Blockchain Insights Today — April 27th
As expected, today continued to highlight how quickly the blockchain and surrounding industries are pushing forward innovation. Before we get into the breakdown, yesterday I broke down a few critical signals that all should be monitoring over the next thirty days. I recommend reading it over, but if you’re in a rush here’s the list;
- Digital currencies price fluctuating
- Global bank activity
- Insurance protection expanding
- Mass adoption of crypto acceptance
- Payments and the future of work
With those signals in mind, let’s break down the day thus far. Starting with price fluctuating, things are trending positive after falling over the past few days. This is an important call out as yesterday Tesla mentioned during their Q1 2021 earnings call, that they had sold~10% of their Bitcoin (BTC) holdings. This marks a moment we haven’t yet seen from a large institution that’s added digital currency to their balance sheet. Something to ponder on is will this prompt others to do the same in coming quarters as Bitcoin or Ethereum rises/falls in pricing?
Banks steal the show again today as U.S. Bank the fifth-largest bank in the U.S. announces they’ll be offering new cryptocurrency custody solutions to clients. This product release comes shortly after the company made an investment in an infrastructure company, Securrency. Additionally, U.S. Bank was selected to administer NYDIG’s pending Bitcoin ETF should it be approved. A quick reminder, we’re still waiting for one here in the U.S. while Canada announced two last week.
Another big announcement that blurs between the banking & mass adoption signals came as Gemini partners with MasterCard and WebBank to offer a first-of-its-kind cryptocurrency rewards credit card. Yes, we’ve seen many exchanges & wallets offering debit cards, this new card is different. The new card will allow cardholders to earn up to 3% back on qualifying purchases in Bitcoin or any of the 30+ cryptocurrencies available on the exchange. Also, there will be no annual fee & cardholders can access exclusive offers from merchants.
Taking a quick side route from our core signals mentioned above, let’s talk about non-fungible tokens or NFTs. This category of the industry landscape is continuing to flourish and infrastructure improves, product offerings expand, and more enter the broader marketplaces. For this reason and many others be to cover later, we’re going to break it down.
First up in NFTs, Binance. If you recall in yesterday’s post I mentioned the company will be expanding its product offering of tradeable tokenized stocks from two to five at the end of this month. Today they decided to enter into NFTs by announcing the upcoming June 2021 release of Binance NFT, a new platform, and marketplace. For reference, Gemini acquired Nifty Gateway in 2019 to offer a similar platform. However, Binance is integrating plans to integrate the latest release into its core product suite making it instantly available to all users. Next, we have the Golden State Warriors who today became the first professional U.S. sports team to release an official NFT.
Closing out the NFT conversation, yesterday Outlier Ventures released a new agreement for entrepreneurs building and raising capital in the NFT. The new agreement is called an NFTSPA or NFT Simple Pre-Purchase Agreement, following the likes of a SAFE, SAFT, etc. According to the company’s announcement, the document is an agreement between a project and one or more buyers, where the buyers pre-purchase limited-edition NFTs from the project which we could refer to as limited-edition Access NFTs. I’m continuing to research and learn more about this agreement for future use and will report back on my findings.
More Around The Industry:
📖 Cardano developer IOHK has unveiled a deal with the Ethiopian government which would see the “world’s biggest blockchain deployment,” a blockchain-based national identity system, rolled out throughout Ethiopia. Announced today, the deal will see Cardano-based decentralized identity solution Atala Prism initially deployed in the country’s schools. It will be used to create “tamper-proof records” of educational performance across 3,500 schools and five million students to instantly verify grades. Read more.
📖 Figment, a blockchain infrastructure provider has launched a $16 million investment fund, Figment Capital, to support decentralized protocols and applications including Cosmos Network (Cosmos), Terra, and Livepeer. Figment Networks said the new venture fund will be an investment arm of the Figment stack, and capital will be used to “supercharge” its support for blockchain protocols and early-stage projects. Read more.
📖 Genies, an avatar company,vatar company, is launching an app to bring customizable avatars to the masses and introducing a store for celebrities to drop exclusive, limited merchandise. Their CEO is eyeing NFTs as the company’s next step. Read more.
📖 Helium, the decentralized, blockchain-powered network that allows users to earn cryptocurrency by running their own nodes announced an alliance with open-source connectivity hardware maker FreedomFi to launch Helium 5G, a new service that uses a different spectrum than the original LongFi network designed for IoT hardware. As a result, the new Helium 5G network will be able to support calls from 5G smartphones and other compatible devices. Read more.
Congratulations to cryptocurrency wallet provider ZenGo ($20m Series A) and Anoma Network ($6.75m) on their recent fundraisings.
