Imaginary “currency” that has no intrinsic value, is wildly manipulated, speculated like crazy, that uses more electricity than many nations, turns out to be a bad idea. Shocker, right? But that’s what is going on in the cryptocurrency world right now. And it’s not just Bitcoin either. For nearly a month, the bottom has fallen out from under the imaginary coins floating around. Bitcoin alone has lost over $2 TRILLION in value since Nov 2021. Being the biggest player in the space, of course, this brought down the value of every other “coin”. It’s losses for everyone who’s involved. Corrie…
Tag: crypto
In an unstable market comes very unstable times. For the past few weeks, everything in the cryptocurrency world is plummeting back down to earth. People who have been heavily invested in coins like Bitcoin and Etherium are taking a bath in losses. Things that claim to be “investments” like NFTs are also being realized as worthless. Over on the trading side, K. Holt at Endgaget writes about how Coinbase has paused hiring. For the record, Coinbase is one of the largest exchanges to trade in crypto and is probably one of the best-known sites out there for it. The company…
Once again we dive into the world of NFTs. As I’ve talked about, these tokens are a huge deal in crypto circles with many using them as investments, get-rich-quick schemes, and complete rip-offs. Now we get to see the flip-side of this with the video game F1 Delta Time. This game, which bears the official F1 licence, used NFTs to sell players unique cars within the game. But now, the studio has lost its licence to F1 and the game has shut down. Players, who were spending a lot of money on these tokens, were given a whopping one day…
In the heydey of the aughts, it was extremely common to find music downloading software running on every college kid’s computer. Music piracy was rampant. After the downfall of Napster, one service became king: LimeWire. It was sued into oblivion by the RIAA in 2010. Now, it returns but in the most 2022 way possible: an NFT marketplace. Meera Navlakha at Mashable has more. The defunct platform is getting a crypto makeover, thanks to a pair of entrepreneurs in Austria who have just bought the rights to LimeWire. Paul and Julian Zehetmayr will be relaunching under a new company, LimeWire…
In all the talk of what countries will do in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a key move is mentioned every time: sanctions. The idea is pretty basic. Stop doing business with a country, freeze their assets, and stop goods from going in. It’s an economic way to turn the screws. But, living in the 21st century means Russia is ready. Emily Flitter and David Yaffe-Bellany at the New York Times have more about the Digital Ruble. Should it choose to evade sanctions, Russia has multiple cryptocurrency-related tools at its disposal, experts said. All it needs is to find…
Twitter’s Twitter Blue premium (and paid) service posted this head-scratcher about a new ‘perk’ to paying the company money to use Twitter: gm! You asked (a lot), so we made it. Now rolling out in Labs: NFT Profile Pictures on iOS I’m not sure why people would ‘need’ this feature when an NFT is literally an image you can screen shot and upload as your profile photo. Even worse is the growing fad of companies jumping into NFTs as if it’s some super-hot market. From what I can tell, most people have no clue what an NFT is nor can…
Depending on whom you speak to, cryptocurrency is either the second-coming of money or it’s a complete waste of time. Leave it to people who have too much time on their hands to come up with some Fyre Fest level ideas on what to do with the crypto ‘riches’. Two people who want to create a crypto utopia of sorts in Fiji have run into real-world roadblocks. Widely mocked plans to establish a tropical haven for cryptocurrency enthusiasts have run into trouble after a contract to buy an island in Fiji for US$12m fell through. A group of crypto-evangelists, led by Max…