roadrunner

The chief operating officer (COO) of Robinhood Crypto has provided an update on the company’s upcoming cryptocurrency wallet launch. The executive also discussed Robinhood’s listing strategy in response to the question of whether the platform will list shiba inu (SHIB) cryptocurrency. Robinhood Crypto’s COO Discusses Listing Strategy as Petition to List SHIB Gains More Supporters Christine Brown, Robinhood Crypto’s COO and VP of Product Operations, talked about her company’s crypto strategy at a conference Tuesday held by Yahoo Finance and Decrypt. She also provided an update on Robinhood’s upcoming crypto wallet launch. Replying to a question about whether Robinhood will list shiba inu (SHIB) and what the considerations are for adding the meme cryptocurrency, the Robinhood Crypto COO noted: “When it comes to our strategy of what we are going to list, the first thing is that we’re not going to talk about it. So I’m not going to break that news here, unfortunately.” She elaborated: But I also think our strategy is a little bit different than a lot of other players out there who are just racing the list as many assets as possible right now. “We think that the short-term gain that we might get is not worth the long-term trade-off for our users,” she clarified. “We want to make sure we are working and assessing everything from a regulatory perspective very well. And we are a safety-first company so that’s how we’re going to play it.” Many shiba inu crypto supporters have been asking Robinhood, “When SHIB?” A petition on Change.org urging the trading platform to list the meme crypto has received more than 526K signatures at the time of writing. Commenting on the prospect of Robinhood listing SHIB in particular, Brown opined: One of my favorite things is seeing the community around these coins really engage with us, really let us know what they want. Crypto Wallet Launch, Q3 Earnings, and Crypto Investing Strategy Brown also shared some news about the upcoming crypto wallet launch Robinhood recently announced. Robinhood’s crypto wallet will allow its users to move supported cryptocurrencies in and out of their brokerage accounts. Noting that it has been “a few weeks” since the announcement, the COO revealed: “We are currently at a waitlist of 1.6 million users who are waiting for this product.” She detailed: “We are actively in our alpha so we do have users we are onboarding who are actually getting access to this product today, right now. But we are moving slowly, precisely because we are a safety-first company. We want to build features that have the right security in mind with our users and what they’re going to be doing.” The COO shared some details of what the company is working on behind the scenes for the wallet over the last few months. “Things that we’re doing, we’re building MFA [multifactor authentication] in-app, so we know … you’re actually initiating a transfer. We’re adding checks on transactions to kind of see what wallet they’re going to, make sure that they’re safe or low risk. And that’s one of the reasons why it’s going to take us a little bit longer to roll this out.” Nonetheless, Brown confirmed: We are still on track for a Q1 general availability, late Q1. Robinhood recently reported its third-quarter earnings results showing transaction-based revenue from cryptocurrency trading of $51 million compared to $233 million in the second quarter. About 40% of its cryptocurrency transaction-based revenue was attributable to transactions in dogecoin (DOGE). While the platform’s crypto transaction-based revenue fell in Q3, Brown pointed out that “Year-over-year, we are still up 800%,” emphasizing, “The retail market is cyclical so we are going to see up, we are going to see down, we should be ready for that.” She also commented on the opinions of some crypto skeptics claiming that crypto investing is either “crazy or stupid.” Brown noted: 57% of Americans, the majority of Americans, have a long-term outlook on crypto. It’s not people that are just getting in and gambling and wanting to see a quick pop. Do you think Robinhood will list SHIB? Let us know in the comments section below. View the full article

Following the string of 20 block rewards spent on Wednesday, an idle bitcoin wallet that was created on July 10, 2013, transferred 2,207 so-called ‘sleeping bitcoins’ worth over $147 million. Both of these massive transactions took place on the same day bitcoin reached an all-time price high at $69,000. 2013 Whale Transfers 2,207 Bitcoin Worth $147 Million On Wednesday, November 10, 2021, a ‘forgotten’ stash of bitcoins that sat idle for eight years and four months woke up for the first time since the wallet’s creation. The action was caught by Btcparser.com and the massive whale spent 2,207 bitcoin worth well over $147 million. The original address was first created on July 10, 2013, and it contained approximately 2,207.60 BTC which was split into two addresses. The first output sent 300 BTC while the second output sent 1,907.5997 BTC and the rest of the funds were used for network fees. The privacy of the transaction from 2013 got a score of 45 (low privacy) on Blockchair’s privacy-o-meter transaction tool. A total of three vulnerabilities were discovered in the transaction worth $147 million and one included matched addresses that were identified. Today’s whale action is similar to the dormant address move with a wallet stemming from the same year saw strange activity in May 2021. At the time, the activity from bitcoins obtained in 2013, also saw re-distribution transfer. The transferred 2,207 bitcoins worth over $147 million that derived from an address created on July 10, 2013, follow the 20 block reward whale spend that happened at around 1:30 a.m. (ET). The 20 decade-old block rewards from 2010 spent on Wednesday saw a “critical” privacy score on Blockchair’s privacy-o-meter and scored a zero. The transaction which saw the movement of 1,000 BTC from 2010 suffered from a total of five privacy vulnerabilities. Unlike the 1,000 BTC transfer which saw the transfer of the corresponding bitcoin cash (BCH), but not the transfer of the 1,000 bitcoinsv (BSV), the 2013 whale move did not touch the BCH or BSV. There are 2,207 bitcoin cash unspent waiting in the original address today worth $1.5 million and 2,207 bitcoinsv worth $426,000 sitting idle as well. Between the 2010 whale and the 2013 whale, 3,207 BTC was transferred by just two entities, as bitcoin (BTC) skyrocketed to $69K on Wednesday. BTC dropped in value after tapping the $69K handle to a low of $62,857 at 4:30 p.m. (ET) on November 10. What do you think about the massive 2013 whale transfer that took place the same day 20 block rewards from 2010 were spent and BTC smashed an all-time price high? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. View the full article

PRESS RELEASE. Charity donation project MUNCH announces the ground-breaking milestone of donating over 1000 ETH to various charitable projects, making MUNCH the world’s leading charitable crypto project. MUNCH is a Defi project that incorporates automatic donations into financial transactions. 3% of every MUNCH transaction is diverted, automatically converted to ETH, and then routed to a community-chosen and verified charity. It requires no action or decision making and gives people autonomy over their investments. MUNCH converts donations at the point of the transaction and sends it directly to the charity’s wallet address. This means that donations do not destabilize the token’s value and the charities can either store the ETH which has a relatively stable value or choose to auto-convert directly to FIAT as soon as they receive the donations. Utilizing blockchain technology creates a system of automated, trustless donations, MUNCH has just celebrated the tremendous milestone of donating over 1000 ETH. (Valued at $4,205,120 at the time of writing). With no processing required, the crypto donated by MUNCH has been collected and is already in action around the world! Since launching in April 2021, the 1000 ETH generated by the MUNCH community has been sent to 4 different community-chosen causes. These causes supported by MUNCH are already feeling the impact of the funds donated by the MUNCH community, with real-world results. GiveWell: Maximum Impact Fund The MUNCH Project raised & donated to GiveWell 738.87 ETH (Est. $2,700,000) GiveWell is a charity that represents the principles of MUNCH and sets the highest standard for our charity selection procedure. By going to the Maximum Impact, GiveWell’s research suggests that this money will go towards saving over 600 lives. You can watch a video from GiveWell explaining the impact of these donations here. The Yellow Brick Road Project The MUNCH Project raised & donated to Yellow Brick Road Project 134.37 ETH ( Est. $467,610,89 ) The next cause supported by MUNCH highlights the power of community to shed light on untold stories. The Yellow Brick Road Project is a charitable foundation with a mission to fund research to identify, understand, treat, and ultimately cure those impacted by HNRNPH2 mutations. Their work aims to identify more individuals with HNRNPH2 mutations, connect families impacted by HNRNPH2 in order to contribute to the understanding of the disorder. In 2020, the YBRP awarded its first research grant at a cost of $420,000. After making the first 3 payments, the project was struggling to raise additional funds. MUNCH’s donations amounted to $320,000 enabling them to continue their research project and giving them funds to explore other research avenues and enhance the lives of people affected. charity: water The MUNCH Project raised & donated to charity water 91.04 ETH (Est. $315,469,08) charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing countries. Founded in 2006, they have the ambitious goal of ending the global water crisis through sustainable, community-led water projects. Since their inception, charity: water has funded 64,999 water projects, across 29 countries, helping over 12 million people gain access to clean water. On average, it costs $40 to bring clean water to one person. MUNCH’s contributions will fund more than 30 water projects, providing lasting access to clean, fresh water for entire communities. MUNCH became the first official crypto partner of charity: water, joining companies such as Google. Save the Children The MUNCH Project raised & donated to Save the Children 31.55 ETH ( Est. $132,139.54 ) Thanks to their long history and wealth of experience, Save The Children operates with a very efficient financial model. When you give to Save the Children, 85% of every dollar goes straight to lifesaving relief to children. This means $50 can provide enough food to keep 3 children from going hungry for a month. The money provided by the MUNCH community will make a significant impact in the formative years of hundreds of people. “We are proud to worked with, and have been able to support these wonderful projects and are delighted to see the positive actions made possible through crypto.” Next up: The Manny Pacquiao Foundation The next charity supported by the MUNCH project will be the Manny Pacquiao Foundation, as voted for by our community. The foundation supports front line efforts to reduce inequality and inequity across the world. Since launching the vote on October 31st, the MUNCH project has already donated close to 20 ETH! Connecting crypto to causes with the MUNCH Charity Circle As the leader in the crypto donation space, the MUNCH Charity Circle also enables any crypto project to donate to the cause we connect with. MUNCH utilizes their relationships with established charities to attract other projects, establish communication, technical onboarding, and verification processes to help other crypto projects donate in a trustless, fungible, and verifiable way. MUNCH has already welcomed many projects to the Charity Circle, including Kishimoto Inu, Safemoon Inu, Kingdom X100 and BankEth. Donations from these projects through the Charity Circle now total close to 30 ETH. You can read more about the MUNCH project here. Contact: Team@munchproject.io This is a press release. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the promoted company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in the press release. View the full article

The largest stablecoin by market capitalization, tether has announced the launch of tethers on the Avalanche blockchain protocol. The stablecoin tether has launched a myriad of blockchain networks and today there’s more than 74.8 billion tethers in circulation today. Tether Launches on Avalanche On Wednesday, Tether Operations Limited, the firm that issues the stablecoin asset tether (USDT) has announced the launch of USDT on Avalanche (AVAX). The crypto exchange Bitfinex has also revealed it will support Avalanche-native USDT tokens on the exchange. Avalanche (AVAX) is a smart contract platform that is both compatible and a competitor of the blockchain protocol Ethereum (ETH). “Tether’s token’s launch on Avalanche will aim to support the long-term growth and sustainability of the Avalanche network while driving stablecoin usage across the defi ecosystem,” the company explained on Wednesday. “USDT on Avalanche is an essential building block for DeFi users,” Emin Gün Sirer, the director of the Avalanche Foundation explained in a statement. “Tether has become a well-accepted, time-tested stablecoin with extensive support throughout exchanges. It will be even more powerful with Avalanche as its foundation,” the Avalanche Foundation director added. Over the last 30 days, the native asset on the Avalanche chain (AVAX) has increased in value by 59.9%, and year-to-date, AVAX has swelled by 2,554% in value. Statistics from defillama.com’s defi dashboard show Avalanche has $10.45 billion total value locked in defi protocols today. Tether’s reserve transparency page notes that as of November 10, 2021, there’s approximately 74,863,439,905 tether (USDT) in existence. “We’re excited to launch USDT on Avalanche, offering its growing and vibrant community access to the most liquid, stable, and trusted stablecoin in the digital token space,” Paolo Ardoino, the CTO at Tether remarked during the announcement. Tether is already issued on blockchain networks such as Omni Layer, Ethereum, Algorand, Bitcoin Cash, EOS, Liquid, Solana, and Tron. “For those who believe in the development of Layer-1 blockchain platforms Avalanche represents an evolved project that boasts Ethereum Virtual Machine compatibility and could be an essential driver for developers looking to port decentralized applications over from Ethereum,” Ardoino added. The second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization, usd coin (USDC) also has plans to be issued on a myriad of different blockchain networks. USDC has a market valuation of around $34.6 billion and there’s $145 billion in stablecoins today. Both tether (USDT) and usd coin (USDC) dominate the market in terms of market capitalization. Today, the tethers in circulation represent 51% of the $145 billion stablecoin economy. What do you think about the stablecoin tether (USDT) launching on the Avalanche network? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. View the full article

On November 9, the two-time Grammy-nominated producer and DJ, Steve Aoki, announced a new partnership with the popular comic book artist and Spawn creator Todd McFarlane. The two plan to launch a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace that leverages the Solana blockchain. The NFT marketplace will be called Odd Key and Aoki and McFarlane aim to launch the platform on November, 18. Grammy-Nominated DJ and Spawn Creator to Launch NFT Marketplace Called Odd Key Next week on November 18, the DJ Steve Aoki and comic book artist Todd McFarlane will be launching an NFT marketplace “designed to empower creators to showcase and sell authenticated digital art.” The launch announcement sent to Bitcoin.com News explains that the new NFT marketplace will be named Odd Key and one of the first drops on the platform will be McFarlane’s notorious “Spawn #1” from 1992. That was the year McFarlane helped form the firm Image Comics and the Canadian comic book creator’s first issue of Spawn sold close to 500,000 copies worldwide. “Spawn #1” is one of the largest monthly title releases from Image Comics in 25 years. “This will be the first time in 30 years that Todd McFarlane has authorized or authenticated any original art for sale, digital or otherwise, and the first time Spawn original art will be made available to the public,” statements sent to Bitcoin.com News disclose. Furthermore, following the initial launch, different sections of the marketplace will go live and the market will have a featured artist section and a section for lesser-known artists called “Artist Alley.” The partnership announcement between McFarlane and Aoki explains that the Odd Key market was built off the “same mentality” McFarlane established with Image Comics. “I wanted to create a world where creators create freely,” McFarlane remarked about Odd Key’s creation. “[A place] where creators could control their creative and financial freedom the way that I was able to,” the comic book artist added. Odd Key Marketplace Aims to Leverage Solana Blockchain and Metaplex Protocol Steve Aoki has been involved with non-fungible token (NFT) assets for a while now and the producer and DJ sold his first NFT collection with Antoni Tudisco for $4.25 million on the platform Nifty Gateway. The announcement explains that similar to McFarlane, Aoki has strong roots as an independent creator and in 1996 he founded his indie record label Dim Mak Records. “I think that Todd and I both see a bit of ourselves in one another,” Aoki said in a statement. “We are both outsiders who’ve somehow made it in a world of insiders. Recognizing that NFTs could empower young creators to carve their own paths to discovery and financial freedom, we wanted to provide a platform to help them reach their audience.” The project further noted that the Odd Key storefront will be leveraging the Solana blockchain network and Metaplex’s decentralized protocol marketplace. NFTs minted via the Metaplex protocol will be stored on Arweave, a network that the creators call a “permanent hard drive built on two novel technologies.” The native tokens for the Solana (SOL) and Arweave (AR) blockchain networks have seen significant gains in 2021. What do you think about Steve Aoki and Todd McFarlane launching an NFT marketplace called Odd Key? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. View the full article

Cryptocurrency mining should be recognized as an entrepreneurial activity under Russian law and taxed accordingly, representatives of key ministries in Moscow and the parliament have indicated. Officials believe the regulatory move would benefit both the state and the crypto industry. Russian Government to Collect Millions of Dollars in Taxes After Legalizing Crypto Mining While the law “On Digital Financial Assets” — which entered into force in January this year — regulates certain crypto-related activities such as “digital currency issuance,” it does not explicitly mention cryptocurrency mining. The sector remains unregulated, the Russian Ministry of Finance has recently acknowledged in comments to the local press. The industry has been expanding in Russia which is rich in energy resources and ranks among the world’s top destinations in terms of share of the global hashrate. According to the Ministry of Economic Development, Izvestia wrote in an article, mining should be regulated precisely as an entrepreneurial activity as it fits in the legal definition provided in the Civil Code. It emphasized this would allow the government to tax miners’ revenue and increase budget receipts. Alexey Minaev, deputy director of the ministry’s Digital Economy Development Department, told the Russian daily: This is exactly an area in which the state can benefit in the form of taxes, and people can legalize their income, big business is also becoming more and more interested in this. Valery Petrov, vice president for market development and regulation at the Russian Association of Cryptoeconomics, Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain (Racib), noted that miners rarely return the proceeds from minted cryptocurrency to Russia as they find it difficult to prove the funds have been obtained legally. The annual revenues from the mining of bitcoin (BTC) alone have been estimated at $19.7 billion, with Russia accounting for around 12% of the total amount, or $2.4 billion. Petrov claims the Russian Federation has lost millions of dollars in recent years due to the failure of the government to regulate and tax the business. The idea of recognizing mining as an entrepreneurial activity has been backed by the Ministry of Energy, which thinks this would allow authorities to distinguish between electricity consumption for private and corporate use. The move has also won support in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, where the chairman of the important Financial Market Committee, Anatoly Aksakov, called for such a solution back in September. While admitting that mining is not prohibited even now, the lawmaker pointed out that its taxation is not clear yet. Aksakov also suggested that it’s worth considering raising electricity tariffs for cryptocurrency miners as they currently buy power at regular rates. The deputy noted that most entities in the sector don’t pay any taxes at the moment and added that large mining enterprises would like to be legalized. True to its hardline stance on decentralized digital money, the Bank of Russia has stated that it does not support any initiatives that promote the emergence of “monetary surrogates,” a term it often uses to describe cryptocurrencies. The central bank opposes their legalization in the country and maintains that the ruble is the only legal tender under Russian law. The Finance Ministry insists, however, that the legal status of crypto mining should be determined as part of the rules pertaining to the circulation of digital currencies. Do you think Russia will adopt business-friendly regulations for its growing crypto mining industry? Share your expectations in the comments section below. View the full article

Brave, the company behind the Brave browser, has partnered with Solana to provide support for the blockchain directly from its browser. According to a press release, the Brave browser will now default to Solana for cross-chain and decentralized app support. Brave users, that are now in the millions, will have access to a Solana wallet within the app. This feature is expected to roll out during the first half of 2022. Brave Partners With Solana to Offer Dapp Support Brave, the company in charge of the development of the Brave browser, a leading privacy-first web browser, has announced it is partnering with Solana, a top five smart contract enabled cryptocurrency, to offer support for Solana-based apps directly from the browser. The announcement was made during Solana’s Breakpoint conference, where Brave’s CEO Brendan Eich praised the scalability and functionality that Solana would offer for Brave users. At the event, Eich stated: With more and more users and creators requiring tools for fast and affordable access to the decentralized Web, this integration will seamlessly pave the way for the next billion crypto users to harness applications and tokens. Brave’s 46 million users will soon have access to Solana support by default. Brave will keep supporting the Ethereum ecosystem, but with this integration, it is clearly taking a chain agnostic view, and it intends to keep integrating support for other chains in the future. Scalability and Brave’s Themis Protocol Solana has been one of the most prolific ‘Ethereum killer’ tokens on the market, seeking to take advantage of Ethereum’s weaknesses and high fees due to its inability to scale. Its token, launched less than two years ago, is already in the top five cryptocurrencies rated by market cap. Its ability to manage more transactions with lower fees is one of the reasons for this. Brave mentions that “transaction fees seen on Ethereum (due to increased interest in crypto and DeFi) have held some users back from transacting.” The new partnership aims to open the possibility for more people to use Brave’s platform combined with Solana’s low-fee environment. Still, it is important to note that Solana itself has not been exempt from its own criticisms. The perceived benefits of Solana are likely one of the reasons that Brave is offering support for the network, pivoting from its Ethereum-only approach. Another reason is that the browser will implement Themis protocol, one of the most important aspects of Brave’s roadmap, on top of Solana. In exchange, Solana will encourage developers to use BAT on Solana-based dapps. What do you think about Brave’s partnership with Solana? Tell us in the comments section below. View the full article

A Venezuelan court in the capital of the country has rolled back a seizure of more than 1,000 Bitcoin miners due to irregularities that occurred during the confiscation. According to court documents, the equipment that was seized was in the custody of a third-party company that was doing maintenance services. The court ordered Sunacrip, the national crypto watchdog, to retrieve these miners from their owners. Venezuelan Court Decides On Crypto Seizure Case A Venezuelan court located in the capital of the country has decided to roll back a seizure measure that the national cryptocurrency watchdog, Sunacrip, executed last month. The operation, which was carried out in a joint effort by the scientific police of the country and Sunacrip, presented several irregularities and according to court documents, violated the “right to defense and due process, as well as the right to property of the plaintiff company.” The equipment seized was undergoing maintenance by third parties and the operation inspected these companies, taking 12 Antminer S9-S9Is, 1,624 EBANG E9Is, and 1,475 power sources into custody. However, Sunacrip didn’t specify the location where these miners were to be held. Another irregularity noticed by the court is that this kind of procedure allows for the required documents to be presented within a window of 15 days. However, in this case, authorities seized the equipment on the same day. Courts Can Now Deal With These Cases With the introduction of this kind of demand in Venezuelan legislation, there is now a precedent stating that courts can indeed interfere in these cases if there is the presumption of a violation of the rights of property, economic freedom, or due process. The decision of the court states that this seized equipment must be given back to its owner, a company called Sierramoros, who will have custody of it until the matter is settled. Another interesting element of the case is that because the Sunacrip officer who supervised the operation didn’t specify the site where these miners would be stored, the plaintiffs believe that these miners could be being used by third parties to mine bitcoin while the matter of the case is solved. The court ordered that while Sierramoros is entitled to have custody of these miners, it can’t put them to work until the ongoing revision of its permits is closed. What do you think about the actions of this Venezuelan court? Tell us in the comments section below. View the full article

In recent times cryptocurrency platforms have been airing a number of commercials on television in order to entice a broader audience to get into cryptocurrencies. The digital currency community has witnessed crypto commercials starring the seven-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady and his supermodel wife Gisele Bündchen, award-winning director Spike Lee, and the actor Matt Damon. Another commercial starring actress Rebecca Ferguson is now airing on Bloomberg Television that promotes the institutional digital asset custody and trading solutions firm Copper.co. Institutional Digital Assets Custodian Copper Films Crypto Commercial With Dune Actress Rebecca Ferguson Copper.co, the institutional digital asset custody and trading solutions provider, has announced the first annual television commercial campaign with the launch of a commercial called “The Unfair Advantage.” Copper is a London-based crypto firm that launched in 2018 and has raised $84.3 million in funding to date. Essentially, Copper provides custodial crypto-asset solutions for “more than 400 institutional clients” and these clients include businesses such as banks, fund managers, and family offices. The service Copper offers allow these firms to buy, sell, and store cryptocurrencies. “The Unfair Advantage” was directed by the Untold Studios executive Diarmid Harrison-Murray. The Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson is well known for her appearances in “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” and the sequel “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” alongside films such as “The Greatest Showman,” “Men in Black: International,” and this year’s sci-fi epic “Dune.” According to Copper, the commercial focuses on a product called Clearloop which “connects the universe of custodians and exchanges in one secure trading loop — with real-time settlement across the network.” ‘The Unfair Advantage’ Follows Slew of Commercials Starring Celebrities Like Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Spike Lee, and Matt Damon “Filmed four months ago in Iceland and London, the commercial features Swedish-born Ferguson exploring an otherworldly landscape,” Copper’s video description explains. Copper’s chief marketing officer, Tyler Kenyon, said the firm appreciated Ferguson’s work a great deal. “We are honoured that Rebecca starred in our new campaign and first television commercial, it was a pleasure working with her,” Kenyon said. Copper’s CMO added: ‘The Unfair Advantage’ message is meant to be somewhat abrasive because we are competing for attention in the loudest and most highly competitive industry that has ever existed: crypto. Ultimately, we want everyone to benefit from what we’ve built, at which point it won’t be an unfair advantage, it will just be the new gold standard. The Copper commercial starring Rebecca Ferguson follows a slew of firms hiring famous celebrities to appear in crypto commercials. Just recently, Matt Damon starred in a commercial for the exchange Crypto.com. The famous director Spike Lee appeared in a commercial for the bitcoin ATM operator Coin Cloud. Furthermore, seven-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady and his supermodel wife Gisele Bündchen recently starred in a commercial for FTX as well. What do you think about the Copper commercial with Rebecca Ferguson? What do you think about the slew of celebrities appearing in crypto-asset commercials these days? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. View the full article

On November 2rd, 2021, RChain‘s blockchain scientist Atticbee visited ZB exchange as an invited guest for a very technical AMA. ZB is a global exchange being in operation for 8 years with a focus on keeping customers’ assets secure. Atticbee discussed the problems of current blockchain technology and RChain’s answer to these challenges, and why one day RChain will be the most user and developer friendly Web 3.0 infrastructure. What is Missing In All Current Public Blockchains In Atticbee’s view, none of existing public chains has addressed these issues that are critical to Web 3.0: Currently there is NO REAL solution to the scalability problem: the scalability of Layer 2 and ETH 2.0 is an illusion because the individual Layer 2 and shard subsystems are not interoperable – they do not “look and feel” like one logical chain. They are designed for token transfer applications, not data intensive Web 3.0 applications. Contracts cannot safely call each other, lacking the “secure composability” to build large, complex software systems from smaller and simpler building blocks as in Web 2.0. Greg Meredith, the founder of RChain, realized these pain points in 2015 when he and Vitalik, the founder of Ethereum, were working together to scale Ethereum. So he chose the concurrent, composable Rho-Calculus with on-chain formal verification capability as the computational model for the contract layer at the beginning of the design. This technology route has many features theoretically impossible for other projects: Solves the “blockchain trilemma” with concurrent “queueless” transaction processing. One platform for all: Direct on-chain storage of large data, integrating all the functions of ETH, IPFS and GRT into one single platform. Seamless sharding: shards look and feel like one with atomic cross shard transactions. Fast on-chain formal verification based on its OSLF behavior type system. The Root Cause of the “Blockchain Trilemma” and Its Solution In Atticbee’s view, the “trilemma of security, performance, and decentralization”, only applies to the current blockchains that require queuing up the transactions, but not applicable to the queueless RChain. Essentially traditional blockchains require transactions to be processed as a long queue, with all nodes in the network working together to maintain this queue. Then they are doomed to suffer from an impossible triangle of security, performance, and decentralization: For security, more nodes need to be involved in maintaining this queue. For performance (scalability), the queue needs to move forward as fast as possible. For decentralization, all nodes need to have equal opportunity to participate in the management and processing of this queue and monitor each other. Basic logic tells us one can only choose any two of them and give up the third. Typical examples: Ethereum chooses security and decentralization over performance; Solana, a leader based system, chooses security and performance over decentralization; EOS with 21 equal nodes chooses performance and decentralization over security. However, when one realizes that “distributedly maintaining a transaction queue is the root cause of the trilemma ”, this problem naturally gets solved if we can eliminate the need for a translation queue like RChain. In RChain’s “block-merge” test network, as more nodes are added, the network achieves higher TPS. It is a solid proof that the trilemma has been solved: more nodes means stronger security; leaderless means decentralized; higher TPS means better performance. Thus RChain reaches all three vertices of the “impossible triangle” simultaneously. RChain VS Solana and PolkaDot — Two Examples of Flawed Solutions When asked his view on other star projects, Atticbee thinks Solana achieves high TPS at the cost of the blockchain trust model, which is meaningless because any centralized system can have much higher TPS. The idea behind its design is simple: since it is too slow to let many nodes manage the queue together, it simply lets a Proof-of-History node decide the order and write into a tamper resistant PoH ledger. The other nodes just execute and validate the transactions in this ledger. However, by doing this, the job of managing the queue is centralized, and the PoH node can dictate transaction order, or censor transactions at will. These malicious behaviors are almost impossible to detect and prove. Atticbee mentioned Flow as a project with a similar idea but uses a committee to decide the order, making it a more fair version of Solana, but as a cost its TPS is much lower. It is a textbook example of how a “queued system” inevitably suffers from the trilemma. As for RChain, it doesn’t need to queue up transactions at all, so it can achieve high TPS while keeping a decentralized leaderless architecture. Atticbee also views PolkaDot as an incomplete cross-chain solution lacking essential coordination capabilities. It has no way to atomically finalize cross chain transactions. Also it does not provide the “composable security” to ensure that when one contract located calls another contract on another para-chain through the relay chain, the permissions given won’t be leaked to others. RChain has atomic finalization of cross-chain transactions, coupled with a behavioral type system as a “on chain firewall”, making it a superior cross-chain solution. A Global Computer with Concurrent Process Orchestration RChain’s ultimate goal is to build a true global computer to serve as the foundation of Web 3.0. As seen from the Web 2.0 experience, the most valuable asset on the web is the vast amount of data. Therefore all existing blockchains have been built with the wrong design at the beginning: they are exclusively optimized as payment networks. A true Web 3.0 infrastructure must be designed for data-intensive applications. In addition, we can see that existing Web 2.0 systems are becoming more complex, but thanks to componentization and containerization, developers can quickly build out large systems with smaller reusable components. However, without a fast formal verification system to ensure safe cooperations between contracts, none of the existing blockchains can achieve this. The Venus phase of the RChain roadmap tries to solve this pain point by introducing a behavior type system support. RChain’s Rho-Calculus is one of the very few models that have this capability. Every Developer Should Start Learning Rholang Rholang, a language based on process calculus, has long been neglected by the IT industry because of its reluctance to leave the comfort zone of current programming paradigms. However, entering the blockchain era, Rholang has a range of advantages for blockchain by its design. First of all, its immutability makes “queueless” transactions possible. All resources in Rholang are immutable data and codes organized by channels. Atticbee made a metaphor: a contract written in a traditional language like Solidity is like a group of kids drawing on a blackboard: the order in which the kids draw will affect the final state of the board, so they must form a queue. On the other hand, Rholang is more like a group of kids playing with Lego blocks: they can pick up and assemble some blocks and then connect the product back to the common project. Since no one can “mutate” any piece, the order doesn’t matter so the kids can play at the same time. Another important benefit of being “queuess” is that large data can be stored directly on-chain. Any data intensive transactions have to deal with the high latency of network and disk operations. The prerequisite for such transactions to be done on-chain is that they can be processed simultaneously with other types of transactions. After the sharding milestone, RChain will have another developer friendly feature: there is no difference between writing a cross-shard contract and writing a single-shard contract. After the Venus milestone, developers can use the behavioral type system to perform static analysis to answer questions such as: Will this code create a race condition, get into a deadlock, or leak any given permissions to a third party? These analyses can be done at compile time in Rholang, before the code runs. With this feature, now you can organize a group of contracts together on-chain and allow them to call each other safely in a concurrent setting. This advantage completes RChain’s ultimate killer feature: on-chain orchestration of contracts, or “Kubernetes on the blockchain”. The RChain community has already built DApps that other chains can’t do by taking advantage of its on-chain data storage capability： Dappy: decentralized DNS server and browser, with NFT and wallets integrated in one package. RSong: music streaming DApp with music stored directly on-chain. RPI: a photo NFT platform with photo data stored directly on-chain. RCovid-19 Passport: vaccination certificates stored directly on-chain. Atticbee predicts that once all the milestones are complete, the benefit of Rholang is sufficient enough to make every DApp developer adopt this new language paradigm. This is a sponsored post. Learn how to reach our audience here. Read disclaimer below. View the full article

Alarmed by the rising energy needs of cryptocurrency mining, Sweden’s financial and environmental regulators have recently proposed an EU-wide ban on proof-of-work coin minting. The Swedish officials believe this would encourage a move towards a more energy-efficient extraction of bitcoin while supporting the transition towards climate neutrality in Sweden and Europe. A state-run power company warns, however, that restrictions could have an adverse effect on global carbon emissions. Expensive Bitcoin Generates More Emissions, Swedish Authorities Allege The rising value of crypto assets attracts more businesses to join the competition to solve the encryption puzzle at the core of cryptocurrency mining while the proof-of-work method is the main reason for its high energy consumption. The remarks come from a joint statement by the director generals of Sweden’s Financial Supervisory Authority and Environmental Protection Agency, Erik Thedéen and Björn Risinger. The two officials have recently issued a call for the prohibition of energy-intensive mining of digital currencies across the European Union, citing various concerns including the migration of miners to other destinations after China’s crackdown. In the Nordic region, for example, their appetite for renewable energy could undermine the transition towards climate neutrality and the efforts to meet the Paris Agreement goals. The government executives quote different estimates highlighting the power-hungry nature of crypto mining such as the one that Bitcoin and Ethereum together use around twice as much electricity as Sweden or the claim that a mid-size electric car can be driven 1.8 million kilometers with the energy burned to mint a single bitcoin. They further point out: Our conclusion is that policy measures are required to address the harms caused by the proof-of-work mining method. It is important that both Sweden and the EU can use our renewable energy where it provides the greatest benefit for society as a whole. Thedéen and Risinger believe that governments have several policy options to address the issue. “For instance, Sweden and other countries could introduce a tax on the energy-intensive production of bitcoin. Another option is to communicate more widely around the climate problems related to crypto-assets, in the hope that this will lead to both producers and investors demanding a shift to mining methods that require less energy,” they elaborate. As demand for crypto assets continues to grow at a fast pace, however, the Swedish officials are worried that neither of these moves would adequately limit the harm caused to the environment. “The emissions need to stop here and now, and renewable energy needs to be used for the climate transition of essential services.” The heads of the Swedish regulatory bodies have called on the EU to consider a blanket ban on proof-of-work mining. Other methods, they insist, can reduce energy consumption by over 99%. The directors want Sweden to halt the establishment of new facilities employing energy-intensive coin minting methods. They also propose to prohibit companies from trading and investing in crypto assets mined with a proof-of-work process to advertise themselves and their activities as sustainable. Such steps could encourage crypto miners to relocate to other countries and increase global carbon emissions anyway, the authors of the proposal have admitted. Nevertheless, they think Sweden and the EU should set an example for other countries and regions. Thedéen and Risinger emphasize: A ban on the proof of work mining method within the EU could be an important first step in a global move towards a greater use of more energy-efficient crypto mining methods. It would also mean that our renewable energy is used as efficiently as possible in order to support the transition towards climate neutrality. According to the statement published by Finansinspektionen, electricity consumption in Sweden’s bitcoin mining sector has increased significantly, already reaching 1 TWh annually. This amount of energy would be sufficient to satisfy the power needs of at least 200,000 households, the Swedish regulators calculate. Meanwhile, the country’s state-owned power generation company Vattenfall has defended cryptocurrency mining. It views bitcoin extraction as an industrial activity that can actually help electricity producers to overcome some of the challenges they are facing. Henrik Juhlin, head of Physical Power Management at Vattenfall, told the Swedish public broadcaster SVT that mining has the potential to balance loads on electrical grids. This is the case when power supply varies, sometimes exceeding demand, and is especially valid for countries like Sweden which increasingly use renewable sources. Wind and solar power generation depend on factors that are beyond human control and consumption by crypto farms can play the role of a buffer at times when there is a surplus of available electricity. Juhlin also warned that banning crypto mining in the EU could in fact increase carbon emissions around the world as the industry could relocate to regions relying on fossil fuels such as coal. Do you think Sweden’s proposal for an EU ban on proof-of-work crypto mining will gather support from other member states? Share your thoughts on the subject in the comments section below. View the full article

Payments giant Mastercard is launching crypto-linked payment cards for the Asia-Pacific region in partnership with three crypto service providers. “For the first time, consumers and businesses in the Asia Pacific region will be able to apply for crypto-linked Mastercard credit, debit, or prepaid cards,” Mastercard said. First Crypto-Linked Mastercards in Asia-Pacific Region Mastercard announced Monday that it has partnered with three crypto service providers across the Asia-Pacific region “to launch the region’s first crypto-linked payment cards.” The three partners are Amber Group, Bitkub in Thailand, and Coinjar in Australia. All three companies offer cryptocurrency exchange services in their respective domestic markets. In partnership with Mastercard, they “will be launching crypto-funded Mastercard payment cards,” the announcement notes, adding: For the first time, consumers and businesses in the Asia Pacific region will be able to apply for crypto-linked Mastercard credit, debit or prepaid cards. The cards “will enable them to instantly convert their cryptocurrencies into traditional fiat currency, which can be spent everywhere Mastercard is accepted around the world.” The three companies “are the first APAC-based cryptocurrency platforms to join Mastercard’s global Crypto Card Program which was designed to make it simpler and faster for crypto firms to bring secure, compliant payment cards to market, as consumers increasingly seek to fund everyday transactions securely and efficiently with digital currencies,” the payments giant explained, adding: This announcement comes at a time when interest in cryptocurrencies is at an all-time high across the Asia Pacific region. Last month, Mastercard announced that it has partnered with cryptocurrency exchange platform Bakkt “to make it easier for merchants, banks, and fintechs in the U.S. to embrace and offer a broad set of cryptocurrency solutions and services.” What do you think about Mastercard offering crypto cards in the Asia-Pacific region? Let us know in the comments section below. View the full article

The CEO of the world’s largest movie exhibition company, AMC Entertainment, says that his company is “on track” to accept four cryptocurrencies by year-end. Dogecoin (DOGE) is expected to be added in the first quarter of next year, and the company is currently figuring out how to take shiba inu (SHIB) as a currency. AMC Discusses Its Crypto Plans: Dogecoin, Shiba Inu Included AMC Entertainment Holdings (NYSE: AMC), aka AMC Theatres, provided an update of its crypto plans during the company’s Q3 earnings call Monday. AMC is the largest movie exhibition company in the U.S., Europe, and the world. As of March 31, the company owned or operated approximately 950 theaters and 10,500 screens globally. “We started accepting cryptocurrency for AMC gift cards and are encoding right now to accept cryptocurrency for online payments on our website and mobile app,” AMC CEO Adam Aron explained, elaborating: We are on track right now to accept, as we promised, bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, bitcoin cash and others prior to year-end next month … We think we’ll be able to launch the acceptance of dogecoin in the first quarter of ’22, just a few months from now. Before deciding to accept dogecoin, the CEO set up a Twitter poll asking his followers whether they wanted AMC to accept the meme cryptocurrency. The outcome was “so fascinating” that the company immediately looked into accepting DOGE. “We’re in the process of figuring out how to take dogecoin,” Aron confirmed. Regarding whether AMC will accept shiba inu (SHIB), Aron noted that after his company’s initial announcement about accepting cryptocurrencies, “the flood of commentary came in about shiba inu.” The CEO proceeded to set up another Twitter poll. This time he asked his followers whether AMC should accept SHIB as a means of payment alongside dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies previously announced. Out of a total of 153,100 votes, 87.6% said “Yes.” Aron described, “A lot of you voted, and a lot of you voted yes,” adding: We are now figuring out how we can take shiba inu as a currency … That’s the next one on our cryptocurrency hip parade. Furthermore, Aron noted: “While we will accept cryptocurrency, we will not hold it on our balance sheet, and therefore, will not face increased balance sheet risks.” The CEO also revealed that AMC is considering launching its own cryptocurrency. In addition, he confirmed that the company is “in conversation with multiple major Hollywood studios about the concept of joint venturing commemorative NFTs [non-fungible tokens] related to major film titles that show in our theaters.” The AMC CEO further shared: There’s just been a tidal wave of inbound messaging to our company and to me personally that we ought to get much more active in the sphere of cryptocurrency and that there was real opportunity for AMC. What do you think about AMC’s plan to accept cryptocurrencies, including dogecoin and shiba inu? Let us know in the comments section below. View the full article

Just before the 26th United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference (COP-26), the UK government polled 3,071 adults from Britain to ask them their opinions on cryptocurrencies and the crypto industry’s effects on climate change. According to the survey, 45% of Britons would support banning crypto assets for environmental reasons and 18% would oppose a ban. Even though 45% of the polled crowd would ban crypto assets, very few respondents think a ban would be effective. 45% of British Adults Surveyed Would Ban Crypto Assets Over Climate Change Concerns This week climate change has been more topical than usual because of the COP-26 event being held in Glasgow. COP-26 is basically a conference hosted by the UN where global participants discuss solutions for mitigating climate change. Political party members who attend typically make national pledges in order to combat the so-called climate crisis. During this year’s COP-26, the U.K. government decided to survey 3,071 Britons before the event started to get opinions about climate change and cryptocurrencies. The survey’s researchers note that the “environmental impact of cryptocurrency is well-documented” despite the fact there are large discrepancies with the data that shows the impact. “A new Yougov survey looking at support for different measures finds that Britons tend to support banning cryptocurrency for environmental reasons,” the researchers detail. “By 45% to 18%, Britons say they would support banning cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin in order to help tackle climate change, including 29% who would ‘strongly support’ it.” Young Adults More Inclined to Support Banning Cryptos — Far Fewer People Think a Ban Would Be Effective Age played a key factor in the Yougov survey as the youngest adults were more inclined to support banning crypto assets for environmental concerns. While men and women both had roughly the same amount of people willing to ban cryptocurrencies, men are twice as likely to be opposed (25% vs 12%). “Women are more likely to have answered ‘don’t know’ on the topic (45% vs 28%),” explained the Yougov researchers. Older adults were far less likely to choose to ban crypto assets over climate change. The most interesting part of the survey is that while 45% of the British respondents said they would support a ban, fewer people agreed a ban would be effective. Despite the mob mentality to ban cryptos, Yougov’s survey participants show “Britons are doubtful” ban mandates would actually work. “Only a quarter (26%) think that banning cryptocurrency would be effective at tackling climate change,” the Yougov survey concludes. “While Britons support banning cryptocurrency by 45% to 18% to help combat climate change, they think it will be ineffective at doing so by 32% to 26%,” the poll researchers add. What do you think about the latest Yougov survey from the UK government that says 45% of British adults would ban cryptos to help fight climate change? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. View the full article

Polygon, an Ethereum scaling platform onboarding millions to Web3, has announced the addition of convenient and flexible fiat payment onramps for the Polygon Network, thanks to a new partnership with Alchemy Pay. Alchemy Pay will create a bridge between fiat and crypto payments by embedding into the Polygon Network, enabling any Polygon-based protocol to set up a fiat on-ramp. The new capability is expected to propel the next phase of growth for Polygon’s DeFi ecosystem. More than 4,000 hosted applications within Polygon’s DeFi ecosystem will now be able to enact transactions on their DeFi apps via direct fiat on-ramps to traditional financial payment platforms like Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and multiple local payment channels around the world. The move will also simplify DeFi app payments on e-commerce platforms, such as Shopify and other networks. Alchemy Pay currently handles $5 million daily transactions, primarily from Asia and Europe. A greater volume of US transactions is expected after Shopify completes integration with Polygon by the end of 2021. Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, said: “DeFi protocols have been flourishing but challenges with Ethereum’s usability at a global scale have slowed development. Scaling solutions are vital to DeFi’s ability to go mainstream. Polygon is already solving the problem of Ethereum’s slow and costly transactions, and now thanks to Alchemy Pay, we can provide an essential gateway between fiat and crypto transactions. This development opens up new capital inroads that will propel users of polygon’s DeFi ecosystem onto the next level in their commercial development.” Polygon’s full-stack scaling solution is leading the way in reducing congestion on the Ethereum mainchain. In September, the number of daily active users on Polygon regularly surpassed those on Ethereum. Rather than being a competitor to Ethereum, however, Polygon facilitates the use of platforms on the Ethereum network. Still, DeFi advocates recognize that Ethereum also needs to find more ways to accept fiat into the ecosystem. The network’s ability to handle transactions between fiat and cryptocurrencies will be crucial for attracting new users. “The Integration of fiat payment options is key to the goal of a frictionless payment experience on crypto networks,” said John Tan, CEO of Alchemy Pay. “It will reduce the tendency of users to hold tokens long term, and make it more appealing to use them within decentralized apps. This, in turn, will appeal to developers who want to build DApps that people can actually use. Both Polygon and Alchemy Pay enable people to use blockchain apps and DeFi platforms rather than just speculate on the tokens.” Nailwal added: “With the hybrid crypto-fiat support of Alchemy Pay, Polygon now will have a much broader scope for development as well as a stronger appeal for adoption. By empowering Polygon and Ethereum with more seamless and flexible fiat-crypto payment channels, Alchemy Pay is supporting the DeFi sector at a fundamental level.” Polygon and Alchemy Pay are also part of a newly-forming Blockchain Infrastructure Alliance (BIA) of industry infrastructure builders and leaders. The BIA is made up of crypto exchanges, stablecoin issuers, DeFi platforms, payment solutions, and other essential roles to jointly promote and drive the growth and advance of the cryptocurrency and blockchain space. The BIA funds blockchain research and nurtures projects that seek to optimise decentralised finance and blockchain infrastructure. About Alchemy Pay Alchemy Pay is an integrated fiat and cryptocurrency gateway solutions provider, powering seamless crypto and fiat acceptance for merchant networks, developers and financial institutions. The company drives adoption of blockchain technology by making crypto investment, commercial transactions, and DeFi services readily accessible to consumers and institutions in the fiat economy. Today, Alchemy Pay supports over 60 countries with 200 payment channels and has touchpoints with more than 2 million merchants through partnerships with industry giants such as Binance, Shopify, Arcadier, QFPay and more. About Polygon Polygon is the leading platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development. Its growing suite of products offers developers easy access to all major scaling and infrastructure solutions: L2 solutions (ZK Rollups and Optimistic Rollups), sidechains, hybrid solutions, stand-alone and enterprise chains, data availability solutions, and more. Polygon’s scaling solutions have seen widespread adoption with 3000+ applications hosted, ~600M total transactions processed, ~60M unique user addresses, and $5B+ in assets secured. If you’re an Ethereum Developer, you’re already a Polygon developer! Leverage Polygon’s fast and secure txns for your Dapp, get started here. Website | Twitter | Ecosystem Twitter | Developer Twitter | Studios Twitter | Telegram | Reddit | Discord | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn This is a sponsored post. Learn how to reach our audience here. Read disclaimer below. View the full article

The organizers of Art X Lagos, a West Africa art exhibition, recently kickstarted a non-fungible token (NFT) art fair that features the works of African artists drawn from more than six countries. Blockchain Provides Important Opportunity for Artists In a statement made on Art X Lagos’ website, the organizers argue that blockchain is now providing digital artists with an opportunity to sell their work. They added that such a paradigm shift opens up the possibility of a more decentralized and more collaborative economy, where creators can lead the way towards a more inclusive, and more diverse society. To demonstrate the extent of Art X Lagos’ determination, the organizers, alongside Superrare — a digital art market on the Ethereum blockchain — recently kickstarted the art fair. According to a report, the physical version of this fair began on November 4 and was expected to end on November 7. The online fair, on the other hand, is expected to end on November 21. NFTs Getting More Support in Africa Meanwhile, in their statement, the organizers also took to time to explain why they are especially supportive of NFTs. The statement explains: As West Africa’s first international art fair, Art X Lagos recognises the importance of contributing to the development of our rich burgeoning African digital art scene, and with this project, we hope to provide a glimpse into the future of art-making and collection on the continent, whilst highlighting the enormous potential of NFTs in the development of Africa’s creative ecosystems. Prior to the fair’s commencement, a prominent Nigerian artist and co-curator of the exhibition, Osinachi, was quoted expressing his appreciation of the work Art X Lagos is doing to help Africa’s digital artists. He added that he would use his own experience as a digital artist to lay the groundwork for the success of other African artists who he says are poised to explore the space. What are your thoughts about this story? Tell us what you think in the comments section below. View the full article

PRESS RELEASE. Hollywood, CA – Riskie Forever, renowned creator of the iconic album cover art of “The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory”, steps onto the digital collectibles stage in partnership with Zelus for a truly unique NFT collection. Beginning on November 5th, the 25th anniversary of the acclaimed album’s release, Zelus will release a series of twenty-five NFTs every day for seven days, each one inspired by the cover art of the Death Row Records classic. The collection will features all new digital artwork inspired by Riskie Forever’s original album artwork. Each day, Zelus will release different limited editions of video artwork paired with physical items created by Riskie. The campaign will culminate on the seventh day with the release of a 3D NFT of the album cover. “Our studio was founded on the idea of creating NFTs that are not only potentially valuable, but also hold unique meaning for collectors and fans,” noted Dale Alexander, Chief of Creative for Zelus. “It doesn’t get much more meaningful than celebrating an iconic artist and one of rap music’s all-time greats in one collection.” Elevating the historic nature of this collection, Zelus has re-obtained the original artwork for the album cover of “The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory”, crafted by Riskie in 1996, which was shared with Tupac just days before his untimely death. One holder of a Makaveli Forever Edition NFT will receive this one-of-a-kind piece of Hip Hop history. Other winners of 1-of-1 auctions will receive items like a stained glass version of the art, original feedback notes between Riskie and Tupac, and a new 25th anniversary commission piece by Riskie. “I remember giving Pac the painting officially, I knew then this was something special,” said Riskie Forever. “Now to be able to celebrate that legacy while creating something truly new and unique – that’s something I’m incredibly proud to be a part of.” Fans can explore the collection by heading to Makaveli.io. Users will link their wallet with OpenSea, and have the ability to handle transactions in ETH and other supported crypto currencies. ABOUT RISKIE FOREVER After spending time as a graffiti artist, Riskie, inspired by Ms. Marta Farris: his high school art teacher, took his talents to a mall kiosk, achieving some level of success. Death Row CEO and rap mogul, Suge Knight introduced Riskie to Tupac Shakur, and this changed the trajectory of his career. Riskie’s first project for Death Row was the insert for Tupac’s “All Eyez On Me” album. Based on the quality of his first assignment, Riskie was commissioned again to complete the album cover for Tupac’s “Makaveli: The 7 Day Theory”. Though Tupac never received the opportunity to see the outcome of the new album due to his untimely death, he was able to witness Riskie’s finished product for the album cover as a painting. Other members of Death Row began to embrace Riskie as well. He did several album covers for the label to include “Death Row’s Greatest Hits” and “Death Row’s Christmas Album”, album covers and inserts for Snoop on the “Snoop Doggy Dog’s Tha Doggfather” album, Daz Dillinger’s “Retaliation”, “Revenge and Get Back”, and Nate Dogg’s “G-Funk Classics, Vol. 1 &; 2”. ABOUT ZELUS Zelus is a 1-stop shop for the creation and issuance of NFTs, offering all the expertise necessary in a single company. From IP to creative to marketing to technical to investment, the company offers the full suite of services from an idea’s infancy to full production and execution. Creative experts work with IP holders to identify the best way to package their legacy into a meaningful digital collectible. The team has extensive intellectual property expertise, providing the necessary consulting to NFT issuers. The technical team manually mints NFTs allowing for dynamic functionality that would otherwise be unobtainable. Zelus marketing and creative teams work closely with the IP holder to ensure the NFT released is not only artistic, but also commercially attractive. ### Zelus Media Contact: Jonah Keel ZelusTeam@42West.com This is a press release. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the promoted company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in the press release. View the full article

The Ethereum Name Service (ENS), the entity that controls the decentralized domains built on top of Ethereum, announced it would pivot to a decentralized governance model, opening the door to the formation of a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization). The ENS is now calling for delegates to propose their views to the community in order to be elected. The airdrop of the DAO tokens will open on November 8. ENS Pivots to Decentralized Governance The Ethereum Name Service, the organization behind the decentralized domain service on Ethereum, announced recently its intention of pivoting its governance model to a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). The organization is adopting a delegate model that will allow individuals to present their proposals and other users to delegate their tokens to support them. The ENS explained that while most of the core functions of the organization operate without supervision, there are some issues that still require dedicated human interaction and oversight. Its principal concerns lie in the multi-sig contract that governs the treasury, the future funds, and the registrar contract that manages the pricing mechanism of the domains. The organization considers that DAO solutions have matured, and this is why it chose this structure to address the current issues in governance. Constitution and Airdrop To constitute a DAO, the members and users of the organizations will receive part of the governance tokens according to their use of the platform services. The airdrop of these tokens will happen on November 8, and each user will receive a portion of the 25 million tokens allocated for this purpose. Another 25% of these tokes will be delivered to the original ENS team and collaborators in Discord, while the remaining 50% will be allocated to the DAO treasury. One of the first acts of the ENS DAO will be to vote on a constitution that proposes a series of guidelines with the purpose of teaching delegates how the ENS should be governed. The constitution proposed is available here, and establishes decentralization and integration as the main objectives of the organization, preventing delegates from applying proposals that would be in conflict with these principles. This airdrop has generated a lot of buzz in the community, which is now speculating about its value and comparing it to other similar events. This is not the first airdrop of this kind on Ethereum. Dydx, a decentralized exchange, airdropped tokes to its customers based on the usage they had of the platform, with some users claiming up to $50K worth of its native token. What do you think about the pivot of ENS to DAO-based governance? Tell us in the comments section below. View the full article

Bitfarms, the Canada-based Bitcoin mining unicorn, has at last revealed details about its activities in Argentina. The company says that the Bitcoin mega mining farm, whose construction started last month, will be built in the province of Cordoba, in association with a private power plant. Bitfarms will purchase the energy directly from this private power company, reportedly without causing stress to the power grid of the country. Bitfarms Opens Up About Plans in Argentina Bitfarms has revealed details about the construction of its bitcoin mega-mining farm in Argentina, which, when finished, will be the largest mining complex in the country. The location of the farm had not been announced by the company until now. According to local media, it was revealed that it will be located in the province of Cordoba, in the city of Rio Cuarto. The facility will house more than 210 megawatts of power capacity for installing miners at a very low price for the company. The facility will be constructed inside of a complex that houses a power plant belonging to the Albanesi group. In this case, the power will come directly from the plant, without touching the national power grid. More Details Ease Lawmakers’ Worries The company also gave more details about the upcoming farm, projected to be operational as soon as next year. Damian Polla, general manager of Bitfarms for Latam, stated: We will generate approximately 500 jobs during construction and another 100 during the operation of the data center. This is a contract for the sale of energy between private parties, which does not involve any type of subsidies, taking into account that the demand is not connected to the grid. These statements serve to alleviate the worries the project had elicited from legislators in Argentina, who were asking to have more information about the current status of the operation. Last month, Martín Berhongaray, a national deputy, called for the government to release all information regarding this matter through a law proposal. The deputy was worried about the possible effects a project of such a scale could have on the national grid, the environment, and the sustainability of the agreement with the power company. Bitfarms signed an eight-year agreement with the Albanesi group, that will allow the company to pay 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, allowing it to retain more bitcoin revenue by lowering production costs. What do you think about Bitfarms’ reveal of the location and scope of its mining farm in Argentina? Tell us in the comments section below. View the full article

PRESS RELEASE. Prague, Czech Republic, 5 Nov 2021, StackSwap, the first complete DEX and Launchpad on the Bitcoin Network has announced the completion of its private round. According to the official press release, the blockchain platform was able to raise $1.3 million during the funding round. The investment round was led by the Stacks Foundation along with key blockchain venture capitalists including HashKey, Genesis Block Ventures (GBV) and SOSV. The early investors share the long-term vision of StackSwap to eventually become the biggest DEX on the Bitcoin Network. Stacks protocol on which Stackswap is built has attracted over $93 million in investments from renowned institutional investors like Coinbase Ventures and Winklevoss Capital. It is built on a Bitcoin-based layer-1 project that implements a smart contract function on Bitcoin and was the first token sale to be approved by the United States SEC. StackSwap released a statement following the successful private funding round. “We are happy that Stackswap will be able to engage with a wider scope of audience and institutions on our new trading platform through this investment. We have a competent global team of professional developers who have researched and have had extensive experience with the DeFi and related systems for a long time.” StackSwap a major milestone in the Bitcoin ecosystem The successful private round is the first step in a series of developments scheduled for the coming weeks. StackSwap will be introducing the first fully functional decentralized exchange (DEX) running on the Bitcoin layer in November. The DEX will leverage Stacks mainnet which acts like a layer-2 network and enables smart contract functionalities on Bitcoin. It utilizes the core features of bitcoin and records transaction details on the Bitcoin network using its PoX consensus mechanism. StackSwap is also the first permissionless DEX that runs on the Bitcoin layer by utilizing the power of the Stacks protocol. It supports the traditional functions of DEX such as token trading through swaps and liquidity mining. In addition, StackSwap has introduced advanced features such as issuing project tokens through its dedicated Launchpad, creating trading pools and token compensation programs through PoXL mining. Users can leverage earning opportunities on the Bitcoin blockchain by staking and depositing Stacks (STX) through an unprecedented Bitcoin-based reward payment system. In addition, new projects and development teams can issue their tokens, create automated pools and execute PoXL mining without any hassles on the StackSwap launchpad platform. This helped to lower the barrier of entry for projects and made StackSwap a truly decentralized and innovative blockchain protocol. About Stacks 2.0 Stacks 2.0 is powered by PoX. PoX is a consensus algorithm involving two separate blockchains. It uses an already well-established blockchain (in this case Bitcoin) to secure a new blockchain (Stacks). PoX connects to Bitcoin with a 1:1 block ratio which means that transactions on Stacks blockchain can be verified on the Bitcoin blockchain. Instead of burning electricity on proof of work, PoX reuses already minted bitcoins as ‘’proof of computation’’ and miners represent their cost of mining in Bitcoins directly. Website: https://www.stackswap.org/home Twitter: https://twitter.com/Stackswap_BTC Telegram: https://t.me/Stackswap Medium: https://medium.com/@Stackswap Media Contact – CEO : Sungmin Aum sungmin.aum@gmail.com This is a press release. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the promoted company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in the press release. View the full article

On November 10, 2021, Vogue Singapore, a team dedicated to fashion, beauty, and “stories that matter,” is launching a non-fungible token (NFT) drop on the marketplace Opensea. The drop will be the fashion and lifestyle magazine’s first NFT collection featuring digital-only Vogue covers crafted by NFT artists. Vogue to Drop the Firm’s First NFT Collection The fashion and lifestyle magazine Vogue and its subsidiary from Singapore is entering the world of non-fungible token (NFT) collectibles. The fashion firm is an old company as it was founded in 1892 by Arthur Baldwin Turnure, and the American company has since created a number of international offshoots. Vogue Singapore announced the launch of Vogue’s first NFT collection hosted on Opensea on November 10. The drop will feature “two digital-only cover NFTs created in collaboration with local and international digital designers,” Vogue Singapore’s team details. One of the Vogue Singapore NFT covers was crafted by the metaverse artist and Nike 3D designer, Chad Knight, alongside Jamela Law and Lionel Wong of Singapore-based design firm, Baëlf Design. The animated cover created by Knight, Law, and Wong is called “Triumphant Awakening.” The cover “presents a gold statuette standing in front of a rotating blue planet with a radiant sun perennially rising and setting in an elliptical arc. A regal headdress — envisaged by Baëlf Design using an AI-algorithm to create organic fractal patterns — adorns the goddess, finely detailed and liberated from the laws of physics,” Vogue Singapore’s announcement explains. Vogue Singapore Plans to Release 2 ‘Beauty NFTs’ Crafted by Dain Yoon The second digital Vogue cover is called “The Renaixance Rising,” and the cover was made to be a programmable NFT. NFT artists The Fabricant and Shavonne Wong created the “The Renaixance Rising” piece, and the art’s lighting changes depending on the time of day it is viewed. Furthermore, Vogue is also launching two “beauty NFTs” designed by Korean make-up maestro Dain Yoon and with the Singaporean-Italian studio Lanzavecchia + Wai. “All inspired by the global theme of ‘New Beginnings’, Yoon’s work features various surreal interpretations of a new dawn — from cherry blossoms painted on her body to an intricate peacock make-up look emblazoned on her face — while Lanzavecchia + Wai has created the ‘Living Vase 01’ and ‘Flower: Collectible’ that depicts an eternal flowering vase that blooms and wilts with each sunrise,” Vogue Singapore’s announcement concludes. What do you think about Vogue Singapore’s NFT cover launch? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. View the full article

New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams plans to make NYC the center of crypto and innovation. He says we must open our schools to teach cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, noting that bitcoin is “a new way of paying for goods and services throughout the entire globe.” NYC Mayor-Elect Wants Schools to Teach Bitcoin, Crypto, Blockchain New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams talked about making NYC the center for innovation and cryptocurrency in an interview with CNN Business Sunday. He also explained the reasoning behind his tweet saying that he will take his first three paychecks in bitcoin. Adams was asked, “Would you encourage businesses in New York City to accept bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies?” He replied: “We are going to look at it. We are going to tread carefully. We are going to get it right.” He proceeded to explain: “l want to send a signal. This city was the Empire State … This is the center of innovation, self-driving cars, drone development, cybersecurity, life sciences. So when I talked about blockchain and bitcoin, young people on the street stopped and asked me: ‘What is that? What it is about?'” The mayor-elect was then asked to explain exactly what bitcoin is. Noting that “Even experts will have a challenge doing that,” Adams replied: It is a cryptocurrency. It’s a new way of paying for goods and services throughout the entire globe. And that is what we must do: open our schools to teach the technology and teach this new way of thinking when it comes down to paying for goods and services. In June, Adams promised his supporters: “In one year, one year, you’re going to see a different city … We’re going to bring businesses here. We’re going to become the center of life science, the center of cybersecurity, the center of self-driving cars, drones, the center of bitcoins. We are going to be the center of all technology.” Adams was also asked to comment on a tweet about him by Jason Furman, professor at Harvard University and chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama Administration. Responding to Adams’ announcement that he would take his first three paychecks in BTC, Furman tweeted Thursday: “Not only is this a bad economic strategy for NYC and a bad investment decision, [but] it also seems like a conflict of interest.” He elaborated: “Like a mayor announcing ‘I’m buying a lot of Amazon stock and then going to put in places policies to benefit Amazon.'” Without mentioning that, unlike Amazon, bitcoin is not a company and there is no bitcoin CEO to benefit from the rise of BTC, Adams emphasized that he is using his personal money. The mayor-elect shared: I lost thousands of dollars in the stock market during the stock market crash in my retirement fund. Volatility is part of some of the investments that we make. “He has his analysis. I have my analysis,” Adams stressed. “And I want to make sure that this city becomes the center of innovation, no matter what that innovation is. This is what the human spirit is about — not being afraid to look at every area of innovation as we move our country and city forward.” What do you think about Eric Adams’ comments about crypto and bitcoin? Let us know in the comments section below. View the full article

Square Inc. has affirmed that its focus is on helping bitcoin become the native currency for the internet. CEO Jack Dorsey explained, “We have a number of initiatives toward that goal” that will help “bitcoin reach a mainstream audience while at the same time strengthening the network and ecosystem.” Square’s Focus Is on Helping Bitcoin Become the Native Currency for the Internet Square Inc. reiterated its commitment to bitcoin during the company’s Q3 earnings call Friday. Square also revealed that its mobile payment platform Cash App generated $1.8 billion in bitcoin revenue. Square’s market cap is currently $110 billion. During the call, Dorsey was asked whether Square is “looking to expand into crypto beyond bitcoin buy and sell,” such as offering other cryptocurrencies and enabling users to “engage in defined NFT ecosystems.” Dorsey simply replied, “We’re not,” emphasizing: Our focus is on helping bitcoin to become the native currency for the Internet … We have a number of initiatives toward that goal. Cash App is just one. He continued: “We’re going to be building a hardware wallet. We’re exploring bitcoin mining, a consumer device to mine bitcoin at home or in a business or seller businesses, in fact. We believe this focus is important. We believe it’s right.” Dorsey also talked about a new business unit, TBD. “We also recently created a business called TBD in order to build an open developer platform with the sole goal of making it easy to create noncustodial, permissionless and decentralized financial services with a focus on bitcoin,” he described. The platform aims “to enable more ideas around decentralized finance on the bitcoin stack and on the stability that it offers and all the resilience that’s had over the decade plus.” The Square CEO said, “We’re going to release more details on what TBD is doing with a white paper on Nov. 19,” elaborating: Both are focused on helping bitcoin reach a mainstream audience while at the same time strengthening the network and ecosystem. “We will build both in the open, in collaboration with the community, sharing all of our decisions, progress and questions along the way,” he concluded. Do you think bitcoin will become the native currency for the internet? Let us know in the comments section below. View the full article

On November 8, 2021, the cryptocurrency economy’s market capitalization reached the $3 trillion mark after gathering significant value over the course of 12 years. The overall value of the 10,464 crypto-assets in existence is now larger than Microsoft’s market valuation at $2.52 trillion and Apple’s $2.47 trillion market cap. Cryptocurrency Economy Is Now More Valuable Than Company’s Like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Saudi Aramco Statistics indicate that on Monday, November 8, the net worth of the entire crypto-economy is valued at over $3 trillion, after jumping roughly 3.7% in value during the last day. The 10,464 coins in existence, worth over $3 trillion, have produced $206 billion in global trade volume during the last 24 hours. Years ago, people laughed and described crypto as merely valueless ‘Beanie Baby’ collectibles. Today, however, most are not laughing and they are either angry or simply taken back by the momentum of value. The crypto economy’s climb to $3 trillion has been fast, as it’s been less than 13 years to surpass the $3 trillion in value. The top assets in the world cannot say the same, and many of them have taken decades to get to the value they are at today. It took the most valuable market capitalization, held by Microsoft today, a total of 33 years from its initial public offering (IPO) to its first trillion-dollar valuation in 2019. The surge in tech stocks and the Covid-19 pandemic pushed Microsoft past the next trillion, leading up to today’s $2.52 trillion valuation. The crypto economy’s valuation grew 169.23% faster than Microsoft’s current market cap. Apple too took a significant amount of time to get to its current valuation since the firm’s inception in 1976. Apple beat Microsoft to the trillion mark a year beforehand in August 2018, and it took the firm 41 years to get there. Two years after 2018, Apple hit the second trillion and in August 2021, the firm reached the $2.5 trillion mark. Shares of Apple have since dropped a hair, down to $150.68 per share and Apple holds a $2.48 trillion valuation. Crypto Economy Grew 215% Faster Than Apple’s Valuation Growth — Some Believe the Value of Cryptocurrencies Will Surpass the Growth of the Internet Itself The crypto economy grew 215.38% faster than the mega tech firm Apple by hitting $3 trillion in less than 13 years. The crypto economy is also bigger than Google’s 2 trillion dollar worth and big oil’s Saudi Aramco and its $1.99 trillion valuation. Google is 23 years old and hit the $2 trillion mark faster than both Apple and Microsoft. However, the crypto economy grew 76.92% faster than Google’s overall market capitalization, and the 10,464 crypto-assets’ overall value is over 1 trillion dollars larger today. In 2016, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said Saudi Aramco would be a trillion-dollar firm after a partial privatization scheme was settled. His prediction eventually came true and Saudi Aramco is the fourth largest asset by market cap today. Meanwhile, the largest oil company Saudi Aramco is 88 years old and in 2019, it hit the $2 trillion market capitalization zone. It took 85 years for the Saudi oil company to make it to this milestone, which is roughly 553.84% slower than the crypto economy’s 13-year run-up in value. In terms of growth, only the internet itself has seen exponential value grow as wildly as the cryptocurrency and blockchain economy. In fact, many crypto proponents believe it will or it already has outpaced the world wide web in terms of value. “The innovations in this industry may even surpass the Internet itself,” The cofounder and former CEO of Bitmain, Jihan Wu, said earlier this year. What do you think about the crypto economy rising to $3 trillion in less than 13 years? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. View the full article

PRESS RELEASE. Popular Bitcoin ATM operator, Bitcoin of America, has announced their newest location in one of Chicago’s hottest nightclubs. Joy District is known for its nightclub/restaurant hybrid. It is located in the heart of River North and has been awarded as one of Chicago’s best and hottest rooftop bars. You can now socialize at Joy District with friends and even interact with a Bitcoin ATM all at the same time. Bitcoin of America is a popular virtual currency exchange, registered as a money services business with the United States Department of Treasury (FinCEN)(RegNum). Bitcoin of America is known for ensuring a fast and hassle-free transaction, while providing top of the line customer support. They are headquartered in Chicago and have locations in most major cities across 31 US states. To date, Bitcoin of America has 30 plus Bitcoin ATM locations across the city of Chicago. You can find a majority of their locations in convenience stores, liquor stores, and 24-hour gas stations. This new location is changing the way that most people think about interacting with cryptocurrency. It is rare to find a Bitcoin ATM in a social setting like a nightclub, but Bitcoin of America is finally making this all possible. Bitcoin of America is always looking to provide convenience to their customers. Their newest Bitcoin ATM location at Joy District also operates as a traditional ATM. Customers have the option to either withdraw cash or choose the cryptocurrency of their choice. Bitcoin of America is looking to change the way that they interact with their customers by making their Bitcoin ATMs more accessible. They are hoping to help make cryptocurrency into more of a daily normality. Bitcoin of America has made a large footprint when it comes to bringing cryptocurrency to the City of Chicago. They announced in early October that they are now the official entitlement sponsor of The Chicago Blackhawks Post Game show. In August of this year Bitcoin of America also announced that they would be working with WGN Radio Chicago. WGN even added a daily Bitcoin price update sponsored by Bitcoin of America. They are hoping to bring awareness to cryptocurrency by promoting it across all platforms. Bitcoin of America has also been vocal about providing more free opportunities for the public to learn the basics of how to buy bitcoin and bringing more women into the industry. This is a press release. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the promoted company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in the press release. View the full article