Author: Forbes
Yat Siu is managing director and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, a publicly traded company based in Australia that has become perhaps the most prolific investor in the non-fungible token (NFT) and metaverse industry in the world. The company invested early on in blue chip firms such as Sky Mavis, OpenSea, Decentraland and Sandbox, each of which saw dramatic growth throughout 2021 as the industry rose to prominence. As such, the company just completed a $350-plus million funding round at a valuation of $5 billion. In this conversation, Siu discusses how Animoca is driving the NFT industry forward and what…
The crypto market has changed dramatically throughout the past year as volume, capital, TVL, and incentives migrate away from Ethereum and towards other layer one and layer two blockchains. This has led to a fragmentation of liquidity across various chains, creating slightly more friction for users who are looking to jump into the emerging DeFi space and begin participating in yield generating activities like staking and farming. This has made cross-chain bridges more important than ever, driving billions of dollars of volume to them as they become a crucial piece of infrastructure within the space. Ethereum Losses Market Share to…
“I believe in Bitcoin & the future is bright,” Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers tweeted on November 1, announcing he was taking an undisclosed amount of his $22.4 million salary in the cryptocurrency. Now, with his legacy under pressure following a losing run in this year’s NFL playoffs, the 2011 Super Bowl champion has more woes. Shortly after Rodgers proclaimed his love, the value of the digital coin peaked at more than $69,000. Since then, it has shared the same trajectory as his team’s postseason performance, falling below $38,000, a 39% decline from his announcement and a 45% drop from the…
Grimace, the purple blob character in McDonald’s advertising, is a complicated guy. When he first appeared in 1971, he played the villain, a stolen milkshake often clutched in each of his four—four!—arms. The company called him “Evil Grimace.” But as Grimace found, it’s hard to make crime pay forever. A decade or so later, McDonald’s rethought him rather significantly, reduced his arms by two, dropped the epithet from his name and turned him into Ronald McDonald’s dopey sidekick. Unfortunately for Grimace, his legacy has grown even more complex after a weird swirl of events Tuesday. Over the past day, more than a…
Not so long ago, the videogame and cryptocurrency industries would have struck anyone as curious bedfellows. While the former was focused on entertainment, the latter sought to create a form of digital money to rival fiat. Where could the sectors possibly converge? Despite its enormous success at the time, CryptoKitties, the first popular release to utilize blockchain technology in late 2017, did not precipitate an immediate influx of games developers and creatives. Partly, this was a result of negative press surrounding the congestion the game caused on the overburdened Ethereum network, which did not then enjoy the breathing room afforded by…
Serwah Attafuah has no use for Meta anymore. The Australian artist, who creates Afro-futuristic abstract NFTs, has 20,000 followers on Instagram, the Meta subsidiary. The platform, which she says originally helped her create a community, sell her work and grow her audience, has changed. Scams, data-privacy concerns and copyright infringements of her art are now an everyday part of life and she’s interacting on Instagram a lot less lately. Meta plans to dive into the world of internet art known as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, according to Financial Times. But Attafuah says she’s not seduced by the possibilities of commerce on…
Cryptocurrency mining services company BitFuFu, backed by industry giant Bitmain, is slated to go public in the United States by merging with a special-purpose acquisition company in a deal that will value the company at $1.5 billion. BitFuFu announced on Tuesday that it would enter a definitive business combination agreement with Nasdaq-listed Ariz Acquisition, which would include $70 million of fully committed private investment in public equity, or PIPE, financing led by bitcoin mining-rig maker Bitmain and a spinoff company, Antpool Technologies. The Hong Kong-based company aims to provide a “one-stop hashrate solution provider for miners of all sizes,” according…
The fortunes of the wealthiest Bitcoin, XRP and other crypto investors and entrepreneurs have imploded along with the value of digital assets. The worst may not be over. Ten of the wealthiest cryptocurrency moguls tracked by Forbes have lost a combined $26.9 billion since November 10, 2021, when Bitcoin and the overall crypto market peaked in value, according to Forbes’ calculations. Three of the ten are worth 50% less than in early November–a staggering loss even for the notoriously volatile cryptocurrency sector. Bitcoin, the largest digital asset by market value, has tumbled 50% since it reached an all-time high of $68,622 on November 10,…
Given the recent release of the whitepaper from the Federal Reserve analyzing the pros and cons of a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC), it seems a good time to take a fresh look at this issue. Since multiple countries around the world have already launched, or are in the process of launching, CBDCs the question has to be asked; why does the United States seem to be behind in this area? The technological arguments have been addressed – blockchain and the cryptoassets that run on top of it do provide quantifiable savings and benefits – so why the hesitation?…
The bitcoin price has this week fallen to levels not seen since July last year, losing 20% over the last week and dropping to half its all-time high of almost $70,000. Other top ten cryptocurrencies Ethereum, BNB, Solana, cardano and XRP have all lost between 20% and 30% from their price this past week (with Wall Street giant JPMorgan issuing a stark Ethereum price warning). As the huge crypto crash rolls on, analysts are warning the price of bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies could fall even further, potentially heralding a bleak, new crypto winter—a prolonged bear market that saw most…