Congressional lawmakers confirmed the nomination of Rostin Behnam, a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission who had been serving as acting chairperson, to assume his position on a more permanent basis. In a Wednesday evening voice vote, members of the U.S. Senate approved President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the CFTC. Behnam has served as a commissioner since 2017…
In brief Coinbase’s CEO published a blog post outlining the company’s vision for the metaverse. Coinbase wants to help users manage their metaverse identity with avatars and NFTs. Coinbase is working on tools to let people access the metaverse—a loosely-defined term that describes an emerging digital world where we work, live, play, and shop. On Thursday, Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong…
On Thursday, ConsenSys, a prominent developer of Ethereum (ETH) software, announced the launch of enterprise software ConsSys Rollups. The service, designed on the basis of zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, is meant to protect specific transaction elements, such as account balances, sender and recipient wallet addresses, and transaction amounts to secure each user’s privacy. Zero-knowledge proofs enable the validation of sensitive encrypted…
On Thursday, BitDAO, one of the world’s largest decentralized autonomous organizations with over $2.5 billion assets under management, and its partner Mirana ventures announced the creation of EduDAO with eight of the world’s top universities including University of California Berkeley, MIT, Harvard and Oxford University. EduDAO is financed by the BitDAO treasury, and will allocate $11 million in funding each…
We’re thrilled to announce that Kraken now supports the Avalanche (AVAX) C-Chain! Funding and Trading Funding is live, and trading will begin Tuesday, December 21 — at which point Kraken will enable order entry and execution. Keep an eye on the status page for updates. You can add AVAX to your Kraken account by navigating to Funding, selecting the asset,…
In brief Ryan Serhant—the real estate broker, author, and star of “Million Dollar Listing New York”—has sold over $1 billion in real estate. Serhant predicts that 50% of real estate transactions will be done using cryptocurrency in the next five years. Earlier this month, someone paid the equivalent of $450,000 in SAND tokens for a house in the metaverse next…
Peter McCormack, a well-regarded Bitcoin investor and advocate, has announced the purchase of local Englishfootball club Bedford FC, divulging ambitions in a fourteen-tweet thread to fuel the club’s prosperous aspirations through the leading cryptocurrency asset, Bitcoin. McCormack said he intends to architecture the club with “Bitcoin at its heart”, introducing everything from merchandise and sponsorship endorsements, an education training program…
In brief Former U.S. first lady Melania Trump is releasing NFTs on Solana. A Solana representative tells Decrypt that it wasn’t a “Solana-led initiative.” The benefit of a permissionless, public blockchain network is that anyone can build on it—but such an open approach means creators and projects can potentially bring controversy or notoriety along with them. Solana’s creators might be…
By Brian Armstrong, CEO and Cofounder, & Alex Reeve, Identity Product Lead These days, everyone is talking about the Metaverse. Primitive Metaverse platforms are selling virtual land for millions of dollars. Billions more are being invested in Metaverse startups. And Mark Zuckerberg recently renamed his entire company to reflect a focus on building the Metaverse. The term “Metaverse” is not new.…
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says that he does not see cryptocurrencies as a financial stability concern. However, he noted that they are risky and “there’s big consumer issues for consumers who may or may not understand what they’re getting.” Fed Chair Powell Says Cryptos Are Risky but Currently Not a Financial Stability Concern Fed Chairman Jerome Powell talked about…
