FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Free stocks and money too!

Author: samwsimpson_lyjt8578

Crypto News Roundup for Nov. 2, 2021

This episode is sponsored by Kava, Nexo.io and Market Intel by Chainalysis.

Featured Story: Jack Dorsey Is Right About Inflation – Partly

This episode was edited & produced by Adrian Blust.

Go to Source
Author: Adam B. Levine, Adrian Blust

Decentralized Identity Startup Spruce Raises $7.5M

Decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have given decentralized identity a solid commercial use case that was previously lacking.

So say the founders of Spruce, an identity startup that just raised $7.5 million in a funding round led by Ethereal Ventures and Electric Capital.

The seed round, announced Tuesday, also included participation by Alameda Research, Coinbase Ventures, BITKRAFT, A. Capital Ventures, Protocol Labs and Gemini Frontier Fund.

The founders of Y Combinator-backed Spruce, Wayne Chang and Gregory Rocco, met at ConsenSys where they were working on economics and decentralized identity, and the team has clearly remained close to the Ethereum design studio.

“In combining identity and storage elegantly, they’re building user-centric, Web3-style tools for the decentralized future, enabling users to control their own data using permissionless infrastructure,” ConsenSys chief and Ethereal Ventures co-founder Joseph Lubin said in a statement.

Read more: Sign-In With Ethereum Is Coming

Spruce launched just over a year ago with two products: the SpruceID toolkit for decentralized identity and Kepler self-sovereign storage. The two systems work seamlessly together across blockchains to gate access via NFT ownership, for instance, or verify credentials for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), said Chang.

“[Users] want liquidity providers and DeFi pools that have a track record of being good liquidity providers,” Chang said. “DAO governance is a really important one too. You want to know that people have something at stake either reputational or otherwise, so they are going to make the right decisions.”

Go to Source
Author: Ian Allison

Ether Hits Fresh Record High, Sandbox’s SAND Leads Rally in Metaverse Coins

Ether, the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum’s blockchain, refreshed record highs on Tuesday amid continued bullish flows in the options market. Meanwhile, tokens associated with virtual reality games extended rally on Facebook’s recent championing of metaverse as the next evolution of social technology.

  • Ether rose to $4,480 during the European hours, surpassing the previous peak price of $4,458 reached on Oct. 29, according to CoinDesk 20.
  • On Monday, several large bull call spreads crossed the tape on Deribit, the world’s largest crypto options exchange by volumes and open interest.
  • As seen in the chart, a bull call spread involves purchasing a call at a particular strike price and simultaneously taking an opposite position in a higher strike call. The strategy is initiated when expecting a measured rise in cryptocurrency’s price.

  • Traders have been snapping up $10,000 and $15,000 calls expiring in March 2022 of late, with Goldman Sachs reportedly predicting an $8,000 ETH price before the year-end.
  • “Since mid-October, we have seen higher interest in year-end and March upside ETH exposure,” Deribit’s Institutional Newsletter for October said.
  • “Premiums for downward protection are getting cheaper. A drop in 3 or 6 Month Skew indicates that out-of-the-money calls are getting more expensive than the money puts. A similar effect can be seen in the volatility term structure where Dec and March IVs [implied volatilities] are elevated,” Deribit added.

SAND tops $3

Ethereum-based virtual reality platform The Sandbox’s SAND token tapped record highs above $3, taking the seven-day gain to over 300%. Other gaming tokens like enjoin coin, lluvium’s ILV token also traded higher.

  • “The growing investor attention on the potential of the metaverse, helped by Facebook’s announcement (SAND and MANA are much more direct ways to bet on metaverse growth than is an investment in Facebook stock),” Noelle Acheson, head of market insights Genesis Global Trading, said.
  • “Facebook’s recent decision to rebrand as Meta is powering metaverse, non-fungible tokens, and gaming tokens higher. AXS, ILV, WILD – all have hit life time highs, MANA, SAND, have tripled,” Dennis Hui, a DeFi portfolio manager at DAO Ventures, told CoinDesk in a Telegram chat.
  • According to Anthony Vince, global head of trading at GSR, Sandbox’s latest closure of a $93 million Series B funding round led by SoftBank adds to bullish momentum around the cryptocurrency.
  • “This should help catapult their growth plans in the metaverse and NFT space, which is a focus of forward-thinking crypto investors at the moment,” Vince said.

Go to Source
Author: Omkar Godbole

FTX backs African fintech unicorn Chipper Cash in $150M fundraise

Crypto exchange FTX has led a $150 million Series C extension fundraise for African remittance outfit Chipper Cash, according to TechCrunch.

This fresh capital injection comes six months after the fintech company closed a $100 million Series C funding round that drew investors like SVB Capital.

Chipper Cash offers feeless peer-to-peer cash transfers across several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa including Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, and South Africa. The company has also begun extending its services to Europe to enable easier remittance flows from African expatriates overseas.

As part of the partnership, FTX users in Africa will soon be able to use Chipper Cash on the FTX trading platform. FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried called this collaboration a “compelling use case” for both companies as it further extends the fintech outfit’s network API integration.

The partnership could also facilitate the company’s pivot to cryptocurrency payments, given its recent pilot test of digital currency peer-to-peer transfers in South Africa and Uganda.

Growing crypto adoption

The news also marks the first investment foray by FTX into the African market as crypto adoption on the continent continues to grow.

According to a Chainalysis report in September, Africa’s crypto market grew by over $105 billion between June 2020 and July 2021 with cryptocurrencies seemingly offering a viable channel for improving remittance flows.

Crypto adoption has also grown in tandem with a general expansion in fintech services on the continent that usually aim to improve access to financial services for the unbanked demographic.

© 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.

Go to Source
Author: Osato Avan-Nomayo

Ethereum hash rate sets all-time high as price surges

Ethereum’s hash rate — or the blockchain network’s computing power used to mine ether (ETH) — continues to rise and now has hit a new all-time high.

The current Ethereum hash rate stands at about 747 TH/s (terahashes per second), according to The Block’s Data Dashboard. It was around 465 TH/s in July when it hit a low. Since July, the hash rate has rebounded significantly.

Several factors appear to have contributed to the hash rate increase, including continuous growth in the DeFi and NFT space and the recent ETH price rally. When the ETH price trades at higher levels, it is more profitable for Ethereum miners to mine ETH since they get block rewards in ETH.

Indeed, Ethereum miners generated a whopping $1.85 billion in revenue last month, according to the dashboard. Notably, Ethereum miner revenues have remained higher than Bitcoin miner revenues for the sixth consecutive month by now.

The price of ether has also continued to rally. ETH is currently trading at around $4,465, according to TradingView, which is around the highest it has ever been. 

© 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.

Go to Source
Author: Yogita Khatri

BitMEX Buys $100,000 of Carbon Credits in Bid to Become Carbon Neutral

BitMEX bought $100,000 worth of carbon credits, representing 7,110 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, enough to offset its bitcoin carbon footprint for the next year, the crypto exchange said in a blog post.

  • The credits will match the environmental footprint from both its bitcoin transactions and the servers powering the exchange, making it the first crypto exchange to become fully carbon neutral, BitMEX said in the post.
  • BitMEX published the reasoning behind the conclusion in a separate post. The best way to approach carbon emissions for crypto exchanges is to figure out “how much electricity usage is incentivised per US dollar spent on transaction fees,” and then calculate the carbon emissions based on that, it said.
  • The “imperfect method” the exchange used then was to compare the average electricity cost in kilowatt hours for bitcoin mining with the global average cost per kWh of electricity.
  • Based on global prices, it found that every $1 spent on transaction fees could “incentivize” up to 7.4 kWh of “typical electricity usage,” which in turn means every $1 spent on bitcoin transaction fees incentivizes 1 kilogram of CO2 emissions.
  • This method should amend one proposed by FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried in a May tweet, BitMEX said.

Go to Source
Author: Eliza Gkritsi

This Diwali Season Indians FOMO Over Shiba Inu

Diwali, the five-day Indian festival of lights, has arrived, with the most important occasion of “Lakshmi Pujan” – worship of the goddess of wealth and prosperity – falling on Nov. 4. The auspicious day is considered the best time to invest in financial assets and has scores of people purchasing gold and stocks each year.

This time, Indians also appear to be flocking to meme cryptocurrency shiba inu (SHIB), whose current market capitalization of $39.13 billion is bigger than the market value of Indian fast-moving consumer goods giant ITC, auto sector heavyweight Maruti Suzuki and one of the country’s top lenders Axis Bank. According to local observers, the lure of making big money on a relatively small investment is drawing investors from all walks of life to SHIB.

“The SHIB FOMO [fear-of-missing-out] is absolutely real,” said Keshav Aggarwal, a crypto investor and founder of Bitcoin Investor Group, a premium WhatsApp group for crypto traders, exchanges, and crypto project founders. “SHIB is the cheapest and the most hyped (marketed) coin available on Indian exchanges.”

At press time, SHIB was changing hands at rupee (₹) 0.005624 ($0.00007026) on Binance-owned Mumbai-based WazirX exchange. Meanwhile, its rival dogecoin was trading at ₹21 ($0.28) and bitcoin was priced at ₹4,871,529 ($65205).

According to International Monetary Fund estimates, India’s per capita income or the amount of money earned per person in inflation-adjusted terms during 2020-21 is ₹86,659,($1160), or 1.77% of bitcoin’s going price. So, it’s no surprise that SHIB, with its much cheaper valuation, is drawing strong demand in the festive season.

“The motivation to buy SHIB is to earn good profit in a short time,” Dharmesh Barot, a SHIB investor and a real estate professional, told Coindesk. “Yes, it’s cheap money too, easy to bet on.”

SHIB, an ERC-20 token created by an unknown person named Ryoshi in August 2020, has chalked up a near ten-fold rally in the past four weeks, outperforming bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies by a big margin. Last week, the cryptocurrency briefly replaced its rival dogecoin as the ninth largest digital asset. The team behind SHIB has also launched decentralized exchange ShibaSwap, which allows users to stake coins.

According to Defi Llama, the total value locked in ShibaSwap has doubled to over $500 million in the past four weeks.

The sentiment is quite bullish in the retail crowd, as evidenced by the recent comments in Aggarwal’s WhatsApp group. “DOGE, SHIB ki behen, chacha, fufa koi nikla hai to batao, pura khaandan kharid lenge [let us know if SHIB, DOGE’s sister, uncle, have been launched, we will buy entire family],” one member jokingly said in Hindi, revealing his/her bullish bias on meme coins.

Members of a Telegram-based Shiba Inu India (Official) group have planned a community buying effort at 6:30 PM UTC on Nov. 3 – a day before Lakshmi Pujan. “We can all do this,” said a group member.

“The major motivation is always the money for people,” Rajat Lalwani, Community Admin & Moderator, Growth Breed at SHIB India, told Coindesk in a Telegram chat. “The price is relatively cheap than a lot of coins, and people feel if the zeros keep getting eaten, then they can make 10x, 100x or even 1000x on their investment long term.”

Peak retail interest

Google Trends currently shows a value of 100 for the India search query “SHIB” over the past 12 months – a sign of peak retail interest mostly seen at market tops.

“Cheap price has been the biggest factor, and to see $100 becoming $1000 in no time is driving madness,” Siddharth Menon, co-founder of WazirX, said. “We had seen this with DOGE in 2017, where memes became life-changing for some. I missed out on that hype back then too.” The exchange published a blog post on Nov. 1 explaining how to buy SHIB in India.

Some investors have been drawn to SHIB by dogecoin’s meteoric 15-fold rise to ₹58 in April-May. “The motivation to buy SHIB came when DOGE coin made an immense amount of money and SHIB was coming into the limelight and was being referred to as the DOGE killer. It was then I thought of investing into it,” said Gurpeet Singh, an audio engineer from the Indian state of Punjab.

There is more to it than low price

According to Lalwani, demand for SHIB stems from the community’s active approach in dealing with the excess supply situation.

“In May, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin burned 45% of SHIB’s supply to a dead wallet. That started a cult-like revolution of burning tokens to increase the price by decreasing supply,” Lalwani said. “Buterin burned a total of 405 trillion, and the community has burnt close to 6 trillion already.”

Buterin had been given half of SHIB’s total supply in May in a supposed marketing stunt. Coin burn refers to the process of removing tokens from circulation and is the crypto market’s equivalent of a stock buyback.

“I am holding a good quantity of SHIB, more than 200 million, and I am looking to add more in Diwali while the price is ranging,” said Jiren Singh, a 36-year old accounts professional and a member of Shina Inu India (Official) Telegram group said. “Cheap price is indeed a reason, but my primary motivation is its strong community base and token burns.”

A petition at Change.Org urging Shiba Inu to develop a policy to burn a significant amount of the token supply is gaining traction, garnering over 13,000 votes in less than 24 hours.

“The Shiba Inu pricing is aiming for the $1, but when it will reach that threshold exactly is anybody’s guess,” the petition says. “Developing a policy that could burn some Shib’s circulating supply will let Shiba Reduce for example this ten year period to five years.”

Currently, there are 549 trillion SHIB in existence , according to data provided by CoinGecko. That number is significantly higher than bitcoin’s circulating supply of 18.85 million. Assuming the petition is approved, there would still be plenty SHIB in the market relative to other cryptocurrencies, limiting its price prospects. However, Indian investors think otherwise.

“Circulating Supply of SHIB is very less for 1.30 billion Indian SHIB army,” one SHIB fan tweeted.

Go to Source
Author: Omkar Godbole

Metaverse Startup The Sandbox Closes $93M Series B Led by SoftBank

Metaverse startup The Sandbox closed a $93 million Series B funding round led by SoftBank, said a press release.

  • The Sandbox is an Ethereum-based platform where players can “play, create, own, and govern a virtual world,” according to its site.
  • Players can own in-game assets in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), such as plots of land that they can build on.
  • The Sandbox token, SAND, has a $2.46 billion market cap, according to data from intelligence platform CoinMarketCap.
  • The startup’s majority stakeholder is Hong Kong-based gaming firm Animoca Brands, an early metaverse and GameFi backer which was valued at $2.2 billion after raising $65 million in October.
  • Other investors in the round include Animoca Brands, True Global Ventures, Liberty City Ventures, Galaxy Interactive, Kingsway Capital, and Blue Pool Capital.
  • The virtual world now has $144 million in gross merchandize value, 500,000 registered wallets, and 12,000 unique land owners, the press release said.
  • The Sandbox has also set up partnerships with names like rapper Snoop Dogg, AMC TV series The Walking Dead, children’s cartoons Care Bears and The Smurfs, gaming brand Atari, and NFT collection CryptoKitties, according to the press release.

Read more: Metaverse Backer Animoca Brands Raises $65M at $2.2B Valuation

Go to Source
Author: Eliza Gkritsi

Coinbase Acquires AI Customer Support Startup Agara

Coinbase acquired customer service startup Agara, according to a blog post on Tuesday.

  • The deal is worth somewhere between $40 million and $50 million, TechCrunch reported citing two people familiar with the matter. The deal is expected to close later this year, Coinbase said in its post.
  • Agara’s main product is an artificial intelligence-powered voicebot used in for customer support.
  • Coinbase said it will leverage Agara’s tech to “automate and enhance” its customer experience tools. The deal also adds deep learnings and AI expertise to Coinbase’s existing tech capacity, and furthers its buildout of a tech hub in India, according to the post.
  • Agara’s team, which is mainly based in India, will join Coinbase, the startup’s co-founder and CEO Abhimanyu told TechCrunch.
  • In July, Coinbase said that it wants to build a tech hub in India.

Read more: Coinbase to Woo India Recruits With $1,000 in Crypto

Go to Source
Author: Eliza Gkritsi

NFT gaming firm The Sandbox raises $93 million in round led by SoftBank

Hong Kong-based gaming platform The Sandbox has raised $93 million in a round led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, according to a Reuters report.

The Sandbox, released on iOS, Android and Windows, allows users to create their own universe inside the game using different elements. In 2018, Hong Kong-based NFT digital property firm Animoca Brands acquired Pixowl, the original developer and publisher behind The Sandbox.

That allows The Sandbox to add in non-fungible tokens in its gaming experience for users to monetize their in-game creations on the Ethereum network. 

The latest round is poised to help the firm expand the metaverse economy beyond just gaming, The Sandbox chief operating officer and co-founder Sebastien Borget said in an interview with Reuters. 

“We are creating this open metaverse. We are positioning the Sandbox against those giant tech companies who are claiming the metaverse to be theirs, offering an alternative where users are first,” Borget was quoted as saying.

The funding also came months after Animoca Brands raised nearly $140 million earlier this year.

© 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.

Go to Source
Author: Wolfie Zhao


Follow by Email
Facebook20
Pinterest20
fb-share-icon
LinkedIn20
Share