Cryptocurrency Bitcoin NEWS

2022-02-02 10:14:30 ​The Thai government has abandoned the tax on transactions with cryptocurrencies

The Thai Ministry of Finance planned to introduce a capital gains tax on private crypto investors as early as January 1, 2022. However, according to a Bangkok Post source, the initiative came into conflict with the position of the Ministry of Tourism, and was also criticized by the business community. As a result, the authorities changed course to attract owners of cryptoassets to the country.

According to the former Deputy Secretary General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of Thailand, Tipsuda Thavaramara, a tax of 15% capital gains on income from cryptocurrencies is “unfair and impractical.”

Her position was echoed by Thailand's ruling party MP Watanya Wongopasi and other financial experts, who warned that a tax on cryptocurrencies could reduce market liquidity and prevent foreign investment from flowing into the country.

As a result, the decision of the Ministry of Finance was canceled, and the income to the treasury from operations with cryptocurrency and mining will now be collected in the form of income tax that is customary for local entrepreneurs.

A similar contentious situation has developed in South Korea, where regulators and crypto investors have not reached a consensus on a bill to tax income from cryptocurrencies. Öffnen / Wie

2022-02-01 12:07:06 ​Diem Sells Silvergate Crypto Payments Network

The assets include development, deployment, and operations infrastructure, as well as tools to launch a blockchain-based payment network. According to Silvergate, they will also receive “proprietary software elements critical to the operation of a regulatory-compliant stablecoin network.”

The partnership between Diem and crypto bank Silvergate was announced last May when Diem left Switzerland for the US after two years of regulatory worries. Silvergate hoped that Diem would provide monetization opportunities in the stablecoin space.

Diem, which started as Libra in 2019, has faced a long and ongoing fight from regulators and lawmakers who have been hesitant about the Facebook-linked stablecoin (now called Meta). US regulators were concerned about the intentions of the project, and Congress invited Diem co-authors, David Marcus and Mark Zuckerberg, to testify on the project.

In October, a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg from five Democratic senators, including the Banking Committee, called for the closure of Diem and Novi, a crypto wallet designed to hold Diem.

“While we have received positive substantive feedback on the design of the network, it has nonetheless become clear from our dialogue with federal regulators that the project cannot move forward,” Stuart Levy, CEO of Diem Networks USA, said today. . "As a result, the best way forward was to sell Diem Group's assets, as we did today with Silvergate." Öffnen / Wie

2022-02-01 10:26:39 ​South Korean developer Netmarble announces more than a dozen blockchain games

Netmarble founder Bang Joon-hyuk revealed that the first game in which users will be able to monetize intangible gaming assets using cryptocurrencies will be "A3: Still Alive". The game will be released in March.

Another game, "Everyone Marble: Metaworld", is going to use "technologies related to the metaverse". With the help of collectible tokens, gamers are promised the opportunity to create real estate in Metaworld, buy and sell land plots of the virtual world.

“Netmarble's blockchain-based games will allow intangible assets to be combined with NFTs. The metaverse and blockchain can create a new real world beyond the boundaries of virtuality. I believe that in the future the gaming industry will become even more developed than it is now,” says Jun Hyuk.

Most of the company's new developments are aimed at foreign gamers, as games for money (GameFi) are prohibited in South Korea. Regulators are concerned that blockchain-based gaming may encourage gaming addiction among young people and increase the likelihood of market speculation.

Recently, the South Korean Gaming Management Committee (GMC) demanded that the Apple and Google app stores block Play-to-Earn (P2E) games in the country. Local authorities believe that the income of each gamer in one game should be capped at $8.4.

In addition to Netmarble, the French developer Ubisoft is showing interest in blockchain and collectible tokens. In December, testing of the Ubisoft Quartz platform for NFT trading began, which will be used in game projects. However, according to a recent survey conducted by the organizers of the Game Developers Conference (GDC), about 70% of game developers are not ready to implement NFT. Öffnen / Wie

2022-01-31 12:47:57 ​MicroStrategy announced a new conference for corporations

Investment company MicroStrategy has decided to host the second Bitcoin conference for corporations, which will be dedicated to providing Bitcoin to large institutions.

Representatives of the organization announced a two-day online event. This event will take place on February 1 and 2, 2022 and will last from 20:00 to 24:00 Moscow time. Experts plan to tell the heads of large businesses about the benefits of placing bitcoins on company balance sheets and other initiatives related to cryptocurrencies.

The head of MicroStrategy Michael Saylor said that this event should help serious corporations understand how they can integrate Bitcoin into their products, services and accounts. The entrepreneur stressed that he would personally deliver a lecture on this topic at the event on the first day.

In addition to him, guest speakers will include Block CEO Jack Dorsey, MicroStrategy CFO Fong Le, Lolli Communications Manager Aubrey Strobel, and many more.

On the second day, experts from the major American cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase, as well as managing companies Fidelity, NYDIG, BitPay, Paxos and others will speak.

Earlier, Crypto reported that Michael Saylor spoke about owning 17,732 Bitcoins in his portfolio. He emphasized that his personal financial plan is practically no different from the strategy professed by MicroStrategy. Öffnen / Wie

2022-01-31 10:27:27 ​A new industry is emerging in the NFT industry

The cryptocurrency market continues to develop and generate new jobs. In particular, another industry is now emerging, where cheap labor from countries such as India and the Philippines is used, and it is used to stuff whitelists in NFT discord servers.

The new projects being created decided to choose the community activity metric for themselves as the basic one for creating FOMO from buyers in the secondary markets, and now they require chatting / grinding / typing messages on the NFT server of the project to qualify for participation in the sale of digital coins before the official start .

Now, according to statistics, countries such as India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and the Philippines are the most active in terms of the number of users of chats in the discord. They work at least 10 hours a day, and fill up to 700 discord messages per day for 3 US dollars per hour.

As in any industry, there are several requirements for applicants. In particular, they must quickly adapt to the requirements of the server owners, repost project tweets, type at least 700 messages per shift, create art to get into the whitelist, and participate in group chats.

Ultimately, whitelist stringing becomes another paradigm for pre-selling coins before the official launch. Since there are a lot of new projects being launched, they need such workers. Hiring ads are distributed on the platforms where freelancers are registered.

This situation is quite indicative, as it shows how the digital economy allows you to create new jobs that were previously unknown at all. Against this backdrop, fears that hundreds of millions of people will lose their jobs and be left without income due to robotization turn out to be exaggerated.

As the digital economy develops, the number of new jobs will also grow, although they will be very exotic for the traditional economy. Accordingly, those who will still be left without their usual work due to robotization will be able to find an opportunity to earn income thanks to virtual technologies. Öffnen / Wie

2022-01-30 11:34:09 ​NFT interest peaked in Google searches

The request for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has reached its all-time high in Google's most famous search engine. It has long surpassed the Ethereum cryptocurrency in this indicator and is systematically catching up with Bitcoin. Such data was provided by analysts of a large American company.

The interest indicator shows that the attention of users from all over the world to Ethereum has grown to 47, while the same parameter in relation to NFT was 99 on a scale from 0 to 100. Residents of Asian regions show the most attention to non-fungible tokens - Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan. In these countries, the frequency of requests exceeds even Bitcoin, but experts predict that digital gold should win back its positions in the future.

Now the citizens of Taiwan, as well as Ukraine, and all the same Japanese and South Koreans are most seriously interested in the first cryptocurrency. Experts attribute the high interest of the inhabitants of the former state of the Soviet Union to tense relations with Russia. Now users are increasingly requesting information about bitcoins, fearing an economic collapse in the country. People are thinking about risk diversification with virtual gold.

Google also noted a significant decline in interest in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. Analysts stressed that the bull market affected all cryptocurrencies, but did not affect the NFT sector, which is still very popular among search queries. Öffnen / Wie

2022-01-29 10:54:38 ​Fidelity joins ProShares in Metaverse ETF filing

Fidelity Investments has filed a metaverse ETF with the US SEC, according to the filing. The ETF will focus on companies that create products related to the metaverse.

Fidelity Investments has filed for a new ETF with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). According to the filing, the ETF is metaverse focused and is called the Fidelity Metaverse Index. The product will focus on virtual worlds and businesses related to the "development, production and distribution of products related to the Metaverse."

Interest in this new digital frontier is skyrocketing both inside and outside the crypto space. ProShares, which already has a popular Bitcoin ETF, also filed a similar ETF application in December 2021.

Earlier this week, the SEC rejected Fidelity's application for a spot Bitcoin ETF and was strongly opposed to approving spot ETFs for the market. However, futures-based ETFs have been approved, and SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has shown their agreement.

Soon other firms and companies will enter the NFT market, given how things are going. This is a very lucrative space in which both crypto companies and traditional ones are looking to gain a foothold. Öffnen / Wie

2022-01-28 12:19:41 ​Apple says it's investing in the Metaverse

Apple's stock price jumped after hours after CEO Tim Cook said during the company's Q1 2022 earnings announcement that he sees significant potential in the Metaverse space.

Asked during a Jan. 27 phone call about Apple's Metaverse capabilities, Cook replied, "We see a lot of potential in this space and are investing accordingly."

“We are always exploring new and emerging technologies, and I spoke at length about the fact that we are now very interested in this.”
The Metaverse is an interoperable virtual universe, partly created by users, offering communication, games, and even live concerts. While it can be accessed through a browser, the experience is better with virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR).

APPL fell about 3% to $159.22 during regular trading hours but has since jumped 8% to $167.23 after hours. The Metaverse was just one of the topics discussed on the call.

Appleinsider reported that during a January 27 phone call, Cook indicated that Apple (APPL) already has 14,000 apps in its App Store developed using the augmented reality developer platform ARKit. Applications developed using ARKit can help users access the Metaverse.

While Meta has been leaning towards using the Oculus headset to immerse users in the Metaverse, Apple is betting on AR technology for now. Apple's headset was scheduled for release in 2022, but on January 14, Bloomberg reported that the release could be delayed due to hardware and software issues.

Despite Cook's commitment to the Metaverse, the headset under development is thought to be focused on gaming, communication, and content consumption. So far, the world's largest company by market capitalization has lagged behind other tech leaders such as Meta and Microsoft, both of which are moving ahead with public development plans in the Metaverse.

Microsoft recently acquired Activision Blizzard for $69 billion with the intention of expanding the Metaverse gaming experience. Öffnen / Wie

2022-01-28 10:30:20 ​Media: Silvergate Capital will buy Meta's Diem project for $200 million

California-based bank Silvergate Capital has agreed to acquire Meta-backed stablecoin project Diem (formerly Libra) for $200 million. It is reported by the WSJ.

In May, the Diem Association entered into an agreement to issue Diem with Silvergate Capital, which was supposed to be the issuer of a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar. However, the financial institution did not receive approval from the US Federal Reserve.

Facebook (now Meta) plans to release its own cryptocurrency became known in 2018.

In June 2019, the Libra basket-backed stablecoin project was officially announced with the publication of a white paper. At the same time, Facebook introduced the Calibra wallet. Previously, the eponymous division of the corporation was headed by former member of the board of directors of Coinbase and Vice President of Facebook David Markus.

To manage the payments network, Facebook created the non-profit organization Libra Association. Among its members were Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Uber, Spotify, Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase and other well-known companies.

The cryptocurrency project from Facebook worried regulators, and in July, hearings on it were held in the US Senate Banking Committee.

In October, it became known that payment firms Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Stripe were in no hurry to sign official documents on participation in the Libra Association due to regulatory problems. Then they left the project.

In May 2020, Facebook rebranded the Libra wallet from Calibra to Novi and created a new operator for it. In December, the consortium behind the project changed its name to the Diem Association.

Despite repeated announcements, the launch of the Diem coin never happened.

In December 2021, Meta's head of payments, David Markus, announced he was leaving the company. Öffnen / Wie

2022-01-27 11:52:19 ​DAppRadar Analysts: “Crypto Winter Could Kill 80% of DeFi”

The forecast was announced by Pedro Herrera, senior analyst at DAppRadar, in an interview with Bloomberg.

Recently, the main cryptocurrencies have decreased in price by 50% compared to historical highs, the agency says in the material. Many investors began to think that what was happening could be the beginning of an extended bearish trend. DeFi protocol tokens have experienced even more drops, such as Aave, Compound, and MakerDAO. But this is only the beginning, says Pedro Herrera:

“Decentralized finance projects have yet to feel the real crypto winter. They have had their ups and downs, but these are only hints of a real bear market. Only 20% of applications, representing 80% of the entire DeFi market capitalization, will probably survive. We can see how protocols that have not gained much popularity disappear.”

Now, according to the DAppRadar portal, about $107 billion is blocked in DeFi protocols. At the same time, at the beginning of January, the figure was higher by a third. Over the past two weeks, the number of active users of DeFi applications has decreased by 20-30%.

However, the investment director of Arca, Jeff Dorman, believes that in the event of a prolonged crypto winter, the projects that remain afloat will only become stronger:

“Despite the current market decline, there hasn’t been the slightest glitch in DeFi protocols. All applications continued to work, and users had no problems withdrawing money. This once again convinces us that DeFi is the future of the financial industry.” Öffnen / Wie