The 4th Bitcoin Halving Explained

Halvings and Miner Revenue

Sometime in April 2024, the reward that cryptocurrency miners receive for mining bitcoin (BTC) will go from ₿6.25 to ₿3.125, with significant consequences for the world’s most valuable digital currency. To help understand this quadrennial event, we’ve teamed up with HIVE Digital to take a deep dive on historical bitcoin data from Coinmetrics to see what the three previous halvings might tell us about the fourth. Bitcoin Explained But to understand halvings, we first need to take a step back to talk a bit about how the Bitcoin network works.…

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$2.3 billion has been invested in blockchain gaming so far this year

blockchain gaming

DappRadar, the decentralized app tracking platform, has unveiled data indicating a remarkable influx of $600 million in investments into the blockchain gaming sphere during the third quarter of 2023. In the broader landscape of blockchain gaming ventures, the year 2023 has been nothing short of astonishing, witnessing an astounding $2.3 billion poured into this domain. Remarkably, even in the face of a seemingly bearish crypto market throughout the year, the third quarter alone contributed a substantial $600 million to this flourishing ecosystem. Diving deeper into the quarterly breakdown, DappRadar’s report…

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Ripple Launches Cutting-Edge CBDC Platform Empowering Central Banks and Financial Institutions

Ripple’s CBDC platform

Ripple, a leading blockchain technology company, has announced the launch of a state-of-the-art platform specifically designed to enable central banks, governments, and financial institutions to issue their own central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). This groundbreaking development comes in response to the increasing interest and momentum behind CBDC adoption worldwide. Ripple’s CBDC platform grants government institutions full control over the entire life cycle of their digital currencies, encompassing essential aspects such as minting, distribution, redemption, and token burning. With this comprehensive solution, financial institutions can actively participate in inter-institutional settlement and…

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The Latest NFT Trend: Taking Out Loans on Rolexes

Rolex GMT-Master II

Blockchain technology has already changed much about the way people interact. But some innovators are hoping to push the technology’s limits even further: they’re betting the blockchain can transform the world into one giant pawn shop. Arcade.xyz, a DeFi protocol for NFT lending, has begun facilitating loans between strangers that use luxury watches as collateral, and employ NFTs to guarantee those loans’ terms. In the past few weeks, Arcade users have lent three Rolexes to anonymous lenders for cash—a Daytona, for $20,000 at 15% APR; a GMT-Master II, for $14,500…

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Cardano developers launch Marlowe to ease smart contract creation

Cardano hard fork

Input Output Global, the creator of Cardano, has launched Marlowe, a toolkit to facilitate smart contract creation in the ecosystem. Marlowe is a tool that simplifies how developers and ordinary people with no coding experience can develop, test, and deploy smart contracts. Marlowe, which has gone through testing by an external firm, has numerous features like reusable and customizable templates, a built-in simulator to test contracts, easy setup, and powerful APIs. In a statement in Lisbon, the developers said that they were partnering with TxPipe to offer access to Marlowe…

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Warner Music, Polygon Labs Launch Blockchain Music Accelerator

music concert blockchain

Further committing to blockchain-based initiatives, Warner Music Group announced Wednesday that it has formed a new music accelerator program in partnership with Polygon Labs that seeks to bolster decentralized music-related apps and projects built on the Polygon network. The program will specifically seek out projects operating at the intersection of music and the blockchain. Some examples of top priorities for Warner and Polygon purportedly include companies attempting to create new mechanisms for the decentralized distribution of music, those focused on fostering artist-fan communities, those building on-chain ticketing solutions, and those…

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Lightning Network reaches all-time high in bitcoin capacity

Lightning Network capacity

Lightning Network, a Layer 2 payment network built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, has reached an all-time high in terms of capacity, or the amount of bitcoin (BTC) locked in payment channels. The payment channel capacity on the Lightning Network has grown 63% since the beginning of last year, according to data from The Block Research. Currently, the network has over 5,490 BTC ($128 million) in capacity, up from 3,350 BTC on Jan. 1, 2022. This is being seen as a positive sign for the adoption of Bitcoin transactions.…

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Digby Design Authenticator links furniture with NFTs to fight counterfeiting

The Vignelli Rocker chair

Technology company Digby has partnered with American furniture brand Heller to launch a tool for establishing the authenticity of physical design products using the blockchain. Named Digby Design Authenticator (DDA), the system allows designers and brands to link each of their products to a non-fungible token (NFT), which effectively acts as a digital certificate of authenticity. Recorded on a blockchain, this provides an unchangeable, decentralised log of the product’s origin and ownership to prevent counterfeits. The first product to use DDA is Heller’s Vignelli Rocker, a plastic rocking chair designed…

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Putin wants to create new worldwide payment system

Bitcoin Russia

Over the weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin raised the proposal of building a new blockchain-based global payments system for international settlements. Putin said that the new system shall involve a digital currency for transactions and must be independent of banks and third-party interferences. The latest announcement from the Russian President came while speaking at a Sberbank-organized artificial intelligence conference. Mr. Putin said that the existing global payments and financial transactions between countries are in jeopardy. This has been mainly due to the rising tensions between Russia and the West. Also,…

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Telegram launches marketplace to auction rare username handles

marketplace to auction rare username handles

The popular messaging app Telegram announced on Oct. 26 the official launch of its new marketplace built on the Telegram Open Network (TON) blockchain. The marketplace will serve as an auction platform on which rare Telegram handles will be up for grabs. The idea was first mentioned back in August on app founder Pavel Durov’s Telegram channel after the TON Foundation successfully auctioned off TON DNS domains. Telegram will start with auctions of four- and five-letter handles, with this being the first time shorter handles will be made available to…

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Apple Released New Rules for Cryptocurrenсy Apps and Games, and It’s Not Good

Apple NFT crypto terms

Apple released a new set of rules for crypto apps in the App Store that reflects the company’s stance on NFTs, crypto and payment. Considering the size of the iOS applications market, it will certainly have an enormous effect on the development path that decentralized applications will choose for the foreseeable future. Enabling NFT buying From now on, developers will be able to leverage IAP to sell NFTs or offer services tied to non-fungibles like minting, listing and transferring. Technically, Apple officially created a gateway into crypto for mobile users.…

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OpenSea announces migration to Seaport protocol

Seaport protocol

OpenSea, the most popular nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, marketplace by trading volume, announced that it was migrating to Seaport. Among many perks, the protocol says it will feature lower gas fees, the ability to make offers on entire collections, removal of new account initialization fees and more user-friendly signature options. As told by OpenSea, users would pay 35% less for gas fees when transacting on Seaport. Based on data from 2021, it would amount to an estimated $460 million (138,000 ETH) in total savings. In addition, the removal of the…

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Solana surpasses $2 billion in all-time NFT sales, is SOL worth buying?

blockchain by NFT sales volume

Solana SOL/USD is a blockchain platform that made a reputation for itself due to its high speed as well as efficiency. The SOL token is the native cryptocurrency used to pay for the transaction fees on top of the network, and ever since the launch of the project in 2017, Solana has grown into one of the largest projects that facilitate non-fungible tokens (NFTs), among decentralized applications (dApps). Solana has become the go-to blockchain network for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) throughout the past few years due to the fact that it…

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Nokia’s SaaS-based Data Marketplace selected by Equideum Health to power its healthcare blockchain solutions

Nokia Data Marketplace

Nokia announced that it has been selected by Equideum Health to help the US-based company jointly develop and deliver healthcare use-cases by using Nokia’s Data Marketplace (NDM) solution delivered through its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. NDM, launched in 2021, facilitates secure sharing of data and AI models in order to drive digital transformation and data monetization for ecosystem players. Taking those NDM capabilities in conjunction with its SaaS delivery model, Nokia will enable healthcare and life sciences blockchain leader Equideum Health to launch new use-cases faster and achieve time-to-value quicker. Equideum…

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New Alfa Romeo SUV uses NFT and blockchain to track car records

Alfa Romeo Tonale SUV

Italian carmaker Alfa Romeo has unveiled its latest vehicle, the Tonale SUV. The firm claims that it is the first in the industry to connect each vehicle to its own blockchain-based token, which can keep track of the car’s whole life cycle. One of the most distinctive features of this SUV is that each car is linked to an accompanying nonfungible token (NFT). The Tonale NFT, according to Alfa Romeo, certifies a car upon purchase and then simply records and keeps data during the vehicle’s lifespan. Francesco Calcara, head of…

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