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“Bitcoin can never be created, it is mathematically pure”- Steve Wozniak

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Bitcoin [BTC] is mathematical purity with a very trustable format that cannot be easily changed with humans in control, is what the co-founder of Apple Steven Gary Wozniak believes. He went on to compare BTC with the US dollar which can be created by the government and used for borrowing but has never been fixed, unlike bitcoin. Proclaiming it as mathematical purity, the entrepreneur declared that there can never be another bitcoin.

While endorsing the king coin, Wozniak feels that the asset can be used ‘effectively’ for payments. He went on to add,

“Yes, I am in that camp that crypto will be used effectively. We have so many digital ways to pay for things now. Crypto just has a little bit of anonymity. I don’t know if that’s right that, I can do things without people knowing. It is hard to trace back crypto, though it is possible.”

Wozniak had on many occasions has shown support for cryptocurrencies. In 2021, speaking at a technology event Talent Land Digital in Mexico, Wozniak had termed BTC a “unique mathematical formula” and a “miracle of technology”. As per local news, the founder deemed the king coin to be much better than gold. “Gold is limited and you have to look for it, Bitcoin is the most amazing mathematical miracle. While Wozniak mentioned that he did not invest in Bitcoin, but ‘believe in it for the future.’

His interest in the asset was not simply limited to mere speeches. After his stint in Apple, Wozniak a.k.a Woz ventured into the blockchain space.

Wozniak’s love for Bitcoin led to this

45 years after he co-founded Apple in Steve Jobs’ parent’s garage in 1976, Wozniak launched his second company called Efforce, a blockchain-based enterprise in the energy efficiency space. According to a company statement, Efforce is a marketplace that enables companies to undertake energy efficiency measures at no cost so that they can invest their liquidity in more critical tasks.

The firm had also launched its own cryptocurrency called WOZX to securitize energy savings. In December 2021, Apple CEO Tim Cook grabbed headlines when he revealed he personally owns cryptocurrency while stating that Apple is looking at it from a technology perspective, but not from a treasury decision.

India’s PM Modi pushes for collective action on cryptocurrency

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India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the recently held World Economic Forum pushed for a ‘collective and synchronized global action’ in terms of regulating blockchain-backed digital currencies. Speaking through a video conference at the Davos Agenda 2022 event, Modi deemed cryptocurrency as a challenge to the changing global order and compared it with supply-chain disruption, inflation, and climate change.

“The way technology is related to it [cryptocurrency], any decision taken by a particular country will not be adequate to resolve the challenges it poses. We need to keep a uniform thought process on it.”

The latest call for a joint effort comes after the end of the Parliament’s winter session, where a cryptocurrency bill scheduled to be listed did not make it as expected.

In a brief recall, the Indian administration, as per sources, has been working on a regulatory framework for digital assets for quite some time. The bill titled “The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency” could not be introduced due to reasons unknown. As per the latest reports, the government is planning to have wider consultations on the matter and the PM will reportedly take the final decision on it.

The Reserve Bank of India [RBI], has maintained its stance on imposing a blanket ban. In its recent meeting of the central board of directors, RBI reiterated that a partial ban would not work. The Indian crypto industry is currently seeking clarity especially in the case of taxation in the Union Budget 2022-23. 

It needs to be mentioned that, at the beginning of the year, India’s Directorate General of GST Intelligence [DGCI] has raided the premises of several crypto exchanges operating in the country after detecting tax evasion by Binance owned exchange WazirX. Following which the trading platform blamed the ‘ambiguity in the interpretation of one of the GST components’ as the reason for the miscalculation in taxes paid.

So far in India’s crypto scene

That being said, many new developments have taken place ranging from launching its first-ever crypto index to the nation’s Bitcoin ETF.

India’s first crypto Index dubbed IC15 debuted on the super-app CryptoWire two weeks ago. Following suit after the US approved Bitcoin Exchange Traded Funds [ETF], India to soon get ETFs for Bitcoin and Ethereum, as per reports. In fact, according to The Financial Express, Torus Kling Blockchain IFSC, has signed a memorandum of understanding [MoU] with India INX to roll out the country’s first cryptocurrency ETF.

Solana-based Burnt Finance scores $8M fund led by Animoca Brands

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Burnt Finance, an NFT auction protocol built on the Solana [SOL] blockchain has announced securing an $8 million A round series spearheaded by Hong-kong based Animoca Brands. Other investors who took part in the funding drive were Multicoin Capital, Alameda Research, DeFiance, Valor Capital Group, Figment, Spartan Capital, Tribe Capital, Play Ventures, HashKey, Mechanism Capital, DeFi Alliance, Terra, among others.

Apart from that, Burnt Finance will now launch its native NFT marketplace, intending to be a ‘hub for NFTs by integrating DeFi functionality, such as NFT lending, liquidity mining with staking incentives, fractionalization, and GameFi’. In accordance with the P.R, this will enable permissionless access to NFTs and claims to have low fees and fast speeds, with 160k users on its waitlist. It also claims to have processed over $100 million of trading volume in 7 days on its Spark testnet.

According to data provided by DappRadar, in 2021, the global market for non-fungible tokens has skyrocketed to around $22 billion. Legacy auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s have also entered into the NFT domain. In December 2021 alone, NFT sales charted $4 billion. Just like its counterparts, Burnt Finance is also aiming to reap the benefits. 

Competitors include OpenSea, SuperRare, Rarible, and NiftyGateway. Even though Burnt is an early entrant, it’s hoping to pose a challenge to the larger players by using popular blockchain like Solana and going for the DeFi space. One of the best-performing cryptocurrencies in 2021, SOL’s DeFi projects crossed US$3 billion in September 2021.

Solana’s DeFi projects brief overview

In just two years, the layer-1 protocol has attracted a wealth of developer talent and has evolved to support over 350 projects, many of which are focused on decentralized finance [DeFi], NFTs, and Web3. Last week, the team behind one of Solana’s biggest projects is in the middle of a $100 million fundraising deal to expand operations. As a matter of fact, SOL’s DeFi major Serum’s Incentive ecosystem has committed $70 million.

Two weeks prior, another DeFi protocol built on the layer-1 blockchain is Exotic Markets that raised $5 million in a private token sale co-led by Multicoin and Ascensive Assets. The funding arrives as Solana maintained its position among the top five in the DeFi TVL charts,

Crypto.com plans to double-down on its investments, appoints its new GP

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Crypto.com Capital, the venture arm of Crypto.com has announced its plan to expand its investment fund as it appoints former TechCrunch journalist Jon Russell as the fund’s General Partner [GP]. Revealing the same in the blog dated 17 January 2022, the investment firm added that Russell comes with 10 years experience as a technology journalist, which includes stints with leading online news firm TechCrunch and subscription media startup The Ken.

The $200 million funds were launched back in March 2021 to invest in promising early-stage startups that have the potential to bring the digital asset ecosystem to one billion users. As per the blog post, Crypto.com Capital has over 10 million users through products such as a Visa debit card, trading exchange, and NFT platform.

The fund is spearheaded by Crypto.com co-founder Bobby Bao and it targets seed and Series A deals in categories including the metaverse, blockchain gaming, NFTs, and DeFi. As stated in the blog, it has completed over 20 deals and its portfolio of companies consists of the likes of Efinity, Genies, DeBank, Alethea AI, YGG SEA, and Matter Labs. Speaking on the occasion, Bobby Bao said,

Crypto.com Capital is not even one year old, but already we work hand-in-hand with dozens of world-class founders and we want to find more. Adding Jon to the team is a statement of intent to double down and grow the web3 ecosystem.  

Crypto.com is the most ambitious company- Jon Russell

Its new General Partner, Jon Russell termed Crypto.com to be ‘the most ambitious company in web3. He further went on to add that the firm’s capital fund brings a very ‘unique advantage to help the world’s best web3 founders and startups to realize their potential.’

Having said that, It’s not uncommon for crypto firms to move into venture capital. Recently Bahamian trading platform FTX launched a new venture unit, called FTX Ventures, and hired Amy Wu, the former exec at Lightspeed, to lead the fund. In 2021, more than 1,700 venture capital deals enable many crypto startups, projects, and protocols to reap over $25 billion in funds. Several prominent venture firms like Paradigm and a16z had also launched new multi-billion venture funds last year.

Why Bitcoin is no longer the favorite for crypto payments?

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Bitcoin stands to lose its dominant status as the preferred choice for crypto payments. BitPay, one of the world’s largest crypto payments processors divulged that consumers and businesses are increasingly starting to use digital tokens other than Bitcoin for purchases. In an interview with Bloomberg, the firm said that Bitcoin usage at Bitpay merchants has significantly reduced from 92% in 2020 to almost 65% in recent times.

On the other hand, the alt coins’ use has started to rise due to their growing adoption by businesses that have begun using stablecoins for cross-border payments. Another reason for its growing popularity is that users have started favoring stablecoins whose values are perceived to remain unaffected from volatility. Not only that, even meme coins like Doge continued garnering massive attention last year, thanks to dog-token proselytizer Elon Musk.

BitPay was founded in 2011, a time where only a handful of entities accepted digital assets. Today it processes an average of 66,000 transactions per month compared to its larger rival, Visa’s volume that processed a staggering 206 billion transactions in 2021. Nevertheless, BitPay, with its $1billion annual transaction volume has enabled companies ranging from Microsoft Corp. to AT&T Inc. to accept cryptocurrency payments.

Bitcoin and Co’s dull outlook are not deterring payment firms

As days go by, more merchants are now accepting crypto payments. Last year, BitPay partnered with VeriFone to enable digital coins at its terminals at various stores. The latest to make its entry is US multinational fintech PayPal Holdings which is currently working on its in-house stablecoin. Taking about how the late 2021 marketwide slump has been failed to deter crypto investors, Stephen Pair, Chief Executing Officer of Bitpay stated,

The recent downturn hasn’t affected crypto investors’ spending habits as much as in the crypto winter of 2018. While luxury spending has been hit, the overall declines have been much smaller, perhaps a sign of confidence that the current downturn could be short-lived, or that crypto has a much broader base of users. We have not experienced as much of a decline in volume with this recent pullback. It’s probably just a reflection of more and more companies that need to use this as a tool to conduct payments.

Walmart foray into the metaverse realm but is it too late?

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Retail giant Walmart is the latest to jump into the bandwagon of mainstream entities that are increasingly making a beeline to the metaverse and NFT sector. According to CNBC, the US-based multinational firm is reportedly embarking onto the metaverse realm with plans to create its own cryptocurrency and collection of non-fungible tokens or NFTs.

As it turns out, the big-box retailer filed several new trademarks back in late 2021 that reflect its interest to create and sell digital goods, including a host of products ranging from electronics, home decorations, toys, sporting goods, and personal care products. In a separate filing, Walmart revealed that it would offer users digital currency, as well as NFTs.

As per data obtained from U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Walmart filed the applications on December 30, 2021. Altogether, seven separate applications have been submitted. Without specifying any details on the patents filings, Walmart in a statement stated,

We are continuously exploring how emerging technologies may shape future shopping experiences. We are testing new ideas all the time. Some ideas become products or services that make it to customers. And some we test, iterate, and learn from.

Josh Gerben, a leading Washington-based trademark attorney believes that there’s a lot of planning going on behind the scenes about how Walmart addresses cryptocurrency, the metaverse, and the digital world in general. In addition to that, few businesses such as fashion powerhouses Burberry and Louis Vuitton, are too jumping into the NFT and gaming world to promote their brands.

Walmart’s entry – Better late than never

Walmart previously on September 2021 grabbed headlines after a press release announcing the partnership between the firm and Litecoin turned out to be fake. A month later, Walmart started a pilot program allowing shoppers to buy Bitcoin at Coinstar kiosks in its stores on October 21, last year. 

Few other retailers such as Starbucks, Newegg, Whole Foods, Nordstrom, Home Depot, and GameStop have opened up its door by accepting crypto payments. Apart from Walmart, major e-commerce marketplace Amazon is believed to launch its own crypto token in 2022 and is reportedly setting up a blockchain for the rumored launch. However, at the time of writing, there isn’t an official confirmation regarding the same.

Axie Infinity is gearing up for major updates; more details

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NFT-based gaming giant, Axie Infinity has released its January journal on 16th January 2022, which teased some major updates. For one, the team is currently focused on building out the Project K trading feature that will facilitate players to trade various resources with one another. As per the blog post, the trading system will likely take more than a month to build. Concepts and 3D modeling for various assets such as buildings and items are also in progress.

Secondly, Origin [Battles V3] development has been pushing full steam ahead, with a target alpha test launch in the upcoming months. Most importantly, Origin will introduce new economic balancing features such as vertical progression of Axies which will provide much-needed sinks for the economy. 

Lastly, the online video game giant is also launching a balancing patch for Season 20 in the coming days. It revealed that the team is planning to release this patch prior to the release of the season to ensure sufficient time for play-testing.

Axie Infinity’s gaming sidechain is bigger than many major layer 1s

According to a new research report led by blockchain analytics firm Nansen, Ronin, a layer 2 product from Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis devoted solely to the game, processed 560% more total transactions than the Ethereum blockchain. And while that figure has since fallen back, the sidechain is still processing more than popular layer one networks such as Avalanche [AVAX] and Fantom [FTM].

Axie Infinity which is undoubtedly the crown jewel of crypto’s still-nascent “play-to-earn” field has raked in 2.8 million daily active users, which is why its sidechain Ronin is processing 40% more transactions than Avalanche, one of the most popular layer 1s by transaction volume.

In addition to that, Ronin users are engaging with advanced decentralized finance or DeFi functionality by depositing into trading platform’s liquidity pools and Axie’s staking module, despite having lower account balances- a trend that has a lesser possibility to follow on most layer 1s due to fees.

NEAR raises $150M to spur Web3 adoption

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In an official blog post, on 13 January 2022, the U.S.-based decentralized application platform and Ethereum competitor, NEAR protocol has announced that it has raised a $150 million fortune directed by Three Arrows Capital. According to the blog post, the funds would be used at regional centers through which it will bolster people to learn about decentralized podiums.

The funds will be utilized to advocate millions of people to learn and use blockchain technology and to endorse Web3 technologies. This benefit of development on the NEAR decentralized blockchain could make it possible for users to network with new audiences.

The agreement has conclusively proved sections across Asia, Europe, Africa, and the team aim to broaden support in Latin America, India, and Turkey.

Marieke Flament, NEAR Foundation’s CEO, said,

“We are delighted to have such a fantastic list of backers supporting NEAR’s mission. We are looking forward to leveraging the funding to improve access to blockchain technology in an ever growing list of countries across the world.”

What is NEAR protocol?

NEAR protocol is a highly efficient blockchain constructed to be extremely fast. It is considered to be unbelievably safe and also eminently scalable. It was designed to run decentralized applications and works to compete with Ethereum and many other superior smart contract-facilitated blockchains such as EOS and Polkadot. Its prime token is also known as NEAR and is used to pay for commission and cache. These tokens can also be invested by token holders who take part in executing network consensus as transaction proofs.

The company is formated by an explicit group of techies and entrepreneurs to be easy to utilize, general, and environmentally friendly. The company is supported by leading venture capitalists like A16Z, Pantera Capital, Electrical Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Blockchain.com, and Baidu Ventures.

As decentralized applications have grown in fame, the crypto society is faced with an increasing scalability issue. Ethereum has been surfaced with scalability obstacles because of the increasing request for its purpose, and whilst a few endorse scaling issues to be resolved by building it on top of Ethereum (Layer-2-solutions), other businesses like NEAR are determined to build a completely fresh blockchain with distinct framework.

Cathie Wood says Bitcoin is the first global private digital currency system

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Cathie Wood, founder, CEO, and chief investment officer of Ark Invest stated that Bitcoin is the first global private digital currency system, which is based on rules. In a summit hosted by the Global Wealth Management Forum’s 2022 “New Economic and Financial Landscape under the Shared Global Recovery”, the exec spoke in detail on the stance adopted by different nations pertaining to Bitcoin adoption.

Citing the example of China where the majority of miners have already left for crypto-friendly shores owing to its administration crackdown. Wood also mentioned some parts of the world are yet to warm up their stance on digital assets, although their attitude is not as harsh as that of the Chinese government. The CEO then went on to mention the current crisis in Turkey where she predicted the likelihood of a blanket ban as opposed to El Salvador building an entire economy out of the king coin.

We think emerging markets will have a polarized attitude, either ban it or welcome it, for example, El Salvador agrees, encourages it, in Turkey, there is a kind of black market existence, the government is currently due to the currency Crisis, struggling. We know that eventually, they should ban the existence of Bitcoin, so now seeing similar problems all over the world, everyone is choosing a different way to deal with it. We are in some countries where Bitcoin is unstoppable.

Cathie Wood is known to make bold predictions. Besides that, the exec is in constant pursuit of finding new ways to invest in crypto assets.

Cathie Wood’s Ark ETF rake in 6.93M shares of SPAC

Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest has reportedly bought nearly 6.9 million shares of the special purchase acquisition firm or SPAC, that is merging with Circle, for $70.6 million through the company’s ARK Fintech Innovation exchange-traded fund [ETF]. According to MarketWatch, this purchase would represent a new position for the ETF.

Wood-backed Ark Invest’s ETFs have a long history of making big purchases in the crypto industry. Previously the investment management entity bought $80 million Robinhood shares after the prices retreated back in October 2021. Wood remained bullish on crypto despite not investing in the first futures BTC ETF that same month.

Cardano-based Metaverse Project Pavia Takes Off: Sundaeswap Announces Launch Date

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Cardano’s gaming project Pavia officially debuted, as metaverse-related interest surged once again. For starters, Pavia is a gaming NFT Metaverse that aims to challenge the dominance of larger rivals in the crypto metaverse realms such as Sandbox Crypto and Decentraland. The Pavia project was incorporated in September 2021. In October 2021, it announced the first sale of LAND parcels by random allocation.

As per the press release, Pavia.io, has a total of some some 100k Land parcels, each being minted as a unique NFT with coordinates. At the time of writing, the project had sold nearly 60% of these Land parcels from October to November 2021. A final is scheduled for Q1 2022.

The pandemic saw a surge in developments towards an overall Metaverse and predictions reveal a potential valuation of $800 Billion by 2024. With projects launching on multiple blockchains, Pavia with its first-mover advantage may well be the people’s choice of the Cardano chain.

This is not the first time a metaverse project is taking shape in the layer-1 blockchain. Back in December 2021, a decentralized cloud computing solution, Cudos announced a joint partnership with Cornucopias. The blockchain gaming metaverse aimed to expand the Cardano Infrastructure by creating a unique method to build dynamic non-fungible tokens [NFT] through the Cudos Network.

As seen in all metaverse projects Pavia too has its native currency, PAVIA, of which 25% was airdropped to Pavia NFT landholders. The token along with other native assets is being actively traded on Cardano’s first DEX MuesliSwap. That being said, the ADA community has more reasons to cheer.

Cardano’s SundaeSwap DEX announced launch date

Cardano’s native decentralized exchange [DEX] and automated liquidity provision protocol SundaeSwap have released the dates for the launch in its blog post published on 16th January 2022. As per the post, the DEX is slated to go live as a fully-functional beta on Thursday, January 20, 2022. Apart from that, projects will be allowed to create pools starting from coming Tuesday, January 18.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson,delighted by the announcement, took to Twitter to congratulate the DEX team and dropped hints of upcoming DApps on the layer-1 platform later this quarter.