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Here Are Mark Zuckerberg’s Ambitious Plans for Building Out the Metaverse
Meta, the newly-named parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus, has unveiled its plans for the next stage of the internet. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during his keynote presentation at Facebook’s Connect conference on Thursday that the company now considers itself to be “metaverse-first” and detailed its ambitious plans for building out the metaverse — a social, 3D virtual space where people from around the world can connect. “As we move beyond what’s possible today, beyond the constraints of screens, beyond the limits of distance and physics, and towards a future where everyone can be present with each other, create new opportunities and experience new things,” he explained. “It is a future that is beyond any one company and that will be made by all of ...
Facebook Changes Its Company Name to Meta
Facebook on Thursday unveiled its new name, Meta, which reflects its new focus on building out the metaverse. During its Connect Conference on Thursday, the company detailed its ambitious plans for growing the metaverse, including Horizon Home, a virtual version of a home, realistic avatars, new immersive technology and virtual workspaces for collaboration around the world. “From now on, we’re going to be metaverse first,” Zuckerberg said during the conference. “Right now, our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything that we’re doing today, let alone in the future. Over time, I hope that we are seen as a metaverse company, and I want to anchor our work and identity on what we’re building toward.” The company also announced a $150 million US...
Blockchain platform Alchemy raises 250M in Series C led by Andreessen Horowitz
San Francisco-based blockchain web services company Alchemy announced a $250 million Series C fundraising round led by Andreessen Horowitz on Thursday, bringing its current valuation to $3.5 billion. This announcement comes hot on the heels of a late April $80 million Series B, which previously valued the startup at $505 million. Pantera Capital, Redpoint, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue, DFJ and Lee Fixel’s Addition also participated in the Series C round. According to founders Nikil Viswanathan and Jon Lau, the company is “very profitable” and thus far, has not spent any of that money, but plans to use the new capital to build a community around blockchain. Alchemy was founded in 2017 but didn’t launch its product until August of 2020. According to reporting from TechCrunch, th...
More than 40 digital currency ETFs await US regulatory approval
Fund managers appear to be scrambling to match demand from investors as major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) teeter around record price levels. According to a Bloomberg Terminal screenshot taken by Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart, over 40 cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, are now awaiting listing in the United States. The source indicated that four have already been approved by the Securities Exchange Commission, the most notable of which is the Ark 21Shares Bitcoin ETF, created in a joint effort by 21 Shares and ARK Invest. The latest fund applications came from AXS Investments on Oct. 27. They are the AXS Bitcoin Strategy ETF and the AXS Short Bitcoin Strategy ETF. The vast majority of funds pending listing seek to purchase BTC dir...
3 reasons why Curve (CRV) price is trending toward a new 1-year high
This week cryptocurrency traders turned their focus to the pack of dog-themed meme tokens as altcoins like Shiba Inu and Dogecoin (DOGE) saw a surge in volume which resulted in SHIB hitting a new all-time high and the remaining Dogecoin clones booking some juicy gains. Traders are now debating whether the launch of the first Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) kicked off the next leg of the bull market or if meme-tokens rallying is a top signal. While SHIB, DOGE and Samoyedcoin are the hot flavor of the week, there are other tokens which are equally bullish and posses stronger fundamentals. Take for example, Curve protocol’s native CRV token which broke to a near yearly high earlier this week. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since hitting a l...
Decentralized design platform Moralis raises $13.4M in seed funding from EQT Ventures
Moralis, a platform that powers decentralized applications, or DApps, announced Thursday that it has received a $13.4-million investment from EQT ventures. The company said that it expects to use this seed capital for product development and corporate expansion. Moralis seeks to provide the blockchain space with a unique user-friendly interface solely for front-end development, while the company and its developers handle the entire back end. The software can also provide complex services such as node management, authentication and transaction indexing — which are needed for cross-chain networks, layer-two solutions and Web 3.0 applications. Moralis, which has been active since June, was founded in 2020 by CEO Ivan Liljeqvist (also known as Ivan on Tech) and Chief Operating Offic...
Cream Finance loses $130 million to yet another flash loan attack
The attack has severely compromised funds in Cream liquidity provider tokens and other Ethereum-based tokens In what is being termed as the largest theft in the Decentralised Finance sector, Cream Finance has confirmed that it has fallen victim to a large flash loan exploit in which the hacker stole over $130 million. The incident marks at least the third major attack on the DeFi lending protocol since the beginning of 2021. The flash loan attack was first identified by blockchain data analytics company PeckSheild. Cream Finance later tweeted notifying that an exploit on the C.R.E.A.M. v1 on Ethereum was being investigated. The negative outpour from the crypto community regarding the Taipei-based decentralised firm’s inability to safeguard user interests forced Cream Finance to shut down i...
Crypto exchange Liquid attains Japanese derivatives licence
Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Liquid has announced that its subsidiary firm, Quoine Corporation, has acquired a Type I Financial Instruments Business license under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act from the Japanese regulatory authorities. The approval will allow Liquid to commence derivatives trading on its platform, offering investment opportunities to both retail and institutional clients, although a specific date for launch was not disclosed. Founded in 2014, Liquid is one of the world’s largest crypto-fiat exchanges with in excess of 800,000 customers and a reported highest daily trade volume of $1.1 billion across 2021. The platform operates under Japan’s Payment Services Act via Quoine Corporation and has also applied for a license with the Monetary Authority of Si...
Powers On… Why US officials ignore ethics and STOCK Act by trading stocks?
About two weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal ran an expose on the number of judges who held or traded the stock of companies over which they presided in legal proceedings. The article identifies 131 federal judges nationwide who did this during the period of 2010 to 2018. Of those 131 members of the judiciary, 61 judges purportedly traded the public company stock of litigants during the case. Imagine that! It’s quite incredible, actually. Powers On… is a monthly opinion column from Marc Powers, who spent much of his 40-year legal career working with complex securities-related cases in the United States after a stint with the SEC. He is now an adjunct professor at Florida International University College of Law, where he teaches a course on “Blockchain, Crypto and Regulatory Considerations....
Bitcoin hodlers ‘only halfway’ to selling BTC after new $500K price prediction
Bitcoin (BTC) investors will resist selling their coins for a lot longer and the bull run will continue, new analysis argues. In a Twitter debate on Oct. 28, data analyst Mitch Klee delivered fresh evidence that the current bull run is only 50% complete. RHODL demands more upside Using the Realized HODL Ratio (RHODL) indicator, created by popular analyst Philip Swift, Klee showed that Bitcoin is still far from the classic top signals it gave at the height of previous bull markets. RHODL is based on the well-known HODL Waves tool, and its increasing size conforms to bull markets gathering pace — both then top out at once. “RHODL ratio shows seller exhaustion, and we are only halfway there,” he said as part of a Twitter comment. Bitcoin RHODL vs. BTC/USD chart. Source: Mitch Klee/Twitt...
Biconomy raises $11.5M through CoinList token sale
Multichain transaction network Biconomy has concluded a public token sale of its BICO cryptocurrency, onboarding more than 12,500 new tokenholders in the process, the company announced Thursday. The public sale, which was facilitated by token listing platform CoinList, raised a cumulative $11.5 million. More than 850,000 people registered for the sale, which was the largest waitlist on CoinList to date. The sale took place on Oct. 14 via two options of 40 million and 10 million BICO tokens. BICO will be used to power Biconomy’s ecosystem as it vies to attract more developers to the community. The so-called multichain relayer network has been designed to aid developers in building decentralized applications for Web 3.0, a broad term that describes the next phase of the internet’s evol...
Olivia Rodrigo Leads 2021 American Music Awards Nominations: Full List
The AMAs added three new categories this year: favorite trending song (with nominees from TikTok on the year’s most viral songs), favorite gospel artist (to go along with the returning favorite inspirational artist) and favorite Latin duo or group. With this year’s continued expansion of the Latin field, there are now as many awards for Latin (five) as there are for pop and country. That’s remarkable because there weren’t any categories for Latin at the American Music Awards until 1998, when Julio Iglesias took the first award for favorite Latin artist. This year, there are four awards each for hip-hop and R&B and one each for rock, inspirational, gospel and dance/electronic. Three categories that were on last year’s nominations list are MIA on this year’s list: favorite social artist ...
