Created by two anonymous co-founders, known as Zodd and Guts, LooksRare claimed to be made “By NFT People, for NFT People.” According to its blog announcement, the LooksRare team is “tired of the deplatforming of creators, and the decision-makers who value business over community, seeking IPO instead of benefiting the communities that got them there.”Continue Reading on Coin Telegraph More
In its blog post, this marketplace revealed that it records all the NFTs that are available on the Ethereum Blockchain to allow for easy trade and offers to be made. Also, this platform provides users with the option of buying and selling NFTs with ether or wrapped ether (WETH), or both, as well as allowing them to make offers with WETH.Interestingly, this platform was launched by two unnamed co-founders, known as Zodd and Guts. Its team is made up of nine persons, who are mostly engineers.Also Read: Crypto Payments Company Moonpay Buys A Cryptopunk NFT For $3 MillionA vampire attack on OpenSeaLooksRare is modeled after a newly launched platform, LOOKS token, which rewards users of this platform and lure existing users from OpenSea. The token was launched at 8:15 UTC and is being traded on a decentralized exchange platform – Uniswap. Its starting price was $4.71 before dwindling to its current price of $2.69, having had a total supply of 1 billion tokens, giving it a diluted value of $2.69 billion, which is dependent on the token’s availability in the market.This marketplace intends to poach NFT big spenders from OpenSea by letting them claim LOOKS tokens for free, so long as they have traded more than three ethers (ETH) ($9,400) OpenSea between June 16 and December 16. This is known as a ‘vampire attack’ in the crypto world, since this platform uses tokens to lure pre-existing users to a different platform. LooksRare is the second major attempt to overcome OpenSea, coming closely after Infinity.In addition to its mouthwatering offers, anyone who sells or buys NFTs from authentic collections would receive LOOKS tokens, but this is only available from Tuesday. After that, the marketplace charges a 2% fee on all trades and gives those staking LOOKS tokens. In addition, the platform is currently providing 30,400% APR to those who place a stake on the token. Consequently, this means that the current supply would increase at a progressive clip.Continue reading on BTC Peers More
Before the year 2022, some members of the cryptocurrency and digital assets world predicted the end of the NFT industry following the massive sales and transactional activity drop. But, surprisingly, some NFT projects have increased by over 100% in their activities in the early days of 2022.As reported by burn sources, the OpenSea NFT marketplace is recorded as one of the main burn providers, following the burning of 3,300 ETH in the last 24 hours. Also, Common Ethereum transfers were responsible for 1,200 ETH burnt coins. Other projects such as Uniswap, Tether, and GenieSwap were responsible for slightly over 1,300 ETH to the burn address.Also Read: NFT Marketplace LooksRare goes live with Vampire attack on OpenSeaIs Ethereum becoming deflationary?As a result of the disproportion between the number of Ether that has been burnt and that which miners have issued, January 9 is considered another deflationary day for Ethereum. Therefore, it is commonplace for Ethereum to become deflationary in the instance where the main network faces elevated fees or congestions.During the most current NFT popularity spike, Ether transaction fees have increased by a more than 150-200%, thereby resulting in increased spending from the network user side.Interestingly, although Ether is faced with deflationary days, its market performance does not appear to be in sync with it following a 16.6% correction which took place between January 5 to January 9. As of the time of reporting, Ethereum trades at $3,145, and this is its first positive day on the market in the last four days, with a 2.4 % price increase.Continue reading on BTC Peers More
A Non-Fungible Token is a digital asset that habituates on a blockchain and can be bought or sold. They take several forms of digital artwork, photography, music, videos, tweets, memes, or any digital file which could be reproduced.Interestingly, the app will provide businesses with opportunities to display their NFTs or any NFT that is publicly available on OpenSea, which is an NFT marketplace. Users can also provide additional details, such as price information, provenance, description, and a QR code that enables retail shoppers to scan and purchase the NFT on their phone from the store.Also Read: Binance NFT Platform Introduces “Subscription Mechanism,” Here’s Why This is CrucialWhile the move of Crown Tv to bring NFT to the physical realm is laudable, it is important to state that this act is not without its challenges. Brands such as Nike (NYSE:NKE), Disney, McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD), and the Dallas Mavericks NBA team have started offering NFTs to consumers but have not implemented its display in retail locations. Superchief Gallery launched its first physical NFT art gallery in 2021, but it was described as glitchy, lagging screens during exhibitions. On the other hand, Toy brand LOL Surprise! announced what it claimed was “the largest retail NFT launch in history,” which involves the release of 10 million packs of cards in 20,000 retail outlets, including Walmarts, Target (NYSE:TGT) and Walgreens. Each card has its unique QR code for digital trading cards, tokens, NFTs, or a digital version of a physical collectible.Crown TV’s app would be available to users of its digital signage software on the dashboard. Amazing features that the app is made up of include content optimization for video walls, vertical displays, horizontal displays, and screens with HDMI support, with up to 4K resolution. Alongside the Crown Tv’s digital signage apps, the NFT can be included in a playlist and programmed to be displayed among other apps and content on screens.Continue reading on BTC Peers More
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Cryptocurrency investment products and funds had net outflows last week totaling a record $207 million, a report from digital asset manager CoinShares showed on Monday, as prices continued their tumble in the first trading week of the year.The sector has experienced four consecutive weeks of outflows since mid-December, reaching a total of $465 million, or 0.8% of total assets under management.Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, posted outflows of $107 million in the week to Jan. 7. CoinShares investment strategist James Butterfill said the outflows were a “direct response to the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) minutes which revealed the U.S. Federal Reserve’s concerns for rising inflation and the fear amongst investors of an interest rate hike.”A policy tightening by the Fed is a negative factor for risk assets such as cryptocurrencies because of tighter liquidity conditions and increased market volatility.Over the last four weeks, Coinshares noted there has been greater investor activity than usual.Since the start of the year, bitcoin has shed nearly 10% of its value against the U.S. dollar. On Monday, it fell below $40,000 for the first time since September 2021.”A phase of heavy loss realization by top buyers has followed the Dec. 4 flush-out (in bitcoin),” said blockchain data provider Glassnode, in its latest research report on Monday.”In the weeks since, onchain behavior has been more heavily dominated by the HODLer (long-term holders) class, with little activity by newer market entrants,” it added.Ethereum-based products had outflows of $39 million last week, posting five straight weeks of outflows with a total of $200 million. CoinShares said on a proportional basis, Ethereum’s outflows were 1.4% of total AUM, higher than that of bitcoin.Blockchain-linked equity investment products did not escape the negative sentiment for the sector, with outflows of $10 million last week.Assets under management at Grayscale and CoinShares, the world’s two largest digital asset managers, fell from their highs to $38.2 billion and $4.3 billion, respectively. More
The Federal Reserve is prepared to take action to ensure elevated inflation does not become entrenched, chair Jay Powell will reiterate to US lawmakers during his confirmation hearing on Tuesday.In testimony to be delivered to the Senate banking committee, Powell — who was nominated by President Joe Biden in November to serve a second term leading the US central bank — will nod to the speed of the economic recovery, the strength of the labour market and the costs imposed by high inflation.“The economy has rapidly gained strength despite the ongoing pandemic, giving rise to persistent supply and demand imbalances and bottlenecks, and thus to elevated inflation,” he said in prepared remarks.“We know that high inflation exacts a toll . . . we will use our tools to support the economy and a strong labour market and to prevent higher inflation from becoming entrenched,” he added.Powell is set to testify ahead of the latest inflation report, which on Wednesday is expected to show the consumer price index rising at an annual clip of 7 per cent, the fastest pace in four decades. Powell underscored the importance of flexibility in the Fed’s approach and argued that monetary policy must take a “broad and forward-looking view, keeping pace with an ever-evolving economy”.When Biden announced Powell’s renomination in November, he made clear that containing inflation was a top priority of his administration. He added that he saw Powell and Lael Brainard, the central bank governor he tapped for the role of vice-chair, as best placed to steer the US economy towards a more robust recovery.“I believe Jay is the right person to see us through and finish that effort while also addressing the threat [that] inflation . . . imposes [on] our families and to our economy,” Biden said at the time.In the weeks that followed the nomination decision, the Fed embarked on an abrupt policy pivot, jettisoning its characterisation of inflation as “transitory” and instead embracing a more aggressive approach to ensure higher US consumer prices do not become entrenched.Not only did the Fed accelerate how quickly it is winding down its stimulus programme, but it prepared financial markets for the prospects of three interest rate increases this year and a move to shrink the size of its massive balance sheet at some point in 2022.Economists now expect the Fed to commence “lift-off” in March and begin reducing its portfolio of securities soon afterwards — a sequence many senior officials have since publicly backed. Goldman Sachs predicts subsequent rate increases in June, September and December after the March move. It expects the Fed to cease reinvesting the proceeds from its maturing securities in July.Minutes from December’s policy meeting also signalled a similar timeline, with the record indicating policymakers see interest rate increases “sooner or at a faster pace” than initial estimates as potentially warranted given the speed of the economic rebound.New jobs data on Friday, which showed the unemployment rate plummeting below 4 per cent despite a sharp slowdown in the pace of monthly jobs gains for December, further emboldened bets of a March rate rise. Wage growth has also moved up sharply, as a record number of Americans quit their jobs. Economists say the economy is close to, if not already at, maximum employment, the second goal set forward by the Fed to gauge the appropriate time to move its main policy rate away from zero. The first goal, for inflation to average 2 per cent over time, has been “more than met”, Fed officials have said.Powell has previously justified the Fed’s hawkish shift despite the fact that there are still 3.6m fewer jobs than prior to the pandemic by arguing that stable prices are essential to a long and steady economic recovery.In choosing Powell, who is a Republican and first appointed to the role in 2017 by former president Donald Trump, Biden rejected criticism from the progressive wing of his party about the chair’s regulatory record — which they said led to a dilution of the post-global financial crisis rules guiding the nation’s largest banking institutions. They also took issue with Powell’s stance on issues related to climate change and instead called for a leader who would take a more proactive approach to thinking about related financial risks.Powell is also likely to face questions about the trading scandal that erupted under his watch and was reignited last week when new disclosures from Richard Clarida, the vice-chair, indicated he was more active in financial markets than he first revealed. Clarida, whose four-year term was set to expire at the end of the month, announced on Monday he is stepping down from his position this week.The Fed in October announced rules that significantly curtailed the transactions of senior staff, but the latest trades, which occurred around highly sensitive policy decisions in the early days of the pandemic, has again tarnished the central bank’s credibility.Clarida is set to be replaced by Brainard, who will face the Senate banking committee on Thursday for her confirmation hearing. More
The new design consists of four phases: Preparation, Subscription, Calculation, and Distribution. Regarding the ‘Preparation phase,’ users are to hold the average daily BNB balance for a specific duration of time. The specific amount of BNB to be stored is determined by the team responsible for the sale.All qualified users are requested to reserve an allocation in the ‘Subscription phase.’ These allocations would be distributed by a lottery mechanism. Users would also have the opportunity to purchase tickets for this or that sale.In the next stage, the ‘Calculation phase,’ the winners would be selected by the system. Also, lucky participants would be able to book NFTs proportionate to the number of tickets they have purchased.In the final phase, which is the ‘Distribution phase,’ new NFTs are transferred to winners, and the remaining BNBs will be kept at spot accounts on Binance (BNB).Related: Binance.US is coming to the metaverse$470 million milestones accomplishedHelen Hai, Head of Binance NFT, stated that this release is a great step for Binance NFT on its journey to an inclusive, democratic, and fair NFT marketplace. According to her:Binance NFT shares a similar accounts system with Binance crypto exchange, and the marketplace currently supports Ethereum (ETH) and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) for its operations.Continue reading on BTC Peers More
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund said on Monday it has appointed French-born University of California-Berkeley economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas as the Fund’s next chief economist, replacing Gita Gopinath, who is joining the IMF management team this month.The Fund said Gourinchas, who joined UC-Berkeley in 2003 and held previous economic posts at Princeton University and Stanford University, will start part-time on Jan. 24 and transition to full-time Fund work on April 1. As Economic Counsellor, he will serve as director of the IMF’s Research Department.IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said Gourinchas “brings a stellar track record of scholarship and intellectual leadership in macroeconomic areas critical to our work — from global imbalances and capital flows to the stability of the international monetary and financial system, and more recently, to economic policies for the pandemic era.”Gourinchas has written extensively in recent years on the implications of the U.S. dollar’s position as the world’s dominant reserve currency. A 2019 paper concluded that the dollar’s “hegemony” is not sustainable and the greenback eventually will likely co-exist with China’s yuan and possibly the euro as dominant currencies. Georgieva described Gourinchas as having “his finger on the pulse of global economic issues.”After nearly two years of disbursing emergency financing to developing countries to help them cope with the coronavirus pandemic, the Fund is shifting to their longer-term financing needs, including debt relief and pressures from rising interest rates and capital outflows.The appointment of Gourinchas comes amid a reshuffling of management in the wake of a World Bank data scandal that occurred during Georgieva’s time as the bank’s CEO in 2017 and that had focused IMF board scrutiny on Georgieva last year.The IMF board cleared Georgieva of any wrongdoing in World Bank data changes to improve China’s business climate ranking, but U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had demanded Georgieva take concrete steps to ensure integrity of IMF data, even though Fund research was not called into question.In December, Georgieva appointed Gopinath as the Fund’s second-ranking official, putting her in a wide-ranging policy role overseeing IMF surveillance activities, research and flagship publications. She replaces Geoffrey Okamoto, a former Trump administration U.S. Treasury official, as first deputy managing director. More
