Cometh gaming studio has announced a $10 million seed round as it launched a second blockchain-based video game.
The startup creates games built on blockchain technology. The games created by Cometh can seamlessly connect with DeFi protocols so that they are equipped with a suite of crypto-based financial tools.
Cometh’s primary focus is to build an end-to-end gaming platform powering the next generation of play-to-earn (P2E) games.
Besides creating games, Cometh also helps gaming firms build out crypto functionality.
According to a press release, venture capital firm White Star Capital, gaming giant Ubisoft and DeFi group Stake Capital led the investment, with Serena Capital, Shima Capital and IDEO Colab Ventures all participating. However, Cometh has not disclosed its valuation yet.
Cometh’s founder Jerome de Tychey said, “our team builds games that explore the new possibilities offered by blockchain technology along with the tools to enhance traditional games with it.”
Cometh also released the studio’s second title, Cometh Battle.
Along with games, Cometh is also working on supplying its technology to help other brands to showcase non-fungible tokens.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Wildlife Warriors’ role in protecting injured, threatened, or endangered wildlife, Australia Zoo has launched a non-fungible token (NFT) project to raise funds and awareness to protect Australia’s wild places and wildlife.
“The rare NFT project will comprise of a series of drops, each focusing on a different Australia Zoo Wildlife Warriors animal. The NFTs will be randomly generated, non deterministic, utility-driven and 100 per cent unique to the buyer.”
With the partnership with Australian-based technology startup Meadow Labs, the limited NFT series will be hosted on the Algorand blockchain based on low transaction fees, which are converted to carbon offsets.
Regarded as the home of the Crocodile Hunter, Australia Zoo is home to more than 1,200 animals. Its Wildlife Hospital has treated more than 110,000 animals since its inception in 2004.
Martin Kelly, the co-founder and CEO of Meadow Labs, sees the partnership as a stepping stone toward creating an “NFT for good” movement needed for a sustainable future.
He added:
“We’re really excited to partner with Australia Zoo in their first foray into Web3 and their mission of fighting for the planet’s wildlife and wild places, one NFT at a time. This is a sensational example of what innovative brands can achieve when they open themselves up to the endless possibilities that Web3 has to offer.”
Given that technological innovations are needed in wildlife conservation efforts, NFTs are expected to fill the void.
Robert Irwin of Australia Zoo noted:
“At Australia Zoo we’re always open to new ways that can help continue our Wildlife Warriors mission. This green chain and new technology allows us a new avenue to continue to fight for the protection of our wildlife and wild places.”
As Australian bushfires wreaked havoc in 2020, Bitcoin donations came in handy in aiding a noble cause, Blockchain.News reported.
The decision to channel the donations through cryptocurrency was arrived at because cryptos allow funds to be raised across the globe during major disasters based on the low transaction fees accrued.
Marathon Digital Holdings, Inc, one of the largest bitcoin mining companies in North America, announced that its bitcoin production output increased by 556% year-over-year to 1,259 BTC for the first quarter of 2022.
Marathon Digital Holdings said revenue rose to $51.7 million in the first quarter of 2022, a 465% increase from the same period last year.
A record 1,259 bitcoins were produced in the first quarter of 2022, an increase of about 15% from the 1,098 bitcoins produced in the previous quarter.
The company said it had about 6,320 bitcoins as of April 30, all of which were self-mined by the company.
The company stated that the focus in 2022 remains on deploying miners and hopes to bring the backlog of miners back into production by the end of the year, reaching a score of 23.3 EH/s in 2023.
Marathon Digital is deploying nearly 200,000 miners for 100% carbon neutral mining.
Fred Thiel, chairman and CEO of Marathon, said that:
“In the first quarter of 2022, we increased our bitcoin production 556% year-over-year and 15% from the prior quarter, producing a record 1,259 bitcoin even as the global hash rate rose by approximately 17% in the same period.”
The company also revealed that it has currently deployed around 36,830 miners with a hash rate of 3.9 exhas per second (EH/s).
Marathon Digital Holdings, a Nasdaq-listed bitcoin mining company based in Las Vegas, announced that it ordered 78,000 Antminer S19 XP bitcoin mining machines worth $879.06 million from Bitmain.
To offer lifelong financial and career development to French-speaking Africans, leading crypto exchange Binance is offering blockchain education in Cameroon and Francophone Africa.
Binance has been carrying out multiple educational events to enlighten the French-speaking Africans about the opportunities rendered by the crypto space and how they can make a living from them.
The crypto exchange has already educated more than 541,000 Africans about cryptocurrencies and how to detect bad actors or scams since the Binance Masterclass Education Series was launched in January 2020. Per the announcement:
“Through regular skills training and the services provided, Binance is creating new job opportunities for Cameroonians – and many are being brought out of poverty and learning new skills in order to remain employable globally.”
By hosting hackathons and bootcamps, Binance is helping African learners to improve their crypto and blockchain skills by working on real-time projects. Some alumni have been absorbed in the workforce, created their own companies, and started crypto trading.
Moreover, the Binance P2P Merchant Program has enabled French-speaking Africans to make a living from the comfort of their home. George, one of the beneficiaries, pointed out:
“I decided to become a Binance P2P merchant after reading up on their mode of operations. I saw how much safer it was when my first trade on the platform was so smooth and fast. I have been able to add a car to my garage, and eventually, I’ll be able to get an even better car — all thanks to Binance.”
Binance recently established a Crypto Academy in Togo, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, and Benin to render a monthly training program.
Binance has shown its commitment to giving back to the community. For instance, the crypto exchange launched a charity project dubbed ‘Crypto Against COVID’ in March 2020.
The funds were to purchase medical equipment for countries worst affected by Coronavirus.
To offer lifelong financial and career development to French-speaking Africans, leading crypto exchange Binance is offering blockchain education in Cameroon and Francophone Africa.
Binance has been carrying out multiple educational events to enlighten the French-speaking Africans about the opportunities rendered by the crypto space and how they can make a living from them.
The crypto exchange has already educated more than 541,000 Africans about cryptocurrencies and how to detect bad actors or scams since the Binance Masterclass Education Series was launched in January 2020. Per the announcement:
“Through regular skills training and the services provided, Binance is creating new job opportunities for Cameroonians – and many are being brought out of poverty and learning new skills in order to remain employable globally.”
By hosting hackathons and bootcamps, Binance is helping African learners to improve their crypto and blockchain skills by working on real-time projects. Some alumni have been absorbed in the workforce, created their own companies, and started crypto trading.
Moreover, the Binance P2P Merchant Program has enabled French-speaking Africans to make a living from the comfort of their home. George, one of the beneficiaries, pointed out:
“I decided to become a Binance P2P merchant after reading up on their mode of operations. I saw how much safer it was when my first trade on the platform was so smooth and fast. I have been able to add a car to my garage, and eventually, I’ll be able to get an even better car — all thanks to Binance.”
Binance recently established a Crypto Academy in Togo, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, and Benin to render a monthly training program.
Binance has shown its commitment to giving back to the community. For instance, the crypto exchange launched a charity project dubbed ‘Crypto Against COVID’ in March 2020.
The funds were to purchase medical equipment for countries worst affected by Coronavirus.
Cryptocurrency hedge Fund Pangea Fund has raised $85 million to focus on a “long-only” strategy.
Pangea Fund Management was founded by Ryan Watkins, a former analyst at Messari Inc., and Daniel Cheung, who works at Jennison Associates LLC.
Ryan Watkins in an interview:
“Our thesis is that in the long run, there’ll be very few winners in each category. So for us, we’d much rather bet on some of the early winners we’re seeing.”
Investors include Bain Capital, ParaFi, Alameda Research, and others, USV co-founder Brad Burnham, Apollo Global Management co-founder Josh Harris, Terraform Do Kwon of Labs, Kyle Samani, partner of Multicoin Capital, and other angel investors participated in the investment.
Most cryptocurrency hedge funds currently focus on Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as investments focused on early-stage projects.
However, what makes Pangea unique is its strategic focus on taking a long-term position among three to seven established tokens.
“The fund’s concentration in just a few tokens will also allow it to focus on supporting an important element of Decentralization: projects’ governance, “said Watkins
Despite the Federal Reserve (Fed) increasing interest rates by half a point (0.5%), Bitcoin (BTC) soared by 6% to reach $40,002.
Even though the leading cryptocurrency had retraced to $39,595 during intraday trading, it was still 2.46% up in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.
The Bitcoin market had been engulfed by nervousness about the repercussions of the Fed’s decision for weeks because a hike in interest rate is usually bearish. Therefore, the surge in price could signal a sell the rumour, buy the news event.
“The Fed made their move as expected, with a 50 basis point interest rate rise. Unsurprisingly, the impact shifted bullish almost immediately for crypto, just as it did after the March hike. We may have another sell the rumor by the news scenario.”
Source: Santiment
Therefore, what might be happening in the BTC market is the opposite of the “buy the rumor, sell the news” adage, which means that if good news is expected sometime in the future, the price will often move higher in anticipation of that date, but not necessarily after.
Meanwhile, Nick Mancini, the director of research at the crypto analytic platform, Trade The Chain, opined that the scenario in the Bitcoin market would have been bearish if the interest rate hike was 0.75% and not the current 0.50%. He explained:
“Any FOMC guidance that does not include a 0.75 percent interest rate increase would be bullish for both crypto and equities. We believe that the market has priced in continued hikes of 0.25% to 0.50% moving forward for 2022. This gives the market certainty, which, in turn, breeds bullish price action.”
To tame runaway inflation, economists speculate that the Fed will roll out further interest rates to attain the target level of 2%.
According to the latest figures by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), inflation rose 8.5% year on year in March 2022, a scenario not seen since December 1981.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin might be painting a bullish picture based on the current narrow playing field because this could trigger a big impulse move, according to Market analyst Michael van de Poppe.
Bitlocus – a global emerging fintech company based in Lithuania – announced on Thursday that it has partnered with Estonia-based fintech company Striga, which develops tech infrastructure for crypto companies,to roll out crypto-friendly debit cards for its customers across the European Economic Area and the globe.
Bitlocus said that the crypto-enabled debit cards will enable its clients to use their cryptocurrencies to buy goods and services just the way they spend traditional currencies where Visa is accepted globally. Backed by the Visa network, the Bitlocus card platform connects with people globally as well as over 70 million merchant locations worldwide.
Bitlocus mentioned that the cards will allow its customers to spend their crypto funds on POS (Point of Sale) devices, make online purchases, and withdraw cash from ATMs.
The crypto cards will benefit both retail customers and business clients, Bitlocus stated. While the card will allow all users to make payments with their tokens listed on the Bitlocus exchange, it will provide business clients with an opportunity to have their brand on the card.
Andrius Normantas, the Chief Executive Officer of Bitlocus, talked about the development and said: “the card is a natural addition to the portfolio of other Bitlocus products. Digital currencies and the crypto ecosystem, in general, are gaining momentum, and we want our clients to benefit from this shift as much as possible”.
Bernardo Magnani, CEO at Striga, also commented on the collaboration and stated: “our partnership with Bitlocus has been critical in the evolution of Striga as a company and dates to our early days when we were running our own crypto card program under the brand Lastbit. We are honoured to have been selected by Bitlocus to power their ambitious crypto-enabled card program and excited to kick-off this new stage in our partnership.”
Bitlocus disclosed that it is preparing to introduce both virtual and physical cards, and will announce the registration to the waiting list shortly.
Removing Barriers to DeFi Access
Bitlocus has been dedicated to helping accelerate cryptocurrency adoption.
In September last year, Bitlocus launched its innovative B2B products, including white-label exchange, crypto mass payouts, IEO launchpads, crypto payment gateway, and custom pair (with fiat) token listing services, designed to cater for the needs of crypto projects of any size and scale.
Launched in 2018, Bitlocus has continued to serve as DeFi investments platform for fiat-based investors. The Terra-based DeFi investment platform was designed to provide a simple means to help traditional investors easily access the expanding DeFi market.
Bitlocus achieves this through various products that allow fiat users to gain exposure to the yields offered by DeFi platforms and protocols such as Aave, Compound, Venus, Sushi. Bitlocus provides such products through a dashboard for accessing DeFi yields, thus helping to bring the benefits of DeFi to mainstream investors.
Blur announced that it is releasing Blur Beta, a real-time trading platform for non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
In a series of tweets, Blur shared details about the platform. “Monthly trading volumes for NFTs have hit billions, but existing platforms are slow and refresh-based,” it said in a tweet.
Currently, the beta waitlist is invite-only, and everyone who joins the platform will be rewarded, Blur said in a tweet.
“Blur Beta access = 5 invites for friends,” it tweeted.
With the release of Blur Beta, the company claims to be building the best NFT marketplace for professional traders.
It also added that the company had assembled a team with professionals from MIT, Five Rings, Square and Brex to build the platform.
“The beta lets you see listings and sales on existing marketplaces in real-time. Never refresh again,” one tweet from Blur said.
One of Blur Beta’s features unlocks a new view of a user’s portfolio, allowing them to see their NFTs, active listings, and a P&L statement.
“When opportunity strikes, you can act fast by bulk listing and delisting directly on Blur,” the company tweeted.
In March, Blur raised $11 million in a seed funding round led by crypto VC firm Paradigm.
According to Blockchain.News, Blur’s NFT marketplace focuses on professional traders. The funding round was led by venture capital firm Paradigm. Some of the other participants included firms such as eGirls Capital, 0xMaki and LedgerStatus.
The startup firm said, “current NFT marketplaces prioritise the retail experience, but they neglect the growing needs of pro traders,” in a blog post after completing the funding round.
“Infrastructure has failed to keep up as monthly trading volumes hit billions, and web2 business models hold the space back with poorly aligned incentives. Our mission is to solve these problems and move the NFT space toward becoming institutional-grade while increasing decentralisation,” the company added.
Many other NFT projects and startups have also raised funding in recent months.
According to another report by Blockchain.News, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) creator Yuga Labs said that it raised $450 million in funding in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, has been approved by the French regulatory agency and operates cryptocurrency transactions legally in France.
France has become the first country that approves Binance to be legally operated in the world and has been listed as a registered digital asset service provider by AMF by the French stock market regulatory engine.
As early as November 12, 2021, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao pinpointed France as one of the most advanced European nations with clear governing rules in the crypto ecosystem. This makes the country a natural fit for opening a regional and central headquarter.
Changpeng Zhao pointed out that France uses “very progressive” in the use of cryptocurrencies, he said that:
“In our interactions with them, they are far more advanced in their understanding, and they’re also much more progressive in their attitudes。France is a very strict regulator. But they have the advanced understandings to go with that.”
Binance has cooperated with the French financial technology industry group to invest 100 million euros, which equals $113 million to support the development of the French blockchain industry and cryptocurrency.
