Kategorie: Crypto Business

• Entain owns Ladbrokes, Coral and bwin among other 25 subsidiaries in the sports betting and gambling space.
• The company’s new innovation hub Ennovate will partner with Verizon, BT and Theta Labs on projects in the metaverse.

Entain plc., a leading sports betting and gaming company that owns major subsidiaries such as Ladbrokes, Coral and bwin, has announced a new innovation lab targeted at interactive sports in the metaverse.

Dubbed “Ennovate”, the platform will also see an investment of £100 million ($133 million) put into start-ups and applications in the non-fungible token (NFT) space, the company said in a statement.

According to the company, £40 million ($53.6 million) will be used in immersive sports and entertainment projects in the UK market.

Entain CEO Jette Nygaard-Andersen said that the sports betting and gambling giant is taking the step as it looks to be a leading player in the race to provide “interactive entertainment for the metaverse.”

She noted that the company seeks to offer its customers new products and experiences, with Ennovate developers leveraging the UK-based firm’s cutting-edge technology to deliver the best in the space.

The firm will also use its position in the tech space to help drive innovation and see broader benefits from the new experiences reach consumers as well as the wider society, she added.

“Our goal is to bring the most exciting experiences in immersive sport, gaming and interactive entertainment to life as the metaverse takes shape,” added Sandeep Tiku, the COO.

Entain expects to have the lab’s first projects roll out in London in March, with initial partners being telecommunications giants Verizon and BT. Blockchain platform Theta Labs is also a partner.

Entain’s venture comes even as a slew of companies look to enter the metaverse space, including big tech firms Meta Platforms, Apple Inc., and Google.

Recently, US retailer Walmart was reported to be making moves into the metaverse and NFTs space.

The virtual world industry is creating a ‘gold rush’ moment for several other companies, including gaming platform Roblox, sportswear giant Nike, and Chinese multinational Tencent.

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• Visa processed $2.5 billion in crypto payments in the three months ended 31 December

• 65 platforms and exchanges have teamed up with Visa, including Coinbase and BlockFi

• CEO Al Kelly said the payments giant “will continue to lean into the crypto space.”

Visa customers used their crypto-linked card to make payments totaling $2.5 billion during the global payments firm’s fiscal first quarter of 2022 ended 31 December.

The company processed transactions worth $46.7 billion during the quarter, an increase of 21% on the volume reported in the same quarter a year ago.

The amounts pushed the electronic funds transfer behemoth’s crypto volume to 70% of what was recorded in the fiscal year 2021, CEO Al Kelly said in an earnings call.

According to the Visa chief, the massive jump in payments made via the company’s crypto-linked cards came as the number of platforms and exchanges signing up with them soared from 54 to 65.

Some of the big-name candidates on the network include crypto exchange Coinbase and BlockFi- a US-based crypto wealth management provider.

Merchants who accept Visa-linked crypto payments have also increased significantly, hitting 100 million during the quarter, the company said in its earnings statement.

Kelly noted that the credit card payments giant “will continue to lean into the crypto space,” as they look to help the sector grow. Part of Visa’s strategy for this, he explained, is to enhance partnerships that help ensure connectivity, reliability, and security, with an eye to scaling services and value proposition to customers.

Visa chief financial officer Vasant Prabhu said the growth in crypto-linked card payments is a signal that users see the utility in the offering, CNBC reported. 

He pointed out that customers are increasingly finding value through access to liquidity and instant, seamless purchases.

The Visa CFO also noted that volumes continued to rise despite the slump in crypto markets. He also added that the payments were spread across various merchant verticals, including at retailers, restaurants, and travel.

The company has no crypto holdings but has increasingly looked to support merchants and platforms. In December, it announced a crypto advisory service that targets helping institutions and merchants.

According to the company, this is due to the growing adoption of crypto across payments. The service also aims at helping customers seeking to explore the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) space and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

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Brad Garlinghouse says 2021 was Ripple’s strongest year, with the adoption of its ODL offering despite the company facing a lawsuit from the SEC.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse says 2021 provided a watershed moment for the crypto industry.  He believes developments over the past year have seen crypto broadly accepted, with billions of people getting an opportunity to get into a global financial community.

Garlinghouse also notes that the year was Ripple’s strongest ever, even with the negative sentiment that surrounded the company following the US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit.

The Ripple chief executive’s comments come as the broader cryptocurrency and blockchain space look to build on positives in 2021 as the market heads into 2022. 

Incidentally, it’s 2021 that saw the explosion of NFTs, growth in DeFi, and increased interest in the metaverse, as well as talk of Web 3. It’s also a year where the US signaled it would not follow China in cracking down on Bitcoin mining nor ban cryptocurrencies.

“It’s been incredible to see a lot less ‘maximalism’, and many more builders joining the industry,” he observed via a series of comments shared on Twitter. He sees this as a positive for the entire ecosystem.

Saying that the year was Ripple’s best ever, Garlinghouse pointed to the fact that 25% of RippleNet’s dollar-denominated volume was recorded via the XRP-based On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) feature. The network also recorded a spike in ODL transactions, which he said was 25 times more compared to stats from Q3 2020. The transaction count also grew 130% quarter over quarter.

Ripple also saw significant expansion by entering new markets for its ODL features, with new offerings in key corridors such as Japan and UAE.

Garlinghouse is one of the harshest critics of the SEC and he feels the regulator makes the US unattractive to crypto companies. He adds that while Web 2 was a work of several US companies, the same might not happen with Web 3.

Here he questioned the SEC’s approach to regulatory issues, saying it’s a farce to still refer to crypto as the “Wild West” when most industry players comply with financial regulators across the world.

According to him, what the industry needs is regulatory clarity and consistency from enforcement agencies, with companies not punished for demanding the same from relevant authorities.

Ignoring its prior statements, the SEC today won’t answer questions about the legal status of ETH, much less anything else. Is the agency actually living up to its mission of protecting investors w/ regulation by enforcement & what @HesterPeirce calls „strategic ambiguity“? 7/10

— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) December 22, 2021

Ripple has maintained the SEC’s accusation that the company’s executives engaged in illegal sales of a security token is an unfair classification of XRP, given the regulator’s view of Ethereum’s ETH.

XRP currently trades around $0.96, about 18% up over the past week and more than 116% up over the past year. However, while many of its peers rallied to new all-time highs in 2021, XRP peaked at around $1.96 in April and is more than 55% down on its ATH reached in early 2018.

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BitMEX will airdrop the tokens to users through to February next year, with spot trading on the new BitMEX Spot Exchange expected early Q2 

On Tuesday, BitMEX announced the minting of its native token BMEX, scheduled for rollout by February 1, 2022. Via airdrops, both new and existing users would receive the token into their BitMEX.com wallets, an offering which the exchange termed a “token for true believers.”

BitMEX explained in a post that the token would have a maximum supply cap of 450 million, with a large portion of them mooted for investment into expanding the ecosystem. The P2P crypto-products trading platform further said the utility token’s whitepaper is due for publication at the end of January next year, and spot trading is expected in Q2 2022.  

“The large majority of BMEX will be spent to reward users and grow the BitMEX ecosystem. An allocation of 20% is reserved for BitMEX employees and another 25% for our long-term commitment to the token and ecosystem,” the post read.

Users would be able to receive the offerings in a few ways. To begin with, the first 50,000 users to sign up for a new account and complete KYC procedures would be eligible to receive 5 BMEX tokens and an additional 10 USDT. Referrals to three friends (signup and completion of KYC) would gift users 15 tokens, and customers would also be able to earn up to 25% of their monthly trading fees in BMEX for transactions on the exchange, at a cap of 50,000 BMEX per user each month.

A bit too late to launch the token?

Though the 2014-founded exchange has announced its native token BMEX, it has seemingly joined the party a bit too late. A flurry of other exchanges, including FTX (FTT), Crypto.com (CRO), Binance (BNB), KuCoin (KCS), and Huobi (HT), have already put out their tokens. These exchanges have enabled users to save on trading fees via their tokens, helping them snatch trading volumes from BitMEX.

BitMEX has additionally been a subject of conversation, mostly for its legal troubles in recent years. This has played a part in the loss of its competitive edge. In October last year, The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC) announced it was pursuing the crypto exchange alongside its co-founders Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, and Samuel Reed for violating several trading regulatory requirements.

The cryptocurrency exchange and derivative trading platform settled with the U.S regulators, incurring a penalty of $100 million in August this year. The co-founders are still due to face legal action for failure to establish measures against money laundering as required by the Bank Secrecy Act.

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Manasquan Bank will take part in Bakkt Holdings’ early adopter program expected in Q2 2022

Bakkt Holdings revealed via a press release on Tuesday that it has closed yet another partnership, this time with New Jersey’s Manasquan Bank. The community mutual bank would participate in Bakkt’s early adopter program slated for early Q2 next year. Once the program gets up and running, the bank’s retail clients would then be allowed to buy, hold, and sell Bitcoin and other altcoins.

The plans is to have the crypto services available via the bank’s mobile app. Sheela Zemlin, the chief revenue officer at Bakkt, lauded the initiative as one that would offer the bank’s customers an incredible opportunity to get into the world of crypto assets. She added that it was more so important as crypto is a critical component of the Web3 ecosystem and would, therefore, as an asset, offer value creation.

“Bakkt is proud to roll out new and innovative ways to this burgeoning economy, enabling a path to buy, sell and hold crypto as an extension of the consumer’s relationship with their trusted local bank,” she noted.

James Vaccaro, Chair and President of the bank, said the partnership fell in line with the banks’ ambition to offer opportunities to clients. Vaccaro specifically singled out those wishing to participate in the digital economy. He added that consumers would be able to explore crypto as an asset option without having to venture out of their trusted banking environment.

“We’re focused on driving growth and introducing new opportunities for our clients to participate in the digital economy,” Vaccaro said in a statement.

Bakkt is spreading its tentacles 

At the beginning of October, Bakkt teamed up with Google to expand its crypto payment options. Through the endeavor, the digital assets manager enhanced utility of its Visa Debit Card as users could now transact directly using digital assets at merchants and locations that accept Google Pay.

The idea was to enable seamless conversion of crypto to fiat as money is sent into a recipient’s wallet. Thanks to the collaboration, Bakkt also gained access to Google Cloud tools that enabled it to scale analytics and integrate AI & machine learning onto its platform.

Before the end of October, the Georgia-based investment holding company joined forces with MasterCard as the payment services firm announced entry into the digital assets’ space. The latter taps on Bakkt as the preferred provider to integrate the assets into its products. This was followed by a relevation that the digital asset company was going into business with Fiserv to enhance mainstream crypto adoption. Bakkt has also previously worked with Quiznos and Starbucks in other cryptocurrency-related campaigns.

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