Crypto news
Gaming Platform Azarus to list on Uniswap – onramps multi-million streaming audience to blockchain
San Francisco, USA, 13th December, 2022, Chainwire Azarus will be hosting a keynote stream in partnership with Animoca Brands at 7am UTC on Wednesday, December 14th (11pm PST on Tuesday, December 13th) to reveal the imminent listing on Uniswap of the AzaCoin, an ERC-20 Token on Ethereum Mainnet, which will list on Uniswap on January 11, 2023. Founded in 2018, Azarus has been demonstrating that “streams are not TV” through its highly engaging Overlay Games. With Azarus, streamers run interactive games over their streams to play along in real-time with their entire audience, sponsored by brands. Overlay Games have generated over 4 million watch hours, distributing $2 million in prizes in the form of loyalty points redeemable in the Azarus Store. Azarus is moving into a crypto-native rewards ...
Crypto hotspots continue to thrive despite FTX collapse
The sudden failure of FTX has left many people questioning the impact this will have on the cryptocurrency ecosystem. For instance, it remains questionable whether or not crypto hotspots will continue to flourish or if there will be a decline in innovation. While it may be too soon to fully understand the impact of the FTX collapse, industry leaders within crypto-friendly geographies believe that the FTX failure will not hamper innovation. For example, Dubai — which has been dubbed as one of the most innovative regions for crypto and blockchain development — continues to see ecosystem activity. Most recently, The Algorand Foundation, the organization driving the growth of the Alogrand blockchain, hosted its second annual Decipher conference in Dubai. The event took place Nov. 29–30, ...
Web3 game DOGAMÍ secures $14M total funding
DOGAMÍ, an augmented reality mobile game involving nonfungible token (NFT) pet companions, has completed a $14 million seed funding round, according to a Dec. 12 press release provided to Cointelegraph. The Web3 mobile gaming company raised $7 million led by VC firm XAnge after initially securing $6 million from industry leaders in January 2022. DOGAMÍ, with community members in over 80+ countries, indicated that it has already sold 12,000 NFTs of dog avatars and 12,000 NFTs of canine accessories through a collaboration with omni-channel clothing retailer GAP. The company has also launched its first mobile application, “DOGA House”, which allows users to discover and interact with their “NFT puppies” in the “DOGAMÍ universe” while earning DOGA cryptocurrency. Relate...
‘Old money has all but fled,’ Huobi co-founder discusses challenges of running $400M VC fund
In a new Twitter post dated Dec. 12, Du Jun, co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange Huobi Global, shared new insight on his experience of running ABCDE Capital, a $400 million Web 3.0 venture capital (VC) fund, in June this year. According to Jun, the idea for ABCDE Capital came in March, and by April, it was already registered in Singapore. However, amidst the $40 billion Terra Luna implosion in May, Jun said that “old money has all but fled” after the incident. We chose to start @ABCDECapital at the most difficult time of the market. Hope to bring a glimmer of light to builders and bring more fairness, innovation and strength to crypto industry. https://t.co/GmxFFsG7qL — Du Jun (@DujunX) June 17, 2022 Undeterred, Jun continued that in August, the VC fund was fully operational,...
ConsenSys launches zkEVM private beta testnet
According to a new blog post on Dec. 13, Web 3.0 ecosystem developer ConsenSys unveiled its zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) network for private beta testing. Designed and operated by ConsenSys, developers can deploy and manage decentralized applications using tools such as MetaMask, Truffle, and Infura as if they were using EVM directly. In addition, users can bridge assets between the Goerli testnet and the zkEVM to test their smart contracts and decentralized applications, or dApps. “Testnet participants can also bridge tokens, transfer tokens, and interact with deployed dApps listed on our upcoming ecosystem portal page. We intend to learn whether the developer experience of the zkEVM has the potential to accelerate innovation in Web3 and will be evaluating f...
Senator Lummis still ‘very comfortable’ with Bitcoin in retirement plans
Pro-crypto United States Senator Cynthia Lummis has remained steadfast in her support for Bitcoin (BTC) as part of diversified retirement plans, despite calls otherwise from her Senate peers. As it stands, Lummis seems to be just one of the few openly crypto-friendly politicians in the United States and has notably pushed for progressive crypto regulation alongside Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Speaking with online news outlet Semafor on Dec. 12, Lummis outlined that crypto winter has not shaken her resolve in BTC and that she’d still like to see the asset included in United States 401(k) retirement plans: “I’m very comfortable with making sure that people can include Bitcoin in their retirement funds because it’s just different than other cryptocurrencies.” “I per...
Judge orders CFTC to serve Ooki DAO founders with lawsuit
A United States federal judge has ordered the Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC) to serve its lawsuit to the two original founders of the Ooki decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). On Dec. 12, District Judge William Orrick ordered the U.S. regulator to serve Tom Bean and Kyle Kistner, the founders of the decentralized trading platform bZeroX which was the predecessor to Ooki DAO. Bean and Kistner had already settled charges with the CFTC in September relating to illegal commodities offerings on bZeroX, while separate charges were laid against Ooki DAO token holders, which was served using a help chat box as well as a notice on its online forum. However, when Judge Orrick later discovered Bean and Kistner were alsOoki DAO token holders he reconsidered how the CFTC was to se...
Not medical advice: Bitcoiner implants Lightning chip to make BTC payments by hand
The Lightning Network continues to shock the Bitcoin (BTC) community. A swiss IT Professional called F418 (not his real name) surgically implanted a Lightning-enabled chip into his right hand to make Lightning Network (LN) payments. An X-Ray image of the chip implanted into F418’s hand. Source: Youtube Speaking with Cointelegraph, F418 said he experimented with body modification and LN payments for fun. He does not recommend that Bitcoin enthusiasts take the layer-2 payments network, the LN, into their own hands as he did. “The use is just to show that it is possible and you can do stuff like that.” He added that most people carry cards, it’s just his hand has the wow factor: “It’s funny if you are doing a presentation as I sometimes do presentations about payments and talk to ...
FSB to lay out global standards for crypto regulation: Reports
The FTX collapse spurred action from a global financial watchdog to give recommendations to regulate the crypto industry early in 2023. The Financial Stability Board (FSB), an international organization that monitors the global financial system, has reportedly stated that it will be laying out steps to regulate crypto next year. According to Dietrich Domanski, the outgoing secretary-general of the FSB, mentioned that recent events have highlighted that it’s “urgent to address risks” within the space. He explained: “Many crypto market participants argue that authorities are hostile to innovation. I would say so far, authorities have been fairly accommodating.” Domanski also noted that the goal of creating recommendations for crypto regulation will be to hold crypto p...
$75M worth of FTX’s political donations at risk of being recalled due to bankruptcy: Report
Following the collapse of FTX and its Nov. 11 bankruptcy filing, $73 million worth of its political donations is currently at risk of being recalled to repay the failed exchange’s creditors, according to a report by Bloomberg. Speculators online allege that the former FTX CEO and his executives sought to influence industry regulations with their generous multimillion-dollar donations to politicians and super PACs. Sam Bankman-Fried and executives Ryan Salame and Nishad Singh are believed to have been high-paying donors to both the Republican and Democratic United States political parties. Many politicians who were at the receiving end of FTX’s generosity now face difficulty regarding what to do next, as they may be forced to return the money to the bankruptcy trustee. In order to...
Brazil could cement its status as an economic leader thanks to 2024 CBDC move
As of 2022, more than 30 million Brazillian citizens have no bank accounts, and no credit or debit cards. What’s wrong here? For roughly a decade, Brazil has been passing legislation aimed at changing the situation. However, the results have fallen short of expectations. To better understand the reason, let’s take a step back to look at a historical perspective. The Brazilian banking industry has always been extremely concentrated, historically due to the country’s macroeconomic volatility, the bank’s legacy technology and stringent oversight. At one point in time, the regulator needed some reliable “bulwarks” to build the local financial system and deal with scale. Concentration was an inevitable flipside of that strategy. However, in the past few years, the balance started to shift, with...
13% of Americans have now held crypto: JPMorgan research
Around 13% of the American population — or 43 million people — have held cryptocurrency at some point in their lives, new research from JPMorgan Chase has revealed. According to a Dec. 13 report titled “The Dynamics and Demographics of U.S. Household Crypto-Asset Use,” this number has risen dramatically since before 2020, when the figure was only around 3%. The latest data from JPMorgan comes from analyzing checking account transfers from a sample of over 5 million customers. It found that 600,000 customers in this sample group transferred cash to crypto accounts at some point during period from 2020 to 2022. The study also noted that cryptocurrency holders typically made their first crypto purchases during spikes in crypto prices. During this time, the amount of cash being sent into...
