Crypto Guides, Knowledge & Insights

South Korea explores Metaverse plans, aims to become the 5th biggest metaverse market by 2026

South Korea is eyeing the growing Metaverse expansion and is all set to work towards developing itself as a major game player in the field.　　The countrys science ministry on Thursday unveiled plans to develop a metaverse market to lead the country ahead by becoming the fifth biggest metaverse market by 2026.Metaverse projects to include medicine, pop culture and tourism　　According to the official press release, South Korea will be working with 220 metaverse companies to create a “metaverse academy” and later produce 40,000 trained metaverse professionals by 2026 to take lead in the given domain.　　As per sources, the country is also planning to build an online Korean language institute on metaverse to facilitate global user interactions and help foreigners engage with several projects on metaverse including medicine, K-pop, tourism, and arts.　　The South Korean Ministry of Science and ICT further stated a single metaverse has the potential to create 1.5 million jobs in the virtual ecosystem.　　South Korea is one of the major markets that effortlessly fosters the virtual reality ecosystem. According to the data acquired from MSIT, the nations VR market has shown immense growth potential of over 36% in 2018 and is expected to be worth $2.5 billion by 2024.Providing support

2022-01-22Deep Dive

FTX, Nexo to launch crypto debit cards

Debit cards are becoming increasingly popular among crypto users. Leading the pack, Coinbase and Crypto.com cards, among others, are already in the market. As announced today on, American crypto derivatives exchange FTX is next in line launching a Visa card to its customers. FTX users are now allowed to sign up for the card by joining a waiting list.　　To begin with, The FTX card will be available to U.S. citizens with a valid social security number only. The announcement does not disclose when the cards will be shipped to FTX customers.Keep crypto as crypto　　According to FTXs website the Visa card will allow users to use their crypto held within their FTX account to be automatically exchanged the exact amount at the point of sale, allowing users to keep “crypto as crypto”. FTX will also protect all user funds. The FTX Visa Card will come at no cost and FTX will not charge any administrative or processing fees.　　Visa has previously approved crypto-backed payment solutions for several crypto companies including Binance, Bakkt, BlockFi, CryptoSpend, and Ledger.　　While FTX now allows its users to join a waiting list, European crypto exchange and custodial service Nexo launched their long-promised debit card on January 19th. Nexo

2022-01-22Deep Dive

94% of financial advisors received questions about crypto last year

Bitwise, a leading provider of crypto index funds, and ETF Trends, a noted source of news and analysis in the ETF space, recently released the findings of their fourth joint survey of financial advisor attitudes toward crypto.　　Financial advisors who manage roughly half of all wealth in the US, are becoming increasingly bullish on crypto.Advisor engagement in the space is growing　　The survey pooled 600 financial advisors, who answered a list of questions on crypto assets and their use in client portfolios.　　The results suggest that advisor engagement in the space is growing, as the percentage of those allocating to crypto in client accounts increased significantly–from 6% in 2019, and 9% in 2020–to 15% in 2021.　　According to the report, an additional 14% of advisors said that they will “probably” or “definitely” allocate in 2022.　　Meanwhile, those advisors who currently reported an allocation in client accounts plan to either “maintain” (42%) or “increase” (58%) that exposure in 2022.　　However, 80% of advisors who allocate to crypto in client accounts reported holding crypto at a weight of 5% or less in portfolios.　　Interested in finding out how financial advisors are learning about the new market, this year‘s survey inquired about the respondents’ primary sources of crypto education.　　Roughly the

2022-01-22Deep Dive

El Salvador Plans to Offer Crypto-Based Loans for SMEs

The government of El Salvador plans to offer small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) $10 million in crypto-based loans as of the first quarter of 2022.　　Acumen, a Solana-based lending and borrowing platform, will provide U.S. dollar funding to El Salvadors National Commission for Micro and Small Enterprises (Conamype), a government entity that plans to allocate financing to local informal entrepreneurs and self-employed workers, Conamypes president Paul Steiner told CoinDesk.　　Acumens loans will have an annual interest rate of 6% to 7%, although it could reach up to 10%, Acumens project manager Andrea Gómez told CoinDesk.　　According to Steiner, 86% of the companies in El Salvador operate in the informal sector and do not have access to banking services. Of that percentage, 98% rely on unregistered lenders offering loans at annual interest rates of 2,300%, on average, he added.　　“They are loan sharks charging between 20% and 25% per month. That is what we want to avoid,” Steiner said.　　According to Steiner, the government has been in talks with Acumen since October 2021, following the approval of bitcoin as legal tender in the Central American country. In parallel, it holds negotiations with different crypto lending platforms looking to provide loans to Salvadoran SMEs, Steiner said, adding

2022-01-21Deep Dive

Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Sets New All-Time High

Mining difficulty on the Bitcoin network increased by 9.32% and hit an all-time high of 26.64 trillion on Jan. 21, at 3:07 UTC, beating the previous record set on May 13, 2021.　　The difficulty is automatically adjusted based the amount of computational power on the network, or hashrate, to keep the time it takes to mine a block roughly stable at 10 minutes. The higher the hashrate, the higher the difficulty, and vice versa.　　On May 13, 2021, bitcoins mining difficulty hit a record 25.04 trillion, as primarily Chinese and North American miners deployed their machines.　　The difficulty started dropping later in May when miners in China, at the time the biggest bitcoin mining country, went dark to comply with a regulatory crackdown. Hashrate and difficulty kept falling until late July.　　Most miners from China estimated that they would come back online in Q1 2022, so “we can attribute a good bit of this increase [in difficulty] to Chinese miners finally coming online in North America,” Whit Gibbs, CEO of Compass Mining, told CoinDesk.　　As Chinese miners found new homes for their operations, and new facilities came online, the hashrate and difficulty started to increase. By December, the hashrate had almost recovered from its July

2022-01-21Deep Dive

What Went Wrong In The Crypto.com (CRO) Hack? Experts Weigh In

The Crypto.com hack is less than a week old and still very fresh in the minds of investors in the space. In what was a brief attack, the hackers were able to access a portion of users accounts on the platform and steal their funds.　　In this report, we ask a couple of experts in the crypto security space their thoughts on the hack and what could have led to it. These experts provide insight into the attack, as well as how this reflects on decentralized exchanges when it comes to security and control on the part of the users.Crypto.com 2FA Breach　　It is now a widely-known fact that the Crypto.com hackers got in by somehow managing to bypass the 2FA security measures on the site. However, what remains a mystery is how the attackers were able to do this. The exchange itself has not spoken on the mechanism implemented by these hackers so we turned to experts in the space to shed light on how this was possible.　　Gleb Zykov, the co-founder and CTO of HashEx, a blockchain security company that focuses on smart contract code auditing, shared with Bitcoinist how the hackers could have gotten into the system.　　2FA authentication is a

2022-01-21Deep Dive

Binance’s CZ Explains Why Banning Crypto Ads Won’t Affect Demand

Several regulators around the globe have taken a hostile approach around crypto exchanges and crypto-related companies by forbidding them to advertise the industry to the general public. However, Binances CEO Changpeng Zhao thinks this will not affect the high demand of the market.Curbing Crypto Ads　　Crypto-related firms have been accused by international regulators of marketing their services with misleading messages that undermine the risk digital assets investments could possess to users.　　Spain, U.k., and Singapore have banned the advertisement of crypto to different extents.　　In Singapore alone, crypto exchanges and other licensed companies can only publish ads on their own websites and mobile apps to avoid reaching the general public.　　The countrys ban includes “any form of advertisements or promotional materials in public areas such as Singapore public transport, public transport venues, broadcast media or periodical publications, third party websites, social media platforms, public events or roadshows.”　　“MAS stresses that DPT service providers should conduct themselves with the understanding that trading of DPTs is not suitable for the general public. These Guidelines set out MAS expectation that DPT service providers should not promote their DPT services to the general public in Singapore.”　　Spain requires a pre-approval for any crypto advertisement directed towards an audience of 100,000

2022-01-21Deep Dive

WAX announces a historic 10 million NFT drop to its blockchain accounts

Known as the ‘King of NFTs’ and the worlds leading entertainment NFT network, Worldwide Asset eXchange (WAX) will be celebrating its major milestones with a record-breaking 10 million NFT drop to WAX blockchain accounts.　　With more than 15 to 20 million transactions per day, WAX established itself as the worlds top blockchain by transaction volume in a highly competitive setting, recently surpassing 11 million total wallet accounts on the platform.Largest single NFT drop to date　　The unprecedented drop that delivers a free NFT for the first 10 million WAX wallet holders is celebrating its loyal community while demonstrating its possible to mint and deliver more than 10 million NFTs with zero carbon emissions.　　“We built WAX to handle the scale of consumer mass-market item trading. We incorporated not just a best-in-class NFT standard but also marketplaces, DEXs, and a user-friendly cloud wallet. I believe we achieved our objective. Because WAX has the highest transaction volume of any chain,” CEO and co-founder of WAX, William Quigley　　Spanning 10 different digital pins, free NFTs are celebrating some of the major milestones in WAX history, including the 2019 mainnet launch.　　Other pins are representing different aspects of the platforms growth, from the WAX cloud wallet launch, and the

2022-01-21Deep Dive

How one Ethereum miner earned over $500k in block rewards

One Ethereum miner could be the luckiest in the space, as he single-handedly mined an entire ETH block and earned himself a cool reward of 168 ETH worth roughly $500,000.Solo miners get lucky with Ethereum and Bitcoin Rewards　　The said miner was operating through the 2miners: Ether SOLO pool on January 17th. Per available data, the miner was able to receive a reward 42 times higher than the usual amount reward awarded by block.　　A cursory look at the size and hash power of the SOLO would show how lucky the miner was. As of press time, less than 1,000 miners are online, and they contribute around 1.5 Tera hashes per second.　　Interestingly, this is the third time this year that this freak occurrence would be happening. In the first two cases, different solo miners using the Solo CK were able to mine an entire block of Bitcoin on their own. This earned each of them 6.25 BTC, respectively.Ethereum and Bitcoin mining hashpower reaches new heights　　What makes the achievement of the solo miners more commendable is the fact that Bitcoin hashrate only recently reached a new all-time high.　　According to available data on Glassnode, Bitcoin hashrate has hit 215 million terahashes per second. Ethereum

2022-01-21Deep Dive

Pakistan Telecom Authority Asked to Block Over 1,600 Crypto Sites

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has been requested to ban more than 1,600 crypto websites by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). The action followed a complete crypto ban recommendation by the central bank, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP). Meanwhile, the countrys science minister said that the government intends to “regularize” crypto in the country.　　Pakistan‘s FIA Taking Action Against Crypto Websites, Backing Central Bank’s Crypto Ban Recommendation　　Pakistans Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has written to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) requesting the telecom regulator to block access to more than 1,600 crypto trading websites, Samaa TV reported Tuesday, citing FIA Director Babur Bakht Qureshi.　　The director first revealed his intention to approach the Telecommunication Authority about blocking some crypto websites last week. He claims that cryptocurrency is being used for money laundering.　　In addition, “Qureshi revealed that a list of individuals involved in the trade of cryptocurrency is being prepared,” the publication conveyed. He added that “These people will be arrested” when cryptocurrency is banned in Pakistan.　　Furthermore, Qureshi said that action will be taken against individuals who promote cryptocurrencies in Pakistan. “These people are on the agencys radar and soon an action will be taken against them,” the director was quoted as saying.　　A growing

2022-01-21Deep Dive

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