Sandbox (SAND) refused to go down despite broader negative market sentiment in the past 24 hours. Instead, the altcoin logged a breakaway recovery as traders assessed its recent high-profile partnerships as a sign that the project has strong fundamentals. SAND rose 10.23% to $3.38 at the UTC close on Jan.27, followed by another 5.42% spike to $3.57 on Friday. In contrast, Bitcoin (BTC), dropped 1.41% within the same timeframe. SAND adoption booms Traders decided to increase their exposure to SAND after the Sandbox announced partnerships with American rapper Snoop Dogg and Warner Music, a major record label. On Jan. 27 …

Apple's stock price jumped in after hours trading after CEO Tim Cook said during the company’s Q1 2022 earnings call that he sees considerable potential in the Metaverse space. When asked on Jan. 27 during the call about Apple’s opportunities within the Metaverse, Cook responded “we see a lot of potential in this space and are investing accordingly.” “We're always exploring new and emerging technologies and I've spoken at length about how it's very interesting to us right now.” The Metaverse is an interoperable virtual universe created in part by users, offering socialization, gaming and even live concerts. Although it …

According to the founder and CEO of virtual party platform Party.Space, niche “Microverse experiences” will be the future of the Metaverse. Rather than “building a big Metaverse and selling some land there,” Yurii Filipchuk says that Web3 creators should focus their efforts on “exploring the best way to interact online” with online communities. The idea is that each online community builds its own Microverse, which connect in a shared network to form a Metaverse. Party.Space launched in May 2020 with the idea to gameify video chats. They now work with 65 corporate clients to host conferences, end of year parties, …

An exchange-traded fund linked to companies involved with the Metaverse launched on the Cboe BZX Exchange — shorting shares of Facebook’s parent company, Meta. The Subversive Metaverse ETF, listed under the ticker PUNK, opened for trading at $25.15 on Thursday. The fund’s holdings include shares of Block — formerly Square — Google’s parent company Alphabet, Microsoft, Sony, GPU manufacturer Nvidia, Coinbase Global, Galaxy Digital and online gaming platform Roblox. However, exposure to Meta — one of the largest tech firms in the world, with a $837 market capitalization — was conspicuously absent from PUNK’s top holdings. $PUNK https://t.co/nBYPFrIKo8 pic.twitter.com/jAB2APsML9 — …

The Sandbox announced Thursday a partnership with Warner Music Group, or WMG, to create a musical theme park and concert venue within the gaming metaverse. The Warner Music Group LAND in The Sandbox will host concerts and live experiences featuring artists and talent represented by WMG. This initiative marked Warner Music’s first entry into the NFT metaverse realm. According to a statement shared with Cointelegraph, their goal is to create immersive social experiences that can empower Warner Music artists. The Sandbox could provide artists with another outlet to engage with their fans, experiment with virtual entertainment and generate new revenue …

Despite a general consensus amongst degen apes that NFTs are headed to the proverbial moon, space agency NASA has revealed it will not clear the use of its content and logos for take off. This is an important clarification as the US government agencies’ images and video content are typically not copyright protected, and can ordinarily be freely used for educational and informative purposes in media. (Its logos meanwhile are copyrighted and can only be used if approved by NASA). While the NFT sector continues to surge full steam ahead — with platforms such as OpenSea posting record monthly volumes …

Virtual world project The Sandbox announced its metaverse accelerator program that will push the development of the open metaverse by investing $50 million in startups. The Animoca Brands subsidiary is partnering with the venture accelerator firm Brinc to target 30 to 40 blockchain startups a year for the program. The Sandbox Metaverse Accelerator Program will allocate up to $250,000 in investment to each potential project and will give additional incentives to top-performing projects. The bonuses include The Sandbox (SAND) digital asset and LAND, digital real estate within The Sandbox’s metaverse. Apart from this, the best-performing startups will also have access …

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and ruling Ak Party officials met earlier this week to discuss the metaverse, with the president calling for comprehensive research on the subject. Erdoğan has reportedly urged the Ak Party to study the metaverse, cryptocurrencies, and how transactions are made using them, according to a Daily Sabah report. At a meeting on Jan. 25, party leaders were instructed to research the phenomenon with significant ramifications for the future. The economic aspects of the metaverse, cryptocurrencies, and social media are anticipated to be addressed at a forum that will be subsequently be organized by the ruling …

Meta-backed crypto initiative “Diem” is reportedly trying to sell its assets, seemingly calling time on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s grand ambitions for a stablecoin to act as the internet’s currency. Diem — which was previously known as Libra — is Meta Platform’s cryptocurrency initiative. According to insider sources speaking with Bloomberg, it is considering selling assets to return capital to its investors. The sources said that Diem is in discussions with investment bankers to determine the best way to sell its intellectual property and cash out on whatever value the project has maintained. It’s unclear how the company will be …

Facebook’s parent company Meta says that its newly-created artificial intelligence (AI) “Research SuperCluster” (RSC) will “pave the way” towards building the Metaverse. The social media giant said that it believes RSC is already one of the fastest supercomputers in the world and will snag the top spot when it’s fully operational in mid-2022, according to a Jan, 24 blog post unveiling the hardware. “Developing the next generation of advanced AI will require powerful new computers capable of quintillions of operations per second,” wrote the company. “Ultimately, the work done with RSC will pave the way toward building technologies for the …

A recent survey revealed that most game developers and their studios have no interest in developing or working with nonfungible tokens (NFTs) or crypto payments. The survey released by the Game Developers Conference on Jan. 21 titled State of the Game Industry 2022 polled 2,700 game developers on their level of interest in NFTs and cryptocurrency. Results were less than favorable for gamers themselves, who have shown great interest in NFTs. A resounding majority of respondents indicated that their studio is ‘not interested' in cryptocurrency as a payment tool (72%) and is ‘not interested’ in NFTs (70%). Only 1% responded …

Singapore-based Blockchain Founders Fund has launched a new venture capital fund to support emerging projects in the cryptocurrency, metaverse and Web3 sectors, offering further evidence that investors are still keen to back major growth trends in the digital asset market. Blockchain Founders Fund II, also known as BFF II, has raised $75 million from various investors across the blockchain and crypto industry, including NEO Global Capital, Appworks, Baksh Capital, Octava and The Sandbox COO Sebastien Borget. BFF II has already deployed capital across 11 projects, including a layer-two derivatives exchange, several play-to-earn games and a DeFi protocol. BFF II is …