Visa got itself a fancy new Twitter avatar this August, and even though it didn’t stay up for long, the 8-bit-styled picture of a visibly unamused woman with a stylish mohawk still made dozens of headlines. It was not just about the relatively hefty price tag of $150,000. The mere fact that the financial giant bought a nonfungible token (NFT) representing the image from the CryptoPunks collection set off fireworks in the media. It was the best marketing spend Visa’s done all year — the ROI on news articles alone must have paid for the purchase tenfold. Yes, even Visa …

People have talked in glowing tones about the transformative properties of blockchain since Satoshi Nakamoto launched Bitcoin (BTC) back in 2009 — books have been written, thousands of panels and presentations have complemented its prospects, costumed Bitcoin maximalists have flaunted their newfound wealth. Despite these commendations, the transformation has been slow. However, whether the delay was due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, or just the time needed to create innovation, we are now on the cusp of change that is creating new economies and ways of human interaction. The Metaverse, with the powerful combination of game theory and blockchain, is …

Facebook has been planning its foray into the metaverse for some time now — possibly even several years. But it’s only recently that its ambitious expansion plans have catapulted the concept into mainstream headlines across the globe. Renaming the parent company to Meta was perhaps the biggest, boldest statement of intent the firm could make. Suddenly, major news outlets were awash with explainer articles, while finance websites have been bubbling with excitement about the investment opportunities in this newly emerging sector. However, within the crypto sphere, the response has been understandably more muted. After all, decentralized versions of the metaverse …

Today’s population has grown up largely as digital citizens, enjoying the amazement that comes with computer entertainment from a young age. For children, this might be online games, whereas for teens, it was virtual social interactions, and for adults, a combination of work and entertainment. However, time and time again, social interactions have proven to be the most successful form of online entertainment, taking gaming to new and more authentic experiences. Consequently, the line between real and virtual has become blurred, a reality further accelerated by tokenization. With tokenization and the resulting nonfungible tokens (NFTs), data and other assets people …

Hot on the heels of the rising cryptocurrency hype, Finnish regulators have dropped a formal notice. On Nov. 24th, the Financial Supervisory Authority (FIN-FSA) stated: “Only registered virtual currency providers can market virtual currencies and related services in Finland. The marketing of virtual currencies in Finnish and in Finland is only allowed for entities registered as virtual currency providers in Finland.” Finland is a highly economically free country, ranking 17th in the Index for Economic Freedom. However, as LocalBitcoins CEO Sebastian Sonntag told Cointelegraph upon receiving their FSA license in 2019: “The controls in the financial sector are of particularly …

The term “digital ownership” has only recently come to mean anything. While nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have been around for some time now, it's in the last year or two that they've caught the attention of mainstream media. The third quarter of 2021 alone saw over $10 billion in NFT trade volume across blockchains, a substantial increase from Q2's $1.2 billion. NFTs are unique digital assets that represent ownership. As proof of ownership, NFTs extend from things like art and digital collectibles to real estate and other physical assets. This is causing a tectonic shift in a wide range of industries, …

Sotheby’s, the world’s oldest art and luxury auction house, announced its collaboration with the public health care advocate and nonprofit organization Sostento to auction off its latest NFT collection via the Sotheby’s Metaverse. The auction entitled, ‘Gifted: The 140 Collection,’ is considered to be Sotheby’s “biggest NFT charity auction ever,” with all of its proceeds going towards Sostento. The NFTs were originally gifted by Twitter as part of a giveaway of 140 NFTs to 140 random followers in June of this year. Its recipients became known as “The Besties.” Now, 7 of these Besties have elected to sell the full …

Quidd, a marketplace for digital collectibles and a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, has raised a total of $5 million in private pre-sales and an initial DEX offering (IDO). The token sale took place on Polkadot project incubator Polkastarter on Nov. 18. The allotment of 2 million QUIDD tokens at a price of US$0.25 per token sold out in under an hour, raising $500,000. Earlier this month, the private sale of the Ethereum-based QUIDD tokens raised US$4 million from investors including Binance Smart Chain Growth Fund, Genesis Block Ventures, Kingsway, Mind Fund Group Ltd, Sanctor Capital, OneFootball, and other angel investors. …

Jack Dorsey, co-founder, and CEO of both Square and Twitter, released a white paper Friday detailing plans for Square's decentralized Bitcoin (BTC) exchange tbDEX. Unlike most decentralized exchanges, or DEXs, tbDEX will not utilize a trustless model, and therefore will not feature its own governance token. Instead, it is a message protocol designed to facilitate trust relationships without relying on a federation to control access. The tbDEX also intends to include many features that make it far less decentralized than a DEX in the truest sense of the word. For starters, the protocol requires that all participants to pass background …

Bloktopia is a virtual skyscraper in the Metaverse comprised of 21 levels to pay homage to the 21 million total maximum supply of Bitcoin (BTC). Owners of its BLOK tokens will be known as Bloktopians. Users will be able to buy and sell nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, purchase digital ad venues, own real estate, and more in the Bloktopia virtual reality. Meanwhile, Bloktopians can also earn revenue by selling or leasing virtual property in the skyrscraper to interested buyers. Bloktopia in-game footage | Source: Bloktopia The project, set to launch sometime next year, is built on the Polygon network, a …

Trading volumes across various verticals of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have been on a tear this year. Combined sales for collectible and art NFTs have reached $7.4 billion as of Q4 2021. The art NFT market has grown from $17.8 million on January 1 to $1.8 billion in total sales as of Nov. 5, 2021. At the beginning of 2021, the collectible NFT market started with a total sales volume of $55.5 million. It has since ballooned to $5.6 billion. As reported by Reuters, total NFT sales volumes jumped from $1.3 billion in Q2 to $10.7 billion in Q3. Record sales …

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols have gained significant traction in the cryptocurrency sector, with a total value locked surpassing $271 billion, based on data from DefiLlama. One exceptionally popular category of DeFi services is that of decentralized borrowing and lending, where users can pledge their crypto as collateral and take out stablecoin loans (or vice versa) to pay for everyday expenses while their investment continues to grow. Such protocols typically charge a spread or difference between deposit and lending rates as a service fee. But then there are protocols like Minterest that seek to distribute a vast majority, if not all, …