Inflation Might Bring New Crypto Users, Tethered Peso, the Price of Zuckerberg’s Meta Ambitions + More News
Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Adoption news
- Verena Ross, chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority, said that soaring inflation may drive retail investors into risky cryptoassets, per Bloomberg. “With inflation rising, investors will look to find investments which are able to try to compensate for inflation and bring greater returns, which might lead to greater risk taking. That is something we are monitoring very closely,” she was quoted as saying.
- KuCoin said that per the results of its survey, 27% of the respondents in the US have invested in cryptoassets, based on a total sample of 1,026 US adult internet users aged 18 to 60 who are self-identifying crypto investors, polled between October 2021 and March 2022. 53% of the respondents claimed to have doubled down their money invested in crypto in the first quarter of 2022, while the share of 41-50-year-olds rose by 7% over the past quarter.
Stablecoin news
- Tether, the company behind the tether (USDT) stablecoin, has launched Tether stablecoins MXNT pegged to the Mexican Peso. Initial blockchain support will include Ethereum, Tron (TRX), and Polygon (MATIC).
- Financial company Circle, the issuer of the USD coin (USDC) stablecoin, stated that USDC and other private-sector innovations are already achieving what a central bank digital currency (CBDC) would hope to offer, in response to the Federal Reserve’s discussion paper on the potential impact of a US CBDC. It added that CBDCs may exacerbate existing problems with financial inclusion and destabilize the banking system. They also stated that the US government is not well-situated to develop and maintain the technology required to successfully administer a CBDC.
Investments news
- Mark Zuckerberg said in the annual shareholder meeting for Meta that he plans to invest heavily in his company’s metaverse ambitions, and that will mean losing “significant” amounts of money on the project in the next three to five years. However, the metaverse will eventually make money from a creator economy, as people build businesses selling virtual goods and services, he claimed.
- Elon Musk is dropping plans to partially fund his purchase of social network Twitter with a margin loan tied to his electric car company Tesla stake and increasing the size of the deal’s equity component to USD 33.5bn, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Musk will provide an additional USD 6.25bn in equity financing for the USD 44bn buyout to eliminate a margin loan of the same size.
- Gaming developer Kongregate and Ethereum (ETH) layer 2 solution Immutable X announced a USD 40m fund that will be awarded as grants to blockchain game integrations on the Kongregate.com platform. The platform itself is relaunching later this year, they added.
- A group of former executives from Binance has created a USD 100m venture fund called Old Fashion Research (OFR), per TechCrunch. The fund will be focused on the metaverse and bringing greater crypto adoption to emerging markets like Latin America and Africa, they added.
Exchanges news
- BitMEX announced that they’re launching ETH margin and settlement for perpetual and futures contracts trading on their platform. This option is already available on their testnet, with the mainnet to follow in “a few days.”
- Binance announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovations and Aerospace Industry of the Republic of Kazakhstan, expressing mutual interest in virtual asset market development in the country. The move will see Binance help advise on developing the legislative framework and regulatory policy for cryptoassets in Kazakhstan, they added.
- Binance Bahrain has received a Category 4 license as a cryptoasset service provider from the Central Bank of Bahrain, which lets them offer a wider range of crypto exchange services to users in Bahrain.
- Bitfinex Securities, the tokenized securities platform of crypto exchange Bitfinex, appointed Jesse Knutson as Head of Operations. Knutson was previously Vice President of Financial Products at blockchain technology firm Blockstream.
- Coinbase announced that their anti-money laundering (AML) compliance solution Travel Rule Universal Solution Technology (TRUST) is expanding globally, now available in the US, Canada, and Singapore, with Europe in the talks, as they’re “actively working to expand to other global jurisdictions.”
NFTs news
- The Gallery of Digital Assets (GODA), described as a resource for contemporary artists to explore the non-fungible token (NFT) and digital space, has announced its launch. The first drop is scheduled for early this summer and will include the GODA mint pass which guarantees access to future drops. Producer Pharrell Williams is among the co-founders of the platform.
Mining news
- Chip giant Nvidia said its contribution from sales of the crypto mining processor (CMP) was “nominal” for its 2023 fiscal first quarter ended May 1, 2022. Its first-quarter revenue for its “OEM and Other” business unit fell 52% to USD 158m from the same quarter last year due to a decline in its crypto mining processor sales.
