NFTs to be Instrumental for Fashion Industry in the Metaverse, GlobalData Analyst Says

With non-fungible tokens (NFTs) continuously taking the world by storm, these digital assets are perfect for fashion in the metaverse, according to Amrit Dhami, a thematic analyst at GlobalData. 

She noted:

“While there is significant uncertainty about what the metaverse will look like, we do know that it will be populated by avatars. Gamers already pay substantial amounts of money for in-game skins, so it stands to reason that metaverse visitors will also naturally invest in clothing and accessories for their avatars.”

Given that NFTs reflects proof of ownership of an asset like an image, these creations have the potential of changing the fashion look in the metaverse because users are offered the chance to buy ‘NFT clothing’ just like the way people purchase custom-made outfits. 

Dhami added:

“These clothing items will not only allow people to build up virtual premium fashion wardrobes to express themselves in the metaverse, but these digital versions may become more valuable than their real-life counterparts due to their ‘non-fungible’ nature.”

NFTs are different from a typical crypto token because of fungibility. A fungible token can be exchanged for another, whereas a non-fungible one cannot be based on its finite nature.

Therefore, the metaverse will provide designers with an opportunity to showcase their creativity through NFTs. Furthermore, they can create private communities with exclusive access to upcoming NFT collections like Dolce & Gabbana. The leading Italian luxury fashion house sold a nine-piece collection of fashion NFTs dubbed Collezione Genesi for a whopping $6 million in October 2021.  

With gaming being at the heart of the metaverse, there is significant potential for game developers and fashion houses to collaborate to create new skins for gamers, Dhami concluded. 

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Top Indonesian Football Club Enters the Blockchain Gaming Arena, Partnering with LGG

To offer its fans new experiences in the blockchain gaming sphere, two-time Indonesian football league champion Persib Bandung has partnered with Liberty Gaming Guild (LGG).  

Gabriella Witdarmono, the vice president of partnership and activation at Persib, acknowledged that intertwining football and innovations like blockchain gaming is a step forward in the digital era. 

She noted:

“Persib, as one of the football clubs that have the largest fan base in Indonesia, must keep up with technological developments, one of which is the development of the gaming industry, which is now favoured by loyal Persib fans, known as Bobotoh.”

Playing in the largest league on Indonesian soil called Liga 1, Persib intends to offer its fans an ecosystem to learn and thrive in the new gaming era through blockchain gaming platform Liberty. 

Fans will also have the chance to monetize their efforts through non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which continue taking the world by storm based on the proof of ownership concept. 

Based on the huge blockchain gaming community in South East Asia (SEA), Maurizio Barbieri believes that the partnership will open new doors to what blockchain technology and the metaverse can offer. 

The chief community officer at Liberty stated:

“I am sure we’ll be able to accelerate our growth in SEA and in Indonesia specifically. We just can’t wait to start working with the amazing Persib team and take this not only to the next level, but to the moon.”

The blockchain gaming sector continues to gain steam, given that it attracted investments worth $1.1 billion last month, according to a recent Blockchain Game Alliance and DappRadar report. 

Virtual worlds, decentralized applications (dapps), and play-to-earn platforms attracted the lion’s share of these investments.

With 2.4 billion active gamers worldwide, blockchain-based games are gaining traction because they accelerate the metaverse narrative. 

Furthermore, the gaming transparency rendered by blockchain technology is also making them tick. 

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Harmony Launches Bored Ape Yacht Club Passport

Harmony, the blockchain platform based on the Ethereum chain, announced the launch of its Bored Ape Yacht Club Passport and support for cross-chain activities, including interoperability between Harmony, Ethereum, BNB chain, and three other blockchains.

Harmony said that the launch of the passport this time is proof that the holders “have ownership of assets across multiple blockchains, and will not transfer property for this purpose, ensuring authenticity”.

The passport enables users to import proof of ownership of Bored Ape Yacht Club’s NFTs into a game called DeFi Kingdoms on the Harmony blockchain.

The game currently has 120,000 monthly active users. When Ape owners connect their MetaMask wallet to DeFi Kingdoms, the passport can verify and display their assets in-game on multiple blockchains.

Team member Leo Chen from Harmony explained that:

“We wanted to give all NFT holders more utility and options to display their NFTs and participate in the Metaverse. Bored Ape Yacht Club holders are the first choices. The cross-chain identity creates a secure and easy way to do so without putting their assets at risk.”

Following in the footsteps of Twitter, Reddit is eyeing to permit users to have NFT-based profile pictures through a feature that is being tested on January 27. On January 20, Twitter announced that it was presenting an official verification mechanism for NFT avatars, allowing some users to set the NFTs they own as their profile picture.

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OpenSea Confirms Under Phishing Attack, after Urging Users to Migrate NFTs New Addresses

Hours after OpenSea announced an upgrade to delist inactive Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) on its platform. Some users have been targeted explicitly through a phishing attack disguised as a legitimate email concerning the planned upgrade. 

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Per the original OpenSea update, the platform advised its customers to move their Ethereum-based NFTs to a new smart contract address, a move that will cost no cent per gas fee. Users who do not complete the migration as instructed stand the chance of losing their old and inactive tokens. Drawing on this detail, PeckShield, a blockchain security and data analytics company, said that the platform’s “Users authorize the “migration” as instructed in the phishing email and the authorization, unfortunately, allows the hacker to steal the valuable NFTs.”

In a Twitter update shared by OpenSea’s Co-Founder and CEO, Devin Finzer, the attacker’s address has remained inactive for the time being, adding that some of the stolen NFTs have been returned back to their owners. In his own words;

“As far as we can tell, this is a phishing attack. We don’t believe it’s connected to the OpenSea website. It appears 32 users thus far have signed a malicious payload from an attacker, and some of their NFTs were stolen… The attack doesn’t appear to be active at this point — we haven’t seen any malicious activity from the attacker’s account in 2 hours.” 

OpenSea claimed that “some of the NFTs have been returned, but not aware of any recent phishing emails that have been sent to users, but at this time we do not know which website was tricking users into maliciously signing messages.”

OpenSea is the world’s largest marketplace for trading NFTs, and the platform has been the target of many malicious workers in recent times.

Earlier in January, the marketplace was hacked for 332 ETH, worth approximately $780 million at the time. While the platform is actively working to mitigate these risks, it also plans on hiring additional staff to relieve its overwhelmed employees. With the new capital and the manpower, perhaps, related exploits shortly can be averted.

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Binance Joins Association of Russian Banks, Strengthening Strategic Relations

Binance cryptocurrency exchange has joined the Association of Russian Banks (ARB), which arguably bolsters its relationship with top financial institutions in the country.

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As reported by a local media outlet, Prime, the onboarding of the trading platform into the banking organization was accompanied by establishing a new department within the body. 

The department is called the Expert Center for Digital Financial Assets and Digital Currencies. Per the report, it will be led by Olga Goncharova, the Binance Exchange’s Russia and CIS head. As a frontline expert in the digital currency ecosystem, Binance, through the expert Center, will supply members of the association with technical insights related to digital currencies.

As detailed in the report, the new “Expert Center” will help compile “professional opinions on the circulation of digital financial assets and digital currencies” and provide members “with expert and analytical materials” on the topic of crypto, as well as providing “international experience.”

The role of Binance is assuming is pivotal in the overall emancipation of digital currencies in Russia as the ARB is a body that consists of about 290 banks. Despite the country’s largest banking organizations such as Gazprombank, Sberbank, and six others are not being enlisted as members based on a recent fallout, the organization still has a prominent presence in determining the direction of financial policies in the country.

The Russian government has been analyzing its potential moves related to its engagement with Bitcoin and other digital currencies lately. While the Bank of Russia has proposed a ban option, the move has been heavily criticized by some of the country’s local leaders, including Telegram founder and Chief Executive Officer Pavel Durov and Leonid Volkov, the Chief of Staff to the Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny.

The Bank has now resorted to banning Bitcoin mining, a move that it hopes will generally limit the circulation of the digital currency in the country. The ascension of Binance to the ARB may change the narrative even in ways that cannot be deciphered at this time.

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New Week New Hurdles: Top 3 Altcoins to Watch This Week

It was a gory weekend for a number of altcoins as the digital currency ecosystem took another downward slide. Investors chose to stay away from risky assets in the wake of the Russian-Ukrainian brawl. The global cryptocurrency market cap slid 3.99% at the time of writing to $1.74 trillion, paring off the gains accrued in the past week.

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Amidst the bearish slump,  three tokens are under review, including Binance Coin (BNB), LooksRare (LOOK), and Terra (LUNA) have inherent utilities and a competitive market advantage that can help them stay resilient amidst the ongoing bearish slump.

Binance Coin (BNB)

Binance Coin is still the fourth-largest digital currency by market capitalization; a figure was pegging at $62.97 billion at the time of writing. BNB is a strategically positioned coin, active as the native token of the Binance Exchange as well as the utility coin of the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) network. By default, the coin is typically under high demand, an inherent advantage that can easily spark a resurgence in the price breakout of the digital currency. BNB was changing hands at $379.22, down 4.65% during the intraday. With the broad ecosystem activities slated for this week, BNB is on track to retest the $400 resistance in the coming days.

LooksRare (LOOK)

LooksRare is an emerging Non-Fungible Token (NFT) marketplace that intends to dethroning OpenSea. Powered by the LOOKS token, the ecosystem is in a pole position to benefit from the woes of the bigger trading platform. The LOOKS token hit it off with retail NFT traders at its debut, swiftly attaining an ATH of $7.07. While the token has tracked back its gains, it is poised to make a relatively faster recovery from its current price of as many NFT stakeholders are bound to explore the platform more for its incentives and the persistent hacks being suffered by OpenSea.

Terra (LUNA)

Terra is a Layer-1 blockchain protocol that aids the fast performance of smart contracts and decentralized protocols. LUNA was trading at a price of $48.80. Since the beginning of the year, the LUNA token has taken a massive beating amidst the persistent bearish slump. Terra represents an innovative protocol that uses fiat-pegged stablecoins to power price-stable global payments systems. Its usefulness is proliferating, and this has placed a corresponding demand on LUNA, a trend that can spark a recovery in the altcoin this week.

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