its electricity from green energy sources. This information is based on data from the International Trade Administration. It costs Brazil US$ 0.12 to generate 1 kilowatt-hour. For that reason, it places Brazil in the middle, in regards to power generation and costs.

The Chief Executive Officer of Moeda, Taynaah Reis made some insightful comments to Cointelegraph. Moeda is a blockchain fintech firm located in Brazil. Reis stated that digital currency is growing in Brazil and that the nation’s authorities had been proactive and protective on encouraging mining and drafting policies. These policies have been on best practices as leading enterprises announce their intentions of incorporating cryptocurrency.

Probably Policies and Procedures

Commenting as an expert in the field, Reis stated that the miners in Brazil would be required to submit a registration of their equipment to the Brazilian authorities. This will be a means for Brazil’s government to keep track of the ecosystem.

Challenges in Brazil

As of now, there are a number of power supply issues in Brazil. The country is now experiencing periods of power rationing. This is whereby the power station allows certain areas in the nation to receive less power whilst other parts of the country do not. The Brazilian government does this to assist the power grid, overall.

Arthur Mining’s President, Rudá Pellini stated that he was not worried that new miners would be a threat to the existing power supply. This is regardless of the present state of power rationing. He stated that one of the most significant issues about energy matters in Brazil is that of transmission. Pellini added that they have a large energy generation surplus in their country. He stated that it is possible to encourage larger investments in green energy generation.

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Altcoins Business News

Latin America is Benefiting from Stablecoins

People in Colombia and Venezuela are turning to stablecoin, including Reserve, as means of utilizing stable currency. Cointelegraph shared their insights when they interviewed a number of these people using Reserve.

Reserve

Reserve is a solution that allows users to exchange fiat currency. Fiat currency that can be exchanged using Reserve includes the Venezuelan bolivares. People who want to exchange the Venezuelan bolivares can exchange it for the U.S. dollar through the Reserve stablecoin (RSV stablecoin).

Purchases on Reserve stablecoin

There are a variety of use cases holders of the coin purchase the RSV for. Some turn to the currency to send money to family and friends. Others use it for regular daily purchases. How people are using it is expanding. According to Reserve, more countries in Latin America are turning to Reserve for their payment needs. So far, the countries that are using RSV include Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, and Argentina. This is after Reserve has been on the market only for 12 months. Reserve also states that it has about 100,000 visitors to its app every week. It also says approximately 8000 merchants have started allowing payment via Reserve.

Perspective from Customers of Reserve

Two customers gave Cointelegraph their perspective on RSV. Alicia Stephany and Sasha Antunez shared their thoughts on how the application affected their day-to-day lives and the economy in their country, Venezuela. Antunez is a Venezuelan neurologist who utilizes Reserve for both her work and her home life. Stephany is a Venezuelan based in Colombia. She utilizes the service to send back financial support to her family that is still in her home country. Antunez said that has Reserve dollars available in her app. If she has to go make purchases at the supermarket and only has a bit of money, she does the exchange so that she has more funds in her national currency in her local bank account. From there she can use her bank funds to make a payment at the shops.

How do Most use Reserve currency

Most currency holders utilize RSV to hold their funds in a type of saving. If their employer pays them in their local currency, they do not have to be anxious about devaluation if their pay is in U.S. currency. Perhaps they decide that they want to make a purchase, they simply convert those funds to their local currency and make the necessary payment in RSV stablecoin if the seller allows it. If the seller does not allow that, they can convert their saved funds into a currency that the seller does accept.

Why is this Important?

People like Antunez usually have to bear with the ups and downs of the Venezuelan bolivar. To avoid losing the value of their hard-earned money, the stablecoin offers them the much-needed stability their national currency does not seem to always provide. In addition, if she travels to another neighboring country like Colombia, she can still find someone who wants extra funds to exchange with. Antunez even managed to convince her pharmacist and supermarket to begin to accept Reserve.

Changes by the Venezuelan Government

Venezuela’s government re-dominated its currency back in October. This was the third time that the government had decided to as of 2008. What this means is that when you go into a Venezuelan shop, you will find prices in dollars. The prices will be in line with the black market rate and not the official exchange rate. When people use RSV, they get better value for their money than they do with the black market rate.

With the financial freedom that cryptocurrency provides and the volatile hyperinflation in Venezuela and several other Latin American countries, it is clear to see that the solution that Reserve offers fills a much-needed gap.

Categories
Blockchain Business News

Kickstarter Crowdfunding Platform Entering Blockchain

One of the world’s most popular and profitable crowdfunding platforms, Kickstarter is making waves in the crypto industry. Kickstarter has planned to start a new enterprise. This new enterprise will have its home moved to a blockchain. The company has chosen its platform to be hosted on the Celo blockchain ecosystem.

Aziz Hasan, the Chief Executive Officer of Kickstarter, and Perry Chen, his co-founder made this announcement on Wednesday through their blog. They stated that their company would be engineering a protocol that would be open-source. This protocol would be based on the Celo blockchain. The two business executives placed focus on the environmental- friendliness of their solution of choice. Since the solution is carbon negative and their protocol is open-source.

The two businessmen said that they were embarking on an important moment for alternative governance models. They added that they think it is an essential opportunity to further this venture by utilizing blockchain.

It was announced on Bloomberg that the crowdfunding company aimed on moving their business to blockchain next year. The project also stated that it would publish a white paper in a few weeks. The platform stated that the move would not cause problems for any existing users or projects. They added that there would be no issues caused for projects that were in particular of the following type: moves, books, products, artwork, medical, and fitness.

The company also announced that it intends on establishing a governance lab. The lab, they said, would be to superintend the engineering of the protocol governance. Camille Canon, the executive director of Purpose Foundation and its co-founder would be heading this work.

Mainstream Joining Crypto

It is no doubt that Kickstarter, like many other businesses, noticed the enormous finances circulating in the crypto space and wanted a piece of the pie. What better way to capitalize than by joining and getting the best of both worlds?

Shifting Times

Another reason why Kickstarter is joining the blockchain ecosystem is likely because of the projects that could have been listed on their platform. Many likely would have signed up to Kickstarter to raise funds for their causes but instead chose DAO (distributed autonomous organizations). ConstitutionDAO remains a shining example of the direction crowdfunding will probably start taking soon. ConstitutionDAO managed to raise several million dollars in about 7 days. In that period about 17,437 strangers decided to back this novel idea. Unfortunately for DAO, a billionaire managed to outbid them. However, the team behind this distributed autonomous organization allowed its members to keep the tokens. As a result, the price of their token shot up.

About Kickstarter

Kickstarter was established in 2009 and has been running ever since. It has been stated that about 21 million have since pledged on their platform. These pledges have amounted to about US$ 6 Billion. These pledges have been made to 213,034 projects. Among some of the projects that have been crowdfunded on Kickstarter are Veronica Mars and Peloton bike.

Projects that have done well on Kickstarter

Kickstarter has managed to help several projects meet their financial goals. Pebble Time, a project listed in 2015 is the top project in terms of funds raised on Kickstarter. It managed to rake in US$ 20.34 million. The second most funds were raised by a campaign in 2014 for Coolest Cooler. This project raised US$ 13.29 million. Elon Musk also managed to raise enormous amounts of money through his crowdfunding on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. On these platforms, he managed to get 325,000 pre-orders for his Tesla in 2016. The Billionaire also managed to raise US$ 3.5 million in pre-order sales for a flamethrower. What is even more amazing is he managed to get these pre-orders within a single day.

Categories
Business News Technology

What does Facebook Becoming Meta Mean?

Naming or renaming a business, product or service says a lot about the intentions the owners have for it, say for example: Meta. Facebook, as you probably know, rebranded to “Meta”. It’s a name not much like its original. In fact, this change tells us to expect a brand new company to emerge from it. However it turns out, we know that Meta is now orientated towards the Metaverse, and is focused with singular resolve.

Meta’s Change

With it being clear that the company is now focused on the Metaverse, one major thing is not exactly clear. This thing is the destination. We are not exactly sure where Meta is going in the Metaverse. After all, the Metaverse itself is still emerging and ambiguity is the general norm at present. Regardless of the ambiguity, many companies are flocking to it with the dream of caching in big soon enough.

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

The general idea is that the Metaverse will be heavily designed with virtual reality and augmented reality at the forefront. It will therefore likely feature gadgets like haptic gloves and virtual reality eyewear.

Will Meta Get it Right?

It is clear that if Facebook can rebrand itself to Meta and decide on a new course of action for the next phase of its existence, it must be pretty sold on the idea. The company attempted to be this ambitious when it got into the digital currency business and established Libra. Libra is the company’s stablecoin. Their stablecoin was supported by other big businesses when it came under a lot of attention as Meta is receiving now. When the company changed its stablecoin’s name from Libra to Diem, it said a lot about what is intended. They wanted this change to show their stakeholders and the general public that they planned to spread their wings and become more autonomous. Unfortunately, things did not go as planned at the project eventually died an unfortunate death.

Other Failed projects

Libra or Diem is not the only failed high-profile project the world has witnessed in relatively recent times. There are quite a few. Snapchat and Google are great examples of at least one failed project. Snapchat attempted to create a successful venture out of Snap Inc. Facebook attempted to create a successful venture out of Alphabet. Both these companies experienced a disappointing failure in their respective cases.

Limitations of Proprietary services

Companies have to make do with the services that they have to be inoperable with. Unfortunately, having to work with or in an ecosystem means you are at the whims of that company’s innovations or other changes they decide to make. These changes may not always be in the ecosystem’s best interest. However, since it’s that company’s ecosystem, compliance is often the only way, unless you can drag the company to court and get the law behind you as Epic Games did by taking Apple to court. Epic Games accused Apple Store rules of monopolistic actions. Even though they did not win that particular argument, they did get the courts to rule that the app should include means for Epic to lead their users to their in-app payment options.

What does the future hold for Metaverse and the Companies that will build it?

The blockchain encourages the development of trust, by its very design. Not trust in the person but rather, the integrity of the system, and smart contract technology in particular. Smart contracts that are based on blockchain give functionality that allows transactions to be audited when it comes to business processes. Ideally, smart contracts can be set up to execute without intervention.

Ultimately, we do not know what the Metaverse will end up looking like. It may herald the dawn of a new age. It may also end up being a place that only the very nerdy end up enjoying. However, based on the significant investments that a number of companies are putting into venturing into the Metaverse, it is likely they will also focus on making the Metaverse as enticing and user-friendly as they can for even the least savvy persons that use the internet.

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Bitcoin Blockchain Business Price Analysis

5 Things to Consider Before Your First Crypto Trade

The world of cryptocurrency has been attracting new investors for the better part of a decade now. While most can’t hope to join the ranks of crypto millionaires overnight by investing in a lucky coin or two, more and more people have started giving careful thought to diversifying their current “traditional” holdings and investing more in cryptocurrencies.

In this piece, we want to help out potential crypto beginners with a few tips on what to condor before making your first trade.


1) Don’t Invest More than You Can Afford to Lose


Financial experts on CBNC warn that “cryptocurrencies are volatile, risky investments, and that you should only invest what you can afford to lose.” It’s important to note that this is not advised to avoid the market altogether –– merely to be careful with what you commit to it. Make sure your own finances are completely sorted before you make any decision to invest in cryptocurrency (or really any other market for that matter). Then, if you do have funds that can be put into crypto, you can try to build them gradually, or invest more when you have more available.


2) Choose the Right Wallet/Exchange


There are a lot of apps or platforms where people buy, hold, and sell cryptos. Some of the most popular options are Coinbase, eToro, Crypto.com, and Binance; we’re also seeing some other financial trading platforms embracing crypto, with Robinhood notably having joined the ranks earlier this year. Before you start investing with any one of these platforms, recognize that they each offer different selections of coins and security measures. They also have different reputations, and in some cases are regulated differently in specific countries. Do some research, talk to friends who have already gotten started, and get a feel for which platform you’d like the most so that you’ll be comfortable when you get going. Your First Crypto Trade


3) Research the Coins


Once you’ve decided on a wallet, you should also do careful research into any specific cryptos you consider buying. Each coin should have a white paper that explains its objective and future plans, even though the market is so volatile. Even altcoins that have little to no value (affectionately known as “shitcoins” in some circles) should have white papers or some other documentation that shows why they were created in the first place. Coins that have nothing you can find through some basic research are red flags and are best avoided. Once you decide on reputable coins to focus on, meanwhile, it’s wise to research price history, what factors influence movement, and what if anything points to the positive or negative movement going forward.


4) Consider Practicing First


If this is your first rodeo, it’s also worth noting that you can practice with play money first. In a write-up on demo trading platforms, FXCM makes clear that said platforms fully simulate real market conditions to give users an accurate feel for how it all goes. While demo trading has traditionally been associated with forex and stocks, for the most part, it can now be conducted with regard to popular commodities –– including leading cryptocurrencies. Practicing with demo trading will give you a better idea of what it’s really like to buy and sell assets in such a new and volatile market, especially if you’re someone who learns best by doing.


5) Resist FOMO



FOMO, or “Fear Of Missing Out” is notorious for leading people to make terrible decisions on impulse –– such as investing life savings on a coin, hoping to win big, and never having to work again. FOMO is often brought up jokingly, but it’s a dangerous state to be in with regard to investment. In order to avoid it, Psychology Today tells us to “Focus less on potential losses of missing out and focus more on immediate gains of what’s being done in the now.” To apply this to crypto, we recommend starting by keeping an eye on the news and making small decisions until you feel comfortable. Avoid the natural FOMO that comes from watching others make gains off of cryptos’ periodic spikes, and focus on your own strategic decisions. Are you ready for Your First Crypto Trade?

We hope these tips will help you make the decisions you’re most comfortable with as you begin your cryptocurrency journey.

by Jaimielee Barron

Categories
Blockchain Business News

Visa and Mastercard making Strides

As technology is advancing at break-neck speed in the crypto space, the giants of financial service provision are not staying ideal. Both Visa and Mastercard are busy innovating and addressing the emerging needs of consumers in the digital age.

Visa

Visa will be unleashing its newly established consulting and advisory offering. This is an attempt by the company to assist its clientele in operating in cryptocurrency spaces. Visa made these statements on Wednesday. The company stated that its division for crypto advisory in their consulting and analytics division would advise financial organizations, retailers, and other enterprises in a comprehensive manner. They said their advisory and consulting would include offering advice on starting up crypto features, developing wallets for central bank digital currencies, and navigating nonfungible tokens.

Why is Visa Establishing this Unit?

The company states that one of the reasons they have established this service is to remain competitive. According to their research, Visa discovered that about 40% of crypto owners would likely switch to another bank if that new bank offered them crypto-related products in the next year.

According to Reuters, UMB is a client of Visa’s cryptocurrency advisory services. UMB is also a financial services business from the United States. UMB’s executive, Uma Wilson stated that they approached Visa to gain knowledge about crypto and stablecoins and how to utilize them in a more relevant way for retail and commercial business purposes.

What does this development by Visa mean?

The establishment of this unit is Visa’s most recent effort at entering the crypto industry. In the past, the firm has also filed a number of patents relating to blockchain. At present, Visa’s research team is making efforts on a project they call “Universal Payment Channel”. The Universal Payment Channel is said to be a hub for blockchain interoperability. It will integrate several blockchain networks. It will also facilitate the movement of digital assets across numerous protocols and wallets.

Mastercard

Mastercard is also making interesting strides like that of Visa. This company recently established crypto-linked payment cards. These cards are for the Asia-Pacific region. Another area in which Mastercard is making efforts, still in the matter of digital currency is that of central bank digital currencies.

Mastercard and Central Bank Digital Currencies

In a recent earnings call with Mastercard stakeholders and investors, Michael Miebach, the CEO of the company stated that he had a positive perspective of the cryptocurrency industry. Mastercard has witnessed a growth in the number of consumers utilizing their MasterCard to acquire crypto. It has also entered partnerships with several crypto enterprises, helping them to establish their crypto-related cards for the Asia Pacific region.

However, Miebach’s most brave opinion was shared during this call with its stakeholders regarding central digital bank currencies. There Miebach stated that Mastercard believes that government would be the best issuer of CBDCs. He added that they had shared this view before and would make their networks ready for such a development.

The executive stayed confident in the role that Mastercard would play in the event such a development does occur. He added that Mastercard could ensure a secure base for private-sector financial service providers and the government to come to identify how they can make such development work.

Other efforts by Mastercard

On Monday the company stated that it would enter into a partnership with Bakkt. Bakkt is a crypto marketplace. This development, they said, would help Mastercard’s US clientele to transact with digital currencies. Miebach did acknowledge the risks that still stood apparent. These that he highlighted in the company’s quarterly report included acceptance questions and how to bring out the utility of CBDCs to citizens.

In conclusion, the biggest international payments services are jumping on board with the reality of cryptocurrency. This says a lot about what people worldwide should expect and anticipate going forward, regardless of what else is going on regarding adoption in countries that are still lagging.

Categories
Business Regulation Technology

Benefits found in Aussie Project Atom Project

Recently, the RBA (Reserve Bank of Australia) released a report on their 2-year long research project. This project was regarding wholesale CBDCs (central bank digital currencies). It focussed on the benefits of digitization and autonomization of manual paper-based banking procedures using DLT (distributed ledger technology).

This publication signals the end of a 24-month project titled “Project Atom”. Several partners worked together on Project Atom. The partners that the Reserve Bank of Australia worked with on this project were: the CBA (Commonwealth Bank of Australia), NAB (National Australia Bank), ConsenSys, and Perpetual. King & Wood Mallesons also contributed to the research project.

Michele Bullock, the assistant governor at the RBA for Financial Systems commented on the project by saying that it showed the potential for tokenization of wholesale CBDC and assets to increase efficacy, improve risk management, and innovation in the wholesale financial transactions in the market.

Wholesale Central Bank Digital Currencies

Wholesale Central Bank Digital Currencies are those CBDCs that are structured for the settlement of transfers that are interbank. They are also those CBDCs that are for transactions among financial organizations. Public use CBDCs are the alternative of this.

Timing of the “Atom Project” Report

This institution made this research report available the same day as when Josh Frydenberg, the Treasurer and Deputy Liberal leader revealed the payments and crypto reform plan for Australia’s fintech and crypto industries. This was on the 8th December 2021. The Australian authorities have shown support for no less than six of the proposals for crypto reform among the nine that they were looking at. These reforms that lawmakers tabled were recommended by the Senate Committee. The government is also still doing investigations for further reforms.

About “Project Atom”

Project Atom included a POC (proof of concept) for the issuing of tokenized CBDCs. This referred to CBDCs that holders could use in a digital wholesale loan market with syndication. The project used a distributed ledger technology for testing purposes. This technology was on Ethereum. The research found that wholesale CBDC supported by DLT infrastructure could greatly improve efficacy. In addition, they found that it could lower operational risk. The system could lower operational risk by being paperless and not using error-prone processes related to the origination and delivery of data, transactions, settlements, payments, and a number of others.

Issues the Project Report Focused on

The report on Project Atom highlighted a number of issues. These issues included transaction privacy, throughput, finality, and efficiency of DLT utilization and CBDC. The report highlighted these issues regarding blockchains that were not meant for wholesale usage.

Proof of Concept Experimentation

The Proof of concept assessment involved a two-tier model. This model was for issuing and distributing CBDCs. In these instances, the Reserve Bank of Australia carried out using of digital currency to commercial banks. Thereafter, the banks made them available to participants in the wholesale market. The project’s authorities sponsored participants on to the market for experimentation purposes.

RBA’s Exploration of CBDCs.

The Reserve Bank of Australia stated that it has investigated the idea of central bank digital currency as far back as 2018. This is regardless of them underplaying the significance of central bank digital currencies in several instances. However, for a whole now the organization has increased its attention on digital currencies. This RBA has notably done this since 2020. This is amidst increasing attention to this type of currency by governments worldwide. China was offered as an example of a country testing out its yuan publicly.

Regarding Progress

The government representative, Bullock shared that the RBA would further its research on the digital currency as an element of its strategy on aiding the advancement of the payments in Australia.

Categories
Blockchain News Regulation

Crypto Execs ask US Congress Clarity on Regulations

A number of executives of some leading crypto enterprises in the U.S. had the opportunity to present your concerns to the House Committee on Financial Services regarding cryptocurrency regulations. Several of these executives appeared united in trying to convince the US lawmakers to offer clarity on the regulatory framework for cryptocurrency.

About the Discussions about Regulations

These CEOs and lawmakers had these discussions on Wednesday. This was at an important hearing regarding crypto. There at the “Digital Assets and the Future of Finance”, subthemed “Understanding the Challenges and Benefits of Financial Innovation in the United States” they discussed the future of crypto regulation in the US. The executives informed the lawmakers about the hurdles their businesses experienced as issuers of stablecoins and also as digital asset exchanges. Among these CEOs in attendance were two top officials from Coinbase, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, Paxos CEO Chad Cascarilla, Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Circle, Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon, and Alesia Haas, and Bitfury CEO Brian Brooks.

Comments by the Crypto Executives

Allaire from Circle stated in a written statement before the hearing that it was in support of the efforts the lawmakers were making. The executive specified that these efforts were for national licensing and Federal supervision of issuers of stablecoin. Allaire stated that that was relevant since many of these issuers were now too “big” to ignore. Cascarilla appeared to agree with this perspective. The CEO in commenting on the financial system in the USA described it as inadequate for managing the digital economy that is growing. Cascarilla, however, added that blockchain may be the answer to this problem.

The PAXO executive informed the meeting that a blockchain system could complete trades in 24 hours. It can also handle counterparty risks and remove the expensive central clearinghouse. He added that this would allow participants in the market and lawmakers the opportunity to monitor and adjust settlements. It could also handle margin issues all as it was happening. He added that everyone was aware that the trade settlement cycle needed to be shortened. He said that it was necessary since it was a high priority for the SEC. Thus, he said taking great efforts to ensure it.

Brooks offered Fidelity as an example of companies driving progress in the digital asset space. He stated that these companies were opting for other countries than the United States of America to set up a business. He reasoned that this was because of better regulations elsewhere. Fidelity established a Bitcoin exchange trading fund in Canada. This was after they did not get approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for one.

Brooks estimated that crypto talent is not centered in Silicon Valley anymore. He stated that this was because of the regulatory issues surrounding crypto in the US. Silicon Valley, being the original home of the commercial internet. Brooks added that some experts in the space have relocated to Miami. Many others relocated to other countries like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Portugal, Singapore. These relocating were going to places where there are no crypto regulations but are progressive and growth orientated.

Comments by the House Representatives

In discussions with the group of executives, Patrick McHenry countered. He said that technology in the cryptocurrency arena was regulated already. He however did acknowledge that the current framework was possibly “clunky” and not current. McHenry added that misunderstanding with his fellow committee lawmakers could cause crypto and blockchain overregulation. In a statement, he said that what was needed were “rules of the road” and not “knee-jerk reactions” by the lawmakers to regulate. McHenry added that these regulations should not be out of fear because if they are, this fear could suppress American technological advancement and put them at a loss competitively.

Topics at the Hearing

The House committee and delegates discussed four key areas of the crypto space. These areas were exchanges, regulatory concerns in digital assets, stable coin offerings, and federal regulatory responses.

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News People Regulation

CIA Working on Crypto Projects

The present head of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns said that the former director of the government organization started projects related to collecting insights on cryptocurrency. He made these comments at a Summit on Monday. Burns stated that the Central Intelligence Agency was interested in incorporating technical know-how in cryptocurrencies and the blockchain. The CIA would like to achieve this with its team of intelligence analysts. Additionally, it would like to liaise with experts in the cryptocurrency industry. He reflected on the problems that the United States of America and other countries around the world have faced in regards to cyber-crimes. He cited ransomware attacks in particular as an unlawful activity that impacted the U.S. significantly.

The CIA’s work has begun

Burns inferred that the ex-Director, David Cohen began the work. He added that his predecessor had begun various projects on cryptocurrency. He indicated that these projects tried to assess second and third-order consequences. Burns also stated that the agency was collaborating with other institutions in the U.S. government to offer concrete intelligence.

Building Cryptocurrency Intelligence

Burns stated that it was important to the Central Intelligence Agency for it to accumulate knowledge. He stated that it was a crucial priority that he intended on devoting resources and attention to. The leader did not give up details on how the organization intended on combating cyberattacks. He did, however, suggest that finance networks would be an area of their keen concern. This is in regards to cyber-criminals who utilize digital currencies for ransom purposes.

Developments in US Cyber Defense

In March of this year, Burns was appointed as the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In May, the organization saw hackers demanding millions of dollars in cryptocurrency. This was over a cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline system. The CIA created a task force from the United States government which successfully managed to recover most of the lost funds.

A previous acting CIA director, Michael Morrell stated that one underutilized tool in the arsenal for fighting cybercrime for the CIA and other law enforcement agencies, in general, is blockchain analysis. He stated that blockchain analysis is extremely effective for the purposes of curbing crime.

About the role of the head of the CIA

The CIA has no stipulation on the length that its director can serve. Therefore, the CIA’s new director, Burns, will likely lead the agency for as long as President Joe Biden requires of him. Several positions remain open that the president of the United States is to fill for the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System.

About the CIA

The US government established the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947. The goal then was for it to be a clearinghouse for intelligence and analysis in foreign policy. Now, the organization’s mandate is to collect, process, and analyze US security data from all over the world. The analysis aspect of this is usually conducted using human intelligence. The CIA is the main member of the IC (US Intelligence Community). The organization is under the Director of National Intelligence in terms of hierarchy. It concentrates on furnishing the leaders of the United States of America with sufficient intelligence.

The CIA is said to officially focus on its efforts abroad as it does not have actual law enforcement functions. This is unlike its sister agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). With changes in how national security concerns are both online and offline, the agency has expanded its mandate to encompass covert paramilitary affairs. The Information Operations Center (IOC) has moved its attention from counter-terrorism to offensive cyber-operations because of these growing changes in how international threats and attacks have evolved in present-day times.

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Blockchain News Regulation Technology

Australia Approves Crypto Reforms to Come

Australia is taking crypto matters head-on. At present, the Australian government is contemplating rolling out a central bank digital currency. It is also in support of a number of progressive regulatory proposals regarding crypto. This is part of the Australian government’s payments and cryptocurrency reform plan.

The government of Australia’s Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg stated that the intentions of the reforms were to advance their nation. They expect these reforms will place Australia on a level that would be among the leading nations of the globe.

Significance of the Plan

Many consider Australia’s Payments and Cryptocurrency Reform plan as the most important disruptive change in the country’s history of payment systems since the 1990s. Australia’s lawmakers have notably done part of the groundwork as far back as September this year by the innovative proposals made at the Australian Senate Committee.

Out of the nine reforms proposed, the Australian government is in support of six of them. This is according to the Australian Finance Review. The lawmakers are reported to be in support of a proposal for a licensing regime for cryptocurrency exchanges. Other proposed laws that the lawmakers are in support of are the laws to regulate the decentralized autonomous organizations and also common access regimes for payment platforms that are new on the market.

Tax proposals

The lawmakers have submitted 2 of the 9 proposals to their respective government bodies for assessment. These proposals have to do with taxation and financial compliance. Out of these 9 proposals, one proposal was been knocked back. This is a proposal that sought to handle renewable energy Crypto mining tax incentives.

In a speech at the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce (AICC), Josh Frydenberge, the treasurer and deputy leader of the Liberal Party shared the plans the Australian government had on this matter. He talked of the cryptocurrency regulations, taxation, and also central bank digital currencies. The Treasurer stated that it was apparent that if these developments are embraced, Australia stands to benefit a great deal from the opportunities that arise from the combination of finance and technology.

Central Bank Digital Currencies for Australia

The Australian quotes an anonymous senior government official on the matter of central bank digital currencies. The official is reported to have stated on the 7th December 2021 that a Reserve Bank of Australia supported Bitcoin or cryptocurrency at a retail scale is being thought of. The official stated that this currency would be integral to the Australian government’s regulatory reform on digital payments.

At the Australia-Israel Chambers of Commerce, the treasurer boldly made statements regarding cryptocurrency assets. He stated that enterprises would find clarity regarding regulatory and tax treatments for cryptocurrency assets and emerging payment options. He added that these regulations will encourage consumer interest, assist new entrants, and make it possible for innovations to emerge. Subsequently, the Treasurer also stated that these developments would make an effective regulatory framework for consumers. As a result, the framework will support the increasing use of cryptocurrency assets. It would also remove ambiguity in regards to the treatment of new payment options.

One Regulation Not Likely to Pass

The Senate committee is likely to incorporate the proposal for a 10% tax discount for miners of Bitcoin. The proposal aimed at rewarding businesses that utilize renewable energy for Bitcoin mining. Swyftx exchange’s head of corporate development, Michael Harris shared his thoughts with Cointelegraph on the matter. He said that it would likely be challenging for the government to exclude the Bitcoin mining industry from other energy consumers. That is, even regardless of how commendable the reasons are. Harris added that the Australian government’s intentions and discourse appeared promising. It appears that the country’s administration has seen the importance of laws to protect the consumer. At the same time the government is still encouraging continued innovation.

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Bitcoin Blockchain Business News

Iceland’s Energy Service Cuts Crypto Mining Power

Landsvirkjun, the company in Iceland responsible for power generation and supply has cut the quantity of power it supplies to some industries. These industries include aluminum smelters and Bitcoin miners. A spokesman from Landsvirkjun said their nation had to reduce the supply of power to these industries, including southwestern Bitcoin miners and others because of a number of concerns. A challenge at the power plant, low water levels at the hydro-reservoir, and external suppliers utilizing energy were among the concerns that the company highlighted as to why it made power supply changes.

Iceland’s Attractiveness to Mining Investors

Cryptocurrency mining investors have often found Iceland attractive for business. This is because Iceland boasts of plentiful geothermal energy. This energy is captured to make cheap and excessive renewable energy. However, as of 7th December 2021, new requests for electrical power from mining operators will be declined. The duration of how long applications will be rejected is yet unknown.

Crypto Mining Companies Operating in Iceland?

Bitfury Holding, Genesis Mining, and Canada’s Hive Blockchain Technologies are the three largest Bitcoin mining companies that have set up operations in the country. Miners have invested significant time and effort in trying to make a profit from the environmentally friendly gains that Iceland’s natural resources offer in form of renewable energy. Some have spent a decade attempting to realize these profits. In commitment to these efforts, one company in the space, Cloud Hashing relocated up to 100 miners to Iceland. HydroMiner GmbH, an Austrian company managed to raise approximately US$ 2.8 million in its first coin offer. The intention of this coin offering was to raise funds to construct mining rigs in Icelandic power plants.

How has power failure affected industries in Iceland?

The aluminum smelting industry in Iceland has been the most impacted by power distribution problems. In December 2021, aluminum prices rose by 1.1%. This was a result of the supply-chain problems stated where the country has had increased demand, creating the present shortfall.

Green Blockchain

Since 2021, environmentally friendly blockchain has become popular. In Glasgow, Scotland at the COP26 conference, think tanks discussed issues around Bitcoin mining and its energy intensity. The conference also set the scene for the launch of GloCha United Citizens Organization (UCO). The purpose of GloCha UCO is to act on climate empowerment as a collective. CloCha UCO will use blockchain technology and innovation to further the climate change agenda.

About Iceland

Iceland is an island nation that is part of Scandinavia in the north Atlantic Sea. The country’s capital city is Reykjavik and happens to also be its largest. It has a small population of 371,000 people and is led by President Guoni Th. Johannesson. Initially, Iceland depended primarily on small-scale farming and fishing. The nation prospered after World War 2 and the industrialization of the fishing industry. As a result, Iceland grew to become one of the world’s most developed nations. As of 1994, it becomes part of the European Economic Area. This further cemented Iceland’s economy and helped it diversify some more. New sectors that grew and benefited from this diversification include biotechnology, finance, and manufacturing. If we compare Iceland to its OECD counterparts, it offers lower taxes in its market economy.

This small nation has come a long way from its days of subsistence farming and fisheries to become ranked the fourth most developed nation in the world, according to the United Nations Human Development Index and number 1 on that of the Global Peace Index. One outstanding aspect about Iceland is that it runs almost entirely on renewable energy. The fact that green energy has grown in popularity in regards to crypto mining and how by design Iceland’s whole nation runs on it makes it quite evident why Iceland is a star in the crypto mining space. Investors can only hope the nation sufficiently resolves its electricity supply problems soon.

Categories
Bitcoin Business News

Cryptocurrency Acceptance in Australia Booming

According to a recent survey, up to 28.8% of Australians use or own cryptocurrency. These findings were presented in a survey for the 2021 Independent Reserve’s Cryptocurrency Index (IRCI). This is a yearly cross-sectional survey conducted by PureProfile. It arrived at these results using a sample size of 2000 Australian people. This 28.8% is an increase from last year’s 18.4% of people who own or use crypto.

What do the Results Mean?

The results imply that there is growing use of cryptocurrency in Australia and in turn in the sector. This is likely driven by pleasant experiences by those who have used or owned crypto. The results of the survey show that 89% of respondents had made money or broken even on their cryptocurrency investments. This is up from the previous year’s 78%.

One leader in the field, Adrian Przelonzny, the CEO of Independent Reserve shared his thoughts on these findings. He stated that the findings did not come as a surprise to him. Przelozny added that cryptocurrency has easily done better than other assets throughout the year. He hypothesized that it is natural that more people are getting interested in crypto, an asset class that doing better than any other on the market.

Best Performing Asset

In another report, Cointelegraph reported back in October that Bitcoin was the best-performing asset class of this year. Przelozny said that he anticipates that this trend will not stop as crypto matures and becomes more stable. He added that the advantage of crypto is that the longer it is being used, the more accepted it becomes. Prezelonzny also expects that we will see that the currency will stabilize eventually and so will the perception of it as a risk for investors.

The real Risk

Up to 28.6% of respondents of the 2021 Independent Reserve’s Cryptocurrency Index survey said that
if the asset came with better protections, they would invest. This percentage of the respondents were those that do not currently own crypto. Furthermore, 26.6% of respondents said that they would purchase cryptocurrency if regulations for the industry became strengthened.

The Need for Regulation for Cryptocurrency

The growth of Bitcoin exploded but regulations have yet to catch up with it. From the feedback of respondents in these stated researches, it is clear that a certain level of growth is dependent on how secure cryptocurrency is for businesses and investors alike. Without advances in terms of regulation, that level may never be reached.

Przelozny added that he is of the opinion that with regulations we will experience a whole new class of investors entering the space. He referenced Singapore as an example of where this was demonstrated to have occurred after regulations improved there. He further stated that the number of investors older than 65 years of age in Australia would likely contribute to the next boom of Australian-based crypto investors once concerns about regulations are dealt with by authorities and stakeholders alike. From Przelozny’s vantage point, he believes these would-be investors are looking for consumer protection from the nation’s administration. Without this consumer protection, these investors may never venture forth into the crypto market.

Interesting Insights

According to research, the 24 to 34-year-old investors turned out to be the most trusting of crypto. In fact, 27.6% of them stated that they were investing with the desire to become rich from it. However, those that probably don’t buy into the promises of riches are likely people over the age of 65 years old.

Bitcoin is still the most well-known and famous cryptocurrency. That is according to the 2021 Independent Reserve’s Cryptocurrency Index. 89.1% of Australians stated that they had heard of Bitcoin. 21.1% of respondents also stated owning it. After Bitcoin, Ethereum was next popular with 11% of respondents stating that they had had ownership of the crypto. This is all up from the previous year’s 5%.

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Business News NFT

Retail buyers make up 80% of NFTs transactions

According to Chainalysis, over 80% of NFTs (nonfungible tokens) were worth under US$ 10,000 in 2021. This means that these NFTs were classed as “retail”. Chainalysis’s report titled “The 2021 NFT Market Explained” that Chainalysis published on the 6th December 2021 delved deeper into trends of this year. This report shared insights gleaned from analyzing data from January to October 2021.

Insights from the report

Retail Transactions and Large Collectors

The report said that collector-sized transactions increased by 6% in March to 19% by 31st October 2021. This demonstrated a growth in the number of larger collectors throughout the year. At the same time, retail transactions amounted to over 80% of the total of nonfungible token transactions on any day in 2021. The researchers considered retail-sized transactions to be those that are US$ 10,000 and under. Collector-sized transactions are those that are worth between US$ 10,000 and US$ 100,000, according to studies.

Institutional-Sized Transactions

Transactions that appeared institutional amounted to under 1% of all transfers. Regardless of this, they still contributed to 26% of trading volume during the stated time period. Research states that institutional-sized transactions are transactions of over US$ 100,000.

Retail transactions made up the bulk of total transfers. However, collectors and institutions comprised the majority of NFT dollar-denominated transaction volumes since early this year. Alternatively, transactions that were collector-sized contributed to about 63% of the volume. Retail transfers contributed to about 11% of the volume for the same period assessed.

Contrast Between NFT Market with Wider Crypto market

Researches also looked at the differences between the market for nonfungible tokens and that of the overall cryptocurrency market. According to their findings, it shows that the NFT market is notably more retail-driven than the wider crypto market. In the wider crypto market, retail transactions make up a small fraction of transaction volumes.

The earning Potential of NFTs

Through 2021, Cointelegraph researchers believe the potential to generate revenues associated with nonfungible tokens contributed to increased cryptocurrency adoption. The US$ 17.7 Billion in NFT sales expected in 2021 adds credence to this explanation. The US $ 17.7 Billion was record-breaking.

In the past few days, NFT sales contributed to US$ 300 million transfers. This is nearly 25% of what was made from The Sandbox metaverse land purchases. Chainalysis said there have also been no less than US$ 26.9 Billion in crypto transferred to ERC-721 and ERC-1155 contracts during this year.

The Merit of Whitelisting Newly-Minted NFTs

Even though the market is generating enormous amounts of money on nonfungible tokens, the research states that only 28.5% of NFTs bought during minting and then sold on the platform lead to profits. Whitelisting could be the solution to this problem, suggested Chainalysis. Chainalysis believes that whitelisting would increase the probability of newly minted NFTs generating profits. Those who were whitelisted on a minting event on OpenSea managed to generate profits up to 75.7% of the time. This is in comparison with 20.8% of the time regarding those who did not get whitelisted. These figures make a persuasive argument for the importance of whitelisting if one wants to make it possible for their NFTs to generate returns.

Merits of Secondary markets for Profitability of NFTs

The research showed that secondary markets are responsible for minted NFTs profiting. According to the data, this happens 65.1% of the time. Therefore, if your newly minted NFT does not get whitelisted, all is not lost. You can wait for an NFT collection to hit secondary markets. One does not have to necessarily make any efforts in a minting event. You can still ensure your NFTs turn a profit through these secondary markets.

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Blockchain Business News

Ex-Meta Engineers raise US$ 36 Million in Investment for Mysten Labs

The company, Mysten Labs just closed a round of fundraising. They managed to raise US$ 36 million in venture capital. Mysten Labs is a research and development firm. A number of ex-Facebook engineers started this new company. The funding raised is to help the company realize its goal of developing a Web 3.0 infrastructure platform.

The Series A round

Mysten Labs announced on Medium that their team had managed to raise these funds in a Series A funding round. The leader in this series A round was Andreessen Horowitz. Other participants included Redpoint, Lightspeed, Coinbase Ventures, Electric Capital, Standard Crypto, Samsung NEXT, Scribble Ventures, NFX, and Slow Ventures.

Mysten Lab’s Intentions

One news outlet, CNBC stated that Evan Cheng, the CEO said Mystery would utilize the financial resources to engineer the infrastructure required for their cryptocurrency and blockchain-focused firm to operate. On top of the Web 3.0 infrastructure plans that Mysten has, the company also intends on launching a platform for the metaverse. This platform is slated to be launched in 2022. They intend to build it into a next-generation NFT platform. They want to use the project to aid users in efficiently reallocating their assets from one virtual environment to another without functionality restraints.

About Mysten Labs

Mysten was established in September 2021. Former employees of Facebook’s cryptographical program established it. They were part of the workforce that helped engineer Meta’s (Facebook’s) blockchain architecture, encompassing its crypto-payments platform – Diem and its mobile wallet – Novi. These engineers are Evan Chang, Sam Blackshear, Adeniyi Abiodun, and George Danezis. Evan Cheng is now the Chief Executive Officer of Mysten. Sam Blackshear is the Chief Technology Officer. Adeniyi Abiodun is the Chief Operations Officer and George Danezis is the Chief Scientist.

About the CEO: Evan Cheng

The Chief Executive Officer of Mysten spent over 10 years working at Apple before eventually joining Facebook. He was once the Director of Engineering, Programming Languages, and Runtimes for Facebook. Later he became the Head of Novi Research at Facebook. There he led Novi by focusing on advancing blockchain and crypto innovation. Novi is an international money transfer and remittance provider owned by Facebook. He also functioned as an advisor to Chainlink. Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network. The network provides live data to blockchains. Now as a co-founder and CEO of Mysten, he takes on new challenges in the research and development of Web 3.0 and other crypto-related technologies.

Mysten Lab’s Partners

Mysten has also established partnerships with Celo and Sommelier. Celo is a service provider that offers an infrastructure for members to make global cryptocurrency payments. The platform can make basic payments and also assists in the development of decentralized solutions on blockchain.

Sommelier is a service provider in the Ethereum ecosystem. It expects the Ethereum crypto blockchain to become the leading player in the international economy. Sommelier Finance has an SDK called the Cosmos Stargate SDK. This SDK is a Tendermin-based consensus layer. It also has an Ethereum bridge managed by international networks of validators. This bridge is bi-directional.

The Company is growing

With the newly raised funds and demand for a larger workforce, it is clear that the company is growing. Some of the roles they have filled are in talent acquisition and staff engineer.

However, the company has numerous openings it needs to be filled. These job opportunities are mainly in the engineering department with at least one management role. These job openings include Distributed Systems Engineer for Decentralized Platforms for Europe, Gaming partnerships manager, cryptography software engineer, Distributed systems software engineer, Product software engineer, programming languages software engineer, and technical program manager. With changing times, many of these job opportunities are to be served in a remote capacity.