Tech, Business, Finance and Everything Else
WeBull is launching their crypto trading service in Australia – just after they re-opened the service in the US.
With companies like eToro – now making the majority of their revenues via crypto trading – it feels like this is going to be an easy revenue driver for WeBull.
via – Cointelegraph
OpenSea, the largest non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, has laid off 20% of its employees. The layoffs come as the company is preparing to launch a new version of its platform.
In a statement, OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer said that the layoffs were necessary to ensure that the company is “best positioned for long-term growth.” He also said that the company is “excited” to launch version 2.0 of its platform, which he said will be “the most advanced and user-friendly NFT marketplace in the world.”
Version 2.0 of OpenSea will include a number of new features, including a new discovery engine, a more efficient search function, and a new social media integration. The new platform will also launch with support for more blockchains, including Solana and Polygon.
The layoffs at OpenSea come at a time when the NFT market is experiencing a downturn. Trading volumes on NFT marketplaces have fallen sharply in recent months, and the prices of many NFTs have plummeted.
It is unclear whether the layoffs at OpenSea are a sign that the company is struggling or whether they are simply a strategic move to reduce costs ahead of the launch of version 2.0. However, the layoffs are a reminder that the NFT market is still in its early stages of development and that it is subject to volatility.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was found guilty on all seven counts of fraud and conspiracy on Thursday. The verdict marks a spectacular fall from grace for the 31-year-old, who was once hailed as a wunderkind of the crypto world.
Bankman-Fried was accused of misappropriating billions of dollars in customer funds from FTX to enrich himself and his associates. The prosecution argued that Bankman-Fried used the money to fund his lavish lifestyle and to prop up his other businesses, including the trading firm Alameda Research.
Bankman-Fried denied the charges, but the jury was not persuaded. After deliberating for just five hours, the jury found Bankman-Fried guilty of all seven counts, including wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering.
Bankman-Fried faces up to 115 years in prison when he is sentenced on March 28, 2024. His conviction is a major blow to the cryptocurrency industry, and it raises serious questions about the regulation of digital assets.
I have just started to do some testing on the Brave Browser. I thought it would be fun to see if it was possible to actually use it consistently and make a little extra income on the side. After using it for a few weeks it didn’t really seem to be paying off. However, the worst part was the inability to move Brave Rewards straight to a Brave Wallet and collect earnings.
Brave Rewards were created first and see to be silo’d outside of other Brave services, such as the Wallet (which is a recent addition).
Currently, if you want to move your Brave Rewards you need to move them either via Uphold or via Gemini (both of which aren’t great choices and yet another account required for little to no reason).
Im hoping in future versions of Brave Rewards and the Brave Wallet they can just simply work together. I would love a world in which I could use my browser (which automatically stops annoying ads and replaces them with a better advertising option in browser that pays me in a cryptocurrency for viewing those ads – then allows me to seamlessly move them into a wallet to either transfer into another currency or put it straight into my bank.
Maybe one day that day will come!
Opensea charge between $70 and $100 dollars when you setup your account and you want to start selling on the Euthereum blockchain. However, you can now choose to mint NFTs on the Polygon blockchain and there is no setup fee and it can be done completely for free.
Take a look here at Opensea.
Moving assets from game to game is going to be a game changer. However, it really requires the game companies and studios to work together – which they haven’t exactly done well in the past.
Fractal is a very interesting company that can hopefully bring more companies together. I could see this working very well on Steam or by a very large company like Activision Blizzard.
Report came out today that Coinbase (COIN) is currently in talks to acquire 2TMM, owner of Mercado Bitcoin, Brazil’s largest crypto exchange.
Mercado Bitcoin has reached 3.2 million customers in 2021, of which 1.1 million were added last year, with a trading volume of $7.1 billion in 2021.
Why it matters:
This gives Coinbase a very strong position in a market in which they have been struggling to gain traction. Brazil and South America overall is going to be a very important market in future for cyptocurrencies.
Katie Haun (who was previously at a16z as the head of their crypto investments division) has started her own venture firm focused on the crypto market and has raised $1.5 billion.
The capital, the largest ever for a solo female founder-led venture, is split across two funds, with the first $500M tranche set out for backing early-stage startups. The remaining $1B “accelerator” fund will focus on late-stage well-established firms across Web3.
Solana is a protocol that is on the rise. Adoption of Solana in terms of developers and DApps have been increasing over the past few years at breakneck speeds – and this leads to more users needing a good wallet solution – step in Phantom.
Phantom is a a crypto wallet focused towards the Solana ecosystem. Here is a great beginners guide to the Phantom wallet – how to signup and how to use the wallet in browser.
Opensea have just announced their own Venture fund, Opensea Ventures. The fund will seek investments in startups working in domains such as NFTs, DeFi, blockchain, and others. OpenSea co-founder Alex Attalah will lead the venture fund.
The fund will focus on startups that produce NFTs, create NFT protocols, produce blockchain and metaverse games, and develop NFT analytics.
This seems like a natural next step to build out an ecosystem fast and potentially tie down some assets for exclusive sale in the Opensea platform.
It has been announced that China’s state-backed Blockchain Services Network (BSN) will soft launch infrastructure for NFTs in China.
BSN said the infrastructure, known as BSN-Distributed Digital Certificates (BSN-DDC), would offer “a diverse, transparent, credible and reliable” one-stop-shop for businesses to mint and manage their own NFTs without relying on cryptocurrencies, which are banned in China.
This will be a very interesting experiment from the Chinese Government as the vast majority of NFTs in the world at the moment are based off the Ethereum network.
No.
Audius has been live for over 3 years now and it is still yet to have a full payment system for artists and record labels.
Audius provide tokens to 5 top artists each week, but that has little to no value for any artist that is going to use their platform with the hopes of reaching more fans and making money from their music.
This feels like it is a completely dead project – even though they have over $1 billion stakes in the platform with a market cap of now less than $500 million.
This has to be one of the most interesting Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and NFT video I have ever seen. It runs through a huge amount of topics and structures and explains them in a very simple way.
After watching the video – there are some points that stand out as great points and others which are kind of irrelevant.
Even after the first 10 minutes there are points in which the previous financial bubble seems to be the exact same structure as what is occuring with NFTs at present. Interesting.
However, this is REALLY WORTH THE WATCH
There has been a lot of talk recently about Stablecoins – how they are being managed and backed against real world assets.
Today the CEO of Circle – that controls the stablecoin USDC – testifies before the House Financial Services Committee
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire confirmed that Circle’s USDC stablecoin is “100%” backed by cash and US debt. Circle shifted the composition of the reserves backing its USDC in September.
A lot of people ask me about crypto currencies and how you can make passive income from crypto. Here is a quick video that outlines the easiest ways to get started for all crypto noobs.
Here is a simple and effective way of explaining Cardano’s proof of stake consensus algorithm.
This videos provides a good understanding in very simply plain english.
Charles Hoskinson is a celebrity in the crypto world. He has been live streaming on YouTube for years now and I have been learning a lot from watching all his videos over the past few months.
If you want to learn about the crypto world and specifically about Cardano and the progress on their platform, then take a look at his YouTube channel.
Dogecoin is crashing!
Dogecoin is down 15% in just the last 24 hours.
Elon Musk was on SNL last night in the US and it has lead to a giant crash in Dogecoin immediately as the credits rolled on the show.