Refinitiv has created a global community for developers in the financial industry. In continuing its longstanding history as a leader of innovation and open tech, the Refinitiv Developer Community offers

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Several celebrities – including Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather Jr., and Paul Pierce – are facing a heavy class-action lawsuit for allegedly promoting a pump and dump crypto scam known as Ethereum Max. Mayweather and Other Celebs Face Class-Action Suit Over Ethereum Max Court documents were filed against the three last Friday in a U.S. District...

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NFTs existed prior to 2021, but it was last year that digital art exploded in the blockchain space, and digital artists shone in the NFT spotlight. While the crypto world became an exciting place to be, a new generation of NFT artists entered the world’s largest artistic movement to date. Crypto investors are having a difficult time in January 2022, as the price of Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies continues to fluctuate wildly. Some have blamed the drop on the Federal Reserve’s recent announcement of additional rate hikes, as well as political unrest in Kazakhstan, which drastically reduced Bitcoin’s hash rate. The price of Bitcoin fell below $42,000 on January 14 as traders hoped for bullish signals. It appears that while the crypto market continues to struggle, the NFT space  is witnessing incredible surge in trading volumes and interest. NFT & GameFi In Sweet Month A new report has shown that NFT and GameFi transactions continued to rise despite falling crypto prices. The report by Dappradar noted that “the number of UAW connected to Ethereum NFT DApps has grown by 43% since Q3 2021,” according to the research. The money generated by NFT trading increased from $10.7 billion in Q3 2021 to $11.9 billion in the first ten days of 2022, according to the research. This rise could also be attributed to recent advancements in the NFT arena, such as the establishment of the LooksRare marketplace. “Blockchain games continue to be widely used,” according to the report, noting that they “represent 52% of the industry’s usage.” The case for blockchain games to continue developing during 2022 has been enhanced by expanding metaverse technologies and the growing success of the play-to-earn model. Data from Dune Analytics revealed OpenSea, the leading NFT marketplace, generated approximately $2.7 billion in volume in the first half of January, on track to beat the $3.4 billion high it set in August. OpenSea had its highest single-day volume of $261 million dollars on January 9. So far in January, OpenSea has surpassed $150 million in trade volume on a daily basis. OpenSea daily volume on Ethereum. Source: Dune Analytics   Related article | OpenSea Transaction Volume Shows That NFTs Are Not Slowing Mason Nystrom, a senior research analyst at Messari, believes the NFT market is in a better position than recent cryptocurrency price moves suggest. Nystrom noted that: “The cryptomarkets are fairly correlated – the market tends to rise and fall with Bitcoin. This has made it surprisingly interesting over the recent downturn as the NFT market has continued to increase in volumes. OpenSea has recorded $2.3 billion in NFT volume in January so far, on pace to break its monthly volume record if volumes continue.” Market Reflects Growing Interest During this market downturn, Chinese consumers have shown a growing interest in NFTs and blockchain gaming, which aligns with recent Chinese announcements that the government will begin building its own non-crypto NFT. “China is now the country with the most extensive user base…increasing 166 percent from the numbers registered in November,” according to DappRadar’s research. Crypto Market Cap Stands at $2 trillion. Source: TradingView Despite the near-term volatility that NFTs may experience as a result of current market conditions, the nature of these digital assets may lead to a decoupling of prices within crypto marketplaces. Despite the fact that the United States is currently ranked second in terms of overall traffic, the country added 175,000 new members to the NFT ecosystem, representing a 38 percent increase. This is due in part to a rise in interest among younger audiences, as Millennials and Generation Z begin to account for a larger share of traffic. Related article | a16z, Mark Cuban invest $23 million in NFT platform OpenSea Featured Image from Unsplash | Charts by Dune Analytics, and TradingView

Crypto derivatives exchange FTX has launched a $2 billion venture fund focused on backing Web3 projects and the overall digital asset ecosystem. Dubbed FTX ventures, the fund will be headed by Amy Wu, a former partner at $10 billion investment firm Lightspeed Ventures Partners. FTX Ventures will invest in multi-stage companies and projects and is particularly excited about the number of talented teams in the Web3 gaming space. In fact, Wu stated that she’s “particularly excited about web3 gaming” and it’s potential to go mainstream. She has previously led multi-million-dollar investments in blockchain software company Alchemy and crypto-gaming firm Faraway. “I am thrilled to be joining FTX to work alongside Sam and some of the smartest people disrupting the financial services industry. With FTX Ventures, we are looking to support entrepreneurs building generational businesses. We’re particularly excited about web3 gaming and its ability to bring mainstream audiences into the ecosystem,” Wu said. In November 2021, FTX, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Solana Ventures even teamed up to create a $100 million blockchain gaming fund. Commenting on the development, FTX CEO, Bankman-Fried said in a statement: “Our investors at FTX have made a deep impact in supporting our growth and development. We strive to do the same at FTX Ventures and are excited to find the brightest minds and disruptive innovation in tech.” As part of FTX Ventures, Wu will lead a team of eight people, which includes general partner Ramnik Arora who has worked as FTX’s head of product since October 2020. Advisor Armani Ferrante, is also part of the team who has previously worked as a software engineer at Alameda Research, a quantitative crypto trading firm and liquidity provider founded by Sam Bankman-Fried himself. With the launch of FTX Ventures, the US-based cryptocurrency exchange has now joined the likes of Binance Labs and Coinbase Ventures, both of which have been in existence for several years.

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The cryptocurrency firm FTX has announced the launch of a $2 billion venture capital fund called FTX Ventures. The fund’s focus will be on advancing blockchain and Web3 technology alongside investments in “social, gaming, fintech, software, and healthcare.” FTX Reveals $2 Billion Venture Capital Fund, Hires Lightspeed Partner Amy Wu FTX Trading Limited has announced […]

Gen Z and growing interest throughout Asia have helped NFTs to shine brightly amidst volatility, according to a report from DappRadar.

Cryptocurrency exchange FTX has today unveiled FTX Ventures – a $2 billion venture capital fund focused on supporting the “world’s best” teams building within the digital asset ecosystem.

Block wants its yet-to-be-built mining rigs to be cheaper, lower-maintenance, and quieter than the current crop of hardware.

As the usage of social media keeps increasing, brands are increasingly dependent on social media influencers to help push their products and services to their wide range of audiences. Because of this, influencer marketing has turned into a lucrative business, with the industry said to become a $15 billion industry by the end of 2022. As per the latest calculations, 43% of all social media influencers make an average of $50,000 a year and the influencer economy is estimated to be more than $100 billion.  The Metaverse and Influencer Marketing  The Metaverse is a virtual ecosystem where immersive digital spaces are manufactured for a range of human activities and this involves the integration of both virtual and physical spaces. Back in the 90s when Neal Stephenson coined the term “metaverse” in his science-fiction novel “Snow Crash,” it was just what it was, an imaginary world from fiction. Recent happenings however have clearly shown that the Metaverse isn’t just the product of a talented writer coining words for his book, but that it is a concept that is already here with us and will be a huge part of our future.  To back this claim, we can easily point to tech giants who are obviously in a race to be the first to market for the Metaverse industry. Meta (previously Facebook) invested $10 billion in 2021 to build its Metaverse, while Nvidia is developing an Omniverse, which will connect virtual worlds in the Metaverse. Music star Travis Scott had his virtual concert at Fortnite attended by 12 million people. Microsoft is building its metaverse.  All of these events prove one thing: The Metaverse is real, it is a big deal and it is happening now. As more and more tech giants and social media platforms make the transition into the Metaverse, a big opportunity to create something much bigger presents itself. That opportunity is creating an influencer-centric ecosystem in the Metaverse.  Even though a large majority of social media influencers are untapped when it comes to Metaverse, blockchain and NFT concepts, the Influencer Marketing (IM) niche is worth only $15 billion at the moment. And the NFTs and Metaverse estimated addressable market is valued at more than $1 trillion.  All of these inspired the team at Metafluence to delve into creating a product that plugs the issue of influencer marketing but this time, for the Metaverse. What is Metafluence? Metafluence is a platform that enables influencers to monetize their influence, social media power and creativity in the Metaverse. Metafluence is the world’s first influence-to-earn platform and the solutions they provide for influencers automatically addresses the brand and audience challenges. This enables all the parties to thrive in Web 3.0. Metafluence is the name of the city in the Metaverse and this city is ruled by social media influencers. Metahuts will be the homes of Influencers and will serve as the main architectural elements of the city. This is similar to the plot of lands in the Metaverse. To be considered an Influencer, you must have at least 100+ engagements (including likes, shares and comments) in one of your social media channels. Up to 100 influencers can come together to create a Metaclan, to unify their social media influence and reach.  Vision  Metafluence’s vision is to build an influencer-focused ecosystem in the Metaverse where social media influencers, brands and their audiences can engage easily in a transparent and incentivized manner. Through Metafluence’s influence-to-earn platform, they aim to convert social media influencers into Metaverse entrepreneurs (Metapreneurs).  Token  $METO is the native utility token of the Metafluence platform. It would be used throughout the Metafluence ecosystem and its utility includes but is not limited to; Acquisition of Influencer Homes (Metahuts) or their upgrades Purchases and transactions — NFT purchases, event tickets, premium access, brand stores etc.  Community incentives and governance — This includes incentives for holding the token, affiliate incentives, transaction fee incentives, staking incentives and incentives for being active.  $METO will also be used for voting, curation and as a means for Metaclan memberships. Tokenomics  Token name: Metafluence Ticker: $METO Total Token Supply: 5,000,000,000 METO Initial Market Cap: $155,000 Fully diluted market cap: $25m Token Allocation and Vesting Schedule  Seed Round (3.2%) — Locked for 30 days with daily vesting for 23 months. Total vesting of 24 months.  Private Round 1 (6%) — 5% released at TGE, then locked for 30 days with daily vesting for 17 months  Private Round 2 (3%) — 10% released at TGE, then locked for 30 days with daily vesting for 14 months Public Sale (1.2%) — 10% released at TGE and then vested daily over 6 months  Team (16%) — 6-month lock followed by a 42-month daily vesting  Advisors (5%) — 6-month lock followed by 18-month daily vesting  Partners (4%) — 3-month lock followed by 33-month daily … Continued

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The gaming industry is going through a profound transformation triggered by the disrupting impact of blockchain. After pay-to-play and free-to-play, the new, groundbreaking development is represented by play-to-earn games. Currently, play-to-earn games are becoming pillars in the metaverse, as NFTs lay the foundation for earning.  These blockchain-based and decentralized games are a pillar of the […]

The 45-minute interactive tour takes you back 850 years to explore the incredible architecture in its prime. On April 15th, 2019, a massive fire that started under the roof of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral caused extensive damage to the historic structure. By the time the last flames were extinguished there was almost nothing left […]

The post VR Restores The Notre-Dame Cathedral To Its Historic Glory appeared first on VRScout.

17-Bit definitely won't be releasing a sequel.