Autor Cointelegraph By Brayden Lindrea

Iran makes $10M import with crypto, plans 'widespread' use by end of Sept

Iran makes $10M import with crypto, plans 'widespread' use by end of Sept

Uverejnil používateľ | aug 10, 2022 |

Struggling through decades of economic sanctions, Iran has placed its first international import order using $10 million worth of cryptocurrency, according to a senior government trade official. News that the Islamic republic placed its first import order using crypto was shared by Iran’s Deputy Minister of Industry, Mine & Trade Alireza Peyman-Pak in a Twitter post on Aug. 9.While the official did not disclose any details about the cryptocurrency used or the imported goods involved, Peyman-Pak said that the $10 million order represents the first of many international trades to be settled with crypto, with plans to ramp this up over the next month, noting:”By the end of September, the use of cryptocurrencies and smart contracts will be widely used in foreign trade with target countries.”Iran was, up until February this year, the most sanctioned country in the world. Iran gets most of its imports from China, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), India, and Turkey, according to Trading Economics.However, Russia now takes the top spot as the most sanctioned nation in the world following its invasion of Ukraine earlier this year. The Islamic nation has been positioning to embrace cryptocurrencies as early as 2017. In October 2020, it amended previously issued legislation to allow cryptocurrency to be used for funding imports.In June 2021, the Iranian Trade Ministry issued 30 operating licenses to Irani miners to mine cryptocurrencies, which then must be sold to Iran’s central bank. Iran is now using those mined coins for import payments. In February, Iran was also looking at a central bank digital currency (CBDC) built on the Hyperledger Fabric protocol as a means to improve its existing financial infrastructure. A pilot version of a CBDC named “crypto-rial” was reportedly launched in July, and only the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) can mint the CBDC tokens and have full discretion over the maximum token supply.

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Coinbase posts $1.1B loss in Q2 on 'fast and furious' crypto downturn

Coinbase posts $1.1B loss in Q2 on 'fast and furious' crypto downturn

Uverejnil používateľ | aug 10, 2022 |

Crypto exchange giant Coinbase has cited a “fast and furious” downturn of the crypto markets as the reasons behind a staggering $1.1 billion net loss in the second quarter of 2022, which also saw trading volume and transaction revenue tumbling. It’s the second consecutive quarter of loss for the crypto company and the largest loss since its listing on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange (Nasdaq) in April 2021. The results, which also missed analyst expectations, were shared in a Q2 2022 Shareholder Letter from Coinbase on Aug. 9, stating:“The current downturn came fast and furious, and we are seeing customer behavior mirror that of past down markets.” Coinbase said that Q2 was a “tough quarter” with trading volume falling 30% and transaction revenue down 35% sequentially.“Both metrics were influenced by a shift in customer and market activity, driven by macroeconomic and crypto credit factors alike,” it wrote. Despite the drop in transaction revenue, Morningstar equity analyst Michael Miller told Reuters in a report that while “Coinbase did not see a mass migration off its platform […], its users are becoming more passive in their cryptocurrency investing”.The crypto exchange reported $802.6 million in revenue, which was a 45.1% drop from the preceding quarter and a staggering 153.1% drop from the prior-year quarter. Its net loss, which amounted to $1.1 billion, was mainly driven by $446 million in non-cash impairment charges caused by lower crypto asset prices in Q2. However, Coinbase wrote that despite the economic downfall, the company is doing its best to adjust to fluctuating market conditions:In order to cut expenses and improve profit margins, Coinbase cut 18% of employees in June, and has also taken a “pause, maintain and prioritize” approach toward product development:“Overall, it will take some time to fully realize the financial impact of our actions, but we have lowered our full-year expense range for Technology & Development and General & Administrative expenses.”Among those products being prioritized include Coinbase’s Retail App, Coinbase Prime, Staking, Coinbase Cloud and other Web3 applications.Miller however said noted that the “reduction is unlikely to restore profitability at current revenue generation levels”.Related: Two more lawsuits for Coinbase: Law decoded, Aug. 1–8Looking ahead, Coinbase said it expects the “soft crypto market conditions” from the second quarter to continue into Q3 2022. The company said it expects a further fall in total trading volume and average transaction revenue per user, though it said it may see some revenue growth from subscription and service fees.Coinbase’s share price fell 10.55% on Tuesday following the release of its Q2 results and is priced at $87.68 at the time of writing.

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Korea Blockchain Week, Aug. 9: Second-day takeaways from the Cointelegraph team

Korea Blockchain Week, Aug. 9: Second-day takeaways from the Cointelegraph team

Uverejnil používateľ | aug 9, 2022 |

Korea Blockchain Week (KBW) 2022 wrapped up its two-day mainstage events this evening, which again saw a number of influential speakers take to the podium including Janine Yorio of Everyrealm, Yat Siu of Animoca Brands and Sky Mavis’ Jeffrey Zirlin.Held at the Grand Intercontinental Seoul Parnas, the second-day conference saw thousands of attendees engaged across three conference tracks — Stage Seoul, Stage Busan and Stage Jeju. The majority of the discussions on the second day focused on the future of the Metaverse, and the strategies that Web3 companies are taking to grow the industry. Given that the event was based in Korea, many were interested in the many exciting Web3 projects coming out of the Korean blockchain scene. The two-day event turned in a very large attendance despite Seoul experiencing some torrential rain over the last few days.But, it’s not quite over yet for KBW 2022 attendees, who will continue networking throughout the night and the rest of the week over countless side events. From 7:00 pm KST, KBW and Upclub will be hosting an exclusive afterparty for KBW attendees at People The Terras in Gangnam-gu in Seoul.Later in the night, the “KBW Official After After Party” will kick off at Club Oriental Jack in Seoul, with the festivities running from 11:00 pm KST to 6:00 am KST for the brave. For those that couldn’t make it to Seoul for KBW 2022, the Cointelegraph team on the ground in Korea has highlighted some of the key discussions from the second day of the conference.Ready Player One’ gave us the misconception that the Metaverse is VR — Everyrealm CEOEveryrealm CEO Janine Yorio believes that Steven Spielberg’s film Ready Player One presents a myriad of misconceptions about the Metaverse, mainly due to the fact that “the protagonist is wearing a VR headset.”Pictured: Yat Siu, chairman and co-founder, Animoca BrandsIn the presentation, Yorio highlighted that because humans like to “interact with technologically” which is historically 18 inches from our faces — meaning that VR headsets can present a number of adoption challenges.Related: Experts clash on where virtual reality sits in the MetaverseDigital property rights key to thriving Web3 economy — Animoca’s Yat SiuCo-founder of Hong Kong-based venture firm Animoca Brands Yat Siu believes that on-chain digital property rights are one of the main aspects of blockchain technology that will drive a more decentralized society.Related: Metaverse housing bubble bursting? Virtual land prices crash 85% amid waning interestSiu believes Web2 companies have had their day with “controlling our data,” and now blockchain-based applications can provide digital ownership to content creators themselves. Pictured: Yat Siu, Chairman and Co-Founder, Animoca BrandsAxie Infinity to “double-down” on the Korean market Sky Mavis, the firm behind play-to-earn (P2E) heavyweight Axie Infinity outlined intentions to “double down” in South Korea and ramp up adoption of the game. Sky Mavis co-founder and growth lead Jeffrey Zirlin spoke to Cointelegraph and noted that despite the domestic ban on P2E games still being in place, the “Korean market is one of the most important gaming markets in the world, and we have tons of players in South Korea.”Related: Vitalik Buterin proposes stealth addresses for anonymous NFT ownershipZirlin added that the company is currently looking at ways to tailor the Axie Infinity game to its cohort of Korean gamers: “I think you know, we want to double down. We want to localize for example, Koreans don’t speak much English, right? So there are actually a lot of barriers to actually getting the game into the hands of Korean players.” 20 million JavaScript devs can now build applications on NEARNear Protocol founder Illia Polosukhin spoke to Cointelegraph after the protocol rolled out its JavaScript Software Development Kits (JS SDKs), effectively opening Near’s floodgates to 20 million global Javascript developers.During KBW 2022, Polosukhin emphasized that the move will open up the niche field of blockchain development to a substantially broader audience, such as students looking to dip their toes into the blockchain and people in the commercial sector looking to accelerate their projects.Related: How to get a job in the Metaverse and Web3“There’s about 20 million JavaScript developers in the world. Probably like every developer one way or another wrote JavaScript in their life. And what we allow you to do is to write smart contracts in JavaScript,” said Polosukhin.

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KBW 2022: Digital property rights key to thriving Web3 economy — Animoca’s Yat Siu

KBW 2022: Digital property rights key to thriving Web3 economy — Animoca’s Yat Siu

Uverejnil používateľ | aug 9, 2022 |

Yat Siu, co-founder of Hong Kong-based venture firm Animoca Brands has argued that on-chain digital property rights are the main aspects of blockchain technology that will drive a more decentralized society.Speaking at Korean Blockchain Week 2022 (KBW), the Hong Kong entrepreneur noted that we’re all “digital dependents” and “data is the resource of metrics” that bring value to platforms like Apple, Google, and Facebook, Sui said:“The most powerful companies in the world today are not energy companies or resource companies, they’re tech companies and they’re not powerful because they make software. They’re powerful because they control our data.”But unlike the Web2 platforms that we’ve become accustomed to, blockchain-based applications allow us to control that data and not be subject to “digital colonization”, said Sui, adding: “The powerful [thing about] Web3 is the fact that we can take ownership and we can make a big change with this because we have distributed and decentralized ownership for these assets.”Sui also reinforced the importance of property rights by making the point that countries that afford strong property rights to their citizens enable their society to thrive. Sui pointed out the correlation between the International Property Rights Index (IPRI), and the Gross Domestic Product Index (GDPI):“Places that have almost no property rights […] You can see [are in] the bottom 20% [of GDPI] But the countries that have very strong property rights, South Korea, USA, Japan, most of Europe, enjoy very, very high property rights,” he explained, adding that digital property rights should be no different.Digital ownership set to take off in AsiaSiu added that the Asian continent has by far the most room to grow when it comes to Web3, as well as capitalizing on digital property rights. Siu said that Asia has a very rich history of “incredible content” and “digital expression”, much of which can be transformed into blockchain-based assets [in the form of NFTs] and provide them with digital property rights over their assets.Related: Digital sovereignty: Reclaiming your private data in Web3Siu added that while people of Asia spend more time on the internet today than on any other continent, there is still so much room to grow. “Unlike the rest of the world, which has almost 100% penetration in the West,” Asia is only around 67% continent-wide internet adoption, he noted. Siu also said that the sentiment toward blockchain-based metaverses, gaming, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as well as the digital property rights that come with them is much more positive compared to the West.

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Institutions flocking to Ethereum for 7 straight weeks as Merge nears: Report

Institutions flocking to Ethereum for 7 straight weeks as Merge nears: Report

Uverejnil používateľ | aug 9, 2022 |

Institutional investors are piling into Ether-based digital asset funds, which have recorded seven straight weeks of positive inflows, according to the latest CoinShares report. Said inflows reached $16.3 million last week, adding to a total of $159 million in inflows over the last seven weeks.CoinShares Head of Research James Butterfill on Aug. 8 said the rise in market sentiment for Ethereum-focused products is largely due to “greater clarity” relating to the upcoming Merge, which is set for Sep. 19, with Butterfill stating: “We believe this turn-around in investor sentiment is due to greater clarity on the timing of The Merge where Ethereum shifts from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.”The Merge will see the Ethereum Mainnet merge with the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain, which will complete the transition from proof-of-work (POW) to a proof-of-stake (POS) consensus mechanism. The POS consensus mechanism is expected to make Ethereum more secure, energy efficient, and environmentally friendly.The Goerli and Prater testnet merge is also expected to take place this week, which will be the last scheduled dress rehearsal before the mainnet Merge takes place in less than six weeks’ time.Traders gearing upBlockchain analytics firm Glassnode suggested that the highly-anticipated Merge has crypto traders gearing up to “buy the rumor, and sell the news.” “Derivatives traders are placing directionally obvious bets for Ethereum, specifically relating to the upcoming Merge planned on 19 September.”In a newsletter titled “Betting on the Merge” on Aug. 8, the analytics firm noted that post-Merge, the ETH options, and futures market is positioned in “backwardation” — a situation in which the current price of an asset is higher than the prices trading in the futures market.“Both futures and options markets are in backwardation after September, suggesting traders are expecting the Merge to be a ‘buy the rumor, sell the news’ style event, and have positioned accordingly,” said the firm.Related: Ethereum options data show pro traders ready to go long into ETH’s MergeHowever, the jury is still out as to how the Merge will ultimately affect Ethereum’s price. In a recent interview, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin remained optimistic about ETH’s long-term prospects saying that the narrative will likely remain positive post-Merge — as aspect that hasn’t yet been priced in. “Once the merge actually happens then I expect morale is going to go way up. I basically expect that the merge is going to be not priced in, by which I mean not even just market terms, but even psychological and narrative terms. In narrative terms, I think it’s not going to be priced in pretty much until after it happens.”The price of Ethereum is $1,776 at the time of writing, up 8.6% over the last seven days, according to data from CoinGecko. 

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