FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Quick Take

• The main distinction between the physical and the virtual worlds is that lands in the former are naturally scarce. 
• The artificial scarcity imposed on web3 lands is keeping the lands from being productive and potentially leads to a web3 land crisis.
• The article discusses land value tax as one of the ways to curb extreme web3 lands speculations.

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Flowcarbon, a startup co-founded by former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann, has raised $70 million to develop its blockchain-based carbon trading tools.

The round, which included both venture capital funding and a token sale, was led by Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto unit, according to a statement on Tuesday. Other investors include General Catalyst, Samsung Next, 166 2nd, Sam and Ashley Levinson, RSE Ventures and Allegory Labs. Participants in the token sale include Fifth Wall, Box Group and the Celo Foundation.

“Flowcarbon’s mission is to drive billions of dollars directly to projects that reduce or remove carbon from the atmosphere by creating the first open protocol for tokenizing live, certified carbon credits from projects around the globe,” the New York-based company said in the release. “Through Flowcarbon’s protocol, project developers can immediately access a marketplace of buyers interested in their credits by bringing them onto the blockchain. Buyers are then able to purchase live carbon credits directly from project proponents.”

Flowcarbon has launched the Goddess Nature Token (GNT), a crypto token on the Celo blockchain backed by carbon credits. The tokens can be retired as an offset, sold, used for borrowing and lending, or redeemed for an underlying real-world credit, according to Flowcarbon. 

Of the total funds raised, $32 million came from venture capital firms and $38 million from the sale of GNT, according to Reuters. 

A private sale of GNT ends in two days, according to the company’s website, which also allows people to register for an impending public sale of the token. 

Flowcarbon was co-founded by Adam Neumann, his wife Rebekah Neumann, Dana Gibber, Caroline Klatt, and Ilan Stern. The company has 35 employees, with Gibber serving as CEO. 

© 2022 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.

Ethereum scaling solution Optimism has reduced the number of wallets that are eligible to receive its upcoming airdrop.

According to a post on Twitter yesterday, Optimism has removed 17,000 addresses that it thinks were traders trying to deliberately game the system.

This is a process known as airdrop farming, or also called a sybil attack. It’s done by those who are speculating that a project might do an airdrop. To do this, they spin up a lot of wallets and use the application in question across all the wallets, hoping that if each one receives the airdrop, they might make a lot of money.

Optimism said the tokens that would have been sent to these wallets will be redistributed among the remaining eligible wallets.

“Optimism is for the people, not the sybils,” Optimism said on Twitter.

Airdrop farming has hit several previous crypto projects. The most high-profile case was when Divergence Ventures used a lot of addresses to try to game the Ribbon Finance airdrop, a project that it had earlier invested in. It initially earned $3.2 million from this strategy but later returned the money after it was identified on Twitter and a backlash ensued.

On April 26, Optimism announced its airdrop, saying that 250,000 addresses were eligible. It is only handing out 5% of its total supply of tokens, with a further 14% designated for future airdrops. The remaining tokens will be spread among an ecosystem fund, public goods funding, its core contributors and private investors.

In Optimism’s Discord server, an Optimism contributor known as NoobMan said the token distribution was likely to happen at the end of May or in June.

© 2022 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.

A month after making bitcoin a legally recognized currency, the Central African Republic has unveiled plans to create a “crypto hub” to attract global crypto enthusiasts. 

The plans have been dubbed Project Sango, according to a post on the government’s official Facebook page dated Monday that directed people to a landing page at sango.org. After registering for the waitlist, users were sent a link to a 24-page online presentation with further details on the proposed project.

There was no confirmation of the Facebook post on the Twitter account of Faustin-Archange Touadéra, CAR’s president. Although he had tweeted on Saturday that “very soon we will announce the next planned phase” with the hashtag #bitcoin.

According to the presentation, which is filled with images of undulating skyscrapers and sailboat-dotted lakes, the Sango project involves creating “the first legal crypto hub recognized by a country’s parliament.” CAR’s plans include founding a Digital Nation Bank, facilitating land purchases in bitcoin, and developing a crypto wallet.

The government will support crypto firms’ access to natural resources such as gold, diamonds and uranium and institute a “citizenship by investment” program with zero-rate tax on income and businesses, according to the presentation. 

The landlocked African nation ranks among the least developed economies in the world with agriculture the largest contributor to its GDP. According to World Bank figures, CAR’s economic output stood at only $2.38 billion as of 2020 and the country ranks near the bottom of the United Nation’s Human Development Index.

Last month, CAR became the first African nation to adopt bitcoin as an official currency, alongside the France-backed CFA franc.

© 2022 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.

Bud, a gaming platform powered by user-generated content, has raised $36.8 million in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital India.

ClearVue Partners, NetEase and Northern Light Venture Capital also participated in the round, alongside existing investors GGV Capital, Qiming Venture Partners and Source Code Capital, Bud said in a release on Tuesday. 

Founded in 2019 by former Snap engineers Risa Feng and Shawn Lin, Singapore-headquartered Bud describes itself as a “metaverse” platform encouraging users to create and share 3D interactive experiences.

In addition to customizing avatars, users can also create and explore millions of experiences ranging from hangout places to battle royale-style games. 

The company said it will use the funds to further develop its creation tools, grow its global user base and roll out web3 products. The company has also laid out plans to launch its own non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace.

To date, Bud says over 15 million 3D experiences and assets have been created on the platform. User-generated 3D assets have been traded more than 150 million times.

Bud is the latest in a string of companies to indicate it will launch a NFT marketplace as it looks to expand.

At the end of last year, Justin Kan, the co-founder of the video game livestreaming service Twitch, and other gaming industry entrepreneurs said they were launching a Solana-based marketplace designed for gaming NFTs, called Fractal. Former music streaming service LimeWire also announced its comeback as a digital collectables NFT marketplace in March. 

© 2022 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.

Exchange operator Coinbase has become the first crypto company to make the Fortune 500 cut — an annual list of America’s largest corporations by revenue — ranking at 437.

The move comes despite Coinbase’s current struggles induced by bearish market conditions. This is because Fortune has ranked companies for its 2022 list based on their 2021 revenues.

The revenue threshold for the 2022 Fortune 500 list was $6.4 billion, up 19% from last year’s limit, Fortune Media announced on Monday. Coinbase’s 2021 revenue was $7.8 billion, according to Fortune.

But this year so far hasn’t been as rosy for Coinbase, with the company posting net revenue of $1.16 billion and a net loss of $430 million for the first quarter. For comparison, Coinbase’s net revenue for the fourth quarter of last year was $2.49 billion.

As crypto prices have plunged in the past six months, trading volumes have dropped across exchanges. Mizuho Securities recently lowered its estimates for Coinbase’s full-year 2022 revenue to $5.6 billion from $6.7 billion due to a “crypto winter,” according to a Barron’s report.

Amid the market slump, Coinbase’s shares are trading near all-time lows at $66. They fell as low as $40 earlier this month, down 88% from their debut at over $328. 

Coinbase’s president and chief operating officer, Emilie Choi, recently said the company will slow hiring in response to turbulent market conditions.

“Heading into this year, we planned to triple the size of the company. Given current market conditions, we feel it’s prudent to slow hiring and reassess our headcount needs against our highest-priority business goals,” she said. 

Choi reassured that Coinbase is “in a strong position” and has a “solid balance sheet.” She further said that Coinbase has been through several market downturns and has emerged stronger every time.  

It will be interesting to watch whether Coinbase makes the cuts to Fortune’s 2023 list. Fortune magazine has been putting out a list of top revenue-generating companies since 1955. US retailer Walmart has been in the number one spot for the last ten consecutive years.

© 2022 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.

ADDX, a Singapore-based trading platform for digital securities, announced a $58 million pre-Series B funding round this morning.

New shareholders in the business include SET Venture Holding, a subsidiary of the Stock Exchange of Thailand; UOB; Hamilton Lane; and Krungsri Finnovate. No valuation was disclosed.

The money will go toward growing the company and geographic expansion, according to a press release. ADDX has several initiatives in the pipeline, including some aimed at bridging the gap between traditional finance operators and those in digital assets.

The firm uses blockchain technology to fractionalize investments in privately held shares, hedge funds, bonds, and other asset classes.

ADDX has been granted licenses by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) for the issuance, custody and secondary trading of digital securities.

It has raised around $120 million to date, a big chunk of which came in a $50 million Series A round in January 2021. Singapore Exchange and Heliconia Capital, a subsidiary of the sovereign wealth fund Temasek, are shareholders in the firm.

“ADDX is on a mission to democratise the private markets,” said Oi-Yee Choo, CEO of ADDX, in a statement. “The new shareholders aren’t just capital partners, but strategic partners too. They have much to contribute in the form of expertise, ideas, market experience and business networks, and ADDX looks forward to adding value to their businesses in return.”

© 2022 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.

“They don’t like something they can’t control. That is the exact same reason most Democrats don’t like bitcoin. Why does bitcoin make Elizabeth Warren toss and turn and twitch at night? Because she wants her sticky little socialist fingers to be able to control every penny in every one of our bank accounts.” 

© 2022 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.

At the start of a new week of trading, there was an even mix of bitcoin miner stocks rising and falling.

On one end, companies like Iris Energy, BIT Mining and Hive Blockchain (on Nasdaq) saw their stocks drop by -8.16%, -6.44%  and -3.99%, respectively.

Argo Blockchain fared better on Monday, going up +4.66% on Nasdaq.

Here’s how other crypto mining companies performed on Monday, May 23:

© 2022 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.

Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn will be the subject of an ethics investigation in Congress for his alleged ties to crypto.

The investigation by the House Committee on Ethics will look into whether Cawthorn “promoted a cryptocurrency in which he may have had an undisclosed financial interest,” according to a statement issued Monday.

It will also probe whether Cawthorn had an “improper relationship” with someone from his congressional staff.

Cawthorn publicly supported the Let’s Go Brandon cryptocurrency, which was aimed at mocking President Joe Biden, according to the Washington Examiner, prompting North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis to call for a bipartisan inquiry into “insider trading by a member of Congress.”

A first-term congressman from North Carolina, Cawthorn stirred controversy for his right-wing, headline-grabbing remarks and support of former President Donald Trump. Cawthorn lost his bid for reelection in a Congressional primary earlier this month. 

Democratic Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, from Texas, will serve as Chair of the Investigative Subcommittee and Republican Congressman from Mississippi Michael Guest will serve as ranking member.

© 2022 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.