METAVERSE & NFT | NEWS 🌌

2022-03-23 02:17:09 FCFS and Adroverse INO Sale is still open!

You can buy NFTs at a bargain price to either use them in the game, or to trade the packs for profit. There are three different packs, each containing 5 gladiator cards:

Jupiter Pack: 20 BUSD, max opening value: ~190 BUSD
Mars Pack: 30 BUSD, max opening value: ~190 BUSD
Venus Pack: 80 BUSD, max opening value: ~670 BUSD

More about First Season Cards:

30 Interactive NFT cards
5 rarity levels: Common, Un-Common, Rare, Epic, Legendary
5 levels, from Level 1 to level 5
3 classes: Fighter, Protector, Caster

Take your BSC wallet and come to INO here: https://ino.scottybeam.io/adroverse

INO is open till 20:00 UTC. Open / Comment

2022-03-21 16:25:21 Are You Ready for Adroverse INO on My Platform!?

Hi beamers!

Today we have Adroverse’s sale on my INO platform! Second project chooses Scotty as their INO guide, I'm very proud.

Sale starts today, 14:00 UTC and finishes tomorrow, 20:00 UTC. You will have plenty of time to hop in, and that’s quite an easy thing to do, since NFTs from Adroverse come at a friendly price.

You can buy NFTs at a bargain price to either use them in the game, or to trade the packs for profit. There are three different packs, each containing 5 gladiator cards:

Jupiter Pack: 20 BUSD, max opening value: ~190 BUSD
Mars Pack: 30 BUSD, max opening value: ~190 BUSD
Venus Pack: 80 BUSD, max opening value: ~670 BUSD

First season cards will also have 3 classes (fighter, protector, caster) and 5 rarity levels (common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary). Adroverse sale on my platform will be BSC-only!

More info about your odds of packing a legendary card can be found in this document.

Scotty over and out! Open / Comment

2022-03-10 18:06:35 ​​Brand new INO platform is opening!

ScottyBeam INO platform is gonna provide lots of cross-chain NFT interoperability features for the top-notch P2E, GameFi and Metaverse projects!

Their first INO is gonna start tomorrow, March 11th. Scotty Beam will sell NFTs of Ancient Kingdom, the 1st ancient martial arts game on the blockchain platform.

Usually first projects on the launchpads are the most profitable, that's why I can recommend you to learn more about this opportunity!

4 more projects are upcoming for this month, so you can take part in the most up-to-date initial NFT offerings in one place. Visit Scotty’s website to find out more.

You will need only ~$450 worth of $SCOTTY tokens staked to take part in private round allocations and ~$1200 to get a priority with guaranteed buy opportunity! Here is the link to their simple Tier System, have a look to choose your tier.

The first INO day is available for 4th and 3rd tiers, the second (March, 12th) is for 1st and 2nd too. For the second day you need to register via the form.

You can buy Scotty’s tokens here and stake here. Hurry up, staking is available till today’s evening, 23:59 UTC.

Looking forward to take part in their first private round INO on March 11th! Open / Comment

2022-01-28 08:37:59 ​​Ripple announces $200M share buyback and expresses optimism for 2022.

The company has repurchased all Series C shares originally issued to Tetragon Financial Group, SBI Holdings and Route 66 Ventures in December 2019.

Blockchain payments firm Ripple has announced a $200-million Series C share buyback, a decision that will take the San Francisco-based tech firm to a record-high valuation of $15 billion.

Back in December 2019, Ripple raised $200 million in a Series C funding round with Tetragon Financial Group, a United Kingdom-based investment firm, acting as the lead investor alongside SBI Holdings and Route 66 Ventures.

However, in December 2020, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission issued a $1.3-billion financial lawsuit against Ripple Labs, as well as co-founder Chris Larsen and CEO Brad Garlinghouse, accusing the parties of using the native XRP token as an unlicensed digital asset security.

Intent on disassociating themselves with Ripple amid their high-profile and openly public lawsuit, Tetragon sued Ripple in early January 2021 in the Delaware Chancery Court, seeking to enact its contractual obligation of a buyback clause to the value of its undisclosed investment sum.

However, just three months later in April, the court ruled in favor of Ripple and against the plaintiff, Tetragon, putting an end to the financial dispute.

In choosing to willingly purchase the shares from Tetragon, SBI Holdings and Route 66 Ventures, it implies that Ripple is seeking to enhance its financial strength, a sentiment that Garlinghouse eluded to in a recent tweet thread.

“Even with 2021’s headwinds, it was our best year on record,” he stated, revealing that the company’s $1-billion bank balance makes it the “strongest we’ve ever been.”

Alongside the news of buyback and valuation, Garlinghouse also shared optimism for the future of RippleNet and Ripple X, the latter of which is posed to enhance the utility of the XRP Ledger in an array of emerging sectors, including nonfungible tokens, central bank digital currencies, as well as interoperable, multichain functionalities, among others.

Cointelegraph reached out to Ripple for comment but did not receive a response at publishing time. Open / Comment

2022-01-23 08:52:05 ​​Bearish sentiment may soon abate according to Coinshares and Bitcoin metrics.

Despite last week’s institutional Bitcoin outflows of $55 million, negative sentiment could be on the wane.

While key Bitcoin (BTC) metrics don’t paint a pretty picture, the bears could be running on fumes. Contrary to analysts warning that Bitcoin could dip to $38,000 “before an eventual breakout,” CoinShares and Arcane Research suggest that the tide could be turning.

In brief, Bitcoin institutional outflows were negative four out of the last five weeks, totaling $55 million. The total assets under management fell to a three-month low of $35 billion midweek last week.

CoinShares' findings illustrate that large investors in the Bitcoin ecosystem, those using companies such as Grayscale, CoinsXBT, ProShares, and ETC Group, have been reducing their exposure to the digital asset.

Their actions are compounded by the Fear and Greed Index hogging the “extreme fear” dial for two months, as Bitcoin spot buying volume hit a six-month low. If the Fear and Greed Index enters a third consecutive month of extreme fear, it will be the second time to do so in the metric’s existence.

Traders are also trepidatious. According to Arcane Research, the seven-day average real BTC trading volume sits at $3.4 billion. It’s the lowest figure since July 2021, remembered as the trough of the mini bear market that occurred from May to July 2021.

Investors and spectators in the space will remember that following that moment, from August to October 2021, the BTC price swelled by more than 60%, buoyed by robust institutional investment.

Plus, with Bitcoin 30-day price volatility constrained to the lowest level seen for twelve months, at 2.5%, the spring is coiled.

Twitter analysts clamor for upside action. Popular Bitcoin bull GalaxyBTC tells followers that $80,000 is on the horizon while Tradermayne says the “bottom is in for the nth time.” Open / Comment

2022-01-16 15:07:08 ​​German neobank N26 to launch crypto trading later this year.

N26’s co-founder says rushing for a global expansion has caused N26 to drop behind in crypto and equities trading.

German neobank N26, one of the biggest European fintech companies and has a $9-billion valuation, is finally ready to tackle crypto and equities trading after striving for a global expansion.

Despite being an early player in the financial technology boom across Europe, the Berlin-based online bank N26’s global ambitions induced a setback in its diversification of services, N26 co-founder and co-CEO Max Tayenthal said in a Financial Times interview.

After exiting two critical fintech markets — the United States and the United Kingdom — N26 plans to “sharpen its focus on its European business” by introducing new products and services to its 7 million customers.

According to Tayenthal, who admitted that the online bank needs to expand its product universe, N26 aims to launch a crypto trading business in 2022 followed by an equities brokerage instead of “putting flags in new markets.”

The N26 mobile app currently doesn’t offer crypto functionality, and features of the upcoming product related to crypto trading are yet to be revealed. Cointelegraph has reached out to N26 for more information, and this article will be updated pending new details.

N26 announced its exit from the U.S. market in November when it teased additional financial products and services for its European customers. “N26 will focus its strategy on broadening its digital banking experience into new verticals to include investment products in the coming year,” the announcement said.

The company was hit with several restrictions from German watchdog the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, or BaFin, in May 2021 partly due to its lacking Anti-Money Laundering controls. BaFin decreed that N26, which accepted an average of 170,000 new clients per month last year, cannot onboard more than 50,000 customers per month.

Describing the BaFin-enforced new customer cap as a massive restriction for the growth investor-funded fintech, Tayenthal said he expects the condition to have been lifted by late summer 2022. Open / Comment

2022-01-03 22:29:58 ​​Bitcoin's Hashrate Regains Strength, Reaches New ATH Thirteen Years After The Genesis Block

Bitcoin's hashrate, its effective measure of network-wide processing power, recently peaked at 203.5 exahashes per second, a record it reached just a day prior to its birthday. With this amount of processing power, Bitcoin's network resiliency and security have also reached an all-time high. This newly-reached peak coincides with the mining of block 0, or the genesis block, which mined 50 BTC.

To this day, intrigue and mystery surround the genesis block. Some, like Craig Wright (who also happens to claim that he is Satoshi Nakamoto), argue that it wasn't really a genesis block. Instead, it was what Wright called an "anchor block" that positioned and enacted Bitcoin's network. Another intriguing fact about the genesis block is with how it was timestamped only six days after it was actually mined. At the time, timestamping the block would have taken a mere 10 minutes.

A cryptic message is included in the genesis block's coinbase parameter, and to this day, crypto enthusiasts are still mulling why Satoshi Nakamoto intended to use it for such an important, historic moment. The text, converted from HEX to ASCII, reads as follows:

"The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"

The text above was the headline for London Times on the 3rd of January of 2009. The late timestamp and this allusion to the period's economic instability have led many to speculate that the genesis block was a message that reflected the reasons why Nakamoto created Bitcoin in the first place.

As the past year fizzled by, Bitcoin reached new all-time highs in terms of price, reaching beyond $68,000 sometime in November 2021. It failed to top this as the year ended, though, breaking a tail-end pattern that began in 2018. With a new all-time high in terms of hashrate, Bitcoin continues to dominate the crypto and blockchain industry as its alpha cryptocurrency. Concerns about its ecological sustainability in terms of mining abound, even as it nears its supply threshold. For this author, at least, Bitcoin's allure was never about its price. It is with how Bitcoin, the crypto space, and block technology itself, have opened numerous opportunities and possibilities for a more equitable world.

A lot has changed, thirteen years since the genesis block. And yes, if Bitcoin was a person, they're now literally a teenager. Perhaps a not-so-rebellious one though, as the current state of crypto regulation is running with bated breath, at a pace that shows it's trying its best to catch up to crypto's technological and economic complexities. From panic-inducing dips to DeFi hacks, from fake Satoshis to NFT booms—here's to wishing Bitcoin a meaningful birthday and better years to come. Open / Comment

2021-12-31 10:07:38 ​​‘The only thing holding us back is us,’ says Charles Hoskinson on DeFi's future.

In a live YouTube session, Hoskinson delivered a 30-minute briefing on the need for collaboration and friendliness within the DeFi industry.

The total value locked, or TVL, in decentralized finance (DeFi) has soared to over $250 billion as 2021 closes out, with most activity on Ethereum, according to DeFi Llama. The budding DeFi industry only became mainstream during summer 2021.

While TVL valuations underscore the rapid growth of the industry, Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson has warned about the challenges facing DeFi. In a YouTube video entitled, "DApps and Cardano DeFi Alliance," Hoskinson talked about DeFi's potential as well as Cardano's small role within the industry.

According to Hoskinson, who has been on a decade-long quest to transform traditional finance, there needs to be more long-term vision among developers and creators:

“It’s very hard to do this kind of engineering and to do it right, with an eye and foresight for the future. Unfortunately, many of the projects in this space will not stand the test of time. It’s just a fact that we will see a great extinction occur in the next five to 10 years.”

Although he believes that 2022 will be “a big year” for both the industry and Cardano, there is “still so much to do,” particularly when it comes to certification standards, the production quality of DApps and security. He noted that almost $10.5 billion have been lost to hacks, scams and theft in the sector in 2021 alone.

Despite considering the crypto community to be “the weavers of the genetics of finance and of the destiny of humanity’s financial operating system for the 21st century,” Hoskinson claims that the “only thing that holds us back is us. If we fight each other, demean and attack each other, all we are doing is hurting our ability to be able to steer the dialogue towards productive ends.”

During the session, Hoskinson talked about Cardano’s current plans, mentioning its 127 projects in development and how the first half of 2022 will be “an essential window for commercialization and utility of Cardano projects.” Open / Comment

2021-12-24 06:24:59 ​Exec Wants Meta to Look to NFT, DAO and Blockchain Expansion Next Year – Report.

The man who will become Meta’s chief technology officer in 2022 reportedly wants the firm (formerly known as Facebook) to “target a deep compatibility with the blockchain” – and has talked up the possibility of exploring decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and non-fungible token (NFT)-related business avenues.

Andrew Bosworth, already a leading Meta executive charged with leading the firm’s augmented and virtual-reality drives, is expected to take up his new position in the coming weeks, and will help the firm execute its much-vaunted metaverse pivot.

According to the New York Times, Bosworth spelled out his intentions in an “internal post” made on Tuesday.

The “note to employees,” was “obtained by” the media outlet, it claimed. The post reportedly saw Bosworth “urge caution” but add that meta “should look to adopt the technologies before others,” adding that blockchain technology would likely have “profound impacts on our industry over the next decade.”

The media outlet added that Bosworth said the company should “develop ways to work with NFTs,” and “look to possibly invest in areas including blockchain-based smart contracts and DAOs.”

He was quoted as writing:

“My overall guidance is to target a deep compatibility with the blockchain. There aren’t many places where I expect us to depend on it exclusively yet, but if we see an opportunity to work jointly with entrepreneurs in the Web 3.0 space I expect it will be worth the effort.”

But Bosworth allegedly warned staff members not to be too gung-ho on Web 3.0, and “urged employees not to over-correct by only relying on decentralized technologies.”

He also showed signs that he was aware of the level of skepticism Meta faces in the crypto and metaverse spheres, allegedly noting:

“While most people are happy to use Facebook and Google, some are not. And those that opt out are disproportionately involved in creating a genuinely impressive wave of technology.” Open / Comment

2021-12-20 22:25:26 ​​Crypto Mania Bizarre Says Mainstream Media

A pillar of mainstream media reports that the crypto market is “frothy” and warns that crypto holdings value will be “wiped out”. It also states that the Fed’s “hawkish” statement on Wednesday may well accelerate the sell-off.

An article on Bloomberg yesterday talked about “parody coins”, celebrity-driven commercials, an NFT “frenzy”, and that the Federal Reserve statement on Wednesday would perhaps signal the end of the current crypto bull market.

Such a negative spin on crypto is unusual, even for mainstream media. A “waning interest” in crypto trading was highlighted, using trading volume data from Coinbase, and even the “greater fool” theory was applied to crypto, stating:

“It’s fine to buy overvalued assets as long as it will be possible to sell them for an even greater price. But diminishing trading activity suggests crypto markets are running out of fools.”

The article labelled the Fed’s Wednesday statement on how it was going to control inflation as “hawkish”. It might be argued that if you aren’t toeing the mainstream media party line, then the so-called “hawkish” Fed move might be considered negligent, or risible at best.

Yes, the Fed pumping slightly less currency into the system over time should have a negative effect on crypto. Less currency in the system means that there is less to spend on sound money such as certain cryptos, gold, and silver.

But, when all is said and done, the monetary system is broken beyond repair. No amount of extra currency pumped in, whether more, or less of it, is going to make a difference beyond the short term.

Trying to argue that the crypto market is an “amusement”, and that it is only there to make a very few people wealthy, while completely ruining the rest, is to try and tar it with the very same brush that must be applied to the current fiat monetary system.

Crypto has its failures and issues. That can certainly be argued. I agree with the article author that there are many crypto tokens that are only there as speculative assets to make money off of unwary investors.

However, to truly understand the complexities of even one of the cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin for instance, might take a very long time to achieve, and it is understandable that many people might treat crypto with suspicion given the array of people with influence and power who have spoken out against it.

The answer to it all is education. There is no shame in not getting crypto. Many incredibly intelligent individuals (such as Michael Sayler for instance) have started out by ridiculing the industry.

Nevertheless, the deeper you dive, the more you find out, not just about crypto, but about the current financial system. The way things are headed, we either end up powerless in the grip of central bank digital currencies, or we embrace private money that is ours, and not the bank’s.

It’s incumbent on everyone to make this choice, to read around outside of the mainstream media, and to not get carried along with the herd. Some of us will continue to challenge mainstream thinking - what will you do? Open / Comment