Why people are paying $175k for virtual land | Coinbase hiring to build out professional trading app | Goldman Sachs not rushing to push more crypto products
Bitcoin $6,327
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Ethereum $196.67
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Crypto Mkt Cap $203B
▲ BTC Dominance 54.10%
A look at Decentraland data and why people are paying up to $175k for virtual properties
Coinbase is hiring to build an app for its professional trading platform
Goldman Sachs has rolled out a crypto derivative, but it’s not rushing to push more products
Yellen: ‘I will just say outright I am not a fan’ of bitcoin
“It is one ... thought that for something to be a useful currency, it needs to be a stable source of value, and bitcoin is anything but. So it's not used for a lot of transactions, it's not a stable source of value and it's also not an efficient means for processing payments. It's very slow in handling payments.” Janet Yellen, former U.S. Fed Chair
The Big Block
Decentraland is one of the most ambitious projects in the crypto space. In a world where virtual reality is estimated to grow a compound annual growth rate of 40%, the Decentraland team hopes to become a dominant player in a potentially lucrative market.
Decentraland can be described as VR-enabled Second Life built on a blockchain. For those unfamiliar, Second Life is a game where players can create virtual avatars to explore a digital world. On Second Life, players purchase land, build homes, and interact with their fellow players. One interesting thing that Second Life helped pioneer is the adoption of virtual economies.
Digital currencies have always been part of games and virtual worlds. These digital currencies work the same way currencies work in real life: You use them as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. But it was only in the 2000s where the virtual economies really took off. Robust economies began forming on popular games like World of Warcraft and Second Life where players tradee virtual property for real-life cash. Gaming currencies no longer only had value in a game, they now have value in real life.
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Around The Block
Coinbase is hiring to build an app for its professional trading platform
Coinbase, the U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange operator, is seeking talent to build out a mobile-application for its professional trading platform, according to people familiar with the matter. Coinbase, which announced Tuesday it closed a $300 million fundraise, is now valued at more than $8 billion. The firm has been expanding at a breakneck rate since the beginning of 2018, breaking its institutional exchange GDAX into a number of operations in May, including Coinbase Markets, Coinbase Prime, and Coinbase Pro. — More
Goldman Sachs has rolled out a crypto derivative, but it’s not rushing to push more products
Goldman Sachs, the white-shoe New York investment bank, has been a darling of the cryptocurrency world, with many observers waiting with bated breath for the firm to make a big splash into the market.
But it doesn’t look like the firm is in any rush to roll out new tradable products tied to the market, according to a direct source. The firm, notably, announced its crypto trading desk in May. At the time, the bank said the desk would offer bitcoin non-deliverable forward contracts, which is a type of derivative product tied to futures, to start. The Block can report those contracts are now trading at the investment bank with a small number of clients, according to the source. It is also exploring ways to custody cryptocurrency for customers. — More
Coinbase announces $300 million fundraise — More
Yellen: ‘I will just say outright I am not a fan’ of bitcoin — More
Bank of America’s new patent hints at possible crypto storage device — More
Bitcoin dealer faces five-year imprisonment for operating an ‘unlicensed money transmitting business’ using LocalBitcoins — More
Survey: 60% of Americans believe cryptocurrencies should be treated the same as fiat currencies in political campaigns — More
U.K. identified key risks related to cryptoassets and commits to mitigate them — More