- Google Exploring Blockchain Products — CEO Shares Web3 Strategies
The CEO of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google, Sundar Pichai, shared some information on the group’s blockchain strategy during the company’s Q4 earnings call last week.
Pichai was asked about his view on web3 and Alphabet’s approach to the industry. “Anytime there is innovation, I find it exciting,” the Google CEO began, elaborating:
On web3, we are definitely looking at blockchain, and such an interesting and powerful technology with broad applications, so much broader, again, than any one application.
“As a company, we are looking at how we might contribute to the ecosystem and add value,” he continued, adding:
Just one example, our Cloud team is looking at how they can support our customers’ needs in building, transacting, storing value, and deploying their products on blockchain-based platforms.
“So we’ll definitely be watching the space closely and supporting it where we can. Overall, I think technology will continue to evolve and innovate and we want to be pro-innovation and approach it that way,” the CEO opined.
https://news.bitcoin.com/google-exploring-blockchain-products-ceo-shares-web3-strategies/
- How four ordinary people got rich from crypto
They once were average workers, with regular jobs and modest pay cheques.
Now they’re loaded.
And all because they bet big on Bitcoin or other virtual money, snapping up online currencies early and often, sometimes sinking every spare dollar into the crypto market, the New York Post reports.
They were savvy enough to see the potential of an investment that some top financial advisers still don’t fully understand, where patience is a priority and one must navigate a world rife with its own language: chainlink, fiat, mining and DeFi.
Plenty of people have lost money speculating in this unregulated marketplace, where no banks or government agencies are involved.
But as of December, a staggering 83 per cent of millennials have bought in.
And despite turbulence, crypto currency has shown an overall upward trajectory — and the ability to transform some people’s lives.
- Top 5 cryptocurrencies to watch this week: BTC, ETH, NEAR, MANA, LEO
Bitcoin (BTC) surged above the $40,000 psychological resistance on Feb. 4 and successfully held the level over the weekend. This boosted the total crypto market capitalization from $1.78 trillion on Feb. 3 to about $2 trillion on Feb. 6, according to data from CoinGecko.
A new financial disclosure by Senator Ted Cruz shows that he bought the recent dip in Bitcoin on Jan. 25 through River brokerage. On that day, Bitcoin traded roughly between $35,700 and $37,600. If the Texas Senator has held his purchase, he is already in the profit.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/top-5-cryptocurrencies-to-watch-this-week-btc-eth-near-mana-leo
- US Senator Ted Cruz Bought the Bitcoin Dip, Discloses BTC Purchase Worth up to $50KThe U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has declared his bitcoin purchase worth up to $50,000. “I’m also particularly proud that my home state, Texas, is becoming an oasis for the blockchain community, for bitcoin miners, for innovators and entrepreneurs in the crypto world,” said the senator.
Senator Ted Cruz Declares Bitcoin Purchase
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has bought the bitcoin dip. A Periodic Transaction Report filed on Friday shows that the senator from Texas personally bought bitcoin worth between $15,001 and $50,000 on Jan 25.
- What is Harmony (ONE) blockchain and why it is getting so much traction?
Harmony (ONE) is a blockchain-based platform that aims to address the conundrum of achieving both scalability and decentralization without sacrificing either.
Harmony (ONE) was launched as part of the Binance Launchpad’s initial exchange offering (IEO) in May 2019. It is aimed to be a bridge between scalability and decentralization efforts. It was built with the motto “decentralization at scale” in mind, emphasizing data sharing and the construction of fungible token and nonfungible asset marketplaces.
Furthermore, Harmony promises to give high throughput with two “lows”: latency and costs. They’re expected to put the platform at the center of efforts to establish the groundwork for future decentralized trustless economies when they’re combined.
Harmony began as a company in 2018 before the IEO. But, who is behind Harmony (ONE)? Multiple investors, including Silicon Valley’s Consensus Capital, Hong Kong’s Lemniscap VC, and others, were interested in its fundraising endeavor, which raised $18 million in April 2019. Investors bought almost $2.8 billion of the company’s ONE tokens, with $12.6 billion put aside for pre-mining.
Harmony gives investors access to an ecosystem that will enable the company’s adoption across a variety of businesses, with a focus on data sharing, decentralized marketplaces, supply chain monitoring, ad exchanges, credit rating systems and gaming.
- Ethereum Name Service Removes Brantly Millegan as Steward, Director of Operations Over 2016 Tweet
Over the weekend the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) community voted to remove Brantly Millegan as a steward over a tweet he posted in 2016 that recently resurfaced. He will also be removed from his position as director of operations of the DAO’s corresponding legal entity True Names Ltd.
In the Tweet, Millegan wrote “homosexual acts are evil. Transgenderism doesn’t exist. Abortion is murder. Contraception is perversion. So is masturbation and porn.”
ENS gives the ability to point a domain name to a wallet. Users would be able to go to a .eth domain name as opposed to a complex wallet address. Domains can be traded as NFTs. There are over 675,000 registered names, according to ENS.
“Practically, it means that you can have a name that you own, that has all the decentralization and censorship-resistance and programmability of Ethereum,” Millegan told CoinDesk in 2020 in describing the project.
Millegan hasn’t apologized for the tweet, citing his religious beliefs.
- Bitcoin jumps 10%, climbs past $40,000 for first time in 2 weeks
Bitcoin gained the most in more than three months as investors show signs of renewed risk appetite following a volatile week across financial markets.
The largest cryptocurrency by market value jumped as much as 9.4% to $40,426, the most since Oct. 15. It hasn’t been above $40,000 in more than two weeks. Ether climbed as much as 11%. Even SOL, the native currency of the Solana blockchain that has tumbled in the wake of the Wormhole project hack, surged about 10%.
The top cryptocurrencies began to rally in overnight trading after strong earnings from Amazon.com Inc. bolstered confidence in technology stocks, which digital tokens have largely tracked over the past months.
- Billionaire Ray Dalio Discusses Future of Money, Insists Some Governments Will Ban Crypto (Ray Dalio on the Future of Money and Crypto
Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio discussed cryptocurrency regulation and the future of money in an interview with David Rubenstein Thursday.
Dalio currently serves as the Bridgewater Associates chairman and cochief investment officer. His firm’s clients include endowments, governments, foundations, pensions, and sovereign wealth funds.
He was asked, “How do you foresee crypto impacting the world order?” The Bridgewater chairman replied, “I think it’s interesting,” disclosing that he has “a tiny percentage” of his portfolio in crypto.
He explained: “I wanted to diversify but it’s a very vulnerable incident because they can track who is operating on it. It can be tracked.” He added:
It’ll be outlawed, probably by different governments.
- India’s Tough Crypto Stance Has a Silver Lining
When the Indian government this week announced plans to tax cryptocurrency and launch a central bank digital currency, the news drew a mixed response. Some in the Indian crypto community gave it a glass-half-full reading while others reported their drinking vessels as half empty.
The former were relieved Narendra Modi’s government didn’t ban cryptocurrencies, as was previously threatened. The latter were angered they’d now have to shave 30% off each crypto trading profit they make.
Both missed the bigger picture, one that goes beyond India to the wider world. That is, in betting on a digital monetary future, the financial authorities of the world’s second-most populous nation are joining those of other nations to hasten the arrival of a multi-currency international monetary system – whether they want that outcome or not. In that world, cryptocurrencies will inevitably occupy a key place.
https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/02/04/indias-tough-crypto-stance-has-a-silver-lining/
- Alibaba’s latest NFT launch features non-tradeable badges celebrating four Winter Olympics sports
Alibaba Group Holding has launched four non-fungible tokens (NFTs) featuring sports at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, expanding the offerings available in China’s closed, non-tradeable NFT world.
The virtual badges, in traditional Chinese ink painting style, depict speed skating, aerial freestyle skiing, slopestyle and figure skating. They will be available on Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall online marketplaces from February 5 to 20, the closing date of the winter games.
The four badges, each having 8,888 copies, will be issued on four different dates during the period, but are only available to Alibaba’s 88Vip paid members, who can purchase using shopping credits and 0.01 yuan (0.16 US cents). The first NFT, featuring a speed skater leaning to make a turn, was sold out soon after it was issued on Saturday.
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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/alibabas-latest-nft-launch-features-093000584.html
