Day: November 17, 2021

Xbox head Phil Spencer is skeptical about NFTs in video games

Phil Spencer, Microsoft’s head of gaming, commented on his skepticism towards nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, in an interview with Axios: “What I’d say today on NFT, all up, is I think there’s a lot of speculation and experimentation that’s happening, and that some of the creative that I see today feels more exploitive than about entertainment.” As head executive of Microsoft’s Xbox division, Spencer’s words carry weight. Xbox, a game console operating system with the second-largest global market share, is ranked only bee PlayStation. This gives Xbox a lot of power…

Will New Anti-Terrorism Rules Help Israeli Crypto Startups? A Global Regulatory Roundup

The state of crypto regulatory news from India to Russia to Brazil. This episode is sponsored by NYDIG. Download this episode On today’s episode, NLW does a whistle-stop tour of global crypto regulatory news, including: India – set to ban crypto as payment but regulated as asset? Israel – might new AML rules make it easier for banks to work with crypto providers? Sweden – disagreement on mining politics Russia – a new source of global power? Indonesia – is bitcoin haram? As well as news from Peru, the U.K.…

Shiba Inu Coin Faces ‘Reversion’ Worthy of Parabolic Rise

Send the dog tokens to the doghouse. That’s the message from some cryptocurrency analysts who say the stunning rise this year of dog-themed tokens like dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba inu (SHIB) represents little more than speculative froth that might hinder the fast-growing digital-asset industry’s credibility. These “dog tokens” or “meme tokens” were created as a joke but have attracted a wide following of speculators and fans. And as a result they’re still not taken as seriously as other cryptocurrencies that are seeing as bellwethers of the fast-moving blockchain technological movement.…

Is Aave destined to stay the top DeFi lending platform?

Crypto lending has become one of DeFi’s most promising use applications, ushering in an influx of dozens of platforms, tools, apps and participants all claiming to revolutionize how tokens are loaned and borrowed. According to Footprint, the number of platforms in the DeFi lending category grew by 263% to 69 since December 2020, setting a record TVL of $48.44 billion, accounting for 21.04% of all DeFi platforms and networks’ entire TVL. The most important lending platforms to have emerged are Aave, MakerDAO and Compound—they dominate the category in terms of…

Canadian Police Arrest Teen for Allegedly Stealing $36M in Crypto

Hamilton police in Ontario arrested a teen for allegedly stealing CAD$46 million (US$36 million) worth of cryptocurrency through a SIM swap attack on a victim located in the U.S. This is the biggest cryptocurrency theft reported so far in Canada, the Hamilton police said in a press release on Wednesday. The victim was targeted by a SIM swap attack, in which scammers hijack accounts by manipulating cellular network employees to duplicate phone numbers so “threat actors” can intercept two-factor authorization requests, the police said . Some of the stolen cryptocurrency…

BTC, ETH, BNB, SOL, ADA, XRP, DOT, DOGE, SHIB, AVAX

Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) are testing psychologically important support levels at $60,000 and $4,000 respectively. Both these levels are critical to keeping the uptrend intact in the short term. While the fall may scare off leveraged traders, Bitcoin whales seem to be viewing this dip as a buying opportunity. On-chain data shows that the third-largest Bitcoin whale added 207 Bitcoin to the holdings at an average price of about $62,053 per Bitcoin. After the latest purchase, the whale’s holding has increased by 635 Bitcoin in November, according to journalist…

After Taproot, What’s Next for Bitcoin’s Future?

Taproot, a privacy and scalability upgrade Bitcoin developers have long been drooling over, finally activated last weekend. But more upgrades are in the pipeline, being worked on by developers behind the scenes. Taproot is a particularly big upgrade in Bitcoin, called a “soft fork,” which isn’t executed all that often in Bitcoinland. Before Taproot, the last soft fork was SegWit, which activated on Bitcoin four years ago. Soft forks aren’t all that common. Nonetheless, they are an important type of upgrade that has repercussions for many projects building on top…

India to reduce GST paid on cryptocurrency exchanges from 18% to 1% through regulatory reclassification

According to a report from CNBC TV18 India, the nation’s government plans to reclassify cryptocurrency exchanges as e-commerce platforms, which will reduce the Goods and Services Taxes (GST) users must pay per transaction, or per trade, to 1%.  Currently, the Indian Government levies an 18% GST on transactions conducted on registered cryptocurrency exchanges, which is passed to users as trading fees. The process is similar to the tax protocol of stock brokerages in the country. However, depending on the legal domicile of the exchange, the new GST proposal could actually…

FTX, Crypto.com and the ‘Stadium Curse’

News broke Wednesday that Los Angeles’ Staples Center, longtime home to the National Basketball Association dominating L.A. Lakers team, will be renamed “Crypto.com Arena” in a 20-year, $700 million naming rights deal that appears to be the largest in sports history. While plenty of sports fans seem to be mourning the end of an era, others see the name change as a legitimation of the crypto sector as a whole. This article is excerpted from The Node, CoinDesk’s daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news.…

A16z Leads $3.1M Funding Round for Mem’s Social Media Protocol

“Some of the core attributes of Web 3 – such as openness, decentralization and user control – are perfectly suited for a new type of social networking platform that’s optimized around the user. That’s the promise we see in Mem, and we’re thrilled to partner with them to help build the Web 3 social graph,” said Arianna Simpson, general partner with Andreessen Horowitz. Source