Author: Staff Writer
Adrian Cheng, CEO of Hong Kong real estate giant New World Development, is venturing into the metaverse with the development of virtual land on blockchain gaming platform the Sandbox. The Sandbox is a subsidiary of Hong Kong-headquartered blockchain gaming unicorn Animoca Brands. The game allows players to build a virtual world and monetize in-game items, which can include digital plots of land they bought or wearables they made for their avatars. The items can be traded on the Sandbox’s marketplace as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), digital assets that use blockchain technology to verify ownership. Cheng announced on Thursday that he will invest in the…
The amount of computing power dedicated to churning out new units of bitcoin has jumped close to an all-time high as cryptocurrency miners shift their operations to new countries following a clampdown in China. The bitcoin hash-rate, a measure of how difficult it is to create new coins, has risen to 172m terahashes per second, the highest since May, according to data from Blockchain.com. The increase suggests digital “miners” are dedicating more computing resources to crack complex puzzles, for which they are rewarded with newly-minted bitcoin. Miners have been moving to new geographies since May, when China outlawed the energy-intensive…
Crypto exchange BitMart said early on Wednesday it would gradually resume withdrawals, three days after hackers ran away with close to $200 million worth of funds from its clients’ cryptocurrency wallets. Sheldon Xia, BitMart founder, said via a Twitter post that the exchange would resume deposits and withdrawals for ether and related tokens. Deposits were set to resume from 10 pm and 11 pm EST Tuesday. “The deposit and withdrawal function of all tokens will be resumed step by step, along with the recovery progress of security testing and public chain development,” Xia tweeted. “No worries, we are marching forward, security will always…
BitOasis users will now be able to buy, hold and sell Uniswap (UNI), Dogecoin (DOGE), Loopring (LRC), Enjin Coin (ENJ), and Decentraland (MANA) on the platform against AED and SAR pairs. As part of the extension, AED and SAR trading pairs for another set of tokens – USD Coin (USDC), Aave (AAVE), Bancor (BNT), Storj (STORJ), Sushiswap (SUSHI), Dai (DAI), and Waves (WAVES) – will become available on BitOasis, with trading expected to go live in a week. BitOasis will also be launching USDT pairs across a selection of the new tokens being listed. Over the last 6 months BitOasis…
Arguably the most coveted entity in the world is money. After all, it makes the world go ‘round. But money—in any form—is only valuable if enough people use it, it’s an acceptable form of payment, and society believes that it’s as valuable now as it will be later. Enter cryptocurrency, a form of digital gold that relies on a decentralized blockchain. Cryptocurrency is on its way to becoming mainstream because, above all else, it’s convenient: There are no middlemen (banks and brokers) that take a cut of the transaction nor delays in the actual transfer of funds. But cryptocurrency—especially bitcoin,…
The third largest holder of bitcoin has added more than $150 million worth of the cryptocurrency to their holdings following the latest price crash. Data from blockchain monitoring service BitInfoCharts shows the investor “bought the dip” with a purchase of more than 3,000 bitcoins The anonymous investor now holds close to $6 billion worth of bitcoin, having made more than $3 billion in profit over the last couple of years as a result of bitcoin’s rising price. It follows a major price crash for bitcoin, which saw it fall from above $57,000 to below $46,000 in less than 24 hours last week. Bitcoin’s price has since…
Suppose you could buy a share of Tesla and send it to a friend in Shanghai as easily as sending an email. Or imagine placing a bet on the inflation rate at the end of President Joe Biden’s term, which would pay off in bitcoin if you were right. All that could become a reality thanks to a project backed by some of the world’s biggest quantitative and high-speed trading firms. Pyth, the brainchild of Chicago-based Jump Trading Group, is a blockchain-based technology service that seeks to provide free, real-time data for a variety of crypto projects. It is loosely…
Bitcoin was trading cautiously Wednesday morning, staying above the $50,000 level following a steep decline that began last week. Bitcoin’s weekend selloff and subsequent rebound illustrate the crypto market’s volatility, but also its growing connection to traditional asset classes. Between late Friday night and early Saturday morning, bitcoin’s price fell more than 20%, trading as low as $42,000 at one point. By Monday afternoon, it had recovered some of those losses and on Tuesday afternoon was trading around $50,528, according to CoinDesk. That was still down from $53,670 on Friday afternoon, and about 27% off its high of $68,990 set…
Cash in little wrapped boxes or tucked inside Hallmark cards is one of the most reliable and beloved gifts. But this holiday season, cash gifts are taking a new form as cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. Giving digital money requires planning, though, as you can’t simply buy one of these assets and send someone a link. Instead, they need someone to have a digital wallet already created, through a provider such as Rainbow, MetaMask or Coinbase. The wallet then holds the assets, effectively acting as a bank account. “There’s a fixed cost to getting started, and there’s no way…
The Cambrian explosion of interest in digital assets this year has led to record prices for cryptocurrencies and NFTs and sky-high valuations of blockchain companies, but also to record amounts of capital for the firms providing the industry with risk management infrastructure against hacks and other illicit activities. In today’s latest example, San Francisco-based blockchain intelligence outlet TRM Labs has raised a $60 million Series B funding round led by Tiger Global. Revealed exclusively to Forbes, several financial institutions including American Express’ Amex Ventures, Visa, Citi Ventures, DRW Venture Capital, Jump Capital, Marshall Wace, Block (formerly Square, Inc.) and PayPal Ventures and…