Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. Following FTX’s demise, the DeFi space is up for a complete remodel as crypto users demand better security and compliance practices. SushiSwap’s roadmap for the coming year includes the development of a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator, a decentralized incubator and “several stealth projects.” All these projects combined can grow its market share 10x, said the CEO. The co-founder and CEO of Ava Labs spoke with Cointelegraph at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, …

Blockchain has been fostering the development of new and often unpredictable markets and economies driven by demand for innovation. From unprecedented crowdfunding mechanisms to play-to-earn (P2E) and move-to-earn (M2E) models, decentralized technology is empowering communities like never before. One of the next big things in today’s tech revolution is the so-called Map2Earn — an emerging and fast-growing trend revolving around an economic model that incentivizes people to scan physical locations and buildings for 3D mapping. While this is not an independent market yet, Map2Earn may play an essential role in augmented reality and the Metaverse. Both are multibillion-dollar markets and …

The lack of a wide choice of high-quality products is what has so far prevented crypto gaming from gaining traction among mainstream users, according to Robby Yung, CEO of Animoca Brands. One of the newest and most promising crypto sectors, GameFi or blockchain-backed gaming, allows videogame players to earn monetary rewards and take ownership of items within games. Despite the sector’s enormous potential, the number of products available in the field is still not enough to attract mainstream users, pointed out Yung in a latest Cointelegraph research panel on VC investing. Drawing an example from the history of mobile gaming, …

This week NFT Steez met with Cryptoys founder Will Weinraub to discuss the current role of play and toys in regard to their integration with nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and Web3 as a whole. Weinraub believes that the act of play is “not restricted to children” and believes that as adults, “we still crave the element of play throughout life.” According to Weinraub, through the development of technology, “play has evolved.” NFTs, especially in gaming, have highlighted this layer of ownership through play. Weinraub and Cryptoys theorize that “adults are just looking for ways to feel like kids again.” Keeping the …

Blockchain technology has revolutionized the way we think about data storage and transactions, but it can also be a complex field for developers to navigate. One tool that can help simplify the process is ChatGPT, a large language model created by OpenAI. A language model is a type of artificial intelligence model that is trained on a large corpus of text to generate or predict text. It can be used to generate new text, such as in machine translation, or to predict the likelihood of a sequence of words. It uses natural language processing and machine learning techniques to learn …

Web3 technologies continue to infiltrate various mainstream industries to bring innovation to old systems. This includes legacy creative fields such as the music industry and more recently, the film industry. This year, the Slamdance Film Festival, an oscar-accredited film festival for indie filmmakers, will see the premiere of the new film “Fuzzy Head,” which received its funding through the blockchain-powered crowdfunding platform Untold.io. Ali Aksu, the CEO of Untold.io, told Cointelegraph that filmmakers, as in the case of Fuzzy Head, can use blockchain technology to democratize their financing process and open up investment opportunities to both accredited and unaccredited investors. …

Genesis Global, a prominent crypto lender, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York on Jan. 20, becoming the latest company to declare bankruptcy in the wake of FTX's collapse. However, the focus of the crypto community has shifted towards other crypto firms that had exposure to the lending firm. One report suggested that a total of nine crypto firms had various exposures to Genesis, including the likes of Germini, Bybit, VanEck, Decentraland and a few others. Bybit CEO Ben Zhou was quick to respond to the reports and clarified that Bybit indeed had $150 million exposure to the …

While traditional asset classes fail to foster broader adoption among women, crypto seems to have found success in bringing women on board, according to a recent survey. Data sent to Cointelegraph by the eToro team highlighted that crypto is now the second most widely-owned asset class for women second only to cash. This comes from the results of eToro’s latest Retail Investor Beat, which surveyed around 10,000 global retail investors in 13 countries. According to the survey results, there is a significant rise in crypto ownership among women. Data shows that ownership increased from 29% in the third quarter of …

Trump NFTs daily sales surge by 800% Former United States President Donald Trump’s nonfungible token (NFT) trading card collection has witnessed a massive resurgence in daily sales volume in recent days. Compared to Jan. 17 sales volumes, Jan 18. and Jan. 19 saw spikes of 800% and 600% respectively, according to market metrics aggregator Cryptoslam. Some pundits believe the renewed interest could be due to his imminent return to social media networks, following reports that the former president was seeking to rejoin Facebook and Twitter ahead of the 2024 presidential election campaign. NFT Watch: Trump Digital Trading Cards see 88% …

Three men reportedly drove their car into the metal barricade outside Sam Bankman-Fried’s parent’s home where he is currently under house arrest, SBF’s lawyers claim. In a filing to the federal court, the lawyers for the former FTX CEO said the three men got out of the car after hitting the barricade and told a security guard guarding the home: “You won’t be able to stop us.” The unidentified trio were then able to drive away before security guards could record the car’s license plate. According to a Reuters report, the incident was described in a Jan. 19 court filing …

Venture capitalists battling with the difficulties of proper crypto firm due diligence should be looking at getting back to the basics — to "trust the chain," a crypto-focused venture fund executive argues. Speaking to Cointelegraph, John Lo, head of digital assets at Recharge Capital — a $6 billion fund with crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) projects on its portfolio — said that FTX shook the "confidence in this industry." "There will be a lot of soul-searching," he said. According to Lo, due diligence has always been a problem in the venture space, even outside of crypto. He said the action …

Crypto lender Nexo Capital has agreed to pay $45 million in penalties to the United States Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and The North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) for allegedly failing to register the offer and sale of its Earn Interest Product (EIP). The news was announced by the SEC and NASAA in two separate statements on Jan. 19. According to a statement from the SEC, Nexo agreed to pay a $22.5 million penalty and cease its unregistered offer and sale of the EIP to U.S. investors. The additional $22.5 million will be paid in fines to settle similar charges …