“Gaming giant Ubisoft is building non-fungible tokens (NFTs) into its latest “Tom Clancy” title, the company announced Tuesday. NFT integrations like Ubisoft’s could be a catalyst for adoption among other incumbent gaming giants.
Crypto investors and observers heralding the move as a bellwether of things to come: The integration marks the first time a mainstream video game is adding NFTs to its in-game economy. The ability to own and sell digital goods outside the walled garden of a given title has long been a holy grail for crypto-minded gamers.
The integration itself will be done through Ubisoft Quartz, a platform that allows players to earn “Digits,” which are in-game collectibles expressed as NFTs. Ubisoft Quartz will launch on Dec. 9 in the U.S., Canada, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Australia and Brazil. The company is releasing three collections of Digits for free to reward the platform’s early adopters. Digits include ‘in-game vehicles, weapons, and pieces of equipment.’
Ubisoft Quartz is the first building block in our ambitious vision for developing a true metaverse.
The NFTs will live on the Tezos blockchain, which – seemingly in a bid to stave off the worst of the online commentariat – Ubisoft touted as using ‘exceedingly less energy to operate than proof-of-work blockchains such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.’ XTZ, the native asset of the Tezos blockchain, was up sharply on the announcement, surging 31% in afternoon trading.”
“In just a matter of months, the National Football League has gone from being one of the least crypto-curious sports leagues to paving the way for mainstream adoption.
The latest deal will grant licensing for players’ name, image and likeness rights to DraftKings for use on its NFT Marketplace beginning at the start of the NFL’s 2022-23 season. DraftKings says it will use the licensing rights for a fantasy-style game where users can go head-to-head against each other using the non-fungible tokens they purchase for specific players.
The format is similar to that of the European NFT platform Sorare, which announced plans to enter American sports markets earlier this year.”
“The deal gives clients of Fidelity Digital Assets access to Nexo’s crypto prime brokerage.
We saw the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to introduce services that simply do not exist to this day, and this is precisely what we plan on doing through our collaboration.
London-based Nexo has processed over $50 billion in transactions for more than 2.5 million users worldwide. Meanwhile, Fidelity has been expanding its digital assets team as institutional demand for crypto assets continues to grow.”
“Enso Finance, a platform for building, sharing and trading index fund–style cryptocurrency portfolios, announced in a blog post plans for a vampire attack on six leading DeFi index platforms. In Enso’s case, the platform is taking aim at Index Coop, TokenSets, dHedge, PowerPool, PieDAO and Indexed Finance, which account for nearly $500 million in total value locked (TVL) among them.
The platform enables users to build indexes out of a wide range of assets, yield-vaulted and revenue-bearing assets, and with other indexes as well, allowing them to create an “ETF of ETFs.” Index creators can also set performance fees as well as timelocks for how frequently index managers are allowed to swap assets into and out of the index. These indexes can also be controlled by a multi-sig, meaning that the product can operate as a treasury management solution as well.
Anyone can create a strategy, and that’s the key differentiator here.
Enso founder Connor Howe declined to specify the type of APY users can expect upon migrating, but it will presumably need to be generous – many of the platforms Enso is looking to leech liquidity from already incentivize users with upwards of 30% APY in governance token emissions.”
See Also: DeFi Liquidity Protocol KyberDMM Launches Suite of New Features, Rebrands to KyberSwap
“LDK has been designed to allow developers to seamlessly plug their applications into the network on mobile devices and point-of-sale terminals.
LDK supports native APIs using Rust, C, Swift, Java and Kotlin coding languages. This lets developers customize their wallet app for their users in the language of their choice while also removing the necessity for separate Bitcoin and Lightning Network (LN) wallets.
In addition to the LDK, Spiral is working on the Bitcoin Development Kit, which allows cross-platform mobile wallet interactions.”
“Bitcoin spent most of Tuesday trading above $51,000 as the stock market rose sharply amid growing optimism that the new omicron coronavirus variant would be less damaging to the economy than previously thought.
Blockchain data suggested that the market crash over the weekend resulted from a “weak hand purge,” according to blockchain analytics firm Santiment.
Bitcoin (BTC) is attempting to reverse its weekend sell-off, although the cryptocurrency’s price could face short-term resistance around $53,000-$55,000. Price momentum is still negative on the weekly chart, which means more time is needed for bitcoin to decisively break above its short-term downtrend.“
See Also: This Bitcoin price metric just hit ‘oversold’ for only the 7th time in 8 years
“The Biden administration has introduced a five-pillar strategy to counter corruption as a part of the core United States national security interest. The strategy involves establishing a new task force to address potential illicit activities on crypto exchanges and other services that can serve as avenues for money laundering.
The Federal government plans to implement new tools for investigating and prosecuting money laundering offenses. The National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team would be particularly responsible for overseeing ‘crimes committed by virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, and money laundering infrastructure actors.’
DOJ will utilize a newly established task force, the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, to focus specifically on complex investigations and prosecutions of criminal misuses of cryptocurrency.”
See Also: India’s Crypto Bill Proposes ‘Arrest Without Warrant’: Report
See Also: CIA Confirms the Rumors: It Really Is Working on Cryptocurrency Projects
“The stablecoin report published last month by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets (PWG) made ripples across the crypto industry with its recommendation that Congress enact legislation to regulate stablecoin issuers like banks, but that appears to be a nonstarter among the crypto-literate on Capitol Hill.
I’ll put it bluntly this way: Regulating stablecoin issuers like banks, which is what the report suggests – it’ll kill American competitiveness.
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), echoed Emmer’s reluctance to rush to enact the legislation recommended by the PWG.
One shouldn’t assume that we’ll necessarily follow the recommendations. I am also skeptical of the notion that all stablecoin issuers should be forced to be banks.”
“Schmidt will help guide Chainlink as it scales its operations and seeks to “build a world powered by truth.”
Eric’s experience and insights around building global software platforms for next-generation innovation will be invaluable as we help developers and institutions usher in a new age of economic fairness and transparency.
Schmidt served as Google’s CEO from 2001 to 2011, during which time the company grew significantly, went public, launched services such as Gmail, Google Maps and Chrome, and acquired YouTube and Android.”
See Also: Google Sues to Shutter Cryptojacking Botnet That Infected 1M+ Computers
The Disrupt 