Gamestop Launches NFT Marketplace
Gamestop, the well-known video game retail firm, is shifting its focus to digital services. The business has released a beta version of their much anticipated Non Fungible token marketplace.
The new NFT market from Gamestop will be based on Loopring, an Ethereum scaling solution.
The platform presently has limited functionality; users may link their MetaMask wallets to the site, add cash to Loopring, and set up their name and profile pictures, but there is currently no trading on the marketplace. Loopring benefits from the Ethereum mainnet’s security while offering lower fees and faster transaction speeds. The scaling solution uses zero-knowledge roll-up technology, enabling it to aggregate thousands of transactions and settling them all as a single operation on Ethereum’s mainnet.
The company’s official statements likely mislead some users, as Gamestop declared in February that they would employ ImmutableX to run its marketplace. Immutable clarified that Gamestop will use both scaling options for its marketplace and would effectively operate as an aggregator for other minting systems.
ImmutableX and Gamestop have recently established a $100 million assistance fund for NFT game developers. According to CoinGecko, Loopring’s native coin LRC has increased by approximately 34% since the Gamestop announcement. LRC is now worth $1.12 per token.
Coinbase Offers ADA Staking
On 24 March 2022, the biggest crypto exchange in the United States, Coinbase, announced staking offers for Cardano ada.
Cardano is one of the ten largest cryptocurrency networks by market cap.Like Ethereum, the second-largest blockchain network by market cap, Cardano also features smart contract functionality that allows developers to build decentralized finance applications, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
Due to the fact that Cardano is a proof-of-stake (PoS)-based chain network security is not ensured through the computational power of the decentralized network but by contributors staking a portion of their ada holdings in the protocol. As the staking process can be difficult to manage for some users, Coinbase and other similar services offer to do it for them. The exchange pools the users’ holdings, stakes them on Cardano, and then fairly redistributes the generated rewards.
Coinbase’s senior product manager Rupamalini Sahu said that the exchange is expected to pay an annualiz return of 3.75% to be distributed every week. Coinbase also provides staking services for other networks like Algorand, Tezos, Ethereum, and Cosmos. In the same week, Coinbase also added support for trading Apecoin on its platform.
Florida Plans To Accept Tax Payments in BTC
On 22 March 2022, Florida Governor Ron de Santis (R) announced that the state would soon allow businesses to pay taxes in cryptocurrency.
While signing a financial literacy curriculum bill, De Santis explained that he had directed the state’s agencies to prepare themselves to accept crypto, especially Bitcoin.
De Santis mentioned a provision in his latest budget proposal that sought funding for blockchain use cases in order to optimize many state functions. However, this section of his budget was rejected by the legislature. While he clearly supports blockchain innovation, he’s skeptical of any state-controlled monetary system.
“I am worried about the power it would give someone in the central authority to shut off access to one’s economic power directly,” he said.
Meanwhile, Miami, Florida’s biggest city, has established an image as a hub for blockchain and cryptocurrency innovation. It is the first city in the United States to create a native cryptocurrency, Miamicoin, which allows the region’s citizen’s to invest directly in the metropolis and to earn digital rewards for their contributions. Miamicoin has already reportedly generated over $21 million in new revenue for the city since its inception, inspiring other popular destinations like New York, San Francisco and Rio de Janeiro to jump on the bandwagon with similar initiatives.
