Tencent, the Chinese software and tech company, has announced its metaverse suite of services designed to target Asian markets. The company revealed that it will revamp its media offering with its new “metaverse-in-a-box” proposal, which aims to facilitate the task of building virtual worlds for third-party companies. Tencent to Focus on Offering Metaverse Tools to Third Parties Tencent, one of…
Australian residents have been identified as one the primary targets of a sophisticated network of cryptocurrency call-center scammers — which are suspected to be run by Israel-based crime bosses. Evidence uncovered after a full-scale raid of four Serbian call centers and 11 residences by Serbian, German, Bulgarian and Cypriot authorities found that Australians were among the top countries being targeted. The…
A former facilities worker who allegedly set up a secret cryptocurrency mining operation inside a Massachusetts school’s crawl space is due for arrest after missing a scheduled court hearing to answer to charges. Nadeam Nahas was scheduled to be arraigned on Feb. 23 facing charges of vandalizing a school and fraudulent use of electricity, according to media reports. JUST IN:…
A cryptocurrency mining rights bill with laws that would prohibit the discrimination of crypto miners is one step closer to fruition after passing the Montana Senate. The proposed laws would enshrine a “right to mine digital assets” and would prohibit “discriminatory” electricity rates being charged to crypto miners, protect mining that occurs “at home” and strip local governments of the…
Crypto exchange BTC-e’s alleged operator Alexander Vinnik may be a candidate for prisoner swap between the United States and Russia. That’s according to a statement by one of his lawyers for Russian media. The latest court hearing in Vinnik’s case has been postponed. Russian Accused of Laundering Billions Through Crypto May Return Home, According to Lawyer A lawyer for Alexander…
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is not the appropriate regulator for stablecoins, says Circle founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire. In an interview with Bloomberg on Feb. 24, the Circle chief executive aired his views on the SEC and its recent moves to clamp down on the crypto industry, including stablecoin issuer Paxos. Allaire appears to have taken…
The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has announced the deployment of Base, an Ethereum layer two (L2) scaling network, after developers launched the Base testnet on Thursday. The company said it is incubating Base within Coinbase and that the L2 chain will progressively decentralize over time. Coinbase L2 Scaling Platform Aims to Help Scale the Crypto Economy Coinbase is joining the competition…
The Ethereum community appears to have taken a bullish view of Coinbase’s newly announced layer-2 network, Base, which has been described as a “massive confidence vote” and a “watershed moment” for the blockchain network. Secured on Ethereum and powered by layer-2 network Optimism, Base aims to eventually become a network for building decentralized applications (DApps) on the blockchain. The layer-2…
An original manuscript of famed novel Snow Crash, along with other digital and physical items related to the seminal work, will be offered at auction by Sotheby’s, the fine art broker announced Thursday. Snow Crash, published in 1992 by speculative fiction author Neal Stephenson, is responsible for coining the term “metaverse,” and laying out the concept of a virtual reality-based…
Jack Dorsey’s payment company Block Inc. reported $1.83 billion of Bitcoin (BTC) revenue from its Cash App business unit in the fourth quarter, representing a 7% fall from the same time last year. In its Q4 and full-year results announced on Feb. 23, Block attributed the fall in Bitcoin revenue to the decline in BTC price in the year. Bitcoin fell approximately…
