With a market capitalization of US$380 billion, Bitcoin has established itself as the most prominent cryptocurrency today. While Bitcoin continues to dominate the crypto market, its price crashing from an all-time high of over US$68,000 in November 2021 to US$19,775 a year later has left people pulling their hair, with some even attempting suicide.
On June 22, the non-profit standards organization the Khronos Group announced the formation of a collaborative body called the Metaverse Standard Forum (MSF). Many major metaverse players, like Meta, Microsoft, Epic Games, Adobe and Nvidia, have come together to join the Khronos Group as founding members of the MSF.
The global cryptocurrency market has been struggling with hacks for almost its entire existence. One of the most recent attacks to have shaken up the crypto market is a hack on the Binance ecosystem. On October 7, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, reported that its blockchain (BNB Smart Chain) had been attacked.
Despite the recent slump in the cryptocurrency market, the space is replete with job opportunities. Jobs in this sector grew by 395% in the U.S. between 2020 and 2021.Experts say that most forward-thinking tech companies have been making moves to incorporate blockchain technology into their businesses. Naturally, to do so, they must hire people who are well-versed in crypto and blockchain.
Just when you thought everything under the sun had a twin in the metaverse, the U.S. military decided to make a metaverse of their own. On May 10, two fighter pilots in the U.S. used virtual reality (VR) headsets to simulate refueling an aircraft flying alongside them in the sky. Besides hanging out with friends or attending a fashion show, many are using the metaverse to simulate tasks that are too difficult, dangerous or expensive to experiment on in real life.
This year, watchmakers pulled out all stops to ensure that connoisseurs were impressed, as watch events, like the Geneva Watch Days and Watches & Wonders, sprung back to life. From materials like platinum ruling the roost to tourbillons and skeleton watches stealing the thunder, we round up some of the top luxury watches of 2022 so far for different kinds of wearers.
Knowledge is power; when it comes to cryptocurrency, the more you know, the better financial decisions you will make. There is a lot to learn within the cryptocurrency space, such as how the different layers of blockchain technology work and which blockchain has the fastest transaction speed. Another important thing you need to know regarding blockchain transactions is the differences between off-chain and on-chain transactions—and which one can save you more money!
If you are a frequent reader of our website, you must have seen us mention The Sandbox, Decentraland and Axie Infinity. These are some of the most popular metaverses out there, and the one thing they all have in common is that they all have their origins in Asia. While Asia is home to all these metaverse projects, it suffers two main issues: the region has major rural-urban inequality as well as a significant wage difference between high-skilled and low-skilled occupations.
As of 2021, US$6.6 billion has been spent on blockchain solutions. The technology not only underpins the global cryptocurrency market but also provides unique utility for other sectors, like healthcare, logistics and real estate. A blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger made up of blocks that record data across a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. Once information is stored on this ledger, it becomes near impossible to delete, alter and hack.
It seems like just about anyone is creating some kind of cryptocurrency these days. In April this year, news broke that Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg was planning on creating his own centralized-social token (dubbed “Zuck Bucks” by Meta’s employees) to reduce the company’s dependence on advertisers. This currency would operate like tokens inside a video game, meaning that you could use them to buy items on Meta’s platform.
Last year, a physical Elon Musk-signed Tesla Model X toy car was minted as a non-fungible token (NFT) and put up for auction on OpenSea. The auction didn’t turn out to be very successful (probably because it wasn’t an official release made by Tesla), but this caused some car fans to wonder: will NFTs get into the automotive market someday?
Look around you, and I’m sure you’ll find at least one person who is either into Korean pop music (K-pop) or Korean dramas (K-dramas). The popularity of Korean cultural products, be it music, TV shows, fashion or skincare, is called the Hallyu (Chinese term for the word Korean) wave. Hallyu wave’s acclaim has had a positive impact on the South Korean economy, with boy band BTS contributing US$3.6 billion to the country’s economy all by themselves.
One of the problems that the blockchain industry has been facing for a long time is the blockchain trilemma. The blockchain trilemma (also called the scalability trilemma) is the belief that decentralized platforms can only accomplish two out of the following three goals—security, scalability and decentralization—at a time.
At this point, most of our readers would be familiar with the concept of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). But for those who need a quick refresher, DAOs are internet communities set up on the blockchain with no central governing body and where members act in the interest of the group. You can invest in and become a member through purchasing their crypto tokens.
If you look at crypto communities online, be it on Twitter or Telegram or Reddit, you’ll find them to be largely made up of men. If asked to visualize the crypto community, everyone would picture a crypto bro (men who are singularly focused on cryptocurrency predictions) discussing which currency will go “to the moon” next. In fact, 94% of all cryptocurrency is owned by men, which means that women occupy only 6% of all crypto holdings.
Cryptocurrency is an extremely volatile and turbulent asset, especially owing to its immensely speculative nature. Investors use a variety of means to gauge cryptocurrencies’ price movement in order to determine future crypto asset performance, including social media sentiment and indices.