Amid the expanding nonfungible token metaverse, Enjin is set to debut the first-ever NFT blockchain built on Polkadot.
Crypto exchange platform Crypto.com has reportedly led an $18.9 million private funding round for Enjin’s new NFT blockchain platform.
Enjin announced the news on Wednesday with DFG Group, BlockTower and Arrington XRP Capital among other investors in the private sale.
Dubbed “Efinity,” the platform is an NFT blockchain built on Polkadot that will reportedly offer greater scalability for participants in the expanding NFT space.
Detailing the technical specifications of the new NFT blockchain, the announcement stated that Efinity will have an initial throughput capacity of processing transactions every six seconds. The project team plans to utilize proof-of-stake consensus to achieve scalability to the tune of 1,000 transactions per second.
Apart from scalability, Enjin will also look to engineer cross-chain interoperability in the NFT space as part of efforts to create a true NFT metaverse.
Thus, Enjin is working on a new token standard called “Paratoken” touted to deliver cross-chain functionalities for NFTs. With Paratokens, market participants will be able to bridge digital collectibles from other blockchains to the Efinity ecosystem.
According to Enjin, Paratokens push the envelope of the ERC-1155 token standard created by the company back in 2018. Commenting on the importance of cross-blockchain functionality for NFTs, Enjin co-founder and chief technology officer Witek Radomski stated:
“Digital assets should exist in a metaverse of blockchains. Opening up liquidity across multiple blockchains and use-cases will connect a broad ecosystem of creators, buyers, and sellers.
The Efinity blockchain will also have its own native token called Efinity Token (EFI). Enjin Coin (ENJ) holders can stake ENJ to earn EFI which serves as the fuel to processing transactions on the new NFT network. EFI will also serve as the governance token for the Efinity community.
Galaxy Digital’s billionaire CEO told CNBC he’s shocked at the speed of cryptocurrency adoption.
Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz believes Bitcoin (BTC) is on track to meet or exceed gold’s market capitalization amid a rapid wave of retail and institutional adoption of the digital asset.
In an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box, Novogratz said cryptocurrency “adoption’s happening much faster than I predicted,” adding that “it’s shocking to me how fast people are moving into the system.”
Novogratz, who has been involved in Bitcoin since 2013 when the digital currency was valued at around $100, explained that his previous BTC price target of $60,000 was too conservative. The initial target was based on Bitcoin achieving roughly 10% of gold’s market capitalization.
“At the beginning of the year, I thought $60,000 was my target because that would have been 10% of gold,” he said. “But I told myself and our investors that once it gets to 10% we’re all going to say it’s going to 20%, and then when it gets to 20% it’s going to go to 50% and then 100%.”
Bitcoin’s emergence as “digital gold” has strengthened Novogratz’s conviction that the cryptocurrency will eventually reach or exceed bullion’s market value:
“I do think bitcoin is on an inevitable path to having the same market cap and then a higher market cap as gold.”
Current estimates place the total market capitalization of gold at roughly $10.7 trillion. Bitcoin, by contrast, has a total market value of $1.1 trillion.
Victoria Bitter has partnered with blockchain energy trading platform Power Ledger to allow customers to earn beer with surplus solar energy.
Asahi’s Australian lager beer subsidiary Victoria Bitter has taken a step toward sustainability by allowing customers to earn a pint with solar energy via blockchain.
According to a Wednesday announcement, Victoria Bitter has partnered with major blockchain energy firm Power Ledger to unlock a new program allowing participants to exchange excess solar energy for slabs of beer.
“The only thing better than drinking the Big Cold Beer in the Aussie sun is earning beer while you do it. Plus it’s a real win-win for beer lovers and the environment,” Victoria Bitter’s general manager of marketing Brian Phan said.
The new Solar Exchange program allows customers to track how much beer they have earned based on the number of solar energy credits exchanged with Victoria Bitter. “Every $30 worth of credit can be exchanged for a slab, which is then delivered straight to your door,” the company said in the announcement.
Power Ledger founder Jemma Green explained that their blockchain platform will be responsible for tracking how much power customers feed to the grid. “You can see how many bottles of beer you’ve earned every 30 minutes,” Green said. Using solar credits obtained in the program, Victoria Bitter will re-invest them back into the program or towards the business’ broader sustainability goals.
Power Ledger provides peer-to-peer energy trading services based on blockchain technology. Last year, the firm started rolling out its blockchain-based solar energy platform in Western Australia, allowing users to track energy consumption and sell their surplus solar energy to other residents.
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Cryptoassets will be available to Goldman investors at some point in Q2, comments from an incoming senior executive quoted by CNBC suggest.
Bitcoin (BTC) and some altcoins will soon be available to Goldman Sachs clients, according to a new mainstream media report.
Released by CNBC on March 31, comments from an interview with Mary Rich, global head of digital assets for the bank's private wealth management division, confirm plans to offer cryptoassets to investors.
Goldman exec: Crypto access coming in "near term"
The move will make Goldman the second major lender to open up the world of cryptocurrency to its clients, and comes weeks after a pioneering move by Morgan Stanley.
″We are working closely with teams across the firm to explore ways to offer thoughtful and appropriate access to the ecosystem for private wealth clients, and that is something we expect to offer in the near-term,” CNBC quoted Rich as saying.
Morgan Stanley's rollout is due to launch in April, with Goldman later in Q2. Both banks have the potential to bring large amounts of new capital into the Bitcoin ecosystem via participation in crypto-focused funds.
Continuing, Rich highlighted demand as a driving force behind Goldman's decision.
“There’s a contingent of clients who are looking to this asset as a hedge against inflation, and the macro backdrop over the past year has certainly played into that,” she added.
“There are also a large contingent of clients who feel like we’re sitting at the dawn of a new Internet in some ways and are looking for ways to participate in this space.”
Like many major banks, Goldman has changed its tune on Bitcoin this year, going from a solid skeptic to embracing the phenomenon — noticeably in contrast to central banks including the United States Federal Reserve.
"Eventually they will have to offer bitcoin services to everyone," Morgan Creek Digital co-founder Anthony Pompliano commented on the news.
BTC/USD gets instant boost after crash
Bitcoin price action reacted warmly to the news, passing $58,000 once more after Wednesday produced a flash crash of more than $2,000 in minutes.
As Cointelegraph reported, analysts remain little concerned about the lack of momentum, pointing to solid fundamentals and the need to shake out overleveraged positions before grinding towards all-time highs.
$68,000 and $73,000 are points of interest for a potential breakout.
What the planned EIP-1559 could mean for Ethereum, DeFi and miners.
The Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559, set to be bundled together with the “London” upgrade in July, has caused as much excitement as fear and panic. On the surface, EIP-1559 is nothing more than a change in Ethereum’s gas fee structure. And to spice it up, it has also been labeled as Ethereum’s scarcity engine, or burn mechanism, as it will destroy Ether (ETH) used in transaction fees, making the cryptocurrency deflationary, and perhaps more valuable down the line.
Curbing Ether’s inflation will make the digital asset as deflationary as Bitcoin (BTC), meaning that its buying power will only increase over time. However, the relevance of the EIP-1559 proposal is based on fixing the runaway gas fees. The upgrade has been in the works for some time, but its timing couldn’t have come at a better time. Ethereum’s sky-high transaction fees are a result of the network being the most used blockchain in the world. This is partly due to its smart contract functionality, something that Bitcoin’s blockchain is limited in.
Ethereum’s functionality has seen it being used as the backbone of several booms in the sector. First, it was initial coin offerings, then came decentralized finance and now nonfungible tokens. To have a better understanding of the relevance of EIP-1559, we need to step back and take a look at the current gas fee model and why it needs to be changed for the good of the ecosystem, although it will leave some miners with a sour taste in their mouths.
Transactions on the Ethereum blockchain
Any form of activity done on Ethereum is recorded on the blockchain, and the accompanying change is considered to be a transaction. Each transaction comes with a cost, which serves two purposes. Firstly, the transaction costs are meant to discourage bad actors from spamming the network. And secondly, they are meant to incentivize miners who maintain the network by confirming transactions.
The Ethereum network currently uses an auction system to determine the gas fee. This basically means that there is no specific transaction fee, and the actual amount paid depends on factors that include network traffic. In theory, users who offer to pay more will have their transactions prioritized and confirmed early. But just like any auction system, the price could go really high. In February, Ethereum’s transaction fee surpassed $39 for the first time.
This spike has benefited miners, who for obvious reasons want the status quo to remain unchanged. It is argued that the EIP-1559 upgrade would reduce transaction costs by as much as 90%, but this can only be confirmed if and when it goes live.
For the broader Ethereum community, EIP-1559 is a welcome upgrade, perhaps long-overdue.
More on the EIP-1559 upgrade
The EIP-1559 upgrade proposes to use flexible block sizes instead of fixed block sizes as has been the norm in proof-of-work systems. To do this, EIP-1559 uses a two-tier system consisting of a base fee and tips.
The base fee will be payable in Ether, and its price will constantly change depending on the network congestion. The new proposal aims to keep the network utilization at 50% or below. If the network usage surpasses this threshold, the base fee will increase as well. This predictable pricing model is meant to remove the burden of setting the price from users and pass it on to be set automatically by wallet providers. The base fee would then be burned after collection, meaning that miners won’t be pocketing transaction fees anymore. This will make Ether a deflationary asset, propping up its price over time.
Tips are slightly different from the base in the sense they are not mandatory. And unlike base fees that have to be destroyed, tips are kept by miners. Under EIP-1559, blocks will not be completely full, providing miners the space to allocate transactions to users who would be willing to pay a premium to have their transactions included in the next blocks. However, miners do not have control of the fee structure and feel let down by the proposal.
Miners are not amused by the EIP-1559 proposal
No one in life is ready to let go of their meal — same goes for Ethereum miners. In February alone, miners’ revenue reached a record of $1.3 billion, half of which coming from transaction fees. Miners have been campaigning against the EIP-155 proposal because it is estimated that it will cost them as much as 50% of their revenue. The issue has gone as far as some pools threatening to band together as a show of force. While it may not incentivize them to effect a 51% attack on the network, the possibility that they can do it will likely give developers sleepless nights.
This also shows that blockchain networks are at the mercy of large mining pools. And if it is only ethical and economic reasons preventing them from harnessing their hash rate for their own nefarious benefits, then blockchains may be far from being secure. At some point, they may have enough reasons to take over the network.
On the other side, the miners’ loss is a win for DeFi projects.
The new fee structure will allow DeFi projects to pay less for their transactions on the Ethereum network. And in the long run, this will reduce the number of projects migrating to other blockchains.
But making Ethereum transition into a more scalable network is doing so at the expense of miners who have not hidden their displeasure about the proposed changes. There is still a long way to go before Ethereum gets where it wants to be, and some stakeholders will be burned along the way.
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
Michael J. Garbade is a co-founder and the CEO of Education Ecosystem. He is a serial tech entrepreneur who formerly worked at Amazon, General Electric, Rebate Networks, Photobucket and UniCredit Group. Garbade has experience working in the United States, Europe, Asia and South America.
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Financial crimes reporting obligations are irrespective of a crypto firm’s total annual revenue.
The United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority has included cryptoasset businesses under the financial crimes reporting umbrella eight months after initially announcing plans to do so.
The FCA made this known via a policy statement issued on its website on Wednesday. This move comes as the country’s financial regulator has increased the number of firms required to submit annual financial crime report known as “REP-CRIM” from 2,500 to about 7,000.
According to the policy statement, the FCA declared that compliance with REP-CRIM reporting was a necessary tool to enable regulators to combat money laundering activities. In its 2020/2021 business plan, the FCA stated:
“We will strengthen our rules to prevent money laundering, as well as working with domestic and international stakeholders to support a joined-up approach to cryptoassets.”
During the initial announcement of the plan back in August 2020, the U.K. regulator said the move was part of efforts to adopt a data-focused approach to fintech regulation. As reported by Cointelegraph at the time, financial crimes reporting obligations are irrespective of the crypto firm’s total annual revenue.
Following the policy statement announcement, U.K. crypto firms included in the extended REP-CRIM regime will need to submit their financial crime report by the due date.
For the FCA, cryptoasset businesses refer to cryptocurrency exchanges and custodial wallet providers. The introduction of REP-CRIM reporting requirement follows on from the regulator’s increased oversight of the virtual currency space which includes compulsory registration for digital asset firms.
Indeed, the FCA has been supervising Anti-Money Laundering compliance of U.K. crypto businesses since January 2020. A backlog of cryptocurrency business registration applications forced the FCA to create a temporary licensing regime back in December 2020.
The ECB will decide whether to proceed with digital euro pilots by mid-2021, Lagarde said.
It could be a while before European Union gets a central bank digital currency, if it gets one at all.
In a Wednesday interview with Bloomberg Television, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde laid out the complex decision-making process with which the bank will determine the future of a digital euro.
The ECB will soon release its analysis of eight thousand responses received from its digital euro consultation process. “That will be communicated to the European Parliament which is one of the key players as well as the Commission and the Council with which we operate,” she stated.
Based on that consultation, alongside the parliamentary work, the ECB’s Governing Council will decide whether the institution will begin experimenting with a CBDC by mid-2021.
Following an initial experimentation phase, the council would then hold a six-month or a one-year assessment on whether to roll out the digital euro, Lagarde stated.
“The whole process — let’s be realistic about it — will in my view take another four years, maybe a little more. But I would hope we can keep it within four years,” she said, adding:
“Because it’s a technical endeavor as well as a fundamental change because we need to make sure that we do it right. We owe it to Europeans, they need to feel safe and secure. They need to know that they are holding a central bank-backed [...] equivalent of a digital banknote. [...] We need to make sure that we’re not going to break any system, but enhance the system.”
Lagarde also mentioned that some financial intermediaries have expressed concerns about the ECB launching a CBDC. She said that these intermediaries will continue to co-exist with the new ecosystem as well as cash, which “will also continue to be available.”
