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UAE issues first NFT stamps in the Middle East
The United Arab Emirates’ postal operator is issuing nonfungible token (NFT) stamps to commemorate the federation’s 50th National Day, offering further evidence that digital collectibles are gaining mainstream appeal globally. Emirates Post Group, or EPG for short, announced this week that it has become the first postal organization in the Middle East and North Africa to issue digital-collectible stamps. The new stamps, which will be unveiled on the Dec. 2, National Holiday, consist of blockchain-based digital twins that will be sold as digital collectibles linked to their physical counterparts. A total of four stamps, each with a distinct design consisting of a national theme, will be issued. Buyers will be able to see the digital design linked to the physical stamp they purchase af...
$3.3B Bitcoin mining company Griid to list on NYSE via SPAC deal
In a filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, Adit EdTech Acquisition Corp, announced it would merge with Cincinnati-based Bitcoin (BTC) miner Griid at a $3.3 billion enterprise valuation. SPACs are blank check companies created for the sole purpose of acquiring other firms. After the deal consummates, Griid will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol GRDI. The deal is expected to close by the first quarter of next year. According to its investor presentation, Griid expects to mine 637 BTC this year with a total hash rate of 187 petahash per second (PH/s) from all miners combined. By 2024, the company projects it can mine 24,348 BTC per year, with its total hash rate surpassing 26,180 PH/...
Ethereum approaches a new ATH, but derivatives data reflects mixed emotions
Today Ether (ETH) price briefly touched $4,760, exciting investors and reminding the world that the altcoin is a mere 2.2% below the $4,870 all-time high reached 20 days ago. While the spot price action might be intriguing, let’s see what’s happening in Ether’s derivatives markets. Ether ETH/USD price at Bitstamp. Source: TradingView While it is possible to draw a descending channel that shows support at $3,960, today’s 5.4% positive move seems decoupled from Bitcoin’s (BTC) negative performance. Earlier today, commodities and stocks took a hit after the U.S. Federal Reserve acknowledged that inflation is more than just a “transitory” trend and Fed chair Jerome Powell said that the bank’s relaxed money policies could end sooner than anticipated. Retail traders...
Josh Groban’s ‘You Raise Me Up’ Didn’t Violate Copyrights, Court Says
A federal appeals court ruled Monday that Josh Groban’s 2003 song “You Raise Me Up” didn’t infringe the copyright to a little-known 1977 song, ruling that both songs were actually derived from the century-old folk song “Danny Boy.” Ending a three-year legal battle over Groban’s first big hit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a lower judge’s decision last year: That any similarities between the two songs originated in the famous folk ballad, for which any copyright has long since expired. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed in 2018 by a company called Johannsongs-Publishing Ltd., which owns the rights to a 1977 song entitled “Söknuður.” The case claimed that “You Raise Me Up,” written by Irish-Norwegian band Secret Garden but popularized by Groban’s version, was “97% si...
ASM Global Taps Jason Oberlander as Chief Commercial Officer
Venue management company ASM Global is expanding its partnership division with Jason Oberlander, who has been hired as chief commercial officer. Oberlander will be tasked with expanding ASM’s naming rights and marketing partnerships for the company’s arenas, stadiums, theaters and convention centers. “We have the scale, consumer touchpoints and ability to integrate brands in—to music, sports, business, tech and more—that will drive value for the brands, content providers, venue partners and guests,” said ASM President and CEO Ron Bension in a release. “Jason’s extensive experience, particularly with IMG in forging new national partnerships with Fortune 1000 brands, will provide far and away the most diverse and enriching opportunities the industry has ever seen.” Oberlande...
Powell: Fed may pull back economic support more quickly as prices spike
“The economy is very strong and inflationary pressures are high, and it is therefore appropriate in my view to consider wrapping up the taper of our asset purchases, which we actually announced at the November meeting, perhaps a few months sooner,” Powell said at a Senate Banking Committee hearing. He said that, for now, the Fed hasn’t made any adjustments to its plans based on an emerging variant of the coronavirus known as Omicron but that he hoped to have more information before the central bank’s next policy-setting meeting in December. He said Fed officials will be looking at data on transmissibility, whether existing vaccines continue to be effective against the new strain and the severity of the disease it causes. “What I’m told by experts is we’ll know quite a bit about those answe...
Avalanche ecosystem accelerator raises $18.5M in seed funding
Avalanche ecosystem accelerator Colony has raised $18.5 million in seed investments to bootstrap the next generation of Avalanche blockchain projects, underscoring heightened demand for the proof-of-stake ecosystem. The investment round was led by the Avalanche Foundation, an organization overseeing ecosystem development grants, with additional participation from Shima Capital, HashKey, GBV Capital and Bixin Ventures. Members of the Avalanche community also participated in the seed round. Colony will use the funds to finance early-stage projects building on the Avalanche network and to provide liquidity for decentralized finance, or DeFi, protocols. Colony’s community will also have the opportunity to invest in early-stage projects through a process called ecosystem farming. Under Co...
Crypto’s impact on sanctions: Are regulators’ concerns justified?
The use of cryptocurrencies to evade international sanctions from various international governmental organizations like the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, among others, has been a concern for regulators ever since the creation of cryptocurrencies. The rapidly increasing adoption of digital currencies in the last two years makes this discussion more important than ever, especially with the advent of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) like the digital yuan. In an interview on Nov.17, United States Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said that the efficacy of U.S. sanctions would not be undermined by central bank digital currencies. Adeyemo’s remarks follow comments from sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who ...
3D metaverse marketplace MetaMundo aims for 2022 launch with new funding
MetaMundo, a virtual nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace focused on metaverses, has announced the completion of a seed funding round of $2.7 million. Led by Animoca Brands, MetaMundo’s debut funding further included Hypersphere Ventures, Digital Currency Group, OP Crypto, Metaartel Ventures and angel investments from the co-founders of Aave and Rarible, among others. Built upon layer-two network Polygon, the platform lets designers and creators mint, sell and license their NFT assets for usage in virtual and augmented reality, as well as across an array of metaverse worlds including Decentraland, Cryptovoxels and Somnium Space. The announcement states that using the Polygon network provides users with reduced gas fees in comparison with the Ethereum network. One of the reasons we decided t...
NFT sales aim for a $17.7B record in 2021: Report by Cointelegraph Research
In 2010, if someone had told you that Internet memes, digital artwork and Twitter avatars would sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, would you have believed them? Well, these are nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, in a nutshell. NFTs are driving blockchains toward uncharted territory on the backs of cute kitties and pixelated punks. What may appear to be a shroud of speculation over pointless collectibles is actually the clouded horizon of fintech innovation. NFTs represent a turning point. Blockchain technology is now being used to represent assets beyond the chain. In order to understand the thriving and intriguing world of NFTs, the Cointelegraph Research team delves deep into this new space, presenting the findings in the latest report “Nonfungible Tokens: A New Frontier.” This r...
UK Watchdog Orders Meta/Facebook to Sell GIF Platform Giphy
The United Kingdom’s antitrust watchdog has blocked Facebook’s acquisition of Giphy and ordered the social network to sell off the GIF-sharing platform, saying the deal hurts social media users and advertisers by stifling competition for animated images. The Competition and Markets Authority said Tuesday that the deal would let Facebook “increase its already significant market power” by denying or limiting other platforms’ access to Giphy GIFs and driving traffic to Facebook-owned sites. It has noted previously that there’s only one other big provider of GIFs, Google’s Tenor. The regulator also was concerned that the deal removed potential competition from the U.K.’s 7 billion pound ($9.3 billion) display advertising market, of which Facebook controls half. It’s the first time the watchdog...
Canadians Are Now Hitting 2 Billion Weekly Audio Streams
Canadian consumers are now streaming more than two billion on-demand audio streams per week — a new benchmark for the country’s music industry. For the third consecutive week, Canada hit the two billion-streams mark in the week ending Nov. 25, according to MRC Data. The total 2.047 billion streams were up 15.9% from the same period last year. Two billion on-demand streams in Canada are worth about 777,500 Canadian dollars ($610,000), according to an estimate by performing rights organization SOCAN provided to Billboard based on a quarterly average earnings of 0.000389 Canadian dollars ($0.000305) per stream. (“Keep in mind this is an average that considers many platforms each with their own variables,” a SOCAN representative stated. “This n...
