Category: Crypto News

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Crypto News Fashion NFTs

Two New NFT Marketplaces To Launch in Asia As The Craze Continues

Two new NFT platforms are set to launch in Asia to provide marketplaces for digital fashion, art, music, collectables and more. The platforms, based in Singapore and Hong Kong are poised to be launched during Q3 2021.

  1. NFT Trading Platform by Hong Kong Digital Asset Exchange.
  2. Luxury NFT Platform by Media Publishares and VIDY.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s coming.

Hong Kong’s One-Stop NFT shop

According to an announcement from Hong Kong Digital Asset Exchange they are launching a NFT trading platform which is going to act as a “one-stop” NFT shop alongside the exchange, since there are no robust ones in Hong Kong’s current market.

HKD.com provides artists with an online platform for the artworks publishing, promotion, trading and payment, with many product categories, including digital art, encrypted collections of animation, music and movies etc. Trading platform, users can trade through public offer or bidding, and carry out token trading and exchange; while artists can also publish their own digital artworks through the trading platform.

Hopefully, the platform will not only help local artists earn more money from their talents but also develop the art market in the region,

Kelvin Yeung, founder and CEO of HKD.com

Singapore’s Luxury NFT Platform

According to a press release from ACN Newswire, Media Publishares in partnership with VIDY are creating a homage to arts and culture by fabricating a 360-degree navigable virtual environment that will showcase digital fashion, art, music and design.

By creating an NFT platform, which essentially acts as a virtual marketplace between creatives and users, it allows us to provide a unique shoppable platform coupled with content for the community in the form of education, interaction and entertainment.

Michael von Schlippe, president of Media Publishares

The platform is looking to cater to the tech savvy audience that wishes to acquire luxury items and for creators to experiment in the virtual world. The main features of the platform will allow minting, trading, and auctioning NFTs through a tokenised system.

We are confident we will create the finest platform that will boost the NFT world by allowing seamless participation from the traditional fashion, art and music communities.

Matthew Lim, founder of VIDY

More Platforms, More Participation?

Having these platforms up and running will enable various individuals to participate in the NFT economy. Not only helping artists profit directly from their work but also encouraging up-and-coming artists to practise with the virtual mediums and add to the annals of digital art.

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Crypto News NFTs Worldwide

Emoji Usernames Could Become New Internet Identity System

Y.at is making unique identities through using emoji strings that can be connected to everything that’s connected to you.

“Your Yat is your @ for the whole internet”, is the slogan for Y.at, the project that aims to make personalised emoji usernames that could become your universal internet identity and much more. For example, instead of coffeequeen98 or *insert generic email here*, you could be known as 🤖👻👑.

When you own a Yat, it’s yours forever. You own that specific sequence of emojis and that is your unique identifier, since they’ll never mint another like that again.

YAT Examples

Yat Can Be Used for More Than Just Socials

Your Yat can be linked to other services like payment apps, storage locations, or you can make a Yat Link Page that has everything you want inked to you in one place – send and recieve money, chat or build a website.

One of the aims for Yats is to be used instead of long crypto addresses which can increase user experience as well easing the process complex validating and testing efforts to authenticate a crypto address.

The possibilities are endless with Yat. You can receive payments, use it on your socials, and eventually much more. Your Yat can be used as a link like this: https://y.at/🌊🔱🌴 (click it to see it!) and automatically redirect visitors to any website you want.

Y.at

How They’re Made Unique

A Yat’s Generation indicates the time period in which it was created. People on the waitlist are Gen 0 and every year generation increases with one. The other is Rhythm score, is a number between 1 and 100, determined by: length, popularity, and pattern. The higher the Rhythm Score, the more rare a Yat is, and the more in demand it may be.

Our mission is for Yats to become the best, and most expressive censorship resistant, self-directed, self sovereign identity system ever. We care deeply about privacy as a basic human right, and internet freedom.

Y.at

They are in the process of developing an oracle service so that Yats can be issued as NFTs on EVM compatible chains such as Ethereum or BSC, aiming to become fully decentralised in the near future.

Having a Yat can help privacy by not giving away any unique identifiers and having the extra bonus of an identifier that expresses you. However, this could cause a problem with unwanted sites or portals that would be avoided by checking a more traditional URL.

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Australia Binance Crypto News

Bitcoin Hit $80k AUD During The Weekend

Australia flag Binance logo
Australia flag Binance logo

Bitcoin reached A$ 80,000 last weekend on Binance Australia, a new record for BTC and the exchange after several weeks of consolidation.

Binance Australia also added three new tokens to trade on its platform: CHZ (Chiliz), BTT (BitTorrent), and THETA (Theta Network).

These three tokens have had an outstanding performance during the first quarter of this year, especially CHZ, which surged 1,600% as the altcoin market saw a boom while high-market cap currencies stagnated.

BSC Reaching New Milestones

The Binance Smart Chain (BSC) protocol achieved a new record on Friday by surpassing 5 million transactions daily — this is 300% more than what the Ethereum network can currently achieve.

As the number of users in the exchange grows, Binance Australia will host a masterclass for beginners keen to use the Binance Smart Chain on April 14. The event will be held virtually via Zoom or watch the Livestream on its official channel.

Bitcoin broke above $60,000 (A$78,600) moving past $61,000 (A$80,000) on April 12. Data from Glassnode suggest that large bitcoin holders (whales) are increasing their positions and accumulating BTC for the first time in over five months.

Buy and Trade Cryptos Using Aussie Dollars

Binance Australia has become one of the top exchanges in the country and more Aussies seem keen to invest in crypto using their AUD — this is why Crypto News Australia has covered a guide with all the necessary info to get started.

Coinjar also offers a great platform to buy BTC using AUD, especially for those who are venturing in the crypto space for the first time.

Another top exchange is Swyftx, which saw record trading volumes over the last two months. Swyftx’s founders were also featured on a list of top tech innovators in Australia, together with Jeff Yew — CEO of Binance Australia.

Categories
Blockchain Crypto News DeFi Investing

Tidal Insurance Set To Go Live On The Oasis Network

In a recent post, The Oasis Foundation – which sprung from the roots of Oasis Labs, the team behind the Oasis Network – stated that DeFi insurance provider Tidal Finance will be bringing their services to the Oasis Network.

As a company known for providing a selection of pools with risk assessments, Tidal Finance allows investors to hedge their bets depending on how much risk they are willing to take.

More Security For Investors?

The aim of implementing insurance policies on a DeFi network is to protect investors who, although interested in DeFi, may dither due to the relative immaturity of the decentralized business sector. Although DeFi is attracting more and more investors – with over $100 billion worth of assets locked into DeFi ventures – certain issues in the not-so-distant past may still give prudent investors reasons to look elsewhere.

According to the blog post, Tidal Finance will be providing cross-chain insurance for Oasis customers. In return, Tidal Finance will be able to expand the scope of their activity, taking advantage of the confidential smart contracts that are one of the major selling points of the Oasis network.

This integration will go beyond just providing insurance capabilities. The Oasis Network’s unique ability to keep smart contracts and their data confidential, will also allow Tidal to explore expanding their claims process to include anonymous, democratized voting on claims processing with their community. In short, their community could vote on whether a particular claim should be approved in a privacy-preserving manner.

Oasis Protocol Foundation

Confidential smart contracts also have uses outside of the financial sector. For example, a hypothetical medical establishment allowing payment in cryptocurrencies could receive payments this way, ensuring the relationship between the doctor and the patient remains confidential – a cornerstone of medicine ever since the Hippocratic Oath was put to paper.

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Australia Crypto News Power Ledger Queensland

Queensland Solar and Lighting Now Accepts Crypto-payments for Their Solar Systems

Queensland Solar & Lighting will now accept cryptocurrencies as payment for their services with installing new solar systems in Brisbane, Queensland.

The company will accept any of the 250 digital assets traded on Australian-based crypto exchange Coinspot. Customers can choose to pay fully or part-pay in crypto for their home solar systems.

We are excited to announce that we are now accepting any form of cryptocurrency traded on the Coinspot platform to be used as payment for a solar system.

Daniel Jarrett, Queensland Solar & Lighting

Solar Companies Using Crypto and Blockchain

Queensland Solar & Lighting is one of the latest in the businesses to adopt cryptocurrencies. As we reported, Solar Exchange has been recently launched – a blockchain-based program that will allow Aussies to exchange solar energy credits for beer using blockchain. The program, powered by Power Ledger, will allow customers to track the number of beer they have earned, based on the number of solar energy credits exchanged with Victoria Bitter.

Power Ledger is an Australian-based blockchain venture that allows decentralised selling and buying of renewable energy. Last year, the platform completed a trial with electricity provider American PowerNet, making it the first implementation of peer-to-peer energy trading technology in the United States.

Categories
Crypto News DeFi Facebook

Facebook Is Making an Ecosystem For Creators On Polkadot Blockchain

Pontem Network will be the “Kusama” of Facebook’s Diem where users will be able to build their own Defi Strategies, Dapps, and other tools before launching them on Diem.

Diem is Facebook’s multi-billion-dollar growth strategy that focuses on creating a financial institution for the unbanked. Diem will be accessible to anyone with WhatsApp or Instagram and supports smart contracts and advanced features. Additionally,  Diem intends to launch a backed stable coin as its first use case.

Connecting The Regulated And The Unregulated

Pontem is a bridge between the regulated and unregulated worlds that will allow exchanging value between the two. Pontem Network has been approved for two grants, one from Web3 Foundation and one from Wings Foundation. The main goal of Pontem Network is to bring the Move Virtual Machine, Move Language, and the ecosystem surrounding it (Facebook’s Diem as known as ex-Libra) to Polkadot. Nearly 2 billion Facebook Diem users will be able to access decentralised tools and create new blockchain projects.

According to Pontem, Diem has some limitations & restrictions which they aim to solve by connecting Diem to the decentralised world. The network will help Diem users get access to all the use-cases provided by the unregulated society, such as financial instruments, DeFi and NFT, and even games.

Pontem aims to be an attractive choice for creators giving them the freedom to build in any direction on the ecosystem.

Pontem’s DeFi Usecases

As an example, Pontem Blocks can act as blocks of pre-set values used to build and create DeFi tools. Users will be able to mix them in various combinations to reach the outcome they are looking for. And the other part is that such development will be fast and effortless, with no need to write code, since users will be able to use ready-made modules and tools to build their ideas. The platform allows for easy migration to Diem

 It allows users to create their own strategies, unite all operations into one transaction, and give external developers a chance to monetize their own developed blocks.

Pontem Network

Pontem network supplies users with complete toolsets to develop Dapp projects, including a package manager that allows communication with other blockchains.

users will have a chance to take multiple actions such as swapping tokens, providing liquidity, or staking LP tokens* all in one place.

Pontem Network

Integration with existing liquidity protocols, including Ethereum ones (using different Polkadot bridges) will expand the uses for DeFi. And since Diem has so many users the ecosystem could become very popular due to it being a “financial framework straight out of the box”.

Categories
Crypto News NFTs

McDonald’s France is Launching NFTs of its Popular Dishes

Worldwide fast-food company McDonald’s is now entering the NFT frenzy. A recent report by la Réclame informed McDonald’s France is planning to issue a limited series of digital artworks as NFTs.

The Macca’s digital art will represent a box of Chicken McNuggets, the famous Big Mac, sundae and fries. McDonald’s France intends to issue five NFTs artwork for each item, 20 in total.

McDonald’s Wants to Award NFTs to Followers

Rather than playing by the norm, where companies and individual artists create and sell NFT contents themselves, McDonald’s France wants to award the artworks to its social media followers. Hence, it is hosting a contest for its followers from April 9 to April 13, wherein the winners will be awarded the first two NFT videos shared on Instagram. It will host another contest from April 14 to April 18 for the last two NFTs shared on Twitter.

The winners can decide whether to hold or sell the content, according to the statement by Macca’s. 

We offer them in full, without placing any monetary value and with no royalty on them. […] We are giving away goodies in NFT in the same way that we could have created a limited series of 20 copies. The winner will be free to do with it whatever he wants. So if a person wants to sell it, it is possible, but it will not be our doing.

McDonald’s France wrote. 

Categories
Bitcoin Bitcoin Mining Crypto News

Data Shows Bitcoin Miners are Making $50 Million Daily

Quantum Computers Are Not a Threat To Bitcoin (Yet), Expert Explains

Bitcoin miners have been generating much more in revenue over the recent months, according to data from Glassnode – an on-chain crypto analytics platform. The revenue usually consists of the cryptocurrency block subsidy and transaction fees. The increase in miners’ revenue follows the recent growth of Bitcoin in market value. 

BTC Miners Average $50 Million Daily

As Rafael Schultze-Kraft, the CTO of Glassnode recently shared on Twitter, Bitcoin miners have been averaging $50 million in daily revenue for the past 30 days. The current record represents over 300 percent increase compared to the record a year ago, which was around $12 million daily revenue.

Source: Glassnode

Overall, Bitcoin miners netted about $1.5 billion mining revenue in March alone, most of which came from the block subsidies paid to them.

BTC miners’ revenue has increased over the past few months. As of January, miners generated about $1.1 billion in revenue, which also represented about a 62 percent increase from the revenue in December. 

Source: Coindesk

Note that, Bitcoin block reward was recently halved to 6.25 BTC on May 11, which is 50 percent less than rewards in the months before. Yet, miners are still able to generate this much in revenue, mostly because of the increase in the price of Bitcoin.

Since Bitcoin’s third halving, the value of the cryptocurrency has increased by over 550 percent.

Most Miners are HODLing

Despite the massive increase in miners’ revenue, on-chain data from Glassnode also confirmed that they are HODLing most of their BTC rewards. For the past weeks, the miner net position change has remained positive, as Crypto News Australia reported on Wednesday. This means that BTC miners have been accumulating new Bitcoin for the stated period. This is quite bullish in the long-term, as it creates scarcity for BTC.

Categories
Banking Crypto News Forex Institutions Trading

Big Banks Are Setting Up To Trade Bitcoin, Forex and Other Digital Assets

State Street, the second oldest bank in the USA, is going to interchange its Forex infrastructure to create a bank-grade platform for digital assets – set to go live in the middle of the year.

State Street Corporation, the parent company of State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) is the world’s fourth-largest investment management corporation, with approximately $3.5 trillion assets under management (AUM), and $38.8 trillion under custody and administration. It’s also the second-largest custodian bank in the world.

According to a press release from Pressat, Pure Digital has made an agreement with State Street to use Currenex, a cutting-edge trading technology, as the backbone for their “new and unique wholesale digital currency trading platform”.

We are excited to partner with Currenex, an industry leader in FX, on this initiative; as we work to transpose FX infrastructure to the crypto space via a bank-led consortium.


Lauren Kiley, CEO of Pure Digital

A Platform Specifically For Banks

The Pure Digital trading platform will be the first of its kind, offering a wholesale inter-bank market for Tier 1 investment banks to trade bitcoin and other digital assets. Pure Digital is in discussions with several other Tier 1 investment banks to use the platform.

The platform will be an over-the-counter (OTC) offering with bilateral credit lines and full transparency so that the banks can see exactly who they’re dealing with. When asked whether they would be using the platform for their own crypto trading, Kiley replied:

That is the intention – State Street is one of the many banks that will be using this platform and we are looking at midway through 2021, although no date is set.

Lauren Kiley, CEO of Pure Digital

Big Banks Are Starting to Offer Crypto Services

Now that other big banks like BNY Mellon, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley have dipped their toes in crypto. The eyes have been on State Street now, as one of the biggest U.S. custody providers and trading operations, to see if it would move into crypto as well.

It (cryptocurrency) needs large balance financial institutions involved in the manufacturing process of price. The primary market doesn’t really exist. There’s a lot of disparate exchanges out there with different rules of engagement and systems. And this manifests itself in very fragmented market data.

Campbell Adams, founder of Pure Digital

The boost that these big institutions give to the cryptocurrency industry through investing in it and making it available for others to invest in is a major help to the ecosystem.  On the other hand, banks need to cater to the needs of their customers, and if they fail to do so they may become irrelevant.

Currently no Australian banks offer crypto services, but will we see this happen in 2021?

Categories
Binance Crypto News

Binance Set to Acquire 20 – 30 Crypto Startups Yearly Says CEO

Binance Set to Acquire 20 - 30 Startups Yearly, Says Changpeng Zhao (CZ)

Binance is planning to acquire 20-30 cryptocurrency related startups per year according to CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ).

With over $800 million in revenue last year, CZ said Binance is self-sufficient and doesn’t need huge funding for growth. 

“My view is I’m not an expert in these areas, and it’s better for us to find strong teams that are already doing this well. We plan to do somewhere between 20 and 30 acquisitions a year. Most are smaller acquisitions—we don’t announce them”

CZ

Leading Exchanges Are Going Public

Leading cryptocurrency exchanges including Coinbase, are preparing to go public in the stock market. But Binance isn’t bothered by this new trend and is focusing to expand with more startup acquisitions.

“Right now, we’re not looking at going public, and we’re not looking at an IPO. We are cash-­sufficient, so we’re able to grow ourselves. We don’t need a huge amount of money, we are profitable, and we are growing,”

CZ

Binance Acquisitions So Far

Binance has already made some huge acquisitions over the past few years which include crypto exchanges, crypto wallets, crypto debit cards and dencentralised apps.

CompanyDatePriceReported
CoinMarketCap – Leading crypto price tracking website2020undisclosed ~ $400 Millionannouncement
Swipe – Crypto debit cards2020undisclosedannouncement
BxB – Korea-Based Stablecoin Company2020undisclosedannouncement
WazirX – Indias leading crypto exchange2019undisclosed ~ $5-10 Millionannouncement
DappReview – Decentralized app reviews website2019undisclosedannouncement
JEX – Derivatives exchange 2019undisclosedannouncement
Trust Wallet – Crypto wallet2018undisclosedannouncement
Binance Acquisitions