Crypto Web Plugg

Here’s what happened this week in the world of crypto. Getty Images Welcome to Nonfungible Tidbits, a weekly roundup of news in crypto, NFTs and their related realms. Our lead story this week is Twitter signing on as the first company to use Stripe’s new cryptocurrency payments feature. The social network plans to give creators — people who monetize their video, art and music directly through their relationships with the audience — the option of getting paid in a stablecoin.  We’ll also cover Coinbase launching a beta version of its NFT marketplace, New York lawmakers considering a moratorium on fossil-fuel powered cryptocurrency mining in the state, and a strange cyberattack on a DeFi protocol in which the hacker left the stolen cryptocurrency behind.  Stripe to begin cryptocurrency payments, starting with Twitter Sarah Tew/CNET Online payment processor Stripe said on Friday that it’ll allow businesses to pay their customers in cryptocurrencies. The first busin...

Samantha Boartfield, PharmD, Guest Writer When I first heard about NFTs, I thought it was a load of nonsense. I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about, and I figured that the bubble would soon burst. But after doing some research and getting to grips with the underlying technology, I realized just how powerful this new phenomenon could be. So, the question remained: Should I invest in NFTs? NFTs are essentially digital assets that exist on a blockchain. They can be used to represent anything from virtual currency to real-world assets like property or gold. And because they’re stored on a blockchain , they’re secure and tamper-proof. This makes them perfect for storing and exchanging value in a trustless environment. I think we’re still only scratching the surface of what’s possible with them, and I think many people won’t want to miss the boat like the majority of us did with Bitcoin . So, without further ado, if you’re thinking about investing in NFTs, you should know wha...

Eoneren/iStock via Getty Images Is bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) going to become a widely used medium of exchange? Its lack of acceptance as a means of payment among merchants, as well as its high transaction costs, “is now changing,” Morgan Stanley analyst Sheena Shah wrote in a note to clients Thursday. Room to grow? The global crypto market cap recently stood at $1.87T, which may sound large, but not when compared with more established asset classes like global equities (~$90T), bonds (~$120T), and Gold ( XAUUSD:CUR ) (~$12T), according to 2021 figures. A slew of payment companies, in particular, are looking to expand their reach in the growing decentralized space. For example, payments firm Strike recently teamed up with point-of-sale supplier NCR ( NCR ) and rewards-based payments firm Blackhawk Network, which “could mean that a large number of physical stores, restaurants and cafes in the US will be able to accept bitcoin payments in the near future,” Shah explained. Also, Strike ...

When people think of NFTs, the first use case most of them likely think of is visual art. From Beeple’s $69 million sale of a digital collage at Christie’s to the Bored Apes Yacht Club collection, visual art has seemed to be most prominent use case for NFTs due to close similarities with traditional fine art investing. The fact that digital art can be viewed and replicated endlessly online has led to some confusion for plenty of consumers with what exactly they’re buying, however. “ The idea that someone can just say, ‘hey, this is mine now, I just saved the image to my laptop, and I’m using it as my background,’ — it seems really obvious. But then when there’s a real, true owner, and you can validate that on-chain, it makes that other person look kind of foolish, at least within the web3 community,” DJ and NFT art collector Justin Blau explained in an interview on the TechCrunch podcast Chain Reaction . Blau, who is better known by his stage name, 3LAU, co-founded  Royal , a s...

Compass Mining customer Eng Taing Eng Taing Eng Taing is in the business of making money. He runs his own private equity firm with $250 million in assets under management ( according to his website ), invests in real estate, has worked in data science and analytics at Apple — and he got into bitcoin back in 2013, well before it was popular to make even a passive bet on the crypto asset class. Now, Taing runs 261 personal mining machines generating the world’s most popular digital token. “I just like making money,” Taing told CNBC. “I invest in a lot of things. I have a lot of apartment buildings, I have senior living homes. I have GPU mines,” continued Taing. “I just like to look at where I can get some good arbitrage advantage, and I thought bitcoin mining presented that both from just, ‘Hey, I could get more bitcoin by having miners than buying bitcoin, especially at the scale that I can get into it — but also, that I am a big believer in bitcoin’s future.'” Bitc...

However, there’s always been a sense of uncertainty in the industry: as with all young tech creations that don’t fit into traditional regulatory frameworks, the countdown started early for when the Chinese government would step in. Since 2017, China has maintained a hard stance against crypto unparalleled around the world. The Chinese financial and cyber regulators have not yet outright banned the trading of NFTs, but the silence is casting a long shadow over the business. This new joint statement is not an official statement from the government, but it’s close. “While the pledge letter doesn’t have any legal effect, it is somewhat binding to the members of these three associations,” says Jay Si, a Shanghai-based lawyer at the Chinese law firm Zhong Lun.  While the state is silently considering its move, NFT industry players are trying to stay on the safe side. For example, NFT platforms owned by the prominent Chinese tech companies don’t use the term “NFT” anywhere. Instead, t...

Since the wake of the nonfungible token (NFT) boom, creators have been leaving their Web2 entities in droves and are carving their own lanes in the Web3 world.  It’s not just technologists and artsy-creators who are pivoting toward Web3. For example, former American professional baseball player Micah Johnson pivoted to painting and focused his pieces on representation. In debuting his first digital piece, sä-v(ə-)rən-tē (pronounced “sovereignty’) Johnson was not only fueled by adversity but inspired by a question that would change the trajectory of his work. “Can astronauts be black?” Johnson’s four-year-old nephew asked his mother.   Alas, the main character of “Akuverse” was created in February 2021. Aku is a physical depiction of the confidence and boldness of a little black, astronaut navigating his way through his dreams. The characterization of Aku challenges the notion that dreams are exclusive to certain social identities. 15,000 avatars of a black kid astron...

BEVERLY HILLS, CA  (April 19, 2022) – UTA has signed the widely popular blue-chip NFT project, Deadfellaz, in all areas. The leading global talent, entertainment and sports company will help co-creators “Betty” and “Psych” continue to build the project’s name through exclusive brand partnerships, merchandising, gaming, live events and more. Deadfellaz started as a generative NFT art collection of 10,000 undead PFPs on the Ethereum blockchain and are now a cultural flagship for web3, representing an inclusive and diverse vision true to the counterculture roots of decentralized finance and the arts. Following the initial drop in the summer of last year, Deadfellaz has developed into an ecosystem with millions of followers, a $38 million market cap, a total volume of sales equaling close to 30k ETH, and nearly 7k unique holders called “The Horde,” which includes Reese Witherspoon, Lionel Richie, Steve Aoki, Dillon Francis and Alexis Ohanian. “It is an honor and a pleasure to work w...

Bitcoin ( BTC ) and its stock market correlation are under fresh scrutiny amid a warning that the Dotcom Bubble is repeating itself in 2022. In a tweet on April 22, popular trader Peter Brandt highlighted similarities between the Nasdaq 100 (NDX) now and twenty years ago. “Deja vu all over again” Bitcoin has shown itself to be highly correlated to U.S. equities this year . In particular, BTC/USD recently became attached to the NDX , which has not passed by some of the industry’s best-known names. As stocks themselves come under pressure from central bank inflation-beating policies, concerns are mounting that the immediate future is anything but rosy for crypto. Brandt, who himself gained attention for predicting some of Bitcoin’s historical price bottoms, now believes that the Nasdaq itself is echoing its performance from the year 2000 — the height of the dotcom crash. Calling it “deja vu all over again,” he uploaded a chart showing the structural similarities. Nasdaq 100 anno...

Ken Kragen , best known for his work in putting together the massive ‘We are the World’ and ‘Hands Across America’ projects, has a posthumous venture launching today. The goal is to fundraise with NFTs for charities focused on climate, world hunger, cancer and Ukraine. Teaming with tech firms Cosmic Wire, an NFT arm that has done several prominent projects, including “Rolling Stone Lips Art”, and OneOf, a sustainable blockchain company, Hands For Humanity is Kragen’s final gift of philanthropy. He died on Dec. 14, 2021. A portion of all proceeds from NFT sales will be shared amongst the Ken Kragen Foundation, Unicef \Ukraine, WhyHunger, F Cancer/Generaize , NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) and Ocean Conservancy . Operating expenses for the project are capped at 40%, which will allow 60% to go to the Kragen Legacy, The Kragen Memorial Foundation Metaverse, which is being created as an additional revenue source for charities, and then shared amongst the Ken Kragen Foundati...

The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) continues taking measures to prevent capital outflows amid martial law by enforcing major restrictions on cryptocurrency purchases. The Ukrainian central bank officially announced Thursday a set of restrictions on cross-border operations, prohibiting individuals from buying cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin ( BTC ) with the national fiat currency, the hryvnia (UAH). Ukrainians are now allowed to buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies only with foreign currency, with total monthly purchases limited to 100,000 UAH ($3,300). The relevant limit also applies to international peer-to-peer transactions. According to the announcement, the NBU has deemed crypto purchases as “quasi cash transactions” alongside operations like electronic wallet deposits, foreign exchange transactions and travel payments. By adopting restrictions on such transactions, the central bank aims to prevent the “unproductive outflow of capital” from the country amid martial law. “The ...

European Union (EU) officials discussed banning Bitcoin trading during a debate on a proposal to ban Proof of Work mining according to documents obtained through a freedom of information request.  According to a report , published by German digital culture organization Netzpolitik, officials from the EU went as far as suggesting that an all out ban on trading Bitcoin ( BTC ) should be enforced in order to curb its overall energy consumption. The most worrying comments from the crypto community’s perspective came from a document that detailed the minutes from an EU meeting with Sweden’s financial supervisor and an environmental protection agency in which officials suggested that regulators pressure the Bitcoin community to switch to a Proof of Stake ( PoS ) mechanism, instead of its current energy-intensive Proof of Work ( PoW ) mechanism. A unidentified official in the discussion said: “Ethereum started moving [to PoS] because of its community…if Ethereum is able to shift, we...

Disclaimer: The text below is an advertorial article that was not written by Cryptonews.com journalists. Every day, it appears as though there is a sensational headline story about another crypto millionaire . In fact, over two-thirds of Gen Z’ers believe they will become millionaires as a result of cryptocurrency, according to a recent poll. In 2021, many millionaires were made after tokens such as Solana (SOL) and Axie Infinity (AXS) saw substantial gains of over 10,000%. To become a millionaire you only need to 10x USD 1000 3 times. In this article we look at Polkadot (DOT) , Fantom (FTM) and FIREPIN Token (FRPN) , three cryptos that we believe have the capabilities to do exactly that. Polkadot Polkadot (DOT) is creating groundbreaking technology for the cryptocurrency space. The Polkadot blockchain creates parachains that allow different blockchains to interact with each other. This is highly beneficial as it increases efficiency and scalability for every blockchain on the...

Hello, and welcome to Chain Reaction , where we’ll get you up to speed with what’s going on in the weird world of crypto every week so you don’t have to join 1,000 Discord chats or follow every hexagonal-profile-picture influencer on Twitter yourself — at least, not if you don’t want to. Don’t take it from us, take it from our colleague Amanda , who said: This week, we dropped our very first episode, in which we talked about three juicy news topics, one of them being Coinbase’s launch of an NFT marketplace . A lot of crypto exchanges besides the household name OpenSea are trying to make NFTs a thing, and they’re each putting their own spin on the concept to try and attract users. We talked about a few of the companies in this space and gave our thoughts on which of their bold strategies are likely to pay off. In other, more terrifying news, apparently a North Korean hacker group was behind the ~$625 million Axie Infinity hack — the largest one in DeFi history — and they’re likely ...