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Sky Mavis, creator of Axie Infinity, the play-to-earn crypto game made famous during the pandemic, may have taken a major step towards adding back many of the users it lost after a tumultuous 2022.

The company announced that the newest incarnation of its blockchain-enabled Axie Infinity video game, which allows gamers to battle one another while collecting and trading non-fungible tokens (NFTs) or earning rewards, will be available for download on Apple’s App Store.

Sky Mavis launched the latest version of the game, called ‘Axie Infinity: Origins,’ last year.

Initially the company is launching the game on the App Store in a select number of countries throughout Latin America and Southeast Asia. Sky Mavis co-founder Jeffrey Zirlin said the limited rollout will help the company “gather data around retention rates” before an eventual global launch.

Source: Sky Mavis.

Countries where Apple users will be able to download the game include Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Venezuela, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam, the company said in a statement.

Zirlin said Sky Mavis has been working with Apple for about a year on gaining approval to launch ‘Axie Infinity: Origins’ on the App Store. Apple has historically made it difficult for companies who want to allow users of their smartphone applications to buy, sell and trade NFTs.

Hope Apple comes around to NFTs

The Sky Mavis executive is optimistic Apple’s policies will eventually evolve in favor of web3 companies.

“We are hopeful around adding in-app purchases for NFTs and Apple allowing for the linking to third-party marketplaces,” said Zirlin. “We expect there to be progress in the future.”

Apple’s App Store rules may have stifled adoption of some blockchain-enabled applications as the company has restricted how and where digital assets like NFTs can be purchased using its devices or demanded a 30% cut of in-app sales.

“That is definitely one of the variables that makes things hard,” said Zirlin. “But I do know that there are larger players than us fighting that fight. For example, Epic Games.”

Epic Games, the maker of the wildly popular Fortnite video game, has taken Apple to court to protest the tech giant’s policy.

Axie Infinity grows by word of mouth

Zirlin said for now Sky Mavis is hoping to see a growth spurt after iPhone users download the game.

“Seventy percent of our users come from family and friend referrals,” he said. “So actually being on the App Store… that’s really important for our growth machine.”

He also said that by Sky Mavis’s estimates ‘Axie Infinity: Origins’ is the “most-played web3 game right now” with more than 1.5 million downloads.

From a trading and adoption perspective there hasn’t been a web3 video games or NFT collection that has come close to equalling Axie Infinity’s success.

During the pandemic, Axie Infinity not only introduced millions of people to the play-to-earn gaming model, it also generated more than $4 billion in trading volume, according to CryptoSlam! Data. People in the Philippines for a time managed to make a living playing the game.

“We’re the only web3 game that mainstream people have really heard of,” said Zirlin.

Axie Infinity hack

The attention surrounding Axie Infinity, however, hasn’t always been positive. Last year, the North Korean hacking group Lazarus allegedly stole more than half a billion dollars from the gaming platform after it stopped using the Ethereum blockchain in favor of its own chain called Ronin.

Both user numbers and trading volumes shrank dramatically. Since achieving a high-water mark in August 2021, when Axie NFT trading volume hit $870 million on nearly 1.9 million transactions, activity has plummeted.

Last month Axie NFTs registered $2.3 million in trading on less than 140,000 transactions, according to CryptoSlam! data.

CryptoSlam! data on Axie Infinity NFT trading.

© 2023 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.

The embattled crypto firm Ripple notched a victory in court on Tuesday when a judge denied the Securities and Exchange Commission’s motion to seal documents tied to a controversial speech on cryptocurrency.

The SEC and Ripple have been embroiled in an ongoing lawsuit for years. The commission accused Ripple of illegally selling its XRP token without registering it as a security in 2020. 

A portion of the legal battle has focused on documents linked to a 2018 speech on cryptocurrency by former Division of Corporation Finance Director Bill Hinman, which included remarks on why he did not consider bitcoin and ether to be securities. The SEC has tried to shield the documents and communications related to the Hinman speech, arguing at times that Hinman’s speech reflected his personal views rather than commission policy. The SEC has also said that the documents were part of Hinman’s commission duties and are protected under a statute that grants privacy for internal deliberations.

Judge Analisa Torres disagreed in a court order on Tuesday.

“They are judicial documents subject to a strong presumption of public access,” Torres wrote in the court filing. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

A judge denied the SEC’s motion to seal documents related to a 2018 speech on cryptocurrency.

Ripple cheers judge’s decision, XRP sees a bump

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse applauded the judge’s decision as a win for transparency.

“Another win for transparency! Unredacted Hinman emails to be publicly available soon – stay tuned as the lawyers work through the mechanics to make that happen,” Garlinghouse said on Twitter.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse responded to a court order on Twitter.

A judge previously denied another SEC attempt to shield the Hinman speech documents last year. The SEC and Ripple did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

The price of the XRP token saw a slight increase after the judge’s order was made public. XRP was up 4.64% over the last 24 hours, and the price was $0.447814 as of Tuesday evening, according to CoinGecko.

© 2023 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.

Coinbase Global, the crypto exchange operator, is extending the range of services it offers customers in Singapore.

The move comes as Coinbase takes steps to bolster its international presence, in direct response to a crackdown by regulators in the U.S. — where the company is based.

“The message here is the world is sort of moving on with or without the U.S. and we are very committed as a global company to keep moving forward on international expansion,” said Hassan Ahmed, country director for Singapore at Coinbase.

Coinbase received in-principle approval as a major payments institution from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in October last year. More recently, the company secured a license to operate an international exchange out of Bermuda, where it plans to offer derivatives trading.

This morning, Coinbase announced that it is introducing no-fee purchases of USDC for customers using SGD, allowing users to earn rewards for holding USDC on the platform and rolling out USDC order books for more experienced traders — allowing them to trade over 200 assets against USDC.

The company is also enabling staking for ETH, SOL, ADA, ATOM and XTZ for customers in Singapore.

What sea of pessimism? 

This new functionality, Coinbase said in its announcement, comes in response to the findings of a survey that sampled 2,000 adults in Singapore.

The findings suggest that fully a quarter of Singaporeans consider crypto the future of finance, on par with the U.S. and surpassing the 17% recorded in an equivalent UK survey. It also found that 32% of Singaporeans own or used to own crypto, while more than half those people expect to trade or hold crypto this year.

“Amid what might seem a somewhat sea of pessimistic headlines I think, for Singaporean consumers and users of crypto, we certainly see a lot of resilience come through,” said Ahmed. “The adoption cycle continues to play out.”

© 2023 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.

Retail crypto trading is more akin to betting on sport than investing and should be regulated as such, according to a new report released by the UK House of Common’s Treasury Committee. 

The report, put together by a group of bipartisan parliamentarians, argues that even bluechip crypto-assets like bitcoin and ether “have no intrinsic value and serve no useful social purpose” and therefore should be regulated by the government as gambling instruments. 

The release of the report Wednesday follows a February update from His Majesty’s Treasury in which the government outlined its plans to “robustly regulate cryptoasset activities.” More recently, lobbyists representing traditional finance firms warned that the UK’s plans to regulate cryptocurrencies would legitimize a market fraught with risks.  

The Treasury Committee shares the same concern, noting in the report that the volatility of cryptocurrencies poses serious risk to retail punters. 

“The Committee is also concerned that regulating consumer crypto trading as a financial service – as proposed by the Government – will create a ‘halo’ effect, leading consumers to believe this activity is safe and protected, when it is not,” according to a summary of the findings. 

Trade association CryptoUK disagrees

CryptoUK, a trade association that represents the crypto industry, strongly disagreed with the report’s gambling characterization. 

“We are both concerned and disappointed by these claims which are unhelpful, false, fundamentally flawed and unsubstantiated,” said Ian Taylor, Board Advisor at CryptoUK. “The statement fails to reflect the true nature, purpose and potential of the crypto industry.”

The House of Commons Committee group concedes that the underlying blockchain technology — not crypto itself — may bring some benefits to the financial-services sector. 

“With no intrinsic value, huge price volatility and no discernible social good, consumer trading of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin more closely resembles gambling than a financial service, and should be regulated as such,” commented Harriet Baldwin, the chair of the Treasury Committee. 

© 2023 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.