Author: Forbes
Daniel Santos is hatching a plan to bring games and NFTs to underprivileged communities. The Brazilian-born entrepreneur now based in Singapore has a vision for a new economic model enabling self-sustaining and evolving ‘digital societies’ to create value via minting, trading and exchanging digital assets. The concept centers around making games and tokenized winnings accessible to the unbanked through his platform, Gamepay. Gamepay provides the infrastructure, tools and community for developers to access untapped, low-income markets as well as gamers. The tools and infrastructure will be used to build metaverses, or virtual worlds focused on social connection, with opportunities to carry…
El Salvador, the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, purchased 410 bitcoin for $15 million Friday with the currency trading at its lowest point in six months, President Nayib Bukele announced on Twitter. KEY FACTS Bukele, who also bought bitcoin during a dip in September, announced in an emoji-laden tweet Friday that the country had purchased the currency “really cheap.” Friday’s purchase brings El Salvador’s total holdings to at least 1,801 bitcoin, currently valued at about $66 million, Bloomberg reported. The value of bitcoin continued to decline following Bukele’s announcement, reaching a low of $35,422 before rebounding slightly to $36,653.56 Friday evening, down 46.72% from…
The energy used in cryptocurrency transactions is enormous, but it needn’t be, a Congressional hearing today was told. “The energy required to validate just one Ethereum transaction could power a U.S. home for more than a week, the energy required for a Bitcoin transaction could power a home for more than 70 days House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) asserted in a memorandum for the session of the committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. He noted at the same time, the environmental costs were high with a single Ethereum transaction adding more than 90 pounds of CO2 to…
Serena Williams, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, is joining the $4.3 billion blockchain-based fantasy soccer game Sorare as a board advisor. In September 2021, the Parisian soccer fantasy company received the fifth largest ever funding round in the crypto industry, hauling in $680 million in cash at a $4.3 billion valuation. Sorare is a fantasy soccer game that runs on the Ethereum blockchain. It allows users to buy NFTs of famous soccer players such as PSG’s Lionel Messi or Borussia Dortmund’s Erling Haaland, field them in fantasy leagues, and trade them with other users. By the end of…
Ethereum and Stellar are unique in the world of cryptocurrencies in that their value has less to do with their “coin” value and more to do with their feature sets. You can invest in them as a tradable asset, but that’s just the beginning of their capabilities and features. Ethereum Is One Of The World’s Most Programmable Blockchains You’ve probably heard that blockchain technology has a wide variety of uses. You don’t have to use blockchains to create and monitor digital currencies. You can use blockchains to keep track of medical information, store cloud data, secure the internet of things,…
The creative process of individuals, and the medium through which a Creator works, is constantly expanding, including digital assets such as Non-fungible Tokens. NFTs that are created, bought, sold or exchanged are considered property by the IRS, and so these are taxed like art buying, selling or exchanging art. For the Creator of an NFT For the Creator, the minting of the NFT is not a taxable event, but, where creating the NFT is due to their personal effort (or the effort of someone who is creating the NFT for them) or the NFT is part of the Creator’s trade or…
Last month, while the cultural elite wrapped up Art Basel with the usual lavish purchases of Keith Herring paintings and Daniel Arsham decayed sculptures, a different crowd had gathered just a couple blocks down the South Beach coastline. The world’s first “Metaverse star” was about to perform. FLUF Haus, the first in-person gathering for a community of virtual 3D Rabbits (known as Flufs), was hosting a concert for the music star known as “Angelbaby”—a large tattooed pink rabbit whose identity, appearance, and music had been created entirely on the metaverse. Despite Angelbaby’s entirely virtual existence, some 600 people—largely stakeholders in…
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) hasn’t yet shared its plans for crypto regulation, and it’s causing concern. “We’re hoping for more clarity around digital assets,” Emily Portney, CFO for Bank of New (BNY) York Mellon Corp told Reuters on Tuesday. “Frankly, it’s a bit confusing about who actually regulates digital assets and especially crypto … and of course exactly what you can or cannot do,” Portney said. Meanwhile, crypto companies in the U.S. remain at the crossroads of regulation. CFOs, for the most part, have been leery of Bitcoin on the balance sheet. For example, Robinhood Markets CFO Jason Warnick said last week at…
One of the reasons Dungeons & Dragons has done so well over the past few years is because the game has been in the right place at the right time. It released an accessible easy to learn edition just as nostalgia for the game fueled by Stranger Things ignited the curiosity of viewers and long dormant players. It broke down the barriers of online play through services like D&D Beyond and Roll20 just as a worldwide pandemic forced everyone to learn how to live, work and play in a virtual space. This year, as Spider-Man: No Way Home’s blockbuster success installs the idea of multiple universes into mainstream pop…
In what has to be one of the most stunningly bad predictions I’ve seen about the concept of blockchain-based video games, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian recently had this to say about how pervasive the concept will become in the future on the Where It Happens podcast: “90% of people will not play a game unless they are being properly valued for that time,” Ohanian, who now runs VC firm Seven Seven Six, said on the show. “In five years, you will actually value your time properly. And instead of being harvested for advertisements, or being fleeced for dollars to buy stupid hammers you…