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Coinbase acquires crypto wallet startup BRD

Crypto exchange Coinbase has acquired the crypto wallet startup BRD, according to a notice from its leadership team.

In a letter address to BRD’s customers published on Wednesday, co-founders Adam Traidman and Aaron Voisine said: “Today, we would like to share the news that members of our team will be continuing our mission at Coinbase, where we will work together to bring the power of decentralization to even more users around the globe.”

Traidman and Voisine went on to say that “[a]t this time, nothing will change in the BRD wallet app and as always, your funds are safe and secure.”

“You may continue to transact normally. In the future, BRD wallet users will have an optional migration path to self custody with Coinbase Wallet, which will include a special gift. Stay tuned for more details to come in 2022,” they continued.

In a Twitter message, the Coinbase Wallet team wrote that “the BRD team will be joining @CoinbaseWallet to help accelerate web3 adoption. The team brings deep expertise in self-custody for crypto wallets, which will help Wallet enable more people to safely and securely access the decentralized world of crypto.”

Unclear at this time is what will become of the startup’s utility token, which trades under the $BRD ticker, that is used as part of its customer loyalty program. The token has a market cap of about $14 million and is traded on crypto exchange Binance.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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Author: Michael McSweeney

Unpacking the Biden administration’s (crypto-friendly) blitz on ransomware

Quick Take

  • The Biden administration’s rollout of its strategy against ransomware managed to get all of the relevant government agencies on the same page.
  • It also went out of its way not to upset the crypto industry, which has reacted vocally to recent threats of a crackdown. 

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Author: Kollen Post

‘Mania is just absolutely peaking right now’: TradingView’s Pierce Crosby

“It seems very much like the mania is just absolutely peaking right now.”

That’s Pierce Crosby, general manager at TradingView. During this episode of The Scoop, Crosby joined host Frank Chaparro to discuss the state of the retail market in crypto and stocks, the data firm’s institutional ambitions and its bid to take trading charts global.

The charting and social network currently boasts paying customers in 180 some countries across the globe. Today, TradingView is looking to grow and expand their company’s presence in Southeast Asia, Latin America, as well as in countries such as Turkey, Brazil, India, Thailand, and Cuba with plan to tap into networks in Japan as well, Crosby explained.

“Deployment of TradingView not just across the US, but globally is really the next mission for us.”

Crosby explained that to date TradingView currently has approximately 33 million users, and has had a virtually zero customer acquisition cost.

Plans for retail and institutional clients

Crosby told Chaparro that he expects retail interest in crypto to continue to grow as exchanges “gamify” their platforms and move to meet the demand of consumers looking to capitalize on new products and token listings, such as dogecoin. “Infrastructure wise, things are just set up for retail to participate.” 

However, TradingView is looking less to capture retail traders than it is to capture retail investors. Rather than competing with exchanges that use ICOs, products or fees to capitalize on margin, Crosby says the company has a longer-term view on this point.

“For us, it seems much more strategic to service investors than it is to service traders, just because volatility is volatility,” he said. “I think most businesses that are set up for success, at least from what I’ve seen, are folks that are thinking more of the investor versus the actual trader.”

Of course, there’s also the institutional side of things, and according to Crosby, TradingView is looking to deploy some of the $298 million it raised this fall by building out some of its internal offerings for institutional clients. 

“We have over one hundred and fifty engineers now focused on this tech. So we’ve done well to replace a lot of internal technology and not just charts, but order management, portfolio management, execution engines, really, everything from the front, front end and middle layer,” Crosby said, adding: “Back end is not what we do.”

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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Author: Frank Chaparro

‘NFT’ named top word of the year by the dictionary publisher Collins

Collins, a dictionary publisher founded in 1824 recording over 4.5 billion words, named “NFT,” or ‘non-fungible token,’ as the top word of the for 2021.  

“It’s certainly a buzzword we’ve heard over and over again in the past 12 months, in breathless news reports and on social media,” the publisher wrote in a Wednesday blog post, describing it as the intersection between internet and money. 

As The Block’s data shows, interest in NFTs exploded in 2021. NFT transaction volume grew steadily since January and reached a record high of $1.05 billion in August of this year. 

Centuries-old art auction house Sotheby’s auctioned off numerous NFTs this year, even launching its own NFT platform called Sotheby’s Metaverse in October. Celebrities to join the bandwagon, such as Katy Perry, The Weeknd, Rob Gronkowski and Simone Biles

In addition to “NFT,” the Collins named “metaverse” and “crypto” as other top words of the year — also due to their increased interest within 2021. Other words on the list include “climate anxiety,” “double-vaxxed,” “cheugy,” “pingdemic,” “hybrid working,” “neopronoun” and “regencycore.”

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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Author: MK Manoylov

More than 1 million ETH has been burned following EIP-1559

The Ethereum network has now burned over 1 million ETH since the London upgrade that ushered in the fee burning mechanism, according to figures from WatchTheBurn — a website that tracks the transaction fee burning process. At the current price of ether, the total value of the total ETH destroyed so far now stands at over $4.2 billion.

In August, the London upgrade introduced Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559 (EIP-1559) that split transaction fees in two: a base cost and a priority fee. The former is burned while the latter serves as a form of payment to miners.

The purpose of EIP-1559 was to make transaction fees easier to estimate. The reason behind this was to make transactions more reliable, since underestimating fees can lead to canceled transactions, and wasted fees. Plus, it helps for periods of high demand.

EIP-1559 was also designed to exert deflationary pressure on the ETH supply since the base fee gets burned and can no longer be used on the network. This reduces the amount of inflation on the network.

Since EIP-1559, the net ETH emission has declined significantly according to The Block’s Data Dashboard. Wednesday’s burn landmark also coincided with the price of ether rising to its highest level against bitcoin since August.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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Author: Osato Avan-Nomayo

Blockchain gaming guild Avocado raises $18 million from Solana Ventures and others

Avocado Guild, a blockchain gaming startup similar to a16z-backed Yield Guild Games, has raised $18 million in a Series A funding round.

Animoca Brands and QCP Soteria Node (QSN) co-led the round, with Solana Ventures, Three Arrows Capital, Polygon Studios, and others participating. The round brings just the six-month-old Avocado Guild’s valuation to $200 million.

This is the startup’s first fundraise, and it is an equity round, its founder and CEO Brendan Wong told The Block. But the investors will also get some AVG tokens, he said. AVG is Avocado Guild’s native token that is yet to be launched.

The round appears to be heavily oversubscribed. According to a pitch deck seen by The Block, Avocado Guild was looking to raise only $5-$8 million for its Series A.

Notably, the startup is on track to an $80 million revenue run rate by the end of this year, according to the deck. Revenue run rate is a forecasting method that enables firms to predict their financial performance over a coming period based on past earnings data.

What are gaming guilds? 

As a blockchain gaming guild, Avocado Guild purchases in-game items and lends them out to play-to-earn game players in return for a share of rewards earned by the players.

Let’s take an example of the Axie Infinity game. It requires players to buy three “Axies” — in-game creatures with unique traits — for playing the game.

Axies can be expensive. The current floor price of an Axie is around $100, according to tracker ChillAxie. That means users will have to spend at least $300 to start playing the game.

With guilds like Avocado Guild and Yield Guild Games, players won’t have to buy Axie-like assets and instead borrow them from these guilds.

These guilds run so-called “scholarship programs” in which a community manager of a guild lends in-game assets to a scholar or a player. Rewards are then split between the manager and the scholar.

Avocado Guild currently supports seven games, including Axie Infinity, Cyball, and Revv Racing. Its scholarship program includes over 7,000 members, and it aims to increase it to 12,000 by the end of this year.

Guilds getting traction 

Avocado Guild’s funding comes three months after Yield Guild Games (YGG) raised a small $4.6 million round led by a16z. The YGG token’s price has shot up since its launch, and its current market capitalization is over $780 million, according to CoinGecko. 

This partially explains why Avocado Guild’s funding round was oversubscribed with backing from notable investors — along with the intersection of crypto and gaming being a hot topic right now.

“We believe the play-to-earn (P2E) industry is still in its nascent stage,” Wong told The Block. “There are over 1 billion active gamers out there in the world who still need exposure to this amazing movement. The guilds of this space are the engine to fuel the P2E economy. P2E is here to stay and AG is committed to help build the future of Web 3.0.”

There are currently 14 people working for Avocado Guild, and the startup is looking to expand its team in the engineering and operations functions, said Wong.

Avocado Guild is currently also in the process of transitioning to a decentralized autonomous organization or a DAO. “The transition to AvocadoDAO is in progress while we develop the smart contracts necessary to pass governance to token holders. We are currently planning for the launch of our token to start the process,” said Wong.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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Author: Yogita Khatri

Bitcoin trades at over 3% discount in India after government lists a crypto bill in Parliament for discussion

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are trading at a discount in India after the country’s government listed a crypto bill in Parliament for discussion yesterday.

At the time of writing, bitcoin at WazirX is trading at around 40,90,000 Indian rupees (around $54,900) compared to $56,750 on Binance — a difference of over 3%, which is significant.

The discount was over 5% last night and earlier this morning on various Indian crypto exchanges, but it appears to be narrowing now.

Some users are panic-selling their crypto holdings after the Lok Sabha — the lower house of India’s bicameral Parliament — published a bulletin listing a crypto bill for discussion, Sharan Nair, chief business officer at CoinSwitch Kuber told The Block.

The bill’s description in the bulletin says it “seeks to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies in India, however, it allows for certain exceptions to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses.”

However, the bill’s contents and the definition of private cryptocurrencies aren’t known yet.

There are some reports now that say private cryptocurrencies are privacy coins, and not broader coins such as bitcoin and ether. But an industry source told The Block that private cryptocurrencies are all cryptocurrencies that are not issued by governments, i.e., all coins except central bank digital currencies. This source said they have clarified that from government sources.

Earlier today, CNN-News18 reported citing “sources in the security establishment,” that the government will not ban crypto outright.

“A regulation mechanism will be in place so that crypto is not misused,” the sources told the publication. “The government is concerned about the underground transactions happening against cryptocurrency — particularly its role in ‘hawala’ and terror funding.”

“A strict mechanism will be in place so that law enforcement agencies can trace the origin of cryptocurrency used for illegal or anti-national work,” the sources added.

This is not the first time cryptocurrencies in India are trading at a discount, said Nair. Prices dropped significantly in 2017, when late Arun Jaitley, then India’s finance minister, said that the government does not recognize bitcoin as legal tender, said Nair.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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Author: Yogita Khatri

Senate Banking Committee chair seeks answers on stablecoins from Centre, Paxos and more

In November 23 letters seen by The Block, Senator Sherrod Brown is calling on stablecoin operators to open up about their processes.

The letter to Circle’s Jeremy Allaire reads: “Consumers’ increased use of stablecoins, and their importance in effecting transactions in digital assets, underscores the need for greater understanding of the basic operation, and limitations, of USDC.”

Brown sent similar letters to Coinbase, Gemini, Paxos, TrustToken, Binance.US and Centre. Notably, he did not write to Tether, which issues the largest fiat-backed stablecoin by market cap and sets the *ahem* gold standard in opacity

Setting a response date of December 3, Brown asked the issuers to explain in “clear, straightforward terms” their processes for minting and redemption, as well as special arrangements that those issuers have with specific trading platforms. 

The letters reference the President’s Working Group’s report on stablecoins. Released at the beginning of November, the report pushed legislators to restrict stablecoin issuance to insured depository institutions — effectively, banks.

Brown chairs the Senate Banking Committee, in which capacity he has been at the Senate’s front lines in the legislative body’s encounters with crypto

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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Author: Kollen Post

ConstitutionDAO is coming to an end

A ragtag effort to raise enough money to buy a rare copy of the US Constitution is coming to an official end after the group failed to win at a Sotheby’s auction last week.

In a Discord message to supporters, donors and contributors, core team member Graham Novak wrote that despite explorations of alternative uses of the nearly $48 million raised, it was “determined that building and maintaining an ongoing project is not something that we as a core team are able to support, given the technical and administrative requirements of doing it properly.” Potential paths forward were initially teased following the conclusion of the auction, with donors being given the option to request refunds for the funds they contributed minus transaction costs.

Novak wrote:

“The community has taken all actions that it was organized to accomplish: we raised capital, we bid at Sotheby’s, and upon losing, we made full refunds available to the community as promised. At this time we want to encourage anyone who has been waiting to claim their refund to do so. There is no time limit on claiming these refunds. The Discord will be left open for 14 days for discussion, and then will shift to read-only.”

“This project was a landmark event that showed the entire world that a group of internet friends can use the power of web3 to face a seemingly insurmountable goal and achieve incredible results on an impossible timeline,” he went on to write.

ConstitutionDAO’s efforts generated a raft of media attention with its swift-moving donor drive, ultimately leading to a chaotic conclusion when it was not immediately apparent who won the auction. A day later, the Wall Street Journal revealed the winner: Citadel founder and CEO Kenneth Griffin, who reportedly intends to loan the rare US Constitution copy to an art museum in Arkansas.

During the roughly week-long sprint, ConstitutionDAO was both criticized as a foolish effort and praised as an example of what decentralized communities can accomplish when motivated. In his closing message, Graham expressed hope that similar efforts would spring from the example set.

“It is our sincere hope that this project will spark many others that take inspiration from the enthusiasm and accomplishments of everyone involved to use the power of web3 to make a positive impact on the world,” he wrote. “We love you all, and are truly humbled to have been part of history together.”

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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Author: Michael McSweeney

Canadian investment company buys $2.5 million worth of virtual real estate in Decentraland

On Tuesday, a Canadian investment firm that focuses on decentralized finance (DeFi) called Tokens.com purchased nearly $2.5 million worth of virtual land in the platform Decentraland.

Specifically, Tokens.com purchased 116 parcels of virtual land for a total of 618,000 MANA, the native currency of Decentraland, according to a company release. The company claimed the purchase represented the largest transaction of its kind to date.

Tokens.com purchased the land through the virtual real estate firm Metaverse Group, which offers virtual land development services for clients. The purchase is equivalent to 6,090 square feet of physical land — which is approximately the size of 1.3 basketball courts. 

In mid-October, Tokens.com purchased a 50% stake in Metaverse Group for $1.68 million. Metaverse Group also sells and rents virtual land in the virtual world platforms Cryptovoxels, The Sandbox, Upland and Somnium. 

The purchased lots are based in Decentraland’s Fashion Street district and will be developed to accommodate the growing demand for fashion brands to showcase digital merchandise in the metaverse. 

“Fashion is the next massive area for growth in the metaverse,” said Sam Hamilton, Head of Content at the Decentraland Foundation, in a statement. “So it’s timely, and very exciting, that Metaverse Group has made such a decisive commitment with this land purchase in the heart of Decentraland’s fashion precinct.” 

Digital land is valued by the foot traffic it receives and its proximity to brands located within the metaverse, as The Block previously reported. 

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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Author: MK Manoylov


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