METAVERSE & NFT | NEWS 🌌

2021-12-16 11:07:40 ​​UK Watchdog Cites “Consumers’ Inexperience Or Credulity” For Recent Crypto Ad Bans

According to the UK advertising watchdog, crypto assets are a “red alert" priority. Seven mostly well-known and reputable crypto companies had their ads banned by the watchdog.

The watchdog said that seven companies had broken advertising standards authority rules. These included: Kraken, Coinbase, eToro, Coinburp, EXMO and Luno, together with a pizza chain promotion.

The ad from pizza chain Papa John’s stated “Free Bitcoin Worth £10”, and also “Save £15 when you spend £30 or more & get £10 worth of Bitcoin from Luno!”

One of the issues that the watchdog had was “misleading claims about future returns”. This seems like a sensible reason for taking up an issue with any offender, crypto or otherwise.

However, citing “consumers’ inexperience or credulity” as regards crypto as a reason for sanctions, is surely stretching the limits of the watchdog’s powers.

Perhaps if the crypto companies in question were not established, or there was reason to believe that they had operated in a questionable way in the past, then a reason for a ban could certainly be argued.

But for the watchdog to just target ‘crypto’ as a whole appears to be just going along with the typical authoritarian line that crypto is just for money laundering and terrorist financing.

Would the watchdog sanction the banks for doing exactly the same thing? Surely it could be argued that “inexperience” and “credulity” might be two reasons for an investor in this day and age to buy many of the financial products offered by banks.

The financial landscape is changing fast. To keep up with the innovations provided by crypto companies and projects would tax any watchdog, so it’s understandable that sometimes decisions can be made that just aren’t based on sufficient understanding of the financial product.

Given the complexities under consideration here, it will possibly be many years before government departments have the necessary deep knowledge with which to make good, informed decisions about crypto. Some key hires will need to be made and public perception will need to change. Here’s hoping this can happen sooner rather than later… Open / Comment

2021-12-15 09:24:22 ​​Parallel Finance Secures 4th Polkadot Parachain Slot With $300M Crowdloan

Parallel Finance, the institutional-grade lending protocol for Decentralized Finance, has announced that it has secured the 4th slot in Polkadot’s parachain auctions. Parachain will begin its slot lease in a little over a week, joining the other winners of previous auctions.

Details Of The Auction
Parallel Finance took to Twitter to announce the news to their supporters, successfully securing its place for the next two years. Over 30,000 contributors pooled in their DOT tokens, leading to a contribution of over 10.75 million DOT tokens, equal to roughly $306 million.

Parallel Finance described securing the parachain as a landmark achievement, managing to maintain a lead over other competing projects such as Litentry, Clover Finance, and other participants in the running. In doing so, Parallel managed to achieve the third-highest DOT contribution among all auctions held so far, managing to achieve the feat during the closing hours of the crowd loan.

Outcompeting Other Projects
As mentioned earlier, Parallel Finance achieved the third-largest DOT contribution in the parachain auctions, although this paled in comparison to what Acala and Moonbeam raised. However, Parallel Finance did manage to secure notably more contributions than quite a few notable projects vying for a parachain slot. Projects such as Efinity NFT and the Metaverse Project were some of the projects that Parallel pipped to secure a slot.

Significant Amount Of Community Participation
The crowdloan allows Parallel Finance to completely bootstrap its connection to Polkadot, with the auction process seeing significant participation from the Parallel community. Parallel Finance founder Rubo Yuan expressed gratitude towards the contributors, thanking them for enabling Parallel to become a part of the Polkadot ecosystem.

He further went on to say,

“The Parallel Finance team thanks the community members for showing trust, thereby helping us to become part of the Polkadot ecosystem by securing a parachain. It’s been a huge milestone in a very short period of time. Since its inception in April 2021, Parallel Finance is gaining ground as the most trusted institutional-grade lending protocol for decentralized finance.”

Ready To Hit The Ground Running
The first batch totaling five Polkadot parachain auctions is set to conclude by mid-December, with Parallel Finance and the other parachain winners set to go live on 17th December. The lease duration is 96 weeks, with Parallel holding the funds until the allotted duration lapses. Rewards will be distributed in phases, or nine separate sessions, with the first distribution scheduled five days after the parachains, are deployed, with subsequent rewards disbursed every 92 days.

Other Parachain Winners
The previous parachain auctions saw projects such as Acala and Moonbeam secure the first two slots, with Acala narrowly beating Moonbeam to secure the first Parachain. Acala received a total of 32,515,989.5 DOT from around 81,218 contributors, with the value of the DOT tokens around $1.27 billion. Moonbeam won the second parachain slot, with the Moonbeam community contributing 35 million DOT, valued at $1.4 billion. This was the largest contribution on record from the largest number of contributors. The third parachain slot was secured by Astar. Open / Comment

2021-12-14 19:42:15 ​​What Will Be The Outcome Of The Congressional Hearing Between Heads Of Crypto Companies And Congress?

Several executives of cryptocurrency exchanges participating in a congressional hearing with the US House financial services committee, Robinhood’s chief legal officer has said he doesn’t expect there to be any significant crypto legislation any time soon.

A crypto congressional hearing led by Republican Representative Maxine Waters took place on Wednesday between the House Financial Services Committee and heads of six crypto companies.The hearing comes on the back of the US government’s efforts to understand the fast-growing digital assets and how best to regulate them.

With six CEO's of crypto exchanges participating in the hearing, including head of Paxos, Charles Cascarilla, and chief of the crypto exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, the hearing marks a positive step from lawmakers as they include lobbyists in their efforts to regulate the crypto industry.

In an interview with CNBC, Robinhood’s chief legal officer Daniel Gallagher commented on the actions that congress is expected to take when they make moves to regulate cryptocurrency in January.

“It's a stretch to believe that there will be legislation coming out on crypto anytime soon.” Gallagher commented.

He added:

“These conversations are, theoretically, existential to crypto, but one would have to assume that Congress is actually going to act and legislate,” he told CNBC.

Nonetheless, many, including Gallagher, are skeptical about the effectiveness of these kinds of meetings and their impact on the speed at which regulation will be created. There was pushback from democrats in the hearing, who were concerned about the risks that crypto poses.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked Jeremy Allaire, the chief executive of the payments company Circle: “What do you say to the folks that say this doesn’t seem like a new financial system per se but an expansion of the old one?”, who replied “I really do believe we are building a new global economic infrastructure layer,” noting that crypto has to be integrated with traditional finance, and form “a hybrid model.” Open / Comment