Cryptocurrency & Mining News - Page 23

The NFT market has amassed a huge $22 billion in trading volume in 2021, analyst firm DappRadar reports.

A new report from DappRadar outlines the emerging NFT trends that've taken 2021 by storm. The firm estimates that NFT volume trading has hit $22 billion throughout 2021, with a market cap of $16.7 billion based on the top 100 NFT collections, including heavy-hitters like Bored Ape Yacht Club ($26.2 million), Beeple's renowned The First 5,000 Days ($69.3 million) and Human One ($29 million), and CryptoPunks ($37.17 million total).

The report succinctly outlines emerging trends in the blockchain gaming space, discussing play-to-earn and GameFi. Startups have raised over $4 billion in capital to fund play-to-earn blockchain games, including Animoca Brands, who received a hefty investment from Ubisoft (and who is also making a Bored Ape Yacht Club video game). Other play-to-earn proponents include Gala Games, who is publishing Peter Molyneux's new game Legacy with its minted land NFTs, and Certain Affinity's new FPS, which pledges to be the very first play-to-earn AAA shooter.

Twitch co-founder Justin Kan is launching an NFT trading marketplace called Fractal, and it's off to a rocky start.

Early adopters of Fractal have been scammed out of about $150,000 worth of Solana, and it's all because of a Discord vulnerability. Over 100,000 members have joined Fractal's Discord in anticipation for the first NFT mint airdrop. Hackers gained control of Fractal's admin account and put out a fake post telling everyone the NFT drop was happening, and they could mint if they linked their wallets.

The fake out only lasted about 10 minutes, but that was long enough. 373 people clicked the link (only 0.3% of the total userbase) which looked authentic but was actually FractaI, with an "I", and not Fractal with an "L". Users linked their accounts and clicked the mint button, losing a total of 800 SOL which amounts to $149,576 USD.

REV's Tai Lopez and Alex Mehr plan to use 100 years of brand recognition to bring the DeFi (decentralized finance) world of cryptocurrency to mainstream consumer markets.

In a shocking move, RadioShack, the once-dead electronics titan, is being resurrected to embrace today's latest tech trends. Instead of selling gizmos and circuits, the new RadioShack will help facilitate DeFi with a new crypto swap--nomenclature for a cryptocurrency exchange. It's pretty complicated and the company has put out detailed documents here.

RaioShack's swap protocol, or decentralized exchange (DEX), is backed by Atlas USV (which is also run by REV's Tai Lopez and Alex Mehr), which has liquidity from the Atlas Treasury, which runs on the Ethereum-based USV token. In essence, REV wants to make an exchange like Uniswap using RadioShack's brand name.

Indian restaurant "Voosh" is doing things a little differently in India -- where the country has the highest number of cryptocurrency investors in the world -- has adopted cryptocurrency-themed food items on its menu.

Since the company made the crypto-fueled move, they've seen nothing but massive success and a huge influx of orders. Voosh's hottest-selling product is their regular Indian tea, but with a fancier cryptocurrency-themed name of "Crypto Chai By Voosh".

Varun Agarwal, the co-founder of Alma Mater, posted a screenshot on her personal Instagram of Voosh's menu, saying: "Ah Bangalore, you beauty". Crypto enthusiasts are super enthusiastic about Voosh's moves, with over 100 million crypto investors in the country making India the hottest spot in the world for digital currency. The Indian government is regulating cryptocurrencies and a bill might be introduced in February 2022, not too far away now.

I noticed that my notifications on Twitter was blowing up a few hours ago, and it was over something called DogeBonk -- a meme coin that has a bigger bark than Dogecoin right now, beating Elon Musk's favorite cryptocurrency to the moon.

DogeBonk is now marketing itself as the first meme coin in space, beating Elon Musk putting a "literal Dogecoin on the literal moon". DogeBonk is being launched into space, which gives the marketing team at DogeBonk the ability to market their meme coin at beating Dogecoin to space.

The team tweeted, with what I'm sure was a huge smile on their faces: "Sorry Elon, but we beat Dogecoin as the first memecoin in space. Watch us prove it tomorrow on our stream. DogeBonk is the first crypto in space. Ain't too late to join us though, truce?"

I don't know how but Jaxson Davidson somehow has the keys to all of my crypto mining farms, and is showing them off on his personal Twitter account. Davidson has just started up his 4th -- yes 4th -- crypto mine and man is it beautiful.

Davidson has uploaded a tease of one of his crypto farms, where you can see hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of graphics cards -- all of them specifically NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3070 with 8GB of GDDR6 memory -- while his new building "will be all" of NVIDIA's new CMP 170HX cards.

The huge RTX 3070-powered crypto mining farm can be found in the Tonaquint Data Center, Inc. which is in Utah. It seems that Davidson has been using mostly NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition graphics cards -- you know, gaming-focused graphics cards and FE cards above that -- not AIB custom models, but rather directly from NVIDIA.

A big decision is about to be made by Russia, as the nation decides to accept cryptocurrency or ban it entirely.

A new report from Reuters revealed that the Central Bank of Russia is pushing for a ban on cryptocurrencies, as it believes it could cause financial instability with a large amount of transactions. This isn't the first move Russia has made against cryptocurrencies, as President Vladamir Putin recently stated during an investment forum that cryptocurrencies in general "bear high risks".

While Putin and the Central Bank of Russia have expressed their concerns about cryptocurrency, the chairman of the Duma, the Russian Parliament Committee on Financial Markets, has pushed for regulatory agencies such as the Federal Tax Service of Russia to tax transactions made on exchanges. Aksakov states that there is an approach that can be made towards legalizing these exchanges.

Traci and Dave Gagnon met back in October 2015 in virtual form inside of Dave's "virtual office" as an avatar, and fast forward just 6 years and the couple is the first to get married in the metaverse... while getting married in real-life.

The couple met in real life after meeting during their company's global convention -- the two work for a real estate brokerage -- and then started dating in March 2019. After 3 months of romance they were engaged, and then on September 4, 2021 the couple got married in a virtual chapel in the sky.

Traci told Insider that it was the CEO of the real estate company they worked for that floated the idea of a virtual wedding and getting married "in the cloud". A sister branch of the employer who creates virtual spaces stepped in, and provided the virtual world for the Gagnon's to get married in the metaverse.

Former first lady Melania Trump has announced her first non-fungible token (NFT) initiative, with proceeds from the NFT going to support children aging out of the foster care system.

The new NFT is called "Melania's Vision" and finds itself as digital artwork being sold for 1 unit of SOL cryptocurrency (worth around $180) and it also includes an audio recording from Melania. Melania's Vision and other anticipated NFTs will be released on MelaniaTrump.com exclusively.

Melania's Vision is an NFT of a watercolor done by artist Marc-Antoine Coulon which "embodies Mrs. Trump's cobalt blue eyes, providing the collector with an amulet to inspire". Melania Trump said in a statement: "I am proud to announce my new NFT endeavor, which embodies my passion for the arts, and will support my ongoing commitment to children through my Be Best initiative. Through this new technology-based platform, we will provide children computer science skills, including programming and software development, to thrive after they age out of the foster community".

NBA legend Michael Jordan and his son Jeffery Jordan have entered the cryptocurrency and NFT market with a new announcement.

According to a report from Decrypt, Michael Jordan and his son have co-founded a new company HEIR.inc that has created a platform that will allow devoted fans to connect with professional athletes. The platform will have feature an HEIR token and is built on the Solana blockchain.

Additionally, the platform will support NFT assets and also allow users to participate in an athlete's limited capacity "huddle" that will include exclusive benefits and features. HEIR.inc has already successfully received $10 million in seed funding, and according to the release, Thrive Captial led the funding round, which Solana Ventures, Reddit co-founder and Seven Seven Six founder Alexis Ohanian, Chicago Bulls player Lonzo Ball, and New York Knicks Executive Vice President William Wesley.