Japan's Biggest Bank to Issue Yen-Pegged Stablecoin for Settlement: Report

The trust banking arm of Mitsubishi UFJ plans to use blockchain technology for securities trading with the stablecoin acting as a payment instrument.

By Jamie Crawley

Mitsubishi UFJ Trust is set to issue a stablecoin as a means of payment to enable instant settlement of securities transactions, according to a report by Nikkei.

The trust banking arm of Mitsubishi UFJ, Japan's largest bank by assets, is planning to use blockchain technology for securities trading and set up the stablecoin as a payment instrument.

Mitsubishi UFJ is looking to expedite the settlement process, which now takes a couple of days, saving millions of dollar by making it instantaneous. In this sense, it will be similar to JPM Coin by U.S. banking giant JPMorgan, which is focused on speeding up wholesale payments such as bond transactions.

The stablecoin will be pegged to the Japanese yen.

Banks and other financial institutions will be allowed to issue stablecoins next year under new legislation designed to limit the issuance of such digital currencies by private companies.

Source : coindesk.com

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Neopets Pitched a Metaverse Pivot. Fans Balked

 For many Neopets fans, an effort to bring the early-aughts classic into Web 3 is throwing up red flags.

By Cheyenne Ligon

What’s crypto’s hottest play-to-earn, NFT-based pet game?

If you guessed Axie Infinity, you’re right – but the Neopets Metaverse team wants to change that. At least, that’s the stated plan.

The project, which launched last September, aims to bring the once-popular pet collecting game – which peaked in the early 2000s and has been on a slow decline ever since – into the Web 3 era.

According to an October 2021 Medium post, the Neopets Metaverse team plans to create a “vast immersive environment where players can interact” and establish a “sophisticated economy integrated on the Solana blockchain” where players can earn real money, all based on the original Neopets game.

It may sound like a dream come true for many of Neopets’ remaining die-hard players, but the Neopets Metaverse project has been received more like a nightmare. Fans of the original game have banded together to push back against the project, taking to social media and fansites to voice their complaints.

At first glance, the critics of the Neopets Metaverse project could be dismissed as blinded by nostalgia, hostile to any changes to the 25-year-old game many of them played as children. Many of the project’s detractors, too, seem inclined towards the knee-jerk negative reaction towards non-fungible tokens (NFTs) seen in many online communities.

The blowback has led to a changing of the guard among the project’s staff, current project leads said. And despite the Neopets Metaverse’s efforts to reform, fans still remain suspicious of the project – for what appear to be legitimate reasons.

Underwhelming NFT drop

In November 2021, the Neopets Metaverse team announced its upcoming NFT collection: 20,500 randomly generated Neopets that would, in theory, be compatible with the future Neopets Metaverse.

But after getting a less-than-enthusiastic reaction from fans, the team behind the project decided to slash the number of NFTs in its genesis drop from 20,500 to 10,500, with 500 NFTs reserved for the project team.

Despite the drop, however, the collection failed to sell out – only 4,225 NFTs were sold. The rest were burned, angering fans who requested NFT buyers be airdropped the remaining supply. Buyers took to Twitter to complain about the clunky minting process, a floor price around $240 to $960 and bots driving up prices within seconds.

The quality and style of the NFTs was also an issue. Herdy, a pseudonymous Neopets player who says he has been playing since 2001, told CoinDesk the NFTs were “very low quality and ugly looking compared to the majority of comparable customizations available on the classic site.”

While the NFT art may have been messy, the sale netted a clean $2 million for the Neopets Metaverse project, according to fansite Jellyneo.

A string of scandals

The shoddy quality of some of the NFT art was not the biggest issue for the Neopets Metaverse team, however.

Allegations swirled online that the Neopets Metaverse project had used art generated by a Neopets fan site called Dress to Impress (DTI) as an example NFT before the drop – and even that the DTI website was used to make all of the NFTs. Users pointed to the presence of a glitch unique to the fan site’s software in the image, and it was quickly taken down and replaced without an explanation.

In an interview with CoinDesk, project manager Danning Chen declined to comment on the incident, but sent a follow-up email from the project team saying the current Neopets Metaverse team was new, having made staffing changes in December 2021 after the sale of the NFTs.

“Some of the original team members that worked on the project have left already, we are looking into what happened,” the email read.

Fans of the project have demanded an acknowledgment and an apology from the Neopets Metaverse team, as well as from its owner JumpStart – the company behind a popular series of educational computer games for children.

JumpStart, which was acquired by Chinese gaming company NetDragon in 2017, did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment, but has verified the partnership with Neopets Metaverse as an official one in other interviews and on social media.

In addition to the allegations of art theft, the culture clash between crypto, which is often harsh and irreverent, and Neopets, which has cultivated a gentle, family-friendly atmosphere through the use of strict filters, has plagued the project.

Fans including Herdy have pointed out that a lack of moderation in the project’s Discord and occasionally antagonistic social media presence have failed to keep up the wholesome and welcoming culture of the original Neopets site.

“The project has fostered homophobia, racism and transphobia in their Discord,” Herdy wrote to CoinDesk, referring to an incident in the project’s Discord chat where an anti-gay slur was allowed to remain up for hours, and a moderator accused complaining users of “fudding,” referring to FUD, the popular crypto acronym for “fear, uncertainty and doubt.”

“[This] is especially damaging given that Neopets has a high LGBT+ membership,” Herdy added. “[They] have never apologized.”

Last October, the Neopets Metaverse Twitter account had to delete a tweet containing a “soyjak” meme mocking “NFT Hateoooors” after Twitter users complained it was offensive.

A roadmap to nowhere?

Neopets players might be willing to let bygones be bygones if the project succeeded in resuscitating their childhood favorite, but that’s looking increasingly unlikely.

In an updated roadmap released on Monday, the project team released details of its plans to take Neopets into the Web 3 era.

The project’s plans for the first and second quarters of 2022 are vague: hiring game developers, releasing a teaser trailer and telling fans about the plans for the game’s structure.

According to the roadmap, by the third quarter an alpha version of the game will be available for those with “priority access.”

These are lofty goals for a project that, according to Chen, currently has only five full-time team members.

The lack of resources appears evident with some cursory googling. A search for “cartoon fantasy village” pulls up the backdrop of the project’s website, a Shutterstock image that can be licensed for $12. It’s unclear if the team’s current roster includes a digital artist.

What does appear to be concrete in the team’s roadmap, however, are financial milestones: in the second quarter, a Medium post touts plans for a “private sale of native tokens to strategic investors and advisors.” There’s also a planned “initial metaverse offering (IMO).”

By next year, the project hopes to launch the beta version of the Neopets Metaverse game, as well as hold a “primary NFT sale of Neopets lands, where Neopians can expand their Neohome on their own plot of land, interact and traverse to other lands.”

When asked how the game would be funded, the Neopets Metaverse team told CoinDesk the initial seed investment would come from the NFT sale’s proceeds, “combined with additional investments from our mother company, NetDragon Websoft,” as well as funds raised from the IMO and “private sales to investors.”

Who is it for?

Many Neopets fans have voiced fears that this project looks a lot like a cash grab – if not an outright rug pull waiting to happen. If at best, it’s just a failed experiment, it wouldn’t be the first in the Neopets canon.

The brand has promoted and failed to deliver on a host of projects, including a mobile app (stalled indefinitely), an animated series (stalled) and even another crypto project – Neopets CryptoQuest, a short-lived, Ethereum-based trading card game from 2018 that died after a few months.

Fans like Herdy are outraged that NetDragon’s money is being used to spin up new projects while their original beloved game is on life support, held together with spaghetti code.

“Leeching money and resources away from the rest of the Neopets brand [could] potentially lead to things like the classic site being shuttered,” Herdy told CoinDesk. “It’s quite certainly the last thing fans of the Neopets brand want.”

Source : coindesk.com

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Market Wrap: Bitcoin Bounce Pauses on Low Volume

Buyers are taking a breather, awaiting a catalyst that could push prices higher or lower.

By Damanick Dantes, Angelique Chen

Bitcoin (BTC) traded lower on Wednesday after a brief price bounce over the past two days. Buying activity has been weak following the January sell-off, which is why some analysts remain uncertain about BTC's short-term price direction.

Market indicators such as volatility and trading volume remain low, indicating a lack of conviction among crypto buyers and sellers. "Bitcoin’s seven-day volatility is now at the lowest level since November 2020," Arcane Research stated in a report. The firm expects short-term rises in volatility to remain limited as BTC trades in a tight range.

Still, a BTC breakout above $40,000 or breakdown below $30,000 could be a catalyst for a surge in trading activity.

"Since the early November peak, there have been four marked, step-like drops in the crypto market," FundStrat, a global research firm, wrote in a Wednesday briefing. "After each drop there has been a recovery averaging 8.9% leading into the next drop. A noticeable difference between the current recovery and the previous ones is the volatility," FundStrat wrote.

The firm noted that during the past three price recoveries bitcoin had an average true range (ATR, a volatility indicator) of 151, but the current recovery's ART is only 109.

Latest prices

●Bitcoin (BTC): $37557, −2.55%

●Ether (ETH): $2724, −1.56%

●S&P 500 daily close: $4589, +0.94%

●Gold: $1807 per troy ounce, +0.34%

●Ten-year Treasury yield daily close: 1.77%

Bitcoin, ether and gold prices are taken at approximately 4pm New York time. Bitcoin is the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (XBX); Ether is the CoinDesk Ether Price Index (ETX); Gold is the COMEX spot price. Information about CoinDesk Indices can be found at coindesk.com/indices.

Ether outperforms bitcoin

Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, is starting to outperform bitcoin. The chart below shows a series of higher relative price lows in the ETH/BTC ratio since July 2020. The next level of resistance in ETH/BTC is at 0.08, a significant barrier which could limit additional upside in ETH relative to BTC.

ETH/BTC price ratio on daily chart shows support/resistance with RSI on bottom (Damanick Dantes/CoinDesk, TradingView)

Altcoin roundup

- Solana Pay ushers in a new payments era: Solana Pay, a decentralized, open and peer-to-peer payment protocol, was launched Tuesday. It aims to pave the way for a future where digital currencies are prevalent and digital money moves through the internet like data – uncensored and without intermediaries taxing every transaction. The company says the protocol provides a specification that allows consumers to send digital dollar currencies, such as USDC, from their wallets directly into a merchant’s account, settling immediately with costs measured in fractions of a penny. 

- Sushi 2.0: SushiSwap is advancing into Sushi 2.0 with plans for some key improvements and product releases this year. Developers are aiming at three overriding goals: scalability, sustainability and efficiency – key factors even prevalent tokens are having difficulty balancing. 

- Cardano developers propose block size increase: Input Output, the development company behind the Cardano network, proposed increasing the network's block size by 11% on Wednesday. The proposal will increase block size by a further 8 KB, taking it from 72 KB to 80 KB, according to CoinDesk’s Shaurya Malwa. 

Source : coindesk.com

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Market Wrap: Ether Hits New High, Outperforms Bitcoin as Altcoins Rally

 ETH is up about 11% over the past week, compared to a 3% rise in BTC over the same period.

Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, reached a new all-time price high of around $4,400 on Friday, topping the previous record high of $4,379 in May, according to CoinDesk data.

ETH is up about 11% over the past week, compared to a 3% rise in BTC over the same period. Technical charts indicate further upside for ether relative to bitcoin, with an upside target toward 0.08 in the ETH/BTC price ratio as discussed in yesterday’s Market Wrap.

Overall, analysts expect further upside for cryptocurrencies for the remainder of the year despite occasional pullbacks, which can lead to choppy trading conditions.

“Bitcoin and major altcoins are experiencing strong volatility on the intraday chart, which is normal at all-time-high levels, like we have seen lately,” Lukas Enzersdorfer-Konrad, Bitpanda chief product officer, wrote in an email to CoinDesk.

“The last negative days failed to damage the overall market structure, and fundamentals further indicate that the long term remains decisively bullish,” Enzersdorfer-Konrad wrote.

Latest prices :

- Bitcoin (BTC): $62,346, +1.70%

- Ether (ETH): $4,394, +3.08%

- S&P 500: $4,605, +0.19%

- Gold: $1,782, -0.97%

- 10-year Treasury yield closed at 1.55%

The great rotation

Despite recent volatility, some traders are starting to position for further upside in alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) such as ether.

“Lately, there has been an increasing number of conversations among investors around shifting portfolio allocations from bitcoin to altcoins to capture the higher returns alts have provided during more speculative risk-on periods,” FundStrat, a global advisory firm, wrote in a Thursday newsletter.

“The good news (for BTC and ETH price) is that the tides appear to be shifting towards a more risk-on fall in traditional markets,” FundStrat wrote.

Ether’s record high

Ether’s new price high coincided with improving blockchain data. The smart-contract Ethereum blockchain burned more tokens than it emitted in the last 24 hours, thanks partly to strong action in shiba inu (SHIB), CoinDesk’s Omkar Godbole reported.

Shiba Inu, the platform behind the self-proclaimed dogecoin killer, burnt 770.12 ETH, becoming the third-largest ETH destroyer. Uniswap v.2 and Tether destroyed 2,729.22 and 1,248.72 ETH, respectively.

And some options traders are betting U.S. regulators will soon approve an ether futures-based exchange-traded fund (ETF) and so are buying cheap out-of-the-money calls in anticipation of a price rally.

High network demand

The chart below shows the recent rise in the Ethereum gas price, which refers to the cost of performing transactions on the blockchain network.

“Historically, when gas gets expensive, we’ve seen activity spike on alternative L1s [layer 1]. But now that Arbitrum and Optimism are live, L2s [layer two] could wind up being the primary beneficiaries,” crypto research firm Delphi Digital wrote in a blog post.

Altcoin roundup

- Decentraland’s MANA surged 80% in 24h: MANA, Decentraland’s native token, surged 80% in one day to a market capitalization of more than $2 billion, CoinDesk’s Lyllah Ledesma reported. This comes after Facebook’s announcement on Thursday afternoon that the company changed its corporate name to Meta to signal an increasing focus on the metaverse, which apparently spurred the jump.

- Here’s why a CryptoPunk sold for $530 million: A Twitter bot that tracks sales of CryptoPunks flagged a transaction that showed the sale of one CryptoPunk non-fungible token (NFT) for a staggering half-billion dollars, CoinDesk’s Andrew Thurman reported. But while the purchase would’ve been one of the largest art sales in history, on-chain analysts were quick to point out the sale was just a clever bit of smart contract magic.

- XRP gets wrapped by Tokensoft for Ethereum DeFi debut: Tokensoft’s Wrapped is taking a multi-custodial approach by partnering with Hex Trust on wXRP, CoinDesk’s Ian Allison reported. The new connectivity for XRP holders will allow access to various DeFi applications, whether that’s lending, borrowing or for use in automated market makers, CEO of Tokensoft Mason Borda said. Wrapped has previously wrapped a number of tokens, including bitcoin, zcash, filecoin and others.

Source : Damanick Dantes, Helene Braun/coindesk.com

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Ether Reaches Record High of Over $4.4K as Shiba Inu Becomes a Leading ETH Burner

 Coin burning refers to the process of removing tokens from circulation and is the crypto market’s equivalent of a stock buyback.

Ether (ETH) clocked a new all-time high on Friday as blockchain data showed that smart-contract blockchain Ethereum burned more tokens than it emitted in the last 24 hours, thanks partly to strong action in shiba inu (SHIB).

The native token of Ethereum’s blockchain rose to $4,402 during Asian hours, topping the previous record high of $4,379 reached in May, according to CoinDesk data.

At the going price of $4,370, the cryptocurrency is up 45% on a month-to-date basis versus bitcoin’s 40% gain. The ether-bitcoin implied volatility spread is rising in a sign that the market expects ether to continue leading the price action in the coming weeks, as Thursday’s First Mover newsletter mentioned.

Data tracked by Tokenview shows Ethereum produced 15,109.34 ETH and burned 16,710.2 ETH in the past 24 hours. That’s a net supply reduction of 1,600 ETH.

Shiba Inu, the platform behind the self-proclaimed dogecoin killer, burnt 770.12 ETH, becoming the third-largest ETH destroyer. Uniswap v.2 and Tether destroyed 2,729.22 and 1,248.72 ETH, respectively.

SHIB has rallied a staggering 800% this month, hitting a record high of $0.00008870. According to Defi Llama, the total value locked in ShibaSwap, a decentralized exchange that allows users to stake SHIB, has doubled to $512 million this month.

Coin burning refers to the process of removing tokens from circulation and is the crypto market’s equivalent of a stock buyback.

The Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 implemented on Aug. 5 EIP 1559, burns a portion of fees paid to the miners, removing a notable chunk of coins from circulation. The upgrade has tied the amount of ether burned with the network usage.

Since activation, the upgrade has destroyed 668,339 ETH, representing over 50% of the new coins issued over the same period.

Some options traders are betting that U.S. regulators would soon approve a futures-based exchange-traded fund (ETF) and are buying cheap out-of-the-money calls in anticipation of a price rally. Data tracked by Laevitas shows the ETH $15,000 call expiring in March has drawn strong demand in recent days.

Source : Omkar Godbole/coindesk.com

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