Author: The Wall Street Journal

Companies plan to dole out up to $100 million in cryptocurrency to help videogame developers make nonfungible tokens for the market. GameStop Corp. GME -11.15% said it would launch a marketplace for nonfungible tokens later this year in partnership with an Australian blockchain startup, stepping into a trendy but unproven area of tech as the videogame retailer tries to turn around its struggling business. Sydney-based Immutable Pty. Ltd. will help develop the marketplace on its carbon-neutral platform, called Immutable X, which uses the blockchain-based computer network Ethereum, GameStop said Thursday. GameStop also said it intends to create a fund with Immutable of up to $100 million…

Stocktwits, the social-media service for retail investors, is adding live trading as an option for its users within the platform. The first assets Stocktwits users will be able to trade are cryptocurrencies. The platform plans to expand into equities trading later this quarter. Brokerages such as Robinhood Markets Inc., Webull and eToro have grown in popularity in part by adding social components to trading, incorporating chat feeds and trending stocks. The payment app, Venmo, also gained ground because of its social feeds and emoji. With this move, the social-media platform is doing the reverse. The crypto exchange FTX will be providing the infrastructure for Stocktwits’…

Alexis Ohanian’s venture firm 776 Management LLC has raised $500 million across two new funds with a plan to invest primarily in crypto startups. “It will be the majority of the portfolio by the end of this year,” Mr. Ohanian said about the firm’s investments in the crypto sector. Such companies account for about 40% of the firm’s deals to date, including videogaming startup Axie Infinity, bitcoin rewards startup Lolli, and crypto tax company CoinTracker. The firm has made more than three dozen investments in total. Mr. Ohanian said he expects the firm to invest mainly in crypto startups because…

The booming cryptocurrency sector’s complaints that Washington has gone too far in cracking down on its unregulated products are getting tested in a key lawsuit targeting Ripple Labs Inc. and its digital coin, XRP. The lawsuit, which the Securities and Exchange Commission filed in the waning days of the Trump administration, faces several hurdles in the coming months. A Manhattan federal judge has been asked to decide, for instance, whether Ripple can argue regulators should have clearly announced which digital assets they oversee, rather than using enforcement actions to bring the industry to heel. The SEC says Ripple illegally raised almost…

People who have made fortunes investing in digital currency, or who helped build the vast crypto industry, are the new darlings of the high-end residential property market When real-estate agent Ryan Serhant received an offer last fall for one of his listings, a roughly $25 million Downtown Manhattan apartment, he was pleased but dubious. The buyer, to whom he gave a property tour, seemed nice but didn’t fit the profile of Mr. Serhant’s typical high rollers who often come from Wall Street or prominent families. This buyer said he was self-employed, but when Mr. Serhant googled him, he found nothing…

Elon Musk wants McDonald’s Corp. MCD -1.96% to start accepting dogecoin for payment. “I will eat a happy meal on tv if @McDonalds accepts Dogecoin,” Mr. Musk, chief executive of Tesla Inc., TSLA -2.39% said in a tweet Tuesday morning. He has repeatedly touted dogecoin, including earlier this month when he said Tesla would accept the cryptocurrency for payment for some merchandise. The price of dogecoin rose 7% on Tuesday, according to CoinMarketCap. Tesla and McDonald’s representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment. The tweet comes after cryptocurrency prices—including dogecoin—have fallen sharply in recent days. The selloff prompted McDonald’s to tweet on Monday: “how are you doing people who run crypto twitter accounts.” Dogecoin, initially started…

MicroStrategy Inc. plans to continue investing in bitcoin despite recent declines in the value of the cryptocurrency asset and a call by U.S. securities regulators to revise its disclosure in future filings. The Tysons Corner, Va.-based software company is one of a handful of companies with bitcoin holdings, alongside auto maker Tesla Inc. and payment company Square, which recently renamed itself Block Inc. “Our strategy with bitcoin has been to buy and hold, so to the extent we have excess cash flows or we find other ways to raise money, we continue to put it into bitcoin,” Chief Financial Officer Phong Le said. The company held $2.41…

Blockchain merely mirrors rudimentary parts of the regulated financial system. The cryptocurrency lobby plans to spend tens of millions of dollars this year helping its largest holders convert their holdings into actual money. They are looking for a way to spin their crypto straw into gold. Lawmakers and regulators should ignore the hype. Urging America to “lead in innovation,” crypto enthusiasts tout the innovation of the blockchain. And it’s true that blockchains achieve bookkeeping without a bookkeeper and allow individuals to make transactions anonymously and quickly. But the innovation pretty much ends there. Compare the functioning of the crypto ecosystem…

Special avatars for crypto investors are the latest way for social networks to exploit users’ need for validation. This week, thousands of Twitter users’ profile pictures turned from circular to hexagonal as the social media app began supporting NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. Meanwhile, Facebook and sister company Instagram are working on a feature that will let users display NFTs as part of their profiles, the Financial Times reported. NFTs, for those who’ve managed to avoid learning about them until now, are unique digital tokens, inscribed on a permanent digital ledger called a blockchain, that serve as proof of ownership of some digital…

A dramatic sell-off in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has outpaced a marked retreat in the U.S. stock market, as the Federal Reserve’s pivot from emergency support spooks investors who piled into highflying but risky assets during the pandemic. The price of Bitcoin has fallen from its November highs of nearly $70,000 to now around 35,000. On Saturday, Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value, had fallen around 9 percent in just 24 hours. Since the start of the year, it has fallen around 23 percent. Meanwhile Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency, fared even worse, dropping around 15 percent over 24 hours…