Date: 11/01/2021
“Together, we can finally put people at the center of our technology. And together, we can unlock a massively bigger creator economy.” — Mark Zuckerberg
Weekly News Report:
1. The name change reflects Facebook’s growing ambitions beyond online social media, a medium it helped build over the past two decades. Facebook Inc. announced Thursday that it has changed its company name to Meta — marking the first major rebrand for the social media giant.
2. Mana, a little-known cryptocurrency, spiked 400% over the weekend amid excitement over Facebook changing its name to Meta. Crypto investors view Facebook’s rebrand as a sign of growing acceptance of the metaverse trend.
3. SQUID tokens, the play-to-earn token inspired by the hit Netflix show, have plunged to nearly zero after a dizzying rise. Data from CoinMarketCap shows that prices for SQUID were down nearly 99.99% to $0.002541 in the past 24 hours.
4. Both SHIB and DOGE posted record highs and are now among the top 10 largest digital assets by market valuation. The dog-themed coin SHIB’s 765% gain in October made it the month’s top-performing cryptocurrency among those with a reported market capitalization of at least $10 billion.
5. Despite the craze around the Shiba Inu coin (SHIB) and other dog-themed tokens, Curve dao (CRV) has quietly risen to become a top performer of the week, up nearly 65% over the past week.
6. A group of U.S. regulators urged lawmakers to subject stablecoin issuers to the same strict federal oversight as banks, in a highly anticipated report released Monday. Congress should also require custodial wallet providers to be regulated by a federal agency and limit stablecoin issuers’ interactions with non-financial companies such as tech or telecom providers.
7. October was a record-breaking month for BTC funds, thanks to the approval of two futures-linked ETFs in the United States. Crypto investment products saw inflows totaling $288 million for the week ending Oct. 31, with Bitcoin accounting for $269 million.
8. Mawson Infrastructure Group has listed an Australian crypto mining exchange-traded fund (ETF) that includes Galaxy Digital and Hut 8 mining, among other companies. The ETF, which will be the first product offered by its Cosmos Asset Management unit, will be named Cosmos Global Digital Miners Access ETF, under the code “DIGA.CXA.”
9. Major Chinese tech giants Ant Group, Tencent and JD.com signed a “self-regulation” convention on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with state organizations on Sunday. NFTs have, up to this point, mostly been exempted from China’s crackdown on crypto.
10. Combining the concepts of GameFi, SocialFi, and NFTSwap, the cross-chain gaming metaverse Celestial has been making headlines in the cryptocurrency airways. Celestial has taken the center stage to lead the adoption of cross-chain warfare metaverse as the blockchain gaming industry continues matching to mainstream adoption.
11. Web Summit 2021, the biggest tech conference in the world, kicked off on Monday in Lisbon, Portugal, and will last until Nov. 4, 2021. Nicholas Julia, co-founder and CEO of French NFT fantasy gaming company Sorare, discussed major innovations that could come as a result of developments in the NFTs industry.
12. The rollout of the world’s second central bank digital currency, or CBDC, is off to a rocky start. Last week, Nigeria rolled out its eNaira CBDC after the Bahamas became the first country in the world to launch theirs, known as The Sand Dollar, the year prior.
13. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is searching for a specialist to foster digital asset underwriting, transaction processing, and custody in the cloud, according to a recent job posting. The right candidate will transform the way firms transact in crypto, stablecoins, CBDCs and NFTs.
14. Central Retail Corp., Thailand’s biggest shopping center developer, is distributing its blockchain-based “C-Coin” to 80,000 employees on a merit basis to use as a substitute for cash in its stores. The C-Coin may be expanded to customers once employee testing is complete.
15. A so-called meme cryptocurrency named after Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is rising in value, namely by a whopping 3,780% in October. The massive upside move pushed Dogelon Mars’ market cap from around $26 million on Oct. 1 to as high as $1.19 billion on Oct. 30, thus making MUSK the 92nd-largest cryptocurrency in the world by market capitalization.
