PlanetWatch, in partnership with Treedom, has launched a “Stake for the Planet” initiative.
PlanetWatch is the world’s first decentralised air quality monitoring network built on the Algorand blockchain. While users of the Treedom platform can virtually plant real-life trees and follow its growth online.
The “Stake for the Plant” initiative allows owners of PlanetWatch’s tokens known as PLANETS to stake the digital assets in their Algorand wallet to earn a reward which will allow them to plant trees.
Each tree is linked to a collectable non-fungible token (NFT) that reflects its uniqueness, and owning the NFT is equal to owning the tree.
“Stake for the Planet” is the first step towards PlanetWatch’s pledge to plant 1 million trees worldwide in the next five years to support global reforestation.
PlanetWatch has said that the “Stake for the Plant” initiative is the first step towards their pledge to plant 1 million trees worldwide to support global reforestation in the next five years.
Currently, Treedom’s platform includes 1,000 trees of 12 separate species across three different continents.
“Announcing our partnership with Treedom and the launch of Stake for the Planet on Earth Day reflects our double commitment to protecting public health via air quality data and mitigating climate change,” Claudio Parrinello, PlanetWatch CEO, said.
MetaHollywood is building the largest online community within a Hollywood-themed metaverse following a joint venture between Animoca Brands and the Planet Hollywood Group.
Movie lovers, studios, and creators will be able to interact within the metaverse and it will also consist of a marketplace for digital collectables. The entire experience is powered by blockchain technology and the joint venture’s native utility token.
Planet Hollywood is the creator and worldwide developer of a consumer brand that capitalizes on the universal appeal of movies, television, sports, music and other leisure-time activities.
Animoca Brands commented on the partnership and said that ” The MetaHollywood joint venture will transform the awe-inspiring Hollywood experience into a Web3 metaverse that benefits and reaches more supporters, studios, and creators globally within a virtual environment.”
The MetaHollywood joint venture will help in the creation, ownership, interaction, distribution, and sharing of digital collectables, movies, clips, and other assets as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
“The new platform will provide a community for collectors to own uniquely famous pieces of film history in the form of NFTs as well as to share, interact with, and experience the digital assets in a purpose-built metaverse fueled by the utility of its native token,” Animoca Brands announced.
Over 60,000 of Planet Hollywood’s iconic motion picture memorabilia encompassing all popular film genres will also be tokenised by MetaHollywood.
Planet Hollywood founder Robert Earl, said, “through MetaHollywood, we will offer utility and functionality that is unrivalled in this burgeoning sector.”
While Yat Siu, the co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, commented: “The MetaHollywood joint venture will create tremendous opportunities by leveraging Planet Hollywood’s vast network of celebrities and IPs and combining them with our industry expertise and our broad portfolio of products and companies.”
In another major partnership, Hong Kong’s MTR Corporation has joined The Sandbox – subsidiary of Animoca Brands – metaverse.
Blockchain.News reported that Hong Kong’s MTR Corporation has become the first global transport operator to join The Sandbox metaverse to create new and immersive experiences in the virtual world.
The partnership will allow the local railway company to explore the metaverse and create new and immersive experiences in the virtual world. The MTR Corporation plans to build a railway-focused virtual space in the metaverse to create unique immersive experiences through gamification and engage creators to collectively build this new community platform.
The Corporation has also acquired a plot of land in The Sandbox metaverse where the company plans to build an immersive virtual station. By doing so, the Corporation is particularly targeting to increase interaction with the younger generation through Web3 and metaverse.
The gamified virtual station will be built in replication to the physical railway environment and players will experience an MTR journey that will be more than taking a ride, the Corporation said.
After the German commercial bank (Commerzbank) applied for license encryption earlier this year, it will become the country’s first major bank to provide encryption currency if they are approved to get the operation license.
German bank Commerzbank also appears to be strengthening its crypto offering after applying for a crypto license earlier this year in the first quarter. A spokesman for the bank confirmed on April 14th.
Bernd Reh, senior spokesman for Commerzbank stated that:
“We entered into a cooperation with Deutsche Börse and Fin-Tech 330x in spring 2021. In addition, we are pursuing our own digital asset strategy and are also planning our own offerings for our customers in the coming years. We have applied for a license from the Bafin for the safekeeping of crypto assets. The future offer is initially aimed at institutional customers.”
Commerzbank, founded in 1870, is one of Germany’s three original banks. The bank hopes to expand the business of custody and trading of non-physical assets and build its own digital ecosystem. It is estimated that at least 25 licence applications are awaiting a decision from the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority.
Chip design and the manufacturing company Dual Miners announced the launch of SHA-256 and Scrypt as the first dual-mining machine hardware equipment worldwide, which is expected to be more energy efficient than other algorithms.
The London-based England Dual Miners company was founded in 2015, it is designed to provide a lower cost for the encryption currency diggers and have more powerful solutions.
Dual Miners become the leading double encryption currency Minerals mining company uses SHA-256 or Scrypt technology in the world.
The mining machine is equipped with a cooling system, a nano-chip 7, a noise reduction mechanism, and the conditioned space humidity. It is connected to the Ethernet and the integration of the world’s leading software and hardware technology, for users in a short time mining Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Monroe currency (XMR), Ethernet Square (ETH), etc. encryption currency.
Director of Operations and Chief Operating Officer Michael Scott from Dual Miners said that despite the current scale is not large, but has a huge mining capacity. He added that：
“The DualPremium generates 60 TH / s for Bitcoin and 2.1 GH / s for Litecoin, respectively. It’s the best investment available on the market.”
Likewise, Intel, a US multinational semiconductor chip maker corporation headquartered in California, announced that it has launched its second-generation Bitcoin mining chip, commonly known as “Intel Blockscale ASIC,” which will increase the energy efficiency of Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining.
Kadena Protocol, a scalable Layer-1 blockchain network, has announced the launch of a $100 million Web3.0 grant to power the growth of innovative startups looking to build on the network.
According to a blog post shared by Francesco Melpignano, the Chief Executive Officer of Kadena Eco, the application for the grant is now ongoing and the funds will be deployed to fund both small and big projects that are ready to innovate on the Kadena blockchain. Projects looking to build gaming, metaverse, DeFi, and NFT-related solutions are of particular interest to the grant.
“Kadena Eco exists to empower builders to create new projects that transform the world. To realize this mission, we’re doubling down on our growing community by deploying capital towards the long-term sustainability of our ecosystem,” Melpignano said. “Kadena Eco grants will be applied to projects big and small, enabling builders of all backgrounds to succeed on Kadena. With our network of technology experts and strategic partners, we’re here to support builders every step of the way.”
While Kadena’s grant is not different from those of its peers like the ecosystem fund floated by Avalanche and Binance, Melpignano said gaining access to this grant can open more doors to the platform’s incubators and other programs designed to assist young developers to fulfil their potentials.
As unveiled, the selection criteria for the Kadena Web3 grant is hinged on the technical strength of the application, details of the specifications, the experience of the team, and the adjudged usefulness of the project to the Kadena ecosystem.
With the calls for applications out, Melpignano said projects that end up benefiting from the grants will have to work under the “Build in the Open” philosophy. This philosophy mandates developers connected to the Kadena network to contribute content, codes, tutorials and product explainers on relevant channels connected with the protocol.
In all, the Kadena team is open to mentoring the next generation of leaders that will innovate to connect the world with the blockchain ecosystem, and one of the ways it is doing this is through the newly launched grant.
American investment banking giant Goldman Sachs is notably lobbying FTX Derivatives exchange if the crypto trading platform decides to go public through Initial Public Offering (IPO) shortly.
According to a report by the Financial Times, Goldman Sachs’ Chief Executive Officer (CEO), David Solomon, met with FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried back in March as both discussed many areas in which they can collaborate.
Primarily, Goldman Sachs was reportedly bolstering its role as an advisor to FTX related to the exchange’s dealings with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The American banking giant will also like to be the broker should FTX decide to go public, assuming a similar role when Coinbase Global Inc went public on the Nasdaq Exchange last year.
Besides these salient aspects, the duo also discussed private fundraising options, collaboration on the market making in crypto trades, and Goldman offering traditional banking services to FTX, according to the sources that spoke to the Financial Times.
FTX Exchange is a trading platform that is making waves in many aspects. Following the enormous funds raised by the crypto unicorn in the past couple of years, it hit a $32 billion valuation in January. The exchange’s positive growth momentum has attracted a number of traditional legacy investors, including the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan and Softbank, amongst others.
The massive valuation of FTX has made the next logical milestone pegged at an IPO, and should Coinbase’s success story be trailed, the Bankman-Fried platform could also hit it off with investors in the public market.
Besides its global operations, FTX has a dedicated and regulated subsidiary in the United States dubbed FTX.US, a startup that has grown its reputation for inking partnerships with sports teams and its strategic acquisitions, the latest of which is LedgerX, a CFTC-regulated derivatives service provider.
Britain’s apex bank, the Bank of England, through the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), is looking to raise as much as 321 million pounds ($419 million) from the commercial institutions it is regulating as it is planning to shore up its regulatory efforts in the digital currency ecosystem.
With the proposed funds it hopes to raise projected to be 8% above what was pulled by the PRA in 2021, the Bank of England is looking to onboard as many as 100 staff that will help chart its regulatory agenda for the nascent industry moving forward.
The digital currency ecosystem is worth more than $2 trillion at its peak, a figure that is no longer negligible. Despite the fact that this figure is just a fraction of the $469 trillion global financial systems, officials of the Bank of England believe the industry is large enough to upset the financial industry, the way the Mortgage industry did when it ushered in the global financial crisis of 2008.
In addition to the plans of the PRA as detailed in its business plans, it plans to “ask firms to report their crypto-asset exposures, treatments, and future investment plans” to help establish a common international framework for digital currencies.
From its regulatory actions, the Bank of England has a very dominant stance concerning the regulation of cryptocurrencies. In September 2020, the Governor of the BoE, Andrew Bailey, recognised the importance of stablecoins in the monetary ecosystem, adding that Bitcoin has no connections to money.
In its own way of identifying more with the evolution of money, the Bank of England is developing its own Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) or Digital Pound. With the growing number of crypto users being recorded in the United Kingdom, stepping up its regulatory moves is a good way for the BoE to register its interest in a more coordinated effort with other regulators in the world as it concerns the developing crypto world.
SFLMaven, a luxury jewellery and goods provider, has started accepting Bitcoin (BTC) payments in the real world and the metaverse for high-end vintage jewellery items.
Joseph Ladin, SFL Maven’s CEO, said:
“We are excited to begin accepting Bitcoin as a valid form of payment, especially as we establish our new metaverse presence and sales of digital goods, creating an avenue for an expanding relationship with a massive new tech-savvy end market.”
With SFLMaven recording sales worth more than $140 million since inception, the company has been experiencing unprecedented cash flows based on increasing web traffic and demand, necessitating BTC reserves.
Ladin pointed out:
“As such, we have begun to diversify the company’s exposure on the cash side with periodic investments in Bitcoin. We will also augment this step by transitioning to allow purchases in BTC as we continually work to widen our access to viable end-market customers interested in our unique products.”
SFLMaven sees the metaverse strategy as a stepping stone towards augmenting sales in 2022. This has necessitated the urge for alternative payment networks and diversified processes for recording and storing financial assets.
Ladin noted:
“We believe in the future of Bitcoin and digital payment systems and that fiat currency systems represent a risk to the productivity of assets on the balance sheet because they are subject to monetary expansion, stimulus, and debt, which could continue to drag down value.”
With the metaverse expected to be worth between $8 trillion and $13 trillion by 2030, this sector continues to gain steam in the modern era because it entails shared virtual worlds where avatars, buildings, land, and even names can be bought and sold, often using cryptocurrencies.
Gaming platforms The Sandbox and FlickPlay recently partnered to enhance the interoperability concept in the metaverse to enable users to move freely between virtual worlds on different platforms.
With 2021 emerging as a strong year for cryptocurrencies, global investors made $162.7 million in realized gains, according to blockchain analytic firm Chainalysis.
The result represented a 400.6% surge from $32.5 billion recorded in 2020, with Americans making the most gains. Per the report:
“The United States leads by a wide margin at an estimated $47.0 billion in realized cryptocurrency gains, followed by the UK, Germany, Japan, and China.”
Source: Chainalysis
The United Kingdom came a distant second with $8 billion. Pakistan capped the top 50 countries in realized crypto gains with $604 million.
Realized gains entail profits accrued after selling a financial instrument like a commodity, share, or cryptocurrency.
Therefore, realized gains in the United States skyrocketed by 476%, from $8.1 billion recorded in 2020 to $47 billion in 2021.
China recorded a lower growth rate at 194% based on intensified crackdowns on crypto activities. Per the study:
“In 2021, China’s total estimated realized cryptocurrency gains were $5.1 billion, up from $1.7 billion in 2020, for a year-over-year growth rate of 194% … the UK saw a 431% increase, while Germany’s gains grew by 423%.”
Ethereum elbowed Bitcoin in 2021
According to Chainalysis:
“Ethereum edged out Bitcoin in total realized gains globally at $76.3 billion to $74.7 billion. We believe this reflects increased demand for Ethereum as the result of DeFi’s rise in 2021.”
Ethereum has been one of the sought after blockchains in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector because it offers smart contracts needed to eliminate intermediaries present in conventional financial processes.
Therefore, 2021 was a significant year for Ethereum because it generated revenue worth $9.9 billion, Blockchain.News reported.
Furthermore, both Bitcoin and Ethereum attained all-time high (ATH) prices in November 2021. Bitcoin scaled the heights to hit $69,000, whereas Ethereum reached historic highs of $4,850.
Justin Sun, the founder of the Tron blockchain network, is stepping up his responsibility in the broader digital currency ecosystem with the establishment of the Tron DAO Reserve.
Sun unveiled the new Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) in an open letter to the Tron community, citing how long overdue a reserve fund is floated to help cushion the broader industry from the shocks of the bear market and sudden price crashes.
Despite Tron being the frontrunner per its founding, Sun noted that the Tron DAO Reserve will service every blockchain protocol with the needed liquidity to stay in business when there is a major financial offset. He said the reserve will be kick-starting its operations with $10 billion, and he enjoined participants to contribute to the liquidity pool of the reserve.
“By setting up a decentralized blockchain reserve, we will be able to bring together the power of all blockchain practitioners through a DAO system and build this organization into the firmest protector of the blockchain industry and market. I believe this will be the best solution to any future crises,” Sun wrote in the open letter.
Specifically, the Tron DAO Reserve “aims to safeguard the overall blockchain industry and crypto market, prevent panic trading caused by financial crises, and mitigate severe and long-term economic downturns.” The Tron DAO Reserve will help to stabilize the exchange rates of both centralized and decentralized stablecoins that are resident on the Tron blockchain protocol “by setting risk-free interest rates and regulating the market through liquidity provision.”
The participation in the DAO will include an incentivization model over time in a bid to reward liquidity providers contributing to the reserve.
Differences with Central Banking Reserve
The operational model of the Tron DAO Reserve has a lot of marked differences from the centralized banking-backed Reserve system that helps to cushion financial shocks amongst commercial banks. Besides the decentralized governance structure as outlined, the Tron DAO is billed to launch a new algorithmic stablecoin dubbed the USDD slated to go live on May 5.
The launch of the USDD stablecoin will help in furthering the role of the Tron ecosystem in stablecoin developments as it has done with Tether USDT.
