Tether launches its USDT stablecoin on the Polygon network

Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin company, has launched its USDT stablecoin on the Polygon network bringing its utility to the over 19,000 decentralized applications (dApps) running on Polygon.

Polygon, a layer 2 (L2) scaling solution for the Ethereum network, allows cheaper and faster transaction costs using ZK rollups and optimistic rollups technologies. Its dapps have been created by more than 8k developer teams from 3k in October.

Tether has a variety of tokens backed by assets with a more “stable” value like the commercial paper and US treasury bills. These assets keep Tether tokens pegged to one dollar each. Besides, Tether had recently announced a new stablecoin, MXNT, launch that will be pegged on Mexican Peso.

Advantages of stable assets

Stable assets are very important as they help to increase the rate of trade in the market as well as cubbing all the risks involved in the DeFi ecosystem in terms of market volatility.

Polygon is now the 11th blockchain to host USDT. Other blockchains that host USDT are; Solana, Ethereum, Avalanche, Omni, Kusama, Algorand, EOS, Bitcoin Cash’s Standard Ledger Protocol, and Tron.

Paolo Ardoino, Tether CTO said:

“We’re excited to launch USD₮ on Polygon, offering its community access to the most liquid, stable, and trusted stablecoin in the digital token space.” 

Notably, USDT had faced some turbulence after TerraUSD (UST) collapsed. This could not be dealt with since UST was an algorithmic stablecoin that was backed by unstable crypto instead of direct dollars.

However, Tether’s recovered its peg quickly and reassured its holders that their reserves were fully backed.

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STEPN (GMT) price surges 20% a day after STEPN said it’ll block GPS services in China

STEPN, the most popular fitness-focused Move-to-earn game, shared an official announcement stating that they will block geolocation (GPS) services for users in China mainland starting on July 15.

Following the announcement, the price of STEPN (GMT) dropped by 5.29% to a low of about $0.83 before bouncing back by 20.67% to trade at $1.05 at the time of writing.

What is STEPN?

After its launch in late 2021, STEPN gained popularity in the world gaining over $20M profit in Q1 of 2022. Currently, the game has over 580K global players, however, it’s not clear how many players are in China.

Since the company will be blocking all the China-based IP addresses, local users have been given up to July 15 to make arrangements themselves for their virtual assets before the change becomes effective. 

STEPN uses the GPS concept to track the movement and steps of the players who purchased the virtual NFT sneakers. The virtual NFT sneakers are then converted to in-game utility tokens.

What caused STEPN to block GPS services in mainland China?

The move to block GPS services in mainland China is mainly due to regulatory issues.

Although STEPN did not explain the reason why the team decided to take that stand, their Twitter thread has hinted at regulatory policies compliance.

The post noted:

“STEPN has always attached great importance to compliance obligations and always strictly abides by the relevant requirements of local regulatory agencies. We also remind users to beware of scams.”

However, the Chinese government is known for its strict policies against digital recording technologies it has not provided and also the fear of foreign surveillance.

Last year, the Chinese government banned the use of Tesla cars by its state officials due to their facial recognition cameras saying that they can be used to spy and gather state information.

Earlier this year, China’s general prosecutor added the level of inspecting non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the Metaverse. Besides, the officials in the country have been warned against financial crimes like illegal fundraising and money laundering carried out through the Metaverse and NFTs. Related crimes will not be tolerated and will attract severe punishment

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Terra 2.0 launch delayed to 28 May as major exchanges announce LUNA airdrop support

Terra 2.0 will now launch its mainnet on 28 May 2022, the team behind the blockchain has announced.

While the announcement made via its official Twitter account did not specify the reasons for the delay, it expects the chain’s version two to go live at 6:00 AM UTC (tomorrow 28 May).

Block 1 of the new chain will be produced following a supermajority of interconnected validators running simultaneously,” the team shared in the thread. 

As for what the community should look forward to, Terra says:

Top crypto exchanges announce LUNA aidrop support

Weeks after a brutal crash of the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin and the LUNA token, the Terra team is getting ready for reincarnation. This time, there will be no UST.

And despite the controversy, criticism and anger around Terra’s collapse, and opposition to forking the blockchain, a governance vote initiated on May 18 was passed to give way to the new chain.

An airdrop for LUNA, the native token of the new chain will also take place at the genesis block. Binance, KuCoin, and FTX, all support the airdrop.

Other major crypto exchanges to announce support include Bitfinex, ByBit, Huobi, Bitrue, LBank Crypto.com, HitBTC, and Gate

Also expected is the migration of dApps built on what is set to be the old chain Terra Classic (LUNC). However, individual projects will choose when to do so, according to today’s communication.

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Binance NFT Marketplace launches “Rh!noX by BinaryX” NFT Collection

Binance NFT Marketplace has announced via a tweet the launch of “Rh!noX by BinaryX” NFT Collection on its Marketplace. The newly launched Collection will be available as a feature in the subscription mechanism.

BinaryX powers CyberArena and CyberDragon, a famous Play-to-Earn game on Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Players can create equipment and characters which are all NFTs. Players can also earn daily rewards and revenues as they have fun.

“Rh!noX by BinaryX” NFT Collection features

“Rh!noX by BinaryX” contains some exclusive NFT avatars with numerous accessories like different backdrops and facial traits. A single NFT costs 7 BNX. 

In addition, “Rh!noX by BinaryX” NFTs provide holders with different privileges and rights on platforms according to their credit ratings.

The future of Binance Smart Chain

In the future, BSC developments will be using NFT items as soulbound certifications and status symbols. NFT avatars can be used to identify key GamFi, DeFi, or Web3 participants and architects.

During the active period of “Rh!noX by BinaryX” NFT Collection, the Binance NFT marketplace will allocate 100 BNX tokens to all top 20 users.

Every account can only purchase 1 “Rh!noX by BinaryX” NFT during the token first sale. After the allocation, the users can sell their NFT on the secondary market. However, the users have to complete the KYC before they start trading their NFTs on Binance’s secondary market.

Users are also awarded BNX token voucher which they can redeem by logging into the account and selecting ‘’Reward Center’’ in the ‘’Account’’. The voucher has a 30-day expiry date for the allocation.

Binance has all the rights to disqualify users who portray malicious activities or those who register numerous accounts to trick the system.

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Highlights May 27: Investors show preference for Bitcoin at expense of altcoins

The crypto market as a whole is bearish with most top 100 coins in the red at the time of writing. Bitcoin fell slightly, altcoins did worse even though stocks rose. 

Top cryptos

Bitcoin was recently trading at around $29,000, generally unchanged over the previous 24 hours. Ether lost around 8% over the same period and was trading below $1,800. 

Most top 10 altcoins were in the red. Solana is the biggest loser, down by around 10%. Investors show preference for Bitcoin, considered the least risky of all digital assets, amid ongoing worries about an economic downturn and high inflation. 

Relative to other coins, Bitcoin saw a spike in its market cap. XRP and Tron are the only top 20 coins in the green, up by around 2% resp. 1%. 

Top movers

Outside the top 20, the tendency was bearish, with most coins losing 3-8% of their value. Notable standouts include Elrond with a loss of 15%, THORChain with 14%, Loopring 10%, Gala 9%, and Waves 12%. 

The biggest loser, however, is STEPN, down 22%. STEPN is in freefall for three reasons: it was banned in China, a massive NFT selloff is resulting in lower prices, and the crypto market is weak overall. 

UST’s descent continues. It’s currently trading for 4 cents and has lost 52% of its value today.  

On the other end, Decred added 2% and Ethereum Classic gained 3%, continuing its upward trajectory seen in the last few days. Tron’s stablecoin USDD is rapidly rising in the market cap ranking.  

Trending

The biggest winner today is Topchain, which aims to become the world’s leading gaming brand, transforming the industry to create a global decentralized gaming ecosystem. Its token TOPC has added 225% to its value today.  

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