Business

Bloktopia is a virtual skyscraper in the Metaverse comprised of 21 levels to pay homage to the 21 million total maximum supply of Bitcoin (BTC). Owners of its BLOK tokens will be known as Bloktopians. Users will be able to buy and sell nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, purchase digital ad venues, own real estate, and more in the Bloktopia virtual reality. Meanwhile, Bloktopians can also earn revenue by selling or leasing virtual property in the skyrscraper to interested buyers. Bloktopia in-game footage | Source: Bloktopia  The project, set to launch sometime next year, is built on the Polygon network, a layer 2 Ethereum (ETH) scaling and infrastructure development network. In addition, Elrond, a blockchain sharding protocol, is to become the anchor tenant in Bloktopia, with its virtual HQ...

Billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya has sold 15% of his position in the crypto and stock trading platform and finance company SoFi. The company went public earlier this year through a merger with a blank-check company led by Palihapitiya and was valued originally at $8.65 billion and now has a market capitalization of $17.04 billion. Palihapitiya, a Bitcoin (BTC) billionaire and former senior executive at Facebook, confirmed his move to sell SoFi stock via a tweet on Friday. 1/ Many of us are trying to make sense of what’s happening in the markets these days. Here are some observations and moves we’ve recently made to continue our work: pic.twitter.com/Z4yA7sS3N6 — Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath) November 18, 2021 In his announcement, he stated, “Equity markets, crypto markets, art valuations...

Bitcoin (BTC) is demanding a “slightly bearish” rethink on price action as old support levels give way overnight. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView Analysts sound alarm over open interest Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed a low of $55,640 on Bitstamp on Nov. 19. Capitalizing on its lowest levels in over a month, Bitcoin has failed to bounce significantly since — and now price forecasts are beginning to change with it. In his latest YouTube update, Filbfilb, an analyst at trading platform Decentrader, warned that 50-day and 100-day moving average (DMA) may be all that can aid bulls. BTC/USD then fell through the first, leaving just the 100DMA at just above $53,000. “I’m definitely going to go spot long at $53,000 again,” he told viewers, ha...

On Friday, Binance announced the integration of the Arbitrum One core network and opened Ether (ETH) deposits on the Arbitrum One layer two. Arbitrum is a third-generation layer-two optimistic rollup protocol that runs on an off-chain Ethereum contract and has lower costs and faster transactions than on the Ethereum mainnet. The announcement notes that Binance users can now deposit any ERC-20 token from the Ethereum network with Arbitrum at a reduced transaction cost. In addition, Binance also stated that it will enable ETH withdrawals on the Arbitrum One Network layer two in the near future, making it one of the first centralized exchanges with layer-two support. Related: The power of cheap transactions: Can Solana’s growth outpace Ethereum? Ethereum, arguably the most prominent blockchai...

Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) like Russia’s digital ruble do not pose any threat to United States sanctions, according to U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo. In a CNBC interview on Wednesday, Adeyemo argued that the U.S. dollar “will remain the dominant currency in the world” despite the increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies. Adeyemo pointed out that digital assets provide an “opportunity in lots of ways” for the U.S. economy, but it’s also associated with many challenges such as money laundering. However, there are ways to combat this in order to benefit from the growing industry. The official said: “We do think that ultimately working together with countries around the world, we can address this risk by calling on the creators of digital assets to follow the rules ...

An Australian software developer has created an online repository of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) called the “The NFT Bay”. The repository includes JPEG versions of the NFTS, not the blockchain-secured token itself. Adelaide resident Geoffrey Huntley launched The NFT Bay 10 hours ago containing a 17.96 terabyte archive of non-fungible token image copies that has since attracted a total of 1.2 million visits. The site has the same layout and logo as torrent website The Pirate Bay, where users can download pirated films, video games, music, and other media. However, instead of downloading blockbuster movies, users can download JPEG copies of NFTs. Source: The NFT Bay. In a statement, the NFT skeptic said that the prank has an artistic purpose, describing it as “an educational art project”...

Robinhood’s chief legal officer Dan Gallagher described the idea of creating a new digital asset regulator was “just plain silly” at a conference on Nov. 17. Robinhood is a popular commission-free trading app that offers digital assets, and rival crypto asset exchange Coinbase put foward the idea of a new regulator in October. Gallagher told attendees at the Georgetown University Financial Markets Quality Conference that “it doesn’t make sense” to add additional agencies to “the alphabet soup of Washington.” He went on to say that attempting to transfer authority from agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to another regulator was “one of the stupidest ideas I’ve heard in this space in a long time.” Gallagher p...

Recent research shows that impermanent losses have become an increasing issue for liquidity providers on Uniswap v3.  A Nov. 17 report by Topaz Blue and the Bancor Protocol found that 49.5% of liquidity providers on Uniswap v3 have incurred negative returns from impermanent loss (IL). The report highlighted that Uniswap v3 generates the highest fees of any automated market maker (AMM) today, but IL surpasses those earned fees. The research surmised that hodling may have been a better option for liquidity providers. “The average liquidity provider (LP) in the Uniswap V3 ecosystem has been financially harmed by their choice of activities and would have been more profitable simply holding their assets.” Impermanent loss is a phenomenon that occurs to liquidity providers on automated mark...

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has warned Aussie investors about speculating on digital assets as it casts doubt over the entire crypto sector. During a Nov. 18 address to the Australian Corporate Treasury Association, the RBA’s head of payments policy Tony Richards offered an overview on distributed ledger tech, crypto assets, stablecoins, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). In his speech, Richards raised questions over crypto’s validity and growth in 2021 as he took aim at the amount of capital invested into memecoins such as Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB): “The recent boom in this area is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that was started as a joke in late 2013, had an implied market capitalization as high as US$88 billion in June t...