Bitcoin Touches $68,000, Ether Soars Over $4,800
Bitcoin and Ether hit new all time highs several times this week. Bitcoin’s leap so far has been to $68,742.31, while Ether has climbed to $4,859.50. Furthermore, the crypto market cap crossed $3 trillion this week. Alongside, several altcoins, including Solana and Cardano, also saw a significant jump in their prices.
AMC Allows Paying by Crypto
Adam Aaron, the CEO of AMC Theatres, announced on Twitter that the theatre chain has started accepting Bitcoin, Ether, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin for paying online. Furthermore, Doge will be next, he added.
Mastercard Offers Crypto Cards in APAC
Mastercard has forged partnerships with digital asset companies Amber Group, Bitkub, and CoinJar to enable customers across the Asia Pacific to get Mastercard credit, debit, and prepaid cards that support cryptocurrencies. Using these cards, the users can instantly convert their crypto to fiat and spend everywhere where Mastercard is accepted.
Brave To Support Solana
This week, the privacy-centric Brave browser announced its partnership with Solana blockchain. This integration of Solana wallets will make Solana the default platform for DApp support from early next year. As a result of this announcement, the price of Basic Attention Token (BAT), Brave’s native token, rose sharply by over 25%.
Tether Comes to Avalanche
Tether (USDT) stablecoin has launched on Avalanche blockchain, making it the ninth network that supports USDT. Tether, which aims at driving the stablecoin’s use in DeFi applications, is also enabled on Omni Layer, Ethereum, Algorand, Bitcoin Cash, EOS, Liquid, Solana, and Tron platforms.
Coinbase To Allow Sharing Crypto Info on Social Networks
Coinbase crypto exchange plans to enable its users to share their crypto holding details on social or private networks. They can share asset pages on the crypto they own and their portfolio’s allocation percentages.
US SEC Rejects VanEck’s Spot Bitcoin ETF
The US financial regulator has rejected investment firm VanEck’s spot bitcoin ETF. It cited that the fund does meet the requirements and rules of a national securities exchange designed to prevent fraudulent activities.
ING Mulling Over DeFi Lending
During her presentation at the Singapore Fintech Festival, Annerie Vreugdenhil, Chief Innovation Officer of ING, revealed that ING is considering partnering with Netherlands’ regulator AFM to trial a DeFi P2P lending project as part of the latter’s sandbox. Though there is no detailed plan charted out yet, ING reportedly is not considering using bitcoin or other similar currencies as collateral.
MAS Announces CBDC Challenge Winners
This week, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced three winners of its Global CBDC Challenge that was launched in June this year. ConsenSys, Giesecke+Devrient, and Criteo emerged as victors of the contest that focused on real world benefits of retail CBDC and was organized in collaboration with the World Bank and the IMF.
Solana and FTX Launch Gaming Fund
Solana Ventures, the investment arm of Solana, crypto exchange FTX, and VC firm Lightspeed are jointly launching a fund aimed at promoting projects developing Web3 gaming on the Solana network. The $100 million initiative has already invested in Faraway, a gaming platform running on Solana.
BoC’s Machine To Convert Foreign Currencies to Digital Yuan
Seemingly in preparation for the 2022 Beijing Olympics, the Bank of China has unveiled a machine that converts foreign money into digital yuan. Instead of a bank account, the users need to link their passports to transact in over 17 different currencies. This device was showcased at China’s International Import Expo in Shanghai.
Hashport – A New Interoperability Solution Launches
Hashport, an interoperability solution allowing digital assets to flow seamlessly between public distributed networks such as Ethereum, Polygon, and Hedera Hashgraph, launched this week. It aims to balance neutrality, security, speed, cost, and ease of use by eliminating the need for a native token. Instead, hashport uses Hedera Consensus Service (HCS) and validators from reputable institutions to build the trust layer.
Decentralized Search for OpenSea
The NFT marketplace OpenSea now supports the decentralized search engine Presearch. With this integration, Presearch considers that users of OpenSea get better search results when they look for NFT projects.
Sotheby’s To Have Live Bidding in Ether
The British auction house Sotheby’s will have live bidding in Ether in a virtual exhibition to be held on Nov 18 in Decentraland. Sotheby’s auctioneer Oliver Barker will be fielding the bids for artist Banksy’s Trolley Hunters and Love Is In The Air.
Beeple Sells Sculpture for $28.9 Million
Digital artist Beeple sold HUMAN ONE, a physical sculpture that comes with an NFT, for $28.9 million at a Christie’s auction. HUMAN ONE depicts a person in a spacesuit walking through a dystopian landscape in 3D. The buyer is Swiss venture capitalist Ryan Zurrer.
Ripple
Ripple To Allow Buying Bitcoin
This week, Ripple announced its plans to allow its clients to buy tokens besides its native XRP using a new offering, Ripple Liquidity Hub. The service that will launch next year will support buying and selling of Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum Classic.
JS Native Smart Contract Platform Launches Public Chain
Agoric, a JavaScript based Smart Contract platform, has launched its public chain this week. This announcement comes a month after the company raised $32 million in a private token sale. The platform is built on Cosmos blockchain and uses Build (BLD) tokens for decentralized governance.
Miami To Distribute “Bitcoin Yield”
Francis Suarez, the mayor of Miami, announced in an interview this week of his plans to issue a “bitcoin yield” as a dividend directly to the residents via digital wallets. The yield comes from the staking of the city’s own crypto, MiamiCoin, introduced earlier this year. According to Suarez, the coin has already earned over $21 million in returns in the last three months.
Ethereum Name Service Considers DAO
The Ethereum Name Service (ENS), the organization that oversees the decentralized domain service of Ethereum, disclosed its plans to adopt a DAO based governance model. It is considering a “Delegate model” that will allow the community to propose their ideas and users to delegate their tokens in support of the proposal.
MUNCH Crosses 1000 ETH Donation Milestone
Crypto charity project MUNCH revealed its historic milestone of donating over 1000 ETH to several causes since April 2021. MUNCH is a DeFi project where 3% of every MUNCH transaction is automatically converted to ETH and sent to a verified charity.
Costa Rica To Create Climate Inventory on Chia
The government of Costa Rica will use the Chia blockchain to create a platform to manage its carbon inventory and climate registry. Other countries will also be able to use this platform and record the credits trade among them.
Cambridge Uni’s Blockchain Based Carbon Tracking
The University of Cambridge is building a marketplace for trading carbon credits that support reforestation projects. It has set up the Cambridge Center for Carbon Credits, where computer and conservation scientists will collaborate on the initiative. The platform will be developed on the Tezos blockchain that the university considers is a sustainable option.
A Memorial on Blockchain
A Dubai based startup, Stonses, has launched a platform built on blockchain that enables people to preserve the memories of their loved ones by creating digital NFTs of the physical objects connected to them. It is built on Verofax, a blockchain based asset management solution.
Discord’s Short-lived Tryst With Crypto
Earlier this week, Jason Citron, the CEO of Discord, hinted at his plans to integrate Metamask and WalletConnector with Discord, with teasers on Twitter. He has, however, since backtracked on his words and now claims that the community chat application has no current plans to add crypto to its platform. The decision, seemingly, is due to the backlash faced due to the environmental impacts of crypto.
And Finally, Twitter’s Crypto Team
Twitter is creating a team to work dedicatedly in the crypto space. The new group, named “Twitter Crypto,” will target blockchain and web3.0 and is headed by Tess Rinearson, who will report to the Twitter CTO.
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