Binance to Launch Cloud Mining Business in November

The world's largest crypto exchange by volume, Binance continues its push into the embattled crypto mining industry with a plan to begin offering a crypto cloud mining product next month.

Crypto miners have had a tough year, with the price of bitcoin having hung around $20,000 for months, a far cry from its peak above $68,000 in November 2021. Other cryptos have faced similar or even worse declines. One of the largest mining-related firms in the U.S. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late September.

Other companies, however, are seeing opportunity from this crisis, with CleanSpark going on a buying spree of mining rigs and data centers, and decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Maple Finance starting a $300 million lending pool.

Binance Pool announced its own $500 million lending fund for bitcoin miners last week and said it would enter cloud mining, a service that allows investors – who otherwise might not be able to buy and operate their own equipment – to rent crypto mining machines. The official launch of the cloud mining service will come in November, a Binance spokesperson told CoinDesk via email on Monday.

Aptos Debuts Its Blockchain, Putting Millions in VC Dollars to the Test

Aptos Labs blockchain launched its mainnet on Monday, becoming the first of the Facebook spin-off networks to premiere and putting to the test its multibillion-dollar valuation.

Aptos is the brainchild of several ex-Meta employees who pioneered the company’s failed diem stablecoin. The Aptos blockchain’s code is written with Move, the Rust-based programming language favored by Mysten Labs' Sui blockchain, another upcoming network.

While Aptos Labs has declared its network "live," its ecosystem is far from complete, with dozens of teams yet to launch the wallets, trading venues, and non-fungible token tech essential to decentralized finance (DeFi). Until those – and a token – debut, there won't be much to do on Aptos.

The blockchain itself is up and running, having completed its "genesis transaction" on Oct. 12. Even so, the infrastructure has proven rocky; People building within Aptos told CoinDesk the mainnet rollout was "rushed."

The buzzed-about blockchain first made headlines in March after securing $200 million in a funding round led by a16z, with major investors including Tiger Global, Katie Haun, Multicoin Capital, FTX Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Binance Labs, and PayPal Ventures rushing in to finance the project.

That flood of investor dollars was quickly followed by another gold rush when, in July, Aptos closed a $150 million Series A round led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto, with participation from Binance Labs. The second funding round set the company’s reported valuation at $2 billion, four times higher than the company’s previous valuation just six months earlier.

DeFi Exchange Mango Markets Will Soon Start Refunding Users for $114M Exploit

Mango Markets, the decentralized crypto exchange (DEX) that suffered an exploit earlier this month, will soon start refunding users for the $114 million exploit.

The DEX had earlier said that its decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), entities that are owned and governed by their members without any central leadership, would vote on how to refund users.

"The program for depositors to recover funds is in audit and should be ready to go by tomorrow morning. Much thanks to all the Mango contributors working tirelessly to make this happen,"

Mango Labs co-founder Daffy Durairaj said in a tweet.

Azuki Launches Physical Backed Token (PBT)

Azuki has released the Physical Backed Token (PBT) — an open-source token standard that ties a physical item to a digital token on the Ethereum blockchain.

“Scanning the chip with your phone allows for the PBT to be minted or digitally transferred to the owner’s wallet. This allows the current owner of a physical item to also own the PBT, which verifiably authenticates the item and ties the item to a digital token in the wallet of their choosing.”

said the Azuki Team

The PBT intends to enable decentralized authentication and tracking of the full ownership lineage of physical items, all completely on-chain and without a centralized server, making it a trustless authentication.

Bored Ape NFT Playing Cards!

Bicycle Playing Cards, the long-running brand now under parent company Cartamundi, announced on Oct 18 that it purchased a Bored Ape NFT and that it plans to create and sell physical playing cards using the artwork.

“It's communities like the Bored Ape Yacht Club that are shaping the future of the internet and the future of Web3,”

“The holders that are part of the community, they are pioneering and are the most innovative in the space.”

said Cartamundi Global VP of Brand Commercialization Masha Ievseieva

Ievseieva said that Bicycle specifically chose an Ape with a joker playing card in a helmet, one of just 2% of the 10,000 total Ethereum NFTs that have that attribute. Bicycle purchased the ape in June for just over 103 ETH, or nearly $187,000 worth at the time.

VEVE drops the Delorean Time Machine NFT!

Veve’s latest drop is an Ultra-rare edition of the DeLorean Time Machine from the Back to the Future II franchise.

The new DeLorean Time Machine Series interactive digital collectible comes with hover conversion retractable wheels and the Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor. Additionally, the digital car’s scale is 1:1.

Major League Baseball Seemingly Looking to Expand its NFT, Digital Games, and Metaverse Presence

Major League Baseball (MLB), an American professional baseball association composed of 30 teams, is looking to hire someone to spearhead digital gaming, NFT, and metaverse licensing projects.

The position includes executing strategic partnerships to expand the MLB’s digital portfolio in NFTs, metaverse, wearable technology, and AR/VR offerings, according to a LinkedIn post, suggesting that the MLB will look to broaden its digital asset launches and metaverse presence in the future.

The MLB has made some other splashes in web3 this year. In January, the League started selling NFTs via a partnership with Candy Digital, a digital collectibles company co-founded by major web3 executives Mike Novogratz, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Michael Rubin.

The MLB also teamed up with the NFT-based fantasy sports firm Sorare to sell collectible NFTs of MLB players, becoming Sorare’s official NFT baseball partner.

Warner Bros’ New Crypto-Twitter Account & Web3 Movie Announcement

A new Warner Bros “Crypto-Twitter” account by the handle of @WarnerBrosNFT came to the surface with its first Tweet on October 19, 2022.

Only a day after, they shared a big announcement in which they introduce a “never before seen” Web3 Movie Experience that would be released on October 21, 2022.

The Movie Experience can be accessed by purchasing one of two Lord of The Rings NFTs:

• The Premiere Mystery Edition consists of 10K NFTs of varying rarities (common, uncommon, rare) that are minted at random. Each rarity represents a different location (The Shire, Rivendell, and Mines of Moria, respectively) and has an interactive navigation menu. The Premiere Mystery Edition is sold for $30.

• The Premiere Epic Edition consists of 999 Ultra Rare NFTs. Each NFT Includes the three locations and features that each Premiere Mystery Edition includes, plus additional image galleries, all for the price of $100.

It’s interesting to see Warner Brothers leverage their industry and current products to sell NFTs at accessible price points. Looking forward to seeing how they continue to innovate in the Web3 space!

Sims Pioneer, Will Wright, Creating Blockchain Game

Hall-of-fame game designer Will Wright (Sim City, The Sims) is making a blockchain game for the masses, not for NFT shoppers.

Wright is the biggest name in the controversial blockchain gaming sector, in which there's an abundance of investment and player skepticism.

“I'm much more interested in attracting a million free-to-play players than, you know, 10,000 rich whales, although we could use those rich whales”

- Will Wright

Wright’s project is called VoxVerse. It is a virtual world set on a massive cube, where players will be able to own land, create attractions, mine for resources, and socialize.

He envisions a game that will attract three groups of people: a small number of rich virtual landowners, paying for plots with crypto; a middle group of creative players who’ll be tapped by the landowners to make stuff (and share any sale proceeds from what they make), and a mass of free-to-play folks who’ll hang out and play in the world.

In a faint echo of the Sims, the game will incorporate systems of fame and trust as well as basic character needs such as energy or hunger.

The most Wright-style touch may be “shape grammar,” which he calls “kind of an evolutionary system” for item creation that lets users repeatedly click on and transform a starter object (car, coffee cup, etc.) to tweak it, make it their own, even “patent” it via the blockchain for revenue-generating reuse.

Design for VoxVerse is happening at Gallium Games, a blockchain-focused startup co-founded by Wright and Carmen Sandiego co-creator Lauren Elliott, who first shipped a game with Wright in 1984.

Their game engine of choice for the Voxverse is Unity, and the project is being orchestrated by crypto gaming boosters Gala Games, which has spent over $25 million funding the effort.

Gala wants Wright’s game to help popularize its Vox characters, which are digital collectibles, or NFTs. The most recent Vox offered by Gala, based on Trolls characters from Dreamworks, went on sale last week for .888 ETH (about $1,300) and will guarantee early dibs on land in VoxVerse.

“I don't really want to be in the business of selling NFTs,”

Wright said, emphasizing that his interest is in blockchain’s ability to allow for secure transactions between players.

Plaid Unveils ‘Wallet Onboard’ Tool, Promises Crypto Product Push

Banking fintech Plaid released its first crypto product – a wallet connector – kicking off a strategy that could take the multibillion-dollar company deep into crypto’s weeds.

Plaid, best known for bridging consumers’ bank accounts with online payments platforms, said its “Wallet Onboard” tool will make it easy for crypto developers to plug into over 300 different Ethereum wallets – and for their customers, too.

It’s also the launchpad for an array of Web3-focused products that Plaid is planning, said Alain Meier, head of the company’s identity division. One of them could see Plaid help decentralized finance (DeFi) users prove to DEXs that they are who they say they are – without revealing their personal information.

“What our teams are working on is bringing these identity credentials to the Web3 experience,”

Meier said.

The wallet onboarding tool is non-custodial and won’t store data, Meier said, noting Plaid’s role doesn’t create any security risks.

The company is prevalent across the centralized crypto industry as a connector between popular exchanges and traders’ bank accounts, Meier said. Around 40% of his division’s business comes from crypto.

All those integrations mean opportunities to build customers’ perceived trust in Plaid, he said. Their familiarity with that company linking to their bank account can then spill over into crypto, where DeFi protocols are under increasing pressure to vet their clients.

Get Splatted by Splatoon 3!

Splatoon 3 is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. Players can enjoy some fast-paced “inking action” with their friends in the multiplayer mode or retreat to the single-player campaign mode to slow down and enjoy a bit of the story!

The game initially does not seem like anything most gamers would pay much attention to when compared with giants in the genre such as Fortnite, Valorant, or even Apex Legends. However, recent news suggests otherwise. The Japan Monthly Report reveals that Splatoon 3 is the best-selling game of the year so far in Japan! Nintendo's third ink-based shooter sold just over 2.9 million retail units in the month of September alone. That means, in just a month, it's surpassed Pokemon Legends: Arceus’s 2.295 million retail unit sales. Including digital units, the game is estimated to have sold around 4 million units so far up to the 2nd of Oct.

So what makes Splatoon 3 special and why do so many players enjoy it?

1- Low Time-To-Fun(TTF) & Barrier to Entry

“The easy-to-understand rules are the secret to Splatoon’s appeal,”

says Sota Ishikawa, a series veteran that has played regularly since the original.

Where other competitive shooters require a high degree of knowledge and practice to compete in, Splatoon gives something for every player to do regardless of skill: inking everything in sight. Players are flexible to choose any sort of playstyle with a variety of interesting weapons to choose from (over 50 weapons) plus reviewers highlight a key point that perhaps sets Splatoon apart from both popular team shooters and other huge games: the lower time investment needed to get to the 'fun'.

2- Homeground Marketing!

From the very beginning, Nintendo threw its weight behind marketing the series.

Right now, merch for Splatoon 3 is everywhere. Displays in just about every 7-Eleven convenience store in the country – of which there are over 20,000 – promise prizes from entering Splatoon raffles. Yes, even tiny stores situated in rural train stations. Plus, there is pretty much every sort of merch you can think of. T-shirts, plushies, cups, notebooks, alarm clocks, and even soap dispensers!

3- Depth is still important!

According to an Iwata Asks interview, the development team spent ten months just adding "depth" to the game. This doesn't just involve depth of gameplay. The team focused on building depth among the characters and the soundtracks the game had to deliver.

Plenty of Japanese gamers play Fortnite and Apex Legends, of course, but Splatoon has tapped a cultural vein in a way only the biggest cultural phenomena can. It's created a youth craze where other new Nintendo franchises have generated merely a pleasant, measured buzz, and built upon its approachable, accessible gameplay to cultivate a legacy with both Japanese kids and young adults.

Axie ($AXS) Token Under Pressure!

Some 21.5 million $AXS tokens, almost 8% of the total supply, will be freed up when the vesting period expires on Oct. 24, 2022, according to data site TokenUnlocks

According to TokenUnlocks, almost half of the soon-to-be-unlocked AXS tokens will be directed to members of the developer team ($57 million), advisers ($25 million), and early investors in a private sale round ($20 million). These holders, in theory, may decide to realize profits and sell tokens.

Based on historical token performance, AXS price has always dropped following prior unlocking dates, blockchain sleuth Lookonchain pointed out

Mighty Bear Games Giving Away Free NFTs for its Web3 Game

Mighty Bear Games will give out free MightyNet Genesis Pass non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for its upcoming Mighty Action Heroes Web3 game.

The game is coming later this year, but Mighty Bear Games will release NFTs to its community first. Those NFTs will be free and they are available to 25,000 people who have crypto wallets and are on Mighty Bear’s “allowlist.” That list has been curated to include long-term holders of NFTs from at least two pioneer collections in the NFT gaming space.

Rather than find players who will acquire NFTs and then immediately try to sell them for a profit, Mighty Bear Games wants to reward those who hold onto the NFTs. All told, the company had 1,337 NFTs on the Ethereum chain in the first release. Simon Davis, CEO of Mighty Bear Games in Singapore, said in an earlier interview that the company wants to win over loyal community members and give utility to the NFTs.

Founded in 2016 (from the ashes of Nonstop Games) by a diverse group of industry veterans with experience at the likes of King, Ubisoft, Lucasarts, Disney, and Gameloft, Mighty Bear Games has a proven track record of developing highly engaging games that appeal to universal audiences. The team has released five games in the past four years. Davis said he wanted to make an outstanding game first and take advantage of the benefits of NFTs with utility for gamers.

The studio is launching its free MightyNet Genesis Pass — seeding its community with the best and most engaged members across Web3 and Gaming to form the foundation of the MightyNet and kickstart its community ahead of the launch of the PFP collection and game in early access at the end of this year.

How 500+ Publishers are Building Sustainable Mobile Game Growth

In a changing app ecosystem, growth-minded mobile publishers have evolved from developing great games to building great gaming businesses.

Meta Audience Network recently commissioned a survey, conducted by IDC, of more than 500 mobile game business decision-makers across 17 countries. The resulting insights are published in the new report: Ads, IAP, and beyond: Supercharge your game.

Below are seven recommendations, backed by this research, to help gaming businesses maximize monetization and growth. The recommendations are categorized by the questions we asked about user acquisition (UA), monetization, and future development.

Rarible Expands NFT Aggregator With Token Rewards That 'Can’t Be Gamed’

NFT marketplace Rarible announced today that it has launched a suite of new features in a package it’s calling Rarible 2. It’s not an entirely new platform—but it is an expanded one that aggregates listings from more marketplaces and also introduces new token rewards for traders.

The new Rarible.com aggregator indexes Ethereum NFT listings from four other marketplaces: OpenSea, LooksRare, X2Y2, and Sudoswap, letting users find more collectible and artwork listings and potentially better prices. The Rarible.com marketplace still includes Rarible’s own listings, as well, as handled by its own internal order book.

Rarible was the first NFT marketplace to launch its own token in 2020, with RARI used for both trading rewards and decentralized governance. Since then, marketplaces like LooksRare and X2Y2 have used reward tokens on a wider scale to try and attract users from other platforms and incentivize trading.

That approach has led to rampant wash trading—that is, manipulating trades to try and earn more token rewards in return. Often, a user will trade an NFT back and forth between their controlled wallets at vastly inflated prices, a process that generated billions of dollars’ worth of wash trading at LooksRare earlier this year.

Rarible is expanding its trading rewards with the launch of its enhanced marketplace, but Salkinov said that the system has been designed in a way that “can’t be gamed” by traders attempting to maximize the rewards, and won’t be susceptible to wash trade manipulation. Some of the rewards are tied to paying creator royalties.

Buyers can earn RARI token rewards by purchasing an NFT from an aggregated marketplace that honors creator royalties, which involves the seller paying additional fees (often between 5% and 10%) on each sale. The number of tokens rewarded will be proportional to the royalty paid, up to a limit. Rewards will also be offered to users who buy an NFT from a selection of projects each week that are deemed RARI Rewards Collections.

RARI token holders will vote on which projects are eligible for rewards each week, and sellers can get in on those rewards too: anyone who lists an NFT from one of those collections through Rarible will also receive token rewards. Rarible will also airdrop RARI tokens to users who bought at least three NFTs through its marketplace from July 1 to September 30.

Sudoswap’s Immediate Liquidity is Enabling NFT Arbitrage

Sudoswap is enabling NFT arbitrage between marketplaces since it provides immediate liquidity for NFT sales.

While this isn’t strictly new, an NFT trader known by the pseudonym Lorem documented, on Oct. 20, their path to arbitraging NFTs, and how it has become a crowded trade.

They also provided details of the challenges of fighting against sandwich attacks to carry out these types of trades. In total, this trader made 7 ETH ($9,000) in just over a month, showing the value in this new type of arbitrage — one that may grow over time as more financial tools crop up for NFTs.

“While I've been interested and searching for arbitrages for over a year now this was by far the most profitable strategy I've come up with, and quite frankly the strategy itself isn't that complex,”

said Lorem in a blog post.

Solving the NFT liquidity problem

Arbitrage is where a trader buys an asset on one marketplace and sells it on another at a higher price — taking advantage of a price discrepancy between the two marketplaces. Typically, this is done for highly liquid assets, like stocks or cryptocurrencies, where the trades can be done simultaneously.

The challenge with NFTs is that the markets are illiquid. NFTs can take days or weeks to sell (if ever). This means an arbitrageur might know they can buy the NFT cheaply on one marketplace and put it up for sale on another marketplace where sales are typically higher — but they don’t know if the token will actually sell. This makes it a risky trade.

Sudoswap changes this by providing immediate liquidity. It works more like an exchange, where there are pools of NFTs available to buy. The NFTs are priced on a bonding curve — similar to Uniswap — where the more NFTs are bought, the higher their prices go. What it means is that traders can instantly sell their NFTs at the price available.

“The overall strategy for this arbitrage is to find NFTs on other marketplaces that can be bought for less than what the selling price is listed as on Sudoswap, and immediately sell the NFT into a Sudoswap pool,”

said Lorem.

Sorare Launches Beta for NFT-Based NBA Fantasy Sports Game

Sorare is launching the beta for its NFT-based NBA fantasy basketball game played with digital collectible cards.

The Sorare: NBA Beta game is a big addition to Sorare’s lineup, which includes a Sorare: Major League Baseball game and a soccer game, Sorare: Football, as well. Players can collect free cards or buy NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.

Fans will create and manage teams with NFTs representing NBA players. Then they can enter tournaments and see the results based on how players do in the real world. Players can start with a free card, but they have the option to pay for NFT (non-fungible token) cards. They can keep playing with these cards and earn rewards or resell them on the marketplace for real money.

The game uses blockchain technology based on Ethereum and was first developed in 2018 by Nicolas Julia and Adrien Montfort in Paris. The partnerships with the NBA, MLB, and multiple soccer leagues are why Sorare was able to raise $680 million on a $4.3 billion valuation in a deal with SoftBank last year.

“This is our third sport, alongside football and MLB. And we’re really excited about this sport, as securing the NBA was one of the top goals of the company from the day that I joined a year ago,”

said Michael Meltzer, head of business development at Sorare, in an interview with GamesBeat.

“Just given the star power of NBA players, it fits within the global nature of our product and the international community that we have in over 185 countries.”

New NFT Marketplace Blur Is Courting JPEG Traders With an Airdrop and No Trading Fees

A buzzy new non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace has entered the arena, offering zero trading fees and an airdrop of its native token to JPEG collectors who have kept trading despite the bear market.

Blur, an Ethereum-based platform, launched a beta version on Wednesday with over $14 million of backing from venture-capital giant Paradigm, NFT-native investment fund 6529, digital art collector Cozomo Medici and others.

The platform is targeting “professional” NFT traders with features like “floor sweeping” across multiple marketplaces, revealing “sniping” and portfolio analytics tools, along with a future airdrop of its BLUR token to anyone who has traded Ethereum-based NFTs in the last six months.

To claim the airdrop, users must list one of their NFTs on the marketplace, which grants them access to “care packages” that can be redeemed for tokens in the future. “Care packages can be opened for BLUR tokens when we launch our token and protocol governance in January,” the company said in an announcement. “This is just our first step towards making Blur a marketplace that the entire NFT community can own and profit from.”

While the marketplace follows the recent trend of optional royalties in a bid to attract users, it has also created a rewards program that incentivizes users to pay royalties in exchange for more BLUR tokens.

UK Minister Proposes Measures to Regulate Crypto Ads, Ban Unauthorized Providers

The U.K. government has introduced measures that would regulate crypto ads and ban unauthorized crypto providers from offering services.

Amendments introduced by Financial Services and City Minister Andrew Griffith to his own bill on Friday have been welcomed by an industry that has called for proposals to extend beyond stablecoins, which are digital assets pegged to relatively stable assets like the U.S. dollar.

The measures amend existing laws to "clarify that the powers relating to financial promotion and regulated activities can be relied on to regulate crypto assets and activities relating to crypto assets," said an explanatory note put forth by Griffith and published Friday, as an amendment to the Financial Services and Markets Bill. Under the U.K. laws dating back to 2000, it is prohibited to carry out regulated financial activities without permission.

The measures seem likely to find favor with an industry that has been crying out for more regulatory certainty, like that offered by the European Union with its Markets in Crypto Assets regulation (MiCA).

"The amendments enable the Treasury and FCA [Financial Conduct Authority] to introduce a full regulatory regime for crypto, a hugely positive step," Nicholas Taylor, head of public policy at crypto exchange Luno, told CoinDesk in an emailed statement. Luno is owned by the Digital Currency Group, which is also CoinDesk's parent company. Andrew Jackson of the fintech industry group Innovate Finance also drew attention to the lack of legal clarity surrounding crypto at a hearing on the bill Wednesday.

Regulators have also been itching to extend their powers to cover crypto. In August, the FCA went so far as to set out the restrictions it wants to put on crypto ads in advance of legislation. The bill is due to be discussed in committee between now and Nov. 3, but may be affected by the departure of Prime Minister Liz Truss, announced Thursday. The nomination of a successor, due next week, may herald a change in other ministerial positions.

FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried Under Investigation by Texas Regulators

Cryptocurrency exchange FTX, its FTX US division, and the founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, are being investigated by Texas regulators over potential securities violations, according to a state filing.

Regulators are probing whether yield-bearing accounts offered by FTX US should be considered unregistered securities, as described in a filing related to the bankruptcy proceedings of Voyager Digital. FTX recently won the bid to acquire the assets of the firm. Barron’s first reported the news.

"The Enforcement Division is now investigating FTX Trading, FTX US, and their principals, including Sam Bankman-Fried,"

wrote Joseph Jason Rotunda, director of enforcement for the Texas State Securities Board.

In a statement shared with Decrypt, an FTX spokesperson said that the firm has been in communication with Texas regulators.

“We have been in talks with the Texas state regulator for a while,”

the FTX statement reads.

“We have an active application for a license that has been pending and believe we are operating fully within the bounds of what we can do in the interim. We look forward to continuing working with Texas.”

In the filing, Rotunda writes that he was able to set up an account through the FTX app to earn a yield on his deposit of Ethereum, as well as funds transferred from his linked bank account.

FTX lets users earn yield—or a portion of crypto staking rewards, similar to interest in a savings account—on deposits, up to 8% APY on the first $10,000 deposited and up to 5% APY on amounts above $10,000 but less than $10 million. Rotunda notes that FTX US has not registered to offer or sell securities in Texas.

“Based upon my earning of yield and an ongoing investigation by the Enforcement Division of the Texas State Securities Board, the yield program appears to be an investment contract, evidence of indebtedness and note, and as such appears to be regulated as a security in Texas,”

Rotunda wrote in the filing.