Autor Cointelegraph By Keira Wright

Australian women’s football team secures $75M deal with Crypto.com

Australian women’s football team secures $75M deal with Crypto.com

Uverejnil používateľ | jan 17, 2022 |

In what comes as the first major crypto sports sponsorship deal down under, the Australia Football League (AFL) has secured a partnership with Crypto.com to back its women’s league (AFLW). The deal is worth close to $75 million over the next five years, a steep increase from the AFL’s existing $18.5 million sponsorship contract with Toyota. Crypto.com is a Singapore-based crypto exchange offering digital wallets and crypto-backed debit cards. The partnership will mark Crypto.com’s first time sponsoring an Australian sports team. It will also be its first time sponsoring an elite women’s sports competition worldwide, a milestone that AFL Executive General Manager Customer and Commercial Kylie Rogers said she’s “proud” to be part of. “The AFL is proud to be the first Australian sports league and elite women’s competition globally to work alongside an organization that shares our passion to progress the future of elite sport and technology.” Crypto.com general manager Asia & Pacific Karl Mohan says that the company was attracted by Australia’s relatively high number of women interested in crypto.“Our latest consumer research in Australia found that more than half (53%) of crypto investors were females,” he said.“It is very encouraging to see that Australians from all walks of life, irrespective of gender or background, are very keen to adopt cryptocurrencies, and we’re excited about being their go-to platform.”Back in August, CNBC released a survey that found that women are still less than half as likely to invest in cryptocurrencies than men, with 16% of men investing vs 7% of women.Related: Australian women owning crypto has doubled in 2021: SurveyCrypto.com has amassed a number of sports branding deals over the past months, totaling over $1.5 billion. In mid-Nov, the crypto company secured a $700 million deal to rename the Staples Center in Los Angeles to the Crypto.com Arena for the next 20 years. It also signed a $100-million sponsorship agreement with Formula 1 in late June and a $175 million sponsorship agreement with the UFC in July.

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The Australian Open swings into the Metaverse on Decentraland

The Australian Open swings into the Metaverse on Decentraland

Uverejnil používateľ | jan 17, 2022 |

Tennis Australia has partnered with Decentraland to host the Australian Open (AO), which will be the first official tennis grand slam in the Metaverse.A virtual recreation of key areas in Melbourne Park, including the Rod Laver Arena and Grand Slam Park, will be open for the duration of the Australian Open tournament, which will run for a fortnight beginning on Jan. 17. The event will include exclusive content for virtual visitors, including behind-the-scenes footage from over 300 cameras around Melbourne Park, including the exclusive player arrivals area and the practice village. As well as broadcasting live footage and AO radio, it will also feature archival footage from tennis matches dating back to the 70s and virtual meet-ups with tennis players including Mark Philippoussis, with other players yet to be confirmed.Tennis Australia NFT & Metaverse Project Manager Ridley Plummer said in a virtual welcome address on Decentraland that he hopes for the AO to become the “world’s most accessible and inclusive sports and entertainment event.”“With the unique challenges fans have faced getting to Melbourne, we’ve fast-tracked our launch into the Metaverse,” he said.“Taking the AO into the Metaverse is an important step to provide truly global access to our great event.”This is especially pertinent given travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, making it very difficult for many fans to reach Melbourne to view the event in real life. The 2021 AO faced a range of challenges, including a historically low number of on-site spectators and lockdown restrictions. Despite the timely introduction of the partnership given the pandemic, Plummer says that the AO plans to continue to collaborate with Decentraland in the future. “We’re in it for the long term,” he said.“The Metaverse is not going anywhere, and as a company, we’re invested in continuing to grow our online presence and push the boundaries of innovation.”He also added that Tennis Australia is exploring the possibility of a year-round property in the Metaverse. “We definitely think of ourselves more as an entertainment event rather than just a tennis event. Whether we’re providing entertainment via the metaverse twelve months of the year or only a few months of the year, that’s definitely a decision to be made in our roadmap going forward.”Australian Open lands a sweet NFT partnership Meanwhile, on Jan. 17, the AO also announced it would be teaming up with NFT platform Sweet to release six NFT collections commemorating the last five decades of the AO. The collections will be released intermittently between Jan. 17 and 27 to coincide with the tournament. Tom Mizzone, CEO of Sweet said that the NFT release demonstrates a “truly new level of access” for fans to get a glimpse into the world of their idols. “We love this idea of turning IP into digital memorabilia and tying that memorabilia back to an experience,” he added.“The idea that the AO designed an umpire chair that had never been seen before and now tennis fans can own and display that umpire chair as an NFT is just amazing.”Separately, the AO launched a collection of 6,776 algorithmically created “Art Ball” NFTs on Opensea on Jan 12. According to Plummer, the collection sold out in three minutes following the public drop with a price floor of 0.26 ETH (around $875) and a trading volume of 223 ETH ($751,287). Each Art Ball is allocated a unique plot on the court. And we’ll be using electronic in line calling tech to update winning points to their corresponding AO Art Ball NFTs. So your ball could decide the match. No challenges. pic.twitter.com/KRj2FiGlAd— AOmetaverse (@AOmetaverse) January 11, 2022Related: Australia’s largest crypto exchange will sponsor tennis star Ajla TomljanovicThis isn’t the Open’s first rodeo in the Metaverse. In 2020, the AO hosted the Fortnite Summer Smash, an esports event with a $100,000 prize pool. Tennis Australia has leased the virtual land from Vegas City, a company that owns large areas of the metaverse.The AO has already had its share of drama, with an Australian court dismissing Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic’s appeal against a deportation order. Djokovic has released a statement following the court decision pic.twitter.com/V0IYHJ04Yc— Andrew Brown (@AndrewBrownAU) January 16, 2022

Djokovic is a vocal critic of the COVID-19 vaccination and claims he was given an exemption from the Australian government to enter the country despite being unvaccinated.

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Robinhood hits new low as FTX US and Bitstamp USA move into stocks

Robinhood hits new low as FTX US and Bitstamp USA move into stocks

Uverejnil používateľ | jan 14, 2022 |

Crypto exchanges FTX US and Bitstamp USA are working on offering stock trading, which would be a further blow to Robinhood as its share price slumps to new lows. FTX US President Brett Harrison tweeted on Tuesday that the crypto exchange is “hard at work on stocks,” commenting that a launch would be coming in “a couple months.” We’re hard at work on stocks! Features we’re planning for day 1: -Live BBO and historical candles-Stock screening/search functionality-Basic fundamentals (market cap, P/E ratio, dividend yield)-Portfolio performance tracking, order/trade detailsWhat else should we have? pic.twitter.com/q2bTpsfuna— Brett Harrison (@Brett_FTXUS) January 11, 2022This isn’t FTX’s first dalliance with stocks. Back in Oct. 2020, the global arm of the crypto exchange launched a feature to allow its customers to access fractionalized trading in tokenized stocks.And Bitstamp USA CEO Robert Zagotta said in a Jan 14 interview with Bloomberg that the exchange is considering entering stocks, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and crypto derivatives.Offering low cost equities trading would allow the two crypto exchanges to attract a similar user base of meme stock style investors as Robinhood, which offers both crypto and stock trading. The additional competition is unlikely to be welcomed by Robinhood ($HOOD) at this point. With meme stock and crypto trading cooling down, the American financial services company closed at an all-time low of $15.30 on Jan 13. Related: Kraken CEO reverses $100K BTC 2021 forecast: Crypto winter now possibleRobinhood is approaching the market from the opposite direction to the two exchanges, beginning with stocks and moving into crypto. It’s been adding new features to its crypto service for some time, and plans to roll out the beta version of its crypto wallet feature this month. This will enable users to withdraw cryptocurrency from the platform. $HOOD closes at an all time low.— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) January 13, 2022

One potential bright spot for Robinhood is interest from the Shiba Inu community. Shiba Inu Coin ($SHIB) has been pumping on rumors that it could be listed for trading on Robinhood as early as next month. The altcoin rebounded by nearly 30% in three days. However CEO Vlad Tenev has denied such reports on multiple occasions.

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Crypto crime’s overall impact set to fall even further in 2022: Chainalysis

Crypto crime’s overall impact set to fall even further in 2022: Chainalysis

Uverejnil používateľ | jan 14, 2022 |

The coming year is likely to see crypto related crime reduce to an ever smaller share of the overall industry as law enforcement takes greater advantage of the transparency provided by blockchain technology, says Kim Grauer, Director of Research at Chainalysis. According to a January 6 report from Chainalysis, the growth of legitimate cryptocurrency usage is “far outpacing the growth of criminal usage.” The share of cryptocurrency transaction volume associated with illicit activity has never been lower, representing just 0.15% of transaction volume in 2021.She told Cointelegraph that barring any “outlier criminal events,” she expected that the growth of legitimate crypto usage over illegitimate usage would continue to accelerate through 2022. She said that things are looking hopeful in the space as “the illicit share of transaction volume continues to fall” and “the narrative that crypto is primarily a means for criminals to transact is finally being put to bed.”“Law enforcement wins continue to demonstrate to bad actors that cryptocurrency’s inherent transparency makes it an undesirable means for transferring illicit funds. Cash is still king when it comes to illicit finance, and that is not likely to change.”During 2021, rug pulls became crypto-criminals’ scam of choice. Scamming revenue rose 82% in 2021 to $7.8 billion, with over $2.8 billion of this total coming from rug pulls alone.However, Grauer said that this doesn’t necessarily indicate rug pulls will remain the most prevalent scam during 2022. Rather, criminals are likely to “abuse newer technologies” like DeFi, NFTs and DAOs as the space moves towards web3. “We saw this [in 2021] especially with DeFi, where criminals not only targeted DeFi platforms for attacks such as through hacks or rug pulls, but started increasingly using DeFi platforms to launder money.”Additionally, Grauer suggested that while she didn’t expect a potential crypto bear market would affect the rate, or type, of crypto crime, a major financial recession or depression could. “When you consider overall economic markets — not just crypto — recessions and depressions can drive an increase in criminal activity,” she said. Related: Retail buyers made up more than 80% of NFT transactions in 2021: ChainalysisDuring 2021, law enforcement agencies around the world had many notable successes. In Nov. 2021, the IRS Criminal Investigations announced that it had seized over $3.5 billion worth of cryptocurrency in 2021 from non-tax investigations. While the proportion was lower, cryptocurrency-based crime actually hit a new all-time high in 2021, with illicit addresses receiving $14 billion over the course of the year, up from $7.8 billion in 2020 according to Chainalysis.

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Second Life creator returns to lay claim to the Metaverse

Second Life creator returns to lay claim to the Metaverse

Uverejnil používateľ | jan 14, 2022 |

The founder of Linden Lab’s virtual online world Second Life Philip Rosedale will be rejoining the project as a strategic advisor to guide its entry to the Metaverse.While he is negative on content interoperability in the Metaverse describing it as “a total fail” he believes an NFT based future is the way forward long term.Second Life is an online social game universe that launched in 2003, when the word “Metaverse” was only being used by Neal Stephenson fans.Since leaving his position as CEO of Linden Labs in 2008, Rosedale has made a name for himself in the virtual reality (VR) ecosystem. In 2013, he created the social VR company, High Fidelity. Philip Rosedale returning to Linden Labs (breaking news today) definitely reminds me of Steve Jobs in the 90s returning to Apple #secondlife #metaverse— Andrew Oleksiuk (they/them) (@Andrew_Oleksiuk) January 13, 2022In a Jan. 13 announcement, High Fidelity said it is investing in Linden Labs with both cash and what is described as “distributed computing patents,” including two regarding community moderation in decentralized environments. “Virtual worlds don’t need to be dystopias,” Rosedale said. “Big Tech giving away VR headsets and building a metaverse on their ad-driven, behavior-modification platforms isn’t going to create a magical, single digital utopia for everyone.”What will the future look like? In an interview with Cnet Technology, Rosedale said that beyond exploring the possibility of adding VR tech to Second Life, advanced avatar animations using facial tracking cameras could also be a future possibility. “Using the webcam to animate an avatar, that’s a really interesting in-between,” he said. “Not enough people are looking at that space, that’s one that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about.”As for the possibility of incorporating new ideas like interoperable non-fungible items into Second Life, Rosedale will need some convincing. In the Metaverse, interoperable content are items which can be bought on one platform and carried over to another. He referenced the way branded content can negatively break the fourth wall in Metaverse platforms, saying that in the short term, “content interoperability is one of these things that only a brand could love.”“As a way of further connecting games to each other, it’s a total fail. The near-term idea is dumb.”However, he didn’t shun the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), saying that the “long-term idea is totally correct.” Second Life already has its own economy and currency, “Linden Dollars.” Related: Meta poaches staff from Microsoft and Apple for metaverse plansAccording to Rosedale, there are 375 million items sold on the Second Life marketplace each year, for around $2 each. In his opinion, these items are essentially already NFTs.“Those are all NFTs — basically, the core idea of allowing digital assets to be marked and allowing them to be tradable and shareable,” he said, adding that this concept is only “going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. Of course, these items inside Second Life aren’t recorded on the blockchain, and therefore cannot exist outside the game – which are essential properties of NFTs. Now in its 19th year of operation, Second Life claims an annual GDP of $650 million, with over 8 million unique items sold on its Marketplace.

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