The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day |
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The Federal Reserve (Fed) seems increasingly likely to start cutting interest rates this year after yesterday's inflation report, fulfilling crypto bulls' long-standing desire for a more risk-amenable macroeconomic environment. The consensus in the crypto market community is that rate cuts, likely to begin in September, will boost fiat liquidity, catalyzing demand for riskier investments like bitcoin (BTC). While that's plausible, markets may have already priced in any easing. Rate-cut expectations have dominated crypto and traditional market sentiment since the second half of 2022 and are among the key catalysts behind bitcoin's surge from 2022 lows near $15,000 to record highs above $73,000 this year. Consequently, the actual rate cut might elicit only a tepid response from the market. |
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This week CoinDesk is publishing a "theme week" devoted to the emerging field of GameFi - or the fusion of Web3 gaming with decentralized finance. Here, to start off, is an interview with Catizen's Tim Wong about the runaway success of that game on TON and a second article about gaming on TON. (Note: Catizen is also the sponsor of the week). We'll have continuing coverage throughout the week. 5 Blockchain Games: What Works and What Doesn't Web3 games are much, much better than they used to be. Longtime gamer David Morris ranks the onboarding, gameplay, graphics and tokenomics of popular Web3 games including Gods Unchained, Pixels and, yes, Hamster Kombat. Catizen’s Tim Wong: 'We Are Here to Build a Business Ecosystem' The Chairman of the Catizen Foundation explains how the team behind the Web3 game attracted 23 million players, and how it hopes to build a lasting franchise. |
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SEC Drops Stacks Investigation |
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission dropped a three-year-old investigation into Hiro Systems, a blockchain software developer (formerly known as Blockstack) that raised $70 million in token sales from 2017 to 2019, according to a Friday filing. The probe's conclusion is another win for the crypto industry in its years-long struggle with the regulator and follows news, reported by Fortune earlier this week, that the agency had ended an investigation into stablecoin issuer Paxos.
"Based on the information we have as of this date, we do not intend to recommend an enforcement action by the Commission against Hiro Systems PBC, formerly known as Blockstack PBC," the SEC's division of enforcement said in a letter to Hiro attached to the Friday filing. |
Blockchain Payment Network Raises |
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Partior, a blockchain payment network backed by banking giants JPMorgan (JPM), DBS (D05) and Standard Chartered (STAN), has raised $60 million in Series B funding. The investment was led by Peak XV Partners with contributions from Valor Capital Group and Jump Trading Group, according to an emailed announcement on Friday. JPMorgan, Standard Chartered and existing investor Temasek also joined the round. Partior is a joint venture between DBS, JPMorgan and Standard Chartered aimed at establishing unified blockchain-based interbank payment rails for instant clearing and settlement. |
Bitcoin (BTC) slumped 2.3% in the past 24 hours to pare back Thursday’s brief gains after a spike following the latest U.S. CPI readings, bringing down with it the broader crypto market. Core CPI for June rose 3.3% versus an expected 3.5%, appearing bullish for risk assets such as cryptocurrencies. However, it turned out to be a “buy the rumor, sell the news” event with many already anticipating a good report and prices being driven up in the days prior, analysis firm Santiment said in an X post. The broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20), a liquid index of the largest tokens by market capitalization, fell 2.48%, indicating losses across the market. Only XRP is in the green among majors with a 5% gain in the past 24 hours, data shows. Such gains came as traditional futures powerhouse CME and CF Benchmarks announced the debut of indices and reference rates for XRP on Thursday, one that Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of closely related blockchain payments firm Ripple, said could boost institutional adoption. |
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The Takeaway: What Web3 Gamers Want |
By Jyro Blade, Product Lead, PlayFi Video game players do not care about NFTs. They don’t care about ownership of in-game assets. They don’t care about faster and cheaper blockchains. They fundamentally don’t care at all about the underlying tech stack behind the games they play.
Every year, the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco has a main floor filled with every manner of game development tools and platforms. Among these are inevitably Web3 companies trying to explain to an audience of completely uninterested Web2 developers how easy it is to tokenize in-game items and how many transactions per second their layer 2 scaling solution has. But never once has a single of these developers heard from their communities “I really wish my magic spells were NFTs.” So why do Web3 game developers and infrastructure companies continue to champion these ideas as the key to bringing Web3 gaming to the masses? Since Web3 developers care about decentralization and ownership of assets, they mistakenly believe everyone else must as well. But the average gamer doesn’t have a clue they don’t “own” the video game skins or items they have bought or received through gameplay. While Web3 fans may care about cutting edge technology and all the metrics associated with it, many gamers happily play on mid tier cell phones or a generation old game console. Read the rest here. |
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