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Young Monday: Algorand and the Bank of Italy, Africa embraces crypto and NFT crimes

Algorand and Bank of Italy, Justin Bieber investigated for his Bored Ape

The Bank of Italy chooses Algorand as its first blockchain platform, cryptocurrency adoption grows in Africa and the “Yuga Labs Gate” scandal erupts

A week full of twists and turns in the world of crypto has just ended. The atmosphere has been tense as Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested a few days ago. Do Kwon, the fugitive founder of the Terra Ecosystem (LUNA) has been spotted in Serbia. Meanwhile, the list of crypto suspects has been growing as Yuga Labs and some celebrities including Justin Bieber, Madonna and Paris Hilton have been accused of manipulating the NFT market.

Beyond the world of crimes, courts and prisons, Algorand has been commissioned to develop a blockchain platform dedicated to the Italian banking and insurance sector. In other news, Africa is showing us new examples of adoption: Nigeria and Kenya are among the twenty countries where cryptocurrencies are most widely used. Moreover, it is increasingly easy to send money to the African continent thanks to the Lightning Network, Bitcoin‘s Layer 2 scalability solution.

Algorand and the first platform for banks and insurance companies

Algorand has been chosen as the Layer 1 blockchain that will support the development of a platform responsible for issuing digital financial guarantees. These are provided by banks and insurance companies to guarantee the fulfilment of contractual obligations or payments. Basically, they are documents that prove to creditors that you have the necessary funds to repay a debt. The platform will be developed in collaboration between Algorand, the Bank of Italy, IVASS (the institute for insurance supervision) and CeTIF, the research centre for innovation and technology of the Cattolica University of Milan.

But why was Algorand’s blockchain chosen? Firstly for its ability to process transactions cheaply and quickly but also because Algorand’s founder is the Italian mathematician Silvio Micali. He commented: ‘we are proud and honoured to be the chosen public blockchain’ moreover – ‘through Algorand’s technology, we can help solve many critical problems facing financial institutions and governments around the world today, bringing opportunity and inclusion to the table’.

The “Yuga Labs Gate” scandal: Justin Bieber, Madonna and Paris Hilton are also under indictment

Last week, several celebrities including Madonna, Justin Bieber, Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon were accused of illegally promoting Yuga Labs‘ NFTs, in particular, the famous Bored Ape Yacht Club. Thirty-three other defendants are being indicted, including a large number of Hollywood celebrities. They are alleged to have broken ten consumer protection and financial securities laws.

Yuga Labs has caught the authorities’ attention for devising a secret scheme in collaboration with celebrities, with the goal of inflating the price of the Bored Apes. The document submitted by the prosecution shows the scheme that Yuga Labs allegedly used to secretly reward the complicit stars. They would therefore not have purchased the Bored Apes using their own free will, but were incentivised by a financial return. The investigation also mentions the online payment service Moonpay, which handled the exchange of money between Yuga Labs and the stars.

A spokesperson for Yuga Labs told Decrypt: ‘In our opinion, these claims are opportunistic and parasitic. We firmly believe they are baseless and look forward to proving it’. Yuga Labs and the Bored Apes Yacht Club thus find themselves once again in the crosshairs of the US federal institutions, just two months after the still unfinished investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

In October, the SEC investigated Yuga Labs to verify that it was not selling its NFT collections as securities without authorisation.

The African continent is embracing adoption

Jack Mallers, the CEO of Strike, a leading payment services company on the Lightning Network, made an announcement on stage at the AfroBitcoin conference. A partnership with Bitnob is being developed to facilitate money exchanges between Europe and Africa. Currently, the only way to send money to African countries, particularly sub-Saharan ones, is to use intermediaries. The best known of them is Western Union. However, intercontinental transactions are quite slow and expensive. For example, to make a $1,000 transfer to Africa you need to spend about five dollars in fees. Also, it takes no less than three working days for the payment to reach the recipient.

Thanks to Strike and its Send Globally app, Africans wishing to send remittance money to family or friends will be able to transfer pounds sterling (GBP) or euros (EUR) into the local currencies of Nigeria (NGN), Kenya (KES) and Ghana (GHS), in the space of a few seconds. The money, as is already the case when using Strike to pay in participating shops, will be automatically converted into BTC. It will then be sent, converted back into the local currency and deposited directly into the recipient’s bank account or mobile wallet.

A report compiled by Chainalisys shows that Africa is one of the continents at the forefront of the cryptocurrency industry. Among African countries where cryptocurrencies are most widely used are Nigeria and Kenya. They rank 11th and 19th respectively in the Global Crypto Adoption Index, which is also used by Chainalisys to measure cryptocurrency adoption in countries around the world.

CryptoCrime: Sam Bankman-Fried and Do Kwon

The vices of the ‘outlaws’ of the crypto world continue coming to light, and the stories are beginning to resemble a true crime series. Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the FTX exchange, was arrested early last week at his residence in the Bahamas. He is now awaiting extradition and trial, which could result in a sentence of 115 years imprisonment. This sentence was calculated by adding up the years of imprisonment for SBF’s charges. Namely embezzlement, financial fraud, conspiracy and money laundering, and two counts of wire fraud. In the first hearing, held on Tuesday the 13th of December in a court in the Caribbean archipelago, the prosecutor denied FTX’s founder bail, probably for fear that he might escape. Meanwhile, SBF has already applied for house arrest because of the health problems he claims to suffer from: insomnia and depression.

The other notorious fugitive from the crypto world, Do Kwon, for whom South Korea issued a warrant for his arrest on the 14th of September 2022, appears to have moved to Serbia last month. The former Terraform Labs CEO reportedly arrived in the Balkan country via Dubai, but  he may have already left. Unfortunately, due to the invalidation of Do Kwon’s passport, it is impossible to know his whereabouts with any certainty.

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Young Monday: Avalanche, Warner Music and Goldman Sachs

FTX bankruptcy: Goldman Sachs sees it as the crypto world's turning point

Avalanche chooses Alibaba’s cloud for its nodes, Polygon is working with Warner Music Group and Goldman Sachs explains the lessons of FTX’s collapse

In the crypto world this week, there has been renewed talk of adoption. In particular, there is more news of partnerships between traditional and Web3 companies. Avalanche, AVAX’s blockchain, has signed a deal with Alibaba Cloud, one of the world’s leading cloud service providers. After having secured partnerships with Instagram, Reddit, Disney, Starbucks and other companies, Polygon now also boasts a music partnership thanks to an agreement signed with Warner Music Group. A month after the collapse of FTX, two financial giants, Goldman Sachs and Mastercard, describe the collapse of the exchange as a growth opportunity for the industry!

Avalanche will use Alibaba’s cloud for node management

Alibaba Cloud, the most widely used cloud hosting service in Asia and the third largest in the world, has chosen Avalanche as its first Web3 partner. Alibaba Cloud provides cloud-based storage, applications and web infrastructure services. Clouds are global networks of servers that operate as a single ecosystem. They can be accessed through the Internet and serve to free up memory and processing power on the devices we use on a daily basis.

Through its cloud service, Alibaba will facilitate the process of opening an Avalanche blockchain node. In addition to staking the native crypto, validators of a Proof-of-Stake blockchain must manage a node that is constantly connected to the internet. This requires computing power and memory. Thanks to this new partnership, anyone wishing to open a node on Avalanche will be able to use these resources by taking advantage of Alibaba’s services. The partnership could increase the number of blockchain validators, which to date number around 1,200, and consequently also increase decentralisation on the network.

Polygon and Warner prepare the next Spotify?

Polygon is interested in all entertainment sectors that intend to use Web3 technologies. After cinema and social media, it is time for the platform to attack the world of music, thanks to a partnership with Warner Music Group. The collaboration between the two brands resulted in the development of LGND.io, a decentralised application (dapp) very similar to a classic music streaming platform such as Spotify or Youtube Music. LGND also allows tracks and albums to be purchased in the form of NFTs, using either credit or debit cards or cryptos such as MATIC and ETH. Once purchased, these NFTs can be resold on major NFT marketplaces, such as OpenSea.

The main objective of the collaboration is to provide emerging artists with a new way to sell their music through NFT technology and the concept of digital ownership. The final version of the platform will be available from January 2023. It will enable artists to not only sell non-fungible music tokens, but also other types of content that provide various benefits such as VIP concert tickets or exclusive merchandise. In addition to Polygon and Warner Music Group, the record company Spinnin’ Records will handle relations with artists. They also participated in the development of LGND.io.

Goldman Sachs: FTX bankruptcy is a turning point for the crypto world

This week, financial giant Goldman Sachs made some statements on the failure of the FTX exchange and its consequences. Rather than analysing what happened only from a destructive point of view, Mathew McDermott, Goldman Sachs’ head of digital assets, stated that he is optimistic about the future of crypto. McDermott’s statements followed a remarkable fact, namely that following the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried‘s exchange, the number of traditional investors interested in buying crypto through Goldman Sachs is on the rise.

Mastercard also seems to be of the same opinion, according to Grace Berkley, the director of the company’s start-up branch. Berkley described the incident as a reset opportunity for the crypto world, which could become safer through the exclusion of malicious actors intending to manipulate the market and regulation.

Decentraland: start of LAND leases

A new feature for Decentraland has been announced: LAND rentals in exchange for rewards! Decentraland is one of the most popular metaverses on Web3. It consists of many units of ‘digital land’, and each of these units is an NFT called a LAND. Lending your own LAND is now very simple, just select the NFT you want to put up for rent and choose for how long and at what price you want to rent it. As far as the time period is concerned, each user can choose from seven options: 1, 7, 30, 60, 90, 180 or 360 days. Concerning the price, the decision is entirely up to the tenant.

The rent is paid by the tenants in MANA, the crypto of Decentraland, and 2.5% is retained by the DAO‘s wallet. The DAO of Decentraland is the collective institution that governs the functioning of this metaverse.

Why rent a LAND? Buying one may be too expensive, all the more so if you plan to create events or experience in a limited amount of time. The market for land in the Metaverse is one of the most expensive of the NFT markets. There are only a few LANDs in Decentraland sold directly from the platform, the remainder are only available in secondary markets, which are very competitive. Users will be able to rent their land to DJs who will throw memorable virtual parties, or to universities who will build Web3 university campuses, or even to fashion brands who will organise fashion shows.

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Young Monday: NFTs on Uniswap, Brazil and the Phantom Wallet

Phantom crypto wallet coming to Ethereum and Polygon

The Phantom crypto wallet becomes compatible with Ethereum and Polygon, NFTs can now be bought on Uniswap and Brazil legalises crypto

Now that December is here, people are starting to think about Christmas presents. In case you’ve been thinking about gifting an NFT over the last week, you can now also buy one on Uniswap, thanks to its brand new NFT marketplace aggregator. The second news of the week concerns Phantom, Solana‘s main crypto wallet, which is also arriving on the Ethereum and Polygon networks. If, on the other hand, the cold December weather has already tired you out and you are considering moving to Brazil, there is some good news. The South American state has approved a legislative decree on cryptocurrencies!

On Uniswap you can now also buy NFTs!

Since the 30th of November, NFTs have officially arrived on Uniswap. The announcement for the initiative came in June, when the first decentralised exchange (DEX) in history announced the acquisition of the NFT marketplace aggregator Genie. An NFT aggregator is a decentralised application (dapp) that is responsible for showing users different alternatives for purchasing the same token on different trading platforms. Uniswap will gather data from Looksrare, OpenSea, X2Y2, Sudoswap and others that are yet to be announced.

In order to welcome NFT collectors to its platform, Uniswap has decided to apply discounts on gas fees. The first 22,000 wallets to purchase an NFT will benefit from a discount of 0.01 ETH (approximately $10) on their first transaction.

The news about Uniswap and Genie does not end there. Those who used Genie before the 15th of April 2022 (included) could be in line to receive a nice Christmas present. The NFT aggregator plans to distribute an airdrop to its early adopters. 300 USDC will be distributed to those who completed more than one transaction on the NFT aggregator, and 1,000 USDC to those who held a genesis Genie NFT on the 15th April 2022.

Phantom is also ready to integrate Ethereum and Polygon

The Phantom crypto wallet, created in 2021 on Solana, will soon also integrate the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains. Phantom was created by the same developers who started the 0x DEX, with the aim of competing with MetaMask. However, instead of creating a crypto wallet for Ethereum, the Phantom team opted for a nascent ecosystem. The choice fell on Solana, and it can be said to have been a good one. Indeed, the crypto wallet has reached 3 million users in less than two years.

Now, Phantom is finally ready to arrive on Ethereum and Polygon, bringing with it the ease of use that has characterised it since its inception.

One of the upcoming innovations for Phantom, presented by CEO Brandon Millman, is the display of all tokens and cryptos in one screen, even if they are on different blockchains. This could be a very useful function for those who hold the same crypto in different networks and want to have an overall view of their funds. A further improvement for Phantom, again according to Millman, are cross-chain crypto and NFT exchanges from within the same wallet. The feature is being introduced so that users can move their assets from one blockchain to another without having to rely on complicated bridges.

Brazil’s crypto legislation

Brazil has reached a turning point in crypto regulation legislation. The crypto assets bill was voted by the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday the 29th of November and will shortly arrive on Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s desk, waiting to be signed.

Brazil’s new cryptocurrency law provides for a licence for exchanges wishing to operate in the crypto market. It also stipulates that assets on blockchain that are considered securities will be regulated by the Commission for Securities and Exchanges (CVM), while assets that do not fall into this category will be the responsibility of the Brazilian Central Bank. To better understand the role these state bodies play, you can make a parallel with the US. The Brazilian CVM plays the same role as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), while the Central Bank plays that of the Federal Reserve (FED) of the United States.The adventure of this legislative decree began some time ago, in April 2022 to be precise, when it was approved by the Senate. However, the vote in the Chamber of Deputies took longer than expected due to the discussion of a very topical issue: the way in which exchanges store users’ funds.

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Young Monday: the FTX movie, the World Cup and Magic Eden on Polygon

FTX: Apple's film on the crypto exchange’s collapse

Apple is in talks for a film about the FTX crypto exchange, Argentina’s fan token collapses after defeat v. Saudi Arabia, Magic Eden arrives on Polygon!

What’s better than a film that can recount the tumultuous events in the crypto world in recent weeks? Apple knows it well, the Cupertino-based tech company has entered into negotiations with author and journalist Michael Lewis to produce a film about the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange. Amazon also had the same idea. Who will win the rights? But in the crypto sector there is another ‘historic’ event that is taking place : the first football World Cup with fan tokens! National team tokens are proving to be closely linked to the results of matches. As in the case of Argentina’s defeat against Saudi Arabia, who even declared a national holiday to celebrate the victory. Because of this defeat, the fan token of Argentina‘s national team (ARG) plummeted by 30%. Finally, in this edition of Young Monday we will talk about the NFT marketplace Magic Eden and its hat trick! From next month onwards, it will also be integrated on Polygon’s blockchain as well as Solana and Ethereum, 

The FTX movie negotiation, Apple wins against Amazon?

Market crashes and the failure of large companies have always inspired filmmakers and storytellers. You must have heard of The Big Short? Come on, the film with Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie about the 2008 subprime mortgage bubble burst. The plot of the film is based on the book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Micheal Lewis. Lewis himself was approached by Apple to make a film about the collapse of FTX and the story of Sam Bankman-Fried.

Michael Lewis would be perfect to tell the story in an investigative film since the journalist has been in contact for about six months with Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX.

According to some tabloids, Apple is not the only company willing to tell the story of Sam Bankman-Fried and his exchange. Amazon Prime also seems to have made a proposal to the two directors Joe and Anthony Russo (those of Avangers Endgame) to produce a series inspired by the event.

In the meantime, memes about the movie, especially those containing predictions about the cast, have been all the rage on social networks. Crypto enthusiasts agree on the actors who should be involved. The most quoted proposal sees Sam Bankman-Fried played by Jonah Hill while Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, by Maisie Williams, the actress who plays Arya Stark in the famous Game of Thrones saga.

Argentina’s fan token collapses after defeat to Saudi Arabia

Is the price of national football team fan tokens linked to the teams’ performance at the 2022 World Cup? After what happened with the Argentine national team’s first match in Qatar, the answer would seem to be yes. The Argentina national team debuted at the 2022 World Cup on Tuesday 11 November with an opaque performance to say the least, losing 2-1 to the lower-rated Saudi Arabia national team.

The decision of the Arab ruler King Salman to call a day of national holiday after the match may makes you realise, even to those who aren’t football fans, the extraordinary nature of what happened. This unexpected result was reflected in the price of the fan token of the Argentine national team, which, after the third whistle, drew a -30% red candle on the chart. The price of ARG went from around $7 to $4.9 at the end of the match.

Triplet for Magic Eden, also arrives on Polygon

Magic Edenis  to date the second strongest NFT marketplace by volume. It was created on Solana and is also arriving on Polygon. The NFT marketplace continues its expansion. After the integration of Ethereum in August 2022, it is now also arriving on Polygon. For the occasion, a new version of the NFT marketplace for Polygon will be launched, presumably in a few weeks’ time, on which there will also be a Launchpad. NFT Launchpads, sometimes real decentralised applications (dapp), sometimes sections of the NFT marketplace, are used to help new collections grow.

The Magic Eden team, through a post on its blog made the following comment on the announcement: “Fourteen months ago we launched Magic Eden with the dream of building an NFT platform that would win the hearts and minds of collectors and creators alike. We have had a crazy year and we are proud of our ability to release new features quickly.

In this same post, the Magic Eden team justified the choice of Polygon, since Ethereum’s Layer 2 can be considered a competitor to Solana. The Magic Eden team stated that they chose Polygon because of its commitment to connecting the crypto world and businesses outside of Web3.

The Magic Eden team also announced that the marketplace on Polygon will be royalty respecting, which could mean that they intend to make royalty payments to NFT creators mandatory again. This latest statement contrasts with last month’s announcement that it was making royalty payments to creators optional.

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Young Monday: Bored Ape with Adidas and Beeple, CryptoPunks on display at the museum

Bored Ape Yacht Club in the Adidas World Cup 2022 commercial

Bored Ape Yacht Club in the Adidas commercial for the 2022 World Cup, Beeple becomes an advisor for Yuga Labs and CryptoPunks arrive in museums!

The FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar has finally started and it’s not missing out on getting NFTs involved! After the collaboration between Algorand and the FIFA World Cup in September, the World Cup 2022 also welcomes the Bored Ape Yacht Club, thanks to Adidas. Adidas has been the main sponsor of the World Cup since 1930, and in this year’s commercial they have also involved the Bored Apes. The Adidas-owned Bored Ape, number #8774, appears in the commercial in the company of champions Karim Benzema and Lionel Messi.

Let’s stay on the NFT theme and talk about the star of the week: Yuga Labs, the Web3 company that created the Bored Apes. Yuga Labs teamed up last week with Beeple, one of the most famous NFT artists in the industry, and launched a plan to donate some NFT CryptoPunks to contemporary art museums around the world, starting with the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami.

The Adidas Bored Ape in the 2022 World Cup commercial

In the Adidas commercial for the 2022 World Cup, the Bored Ape Yacht Club is also present. In the advertisement, ‘Catch our family reunion all World Cup long’, the Bored Ape of Adidas, Indigo Hertz, can be seen on a cereal box in the shape of footballs. This cereal was named ‘Indigoool’, in honour of the ‘bored monkey’. In the commercial, the cereal is eaten by French footballer Karim Benzema.

Adidas bought its Bored Ape in September 2021 for 46 Ether, about $156,000, and subsequently dubbed it Indigo Hertz, creating a Twitter profile for the occasion. Starring in the Adidas and Bored Ape Yacht Club advert are some famous footballers, including Lionel Messi, Heung-min Son and Serge Gnabry immortalised as they prepare, to the tune of Opus’ ‘Life is life’, to set off as one big family for Qatar. The commercial is narrated by English rapper Stormzy, who is also the driver of the ‘hippie’ style bus on which the footballers board at the end of the commercial.

The Adidas commercial in collaboration with the Bored Ape Yacht Club is not the German brand’s first NFT and Web3-themed initiative! Almost a year ago, on the 17th of December 2021, Adidas launched the ‘Into the Metaverse‘ initiative with the aim of bringing the sports brand into the metaverse. Adidas also recently released a capsule collection of NFT clothing. The collection is called ‘Adidas Virtual Gear – Genesis Collection’ and consists of cyberpunk-style digital clothes, which can now be purchased on the OpenSea NFT marketplace. These clothes, which will also be released in a physical version in the near future, are designed using state-of-the-art technology like 3D printing.

Beeple becomes advisor of Yuga Labs

Beeple, the digital artist who produced one of the most expensive NFTs ever, the Everydays NFT, has become an advisor to Yuga Labs. The relationship between the digital artist and the Web3 company came about through Yuga Labs’ acquisition of WENEW Labs. WENEW Labs is Beeple’s NFT fashion startup and has already established important partnerships with industry giants such as Gucci and Louis Vuitton.

Yuga Labs seems particularly interested in 10KFT, the NFT marketplace built on Ethereum by WENEW Labs. 10KTF is a shop set in the fictional city of New Tokyo and allows users to create and purchase NFT clothing that will, in the future, be able to be worn as their PFPs within metaverses. The 10KTF NFT marketplace is run by Wagmi-San, a garment designer who describes himself as a ‘digital artisan’.

Greg Solano, co-founder of Yuga Labs, said in a comment about the acquisition: “Beeple and the WENEW team have found a way to tell the Web3 story, while at the same time harnessing people’s passion for digital avatars and desire to personalise them. WENEW co-founder Figge, who co-founded the start-up with Beeple, will join Yuga’s management team as CCO (chief content officer), while Beeple, who’s real name is Mike Winkelmann, will act as consultant.

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CryptoPunks come to the museum!

Yuga Labs is unstoppable! It has also devised a plan to donate CryptoPunks to modern art museums around the world. They are starting with CryptoPunks #305, which was given to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami. CryptoPunks are one of the most expensive and iconic NFT collections ever, created in 2017 by Larva Labs, a startup by Matt Hall and John Watkinson. This NFT collection is inspired by London punk culture and are true ideological and philosophical icons of the Web3. CryptoPunks #305 was not chosen at random by Yuga Labs, this number is actually the area code of the City of Miami, one of the main hubs of the NFT industry.

A few months ago, in March 2022, the intellectual property of CryptoPunks and Meebits (another Larva Labs collection) was bought by Yuga Labs together with most of the Crypto Punks and Meebits NFTs owned by the founders. Since then, Yuga Labs has been in charge of project development, planning initiatives to make CryptoPunks and NFTs in general more mainstream.

The Punks Legacy Project initiative, which started with the donation of CryptoPunks #305, aims to donate and create ad-hoc installations for more CryptoPunks in contemporary art museums around the world. The aim of the initiative is to promote NFTs and reinforce the idea that identifies these digital artworks as works of art in their own right. “Just as Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol led the renaissance of contemporary art, I hope that CryptoPunks can lead the charge for NFTs,” said Noah Davis, CryptoPunks brand manager.

Number 305 is not the only CryptoPunks in the possession of the ICA Miami, the museum in fact already holds Crypto Punk #5293, nicknamed “Priscilla” which was donated by a private collector named Eduardo Burillio in July 2021. Punk #305 will be “installed” inside the ICA in Miami on the 2nd of December 2022 and the installation will remain in the Florida museum until the end of the year.

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Young Monday: Subway, Messi, Polkadot reach agreement with SEC

Subway accepts Bitcoin Lightning Network payments and Messi on Sorare

At Subway, you can pay with Bitcoin using the Lightning Network, Messi collaborates with the NFT Sorare card game, and Polkadot makes a deal with the SEC!

The collapse of the FTX exchange has destabilised the crypto world, but during this delicate time there is also some positive news. Let’s see what happened with Young Monday! In the Subway restaurant chain, one of the largest restaurant franchises in the world, you can pay in Bitcoin using the Lightning Network. Polkadot on the other hand seems to have convinced the SEC that it is a software and not a security, i.e. a financial instrument. The latest news on this Young Monday is crypto football-themed and it concerns one of the greatest footballers ever: Lionel Messi, who has partnered with Sorare, the Web3’s most popular sports NFT card game.

Can you pay in Bitcoin at Subway?

Subway was one of the first shops in history to accept Bitcoin as a payment method. The owner, Daniel Hinze, is a big supporter of Bitcoin and had already allowed his customers to pay in BTC in 2013 at a store in Moscow. However, payments then were very slow. Customers who paid in Bitcoin at the time complained of waits of dozens of minutes for transactions to be processed. Recently, the situation has changed thanks to the possibility of paying in Bitcoin from Subway via the Lightning Network. The Lightning Network is a Layer 2 of Bitcoin, created in 2016 that is able to process transactions extremely quickly and cheaply. It is now possible to pay in Bitcoin from Subway at three shops in Germany, all located in Berlin.

During the first month since the introduction of the Lightning Network, a record number of Bitcoin transactions were processed: more than 120 within Subway stores. For the occasion, a special offer was proposed: a 50% discount to those paying in BTC at Subway. The new solution implemented by Subway was much appreciated by supporters of the first ever cryptocurrency, who shared pictures of tasty sandwiches on social media with the hashtag #usingBitcoin. Another fast food chain, after McDonald’s thus jumps on the bandwagon, for Bitcoin holders it is starting to become difficult to choose where to eat.

Polkadot gets vocal: I am not a security!

The Web3 Foundation, a foundation set up by Polkadot founder Gavin Wood, which aims to promote and protect the technologies behind the decentralised web, has recently concluded its debate with the SEC on the legal terms with which to refer to DOT: is Polkadot a security or software? Securities are exchangeable assets commonly referred to as financial instruments or securities. Various commissions oversee these assets to ensure their safety and compliance with current regulations. In the United States of America, the commission of reference is the SEC (Security and Exchange Commission). The dialogue between the Web3 Foundation and the SEC began in 2019. During the discussions, the Web3 Foundation stood in for Polkadot, with which it shares the founder, seeking to protect its interests.

The aim of this dialogue was to convince the US regulatory commission that Polkadot is neither a security nor a financial instrument but a software. The back-and-forth, which took the form of a real negotiation, ended a few days ago, exactly three years after it began. The verdict? Polkadot and its DOT crypto are not securities! Relations between the two parties do not end with this verdict but will continue with the aim of trying to define an unambiguous regulation for all blockchains.

After Chiliz, Lionel Messi arrives on Sorare

On Wednesday, the 9th of November 2022, Lionel Messi joined the Sorare team as an official ambassador. “The flea” will find himself in good company in this Web3 team built by Sorare, which includes such big-name sportspeople as tennis player Serena Williams and her ‘real world’ teammate Kilian Mbappè. The Argentinean Paris Saint-Germain player will help Sorare reach even more football fans, and get them onto the number one decentralised (dapp) application for crypto fantasy football. Sorare CEO Nicola Julia said that the collaboration with Lionel Messi represents a turning point for the Web3 platform.

Leo Messi is considered the world’s most powerful active player and is the third most followed sportsman on social networks, after his ‘colleagues’ Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar Jr. This is not the first collaboration that Lionel Messi has signed with companies in the crypto sector, as in April 2022 he had already signed a partnership with Socios.com, the most important platform for fan tokens built on Chiliz, for USD 20 million. Fan tokens are a daily part of the Argentinean star’s life, with part of the player’s salary from Paris Saint Germain being paid to Messi in $PSG, the French team’s fan token. With Lionel Messi concluding deals with two competitors, will he keep one foot in two shoes (or boots) forever or will he sooner or later choose his favourite crypto team?

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Young Monday: Instagram, JP Morgan and Microsoft

Instagram NFT marketplace, JP Morgan gets involved with DeFi

Instagram and Game Stop’s NFT marketplace, JP Morgan and Microsoft get involved in Web3, the Premier League chooses Sorare

For this first Young Monday of November 2022, our protagonists are ‘traditional’ companies grappling with Web3 adventures. The first of these is Instagram, which plans a ‘leg-up’ entry into the non-fungible token market through the development of its NFT marketplace. Then we move on to JP Morgan, one of the most important banks in the United States. They debuted in the world of decentralised finance (DeFi) with their first transactions on Aave, while Microsoft invests in crypto gaming. Concluding with another news item on mass adoption, Young Monday unveils the plans of the English Premier League. The world’s top football league is in fact negotiating with Sorare for the production of an NFT collection.

Gamestop and Instagram launch their NFT marketplaces

Buying NFTs on Instagram? It’s almost a reality! On Wednesday, the 2nd of November 2022, Meta announced the integration of an NFT marketplace on Instagram. Meta’s plan to bring non-fungible tokens to the social network is proceeding step by step. Already in August 2022, in a test phase, some users started to post and display NFTs on their profiles. But soon, it will be possible to create and sell NFTs directly on the app.

Users who create NFTs on Instagram will do so thanks to Polygon’s blockchain. In Instagram’s NFT marketplace, it will also be possible to link their OpenSea account and transfer their tokens from one platform to another. This option will initially only be available for NFTs built on Polygon and Solana (thanks to the collaboration with Phantom).

Instagram’s marketplace will initially be tested by a few sectioned creators. And, according to the official announcement, the Instagram marketplace will not charge commissions in its initial phase. Following the important announcement, on Thursday 3rd of November 2022, the price of MATIC (the crypto on Polygon’s blockchain), drew a green candle on the chart with a price increase of more than 10%.

GameStop also has some updates on its Web3 adventure. This adventure began a year ago now, in November 2021, with the purchase of an NFT domain (nft.gamestop.com). Subsequently, the video game store started building its NFT marketplace and developed its self-custodial crypto wallet. A few days ago, GameStop’s NFT marketplace finally concluded its beta phase, allowing the final version of the NFT marketplace to be activated on the ImmutableX blockchain. ImmutableX is an Ethereum sidechain dedicated to crypto gaming. The partnership between ImmutableX and the famous video game store started in February 2022. The beta version of Gamestop’s NFT marketplace went live 5 months later. To date, the platform provides access to Web3 games built on the blockchain, such as Gods Unchained, Guild of Guardians and Illuvium.

JP Morgan and Microsoft take their first steps into the Web3

For our “institutions join web3” paragraph, this week, we take a look at JP Morgan. The world’s largest bank is part of the American Big Four in the financial sector, along with Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo. In finance jargon, these kinds of giants are called institutional investors. By ‘institutional investors’ we mean organisations that are the benchmark for a certain sector and make periodic and systematic investments using large amounts of capital.

Last week, precisely on Wednesday the 2nd of November 2022, JP Morgan carried out its first transaction on a decentralised finance platform (DeFi). The transaction was processed with the help of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and is part of a pilot programme called ‘Project Guardian’, which was set up to explore the potential of decentralised finance in financial markets populated by large capital. This is the first case of a traditional bank using a DeFi platform in a public blockchain.

JPMorgan deposited Singapore dollars and Japanese yen tokens on the Aave liquidity protocol. These tokens were used for trading and the transactions were finalised using Polygon’s network (preferred to Ethereum for its low fees). According to Aave’s spokespersons, JP Morgan’s first DeFi transaction is a ‘milestone’ for the industry, as it ‘represents a huge step towards moving traditional financial assets to DeFi’.

Bill Gates‘ company Microsoft has also recently invested in Wemade, a Korean play-to-earn video game company. Wemade, which was founded in the early 2000s, recently received some USD 46 million from Microsoft and other companies to devote to the development of crypto games. This is not Microsoft’s first investment in Web3, in February 2022 the company had invested in the blockchain software company Consensys. In September, it participated in a funding round for the decentralised data platform Space and Time.

Sorare and Premier League: one step closer to collaboration

The English Premier League has decided to enter the NFT market through a partnership with Sorare. The partnership has not yet been made official, but if it goes through, it would be Sorare’s third international partnership in a few months. It would follow those with American sports leagues the National Basketball League (NBA) and Major League Baseball (MLB). According to rumours, the English football league’s collection could be similar to NBA Top Shot, and thus represent iconic moments of the world’s most popular and followed football league. A similar crypto football-themed collection already exists, it is the one between Algorand and FIFA dedicated to the World Cup.The uncertainty about the success of the deals is mainly related to the economic part of the question, will Sorare accept the Premier League’s current $34.7 million offer? The English football league, before knocking on Sorare’s door, sounded out the market through relations with some competitors such as Dapper Labs and Consensys. However, it seems that the proposals made by the Web3 companies did not take root. For Sorare, this could be an opportunity to improve on its already incredible performance in 2023.

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Young Monday: Udinese Calcio, the UK and L’Oréal Paris

Crypto in the UK: Rishi Sunak is bullish and open to stablecoins

The UK is increasingly bullish on crypto, Udinese launches its fan token on Socios, L’Oréal and Meta fund Web3 startups

Electrifying news for this Halloween edition of Young Monday, but fear not, nothing scary! The first item concerns fan tokens. Socios launched the Udinese Calcio crypto on Wednesday the 26th of October 2022. The UK introduces the Financial Service and Markets Bill to regulate cryptocurrencies and Meta is working with L’Oréal to fund Web3 startups.

Socios launches Udinese Calcio fan token

On the 26th of October 2022, Udinese Calcio, Friuli’s Serie A team, launched its UDI fan token on the Socios.com platform. Socios is the most popular fan token platform, built on the Chiliz blockchain. The Udinese Calcio UDI fan token will allow fans to participate in the team’s decisions through surveys, and access exclusive promotions for customised products and content. There are 25,000 UDI fan tokens and they were sold through three different stages, which ensured that most fans will own at least a few.

The first survey in which Udinese Calcio fan token holders were able to participate was launched by Socios at the same time as the first phase of the UDI crypto sale. Fans were able to choose the ‘motivational’ slogan to be printed on the shirts that the players will use for the pre-match warm-up. Voting participants will also take part in a draw, the prize of which will be an official jersey autographed by all members of the Friulian team. Udinese Calcio and Socios have been working together since February 2022 with the aim of involving fans more closely in the club’s decisions. In this regard, more than 500 surveys will be offered to fan token holders by the end of the year.

Growing adoption in the UK thanks to Rishi Sunak

On the 25th of October, the UK presented the ‘Financial Services and Markets Bill’, a bill aimed at strengthening the country’s position in the cryptocurrency sector. The aim of the bill is to turn the UK into a global hub for crypto and Web3 in general. What is the first step to achieve this? Expanding and amending existing regulations, especially those relating to stablecoins. The latter will be renamed to ‘Digital Settlement Assets’ within the document, and could be added to the list of accepted currencies for payments and thus become a widespread means of payment.

This openness of the UK on the subject of cryptocurrencies is not surprising, given the interest in the topic of the new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Sunak replaced Liz Truss on Monday the 24th of October 2022, who resigned after only 40 days in office. Sunak, during his previous tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister), had already demonstrated his interest in crypto and Web3 technologies. The idea of making the UK a global technology hub for crypto assets was conceived at that time, along with the even more ambitious proposal to create an NFT collection for the British royal mint. Rishi Sunak has also spoken out on a number of occasions about CBDCs. As far back in 2011, he proposed creating a UK Central Bank Digital Currency to be called ‘Britcoin’.

Meta and L’Oréal, working together to finance Web3

Meta and L’Oréal have decided to join forces, assisted by the French business school HEC Paris, to launch a Web3 startup accelerator to promote creativity in the metaverse. Startup accelerators, or incubators, build growth pathways to help young companies with innovative ideas make a name for themselves in an industry. Meta, L’Oréal and HEC will help start-ups that want to specialise in the production of Web3 technologies, in particular augmented reality (AR) virtual reality (VR), 3D production, user experience portability and the token economy.

The collaboration, which will run from January to June 2023, will be entirely hosted by Meta, within its startup campus in Paris, Station F. Applications to participate are open until the 20th of November 2022, and will be judged by a jury composed not only of Meta, L’Oréal and HEC employees, but also of entrepreneurs and investors with experience in the sector. Meta’s Vice President for Southern Europe, Laurent Solly, said, “We are proud to partner with L’Oréal on this ambitious project, which aims to support the French startup ecosystem and will play a key role in building a shared, creative and inclusive metaverse.”

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Young Monday: Ethereum Shanghai update, Guinness World Record and Jack Dorsey

Ethereum: next Shanghai update arrives

The next Ethereum update arrives, Bitcoin is awarded a Guinness World Record and Jack Dorsey unveils his new social network

Ethereum never stops updating! A little over a month after the activation of The Merge, the next update: Shanghai is coming on the Ethereum testnet. Shanghai will be instrumental in setting up the new Ethereum 2.0 set-up. From the largest Proof-of-Stake network, we move to the largest Proof-of-Work network. Bitcoin has entered the Guinness Book of World Records with three different records, and the record committee is not the only one who has paid tribute to BTC. A few days ago Kanye West was spotted wearing a hat with the inscription ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’.

Some pointed out that this fashion choice comes just after the rapper was forced to withdraw money from his JPMorgan bank account. The photo of West and his baseball cap sent social media into a frenzy. Speaking of social media, the latest Young Monday news reveals the latest details on Bluesky, Jack Dorsey‘s new decentralised social network.

The next Ethereum update: Shanghai is coming!

News about Ethereum is back, in particular about updates to its blockchain. As of the 14th of October 2022, the testnet dedicated to the next Shanghai update went live. The testnet is called Shandong and should remain active until September 2023. At that point, Shanghai should be activated on the main network. It is the follow-up update to Ethereum’s Merge, which was successfully activated on the 15th September 2022, changing the consensus algorithm of the blockchain created by Vitalik Buterin. From Proof-of-Work, the network successfully shifted to Proof-of-Stake.

The main new feature to be introduced with the Shanghai update is the possibility of staking ETHs at any time (but with certain limitations). Staking has become the mechanism behind the operation of Ethereum 2.0. Since it was implemented on the Beacon Chain, more than 13.4 million ETHs have been blocked on the network. That is almost 18 billion USD which corresponds to 11% of the total ETH supply in circulation. After Shanghai, users will be able to unlock their staked cryptocurrencies for a maximum of 43,200 ETH per day. This limit was imposed to avoid mass withdrawals that would make Ethereum’s network vulnerable.

Shanghai will also introduce a beta version of a rollup mechanism to process transactions on Layer 2s, which some say could lower Ethereum’s gas fees.

Bitcoin enters the Guinness Book of World Records

Bitcoin has entered the Guinness Book of World Records, and was awarded three different records! The first prize BTC won is for the ‘first ever decentralised cryptocurrency‘. Bitcoin did not win the record for the first crypto ever, but only the record for the first decentralised crypto, because digital currencies had already been created by a number of companies in the 1990s. These included Bit God, Wei Dai and Hash Cash.

Bitcoin was also reported as the ‘oldest cryptocurrency’, created on the 3rd of January 2009, and the ‘cryptocurrency with the largest value’. At the time the prize was awarded, Bitcoin was worth around $43,000, and its market cap was over $800 billion. These prizes were awarded in March 2022, and will now be included in the 2023 Guiness World Record volume in the ‘cryptomania’ section. Here you can also find the record for the most expensive NFT (the CryptoPunks #5822 sold for $23.7 million in February 2022) and the ‘most valuable fan token’ (i.e. CITY, the Manchester City fan token with a market cap of $25 million).

Jack Dorsey talks about his new idea for social networking

Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, announced on the 18th of October 2022 that his new social network, Bluesky Social, is in beta stage for some users and will soon be launched. In 2019, Dorsey had already expressed his desire to create a new ‘decentralised’ social network to enhance the user experience, to allow for more  personalisation and to manage their own data.

Furthermore, Bluesky wants to be open to developers who want to build and innovate in complete freedom. The vision of the former Twitter CEO is certainly very ambitious and if it is realised, it will lay the foundations for a new class of social network. So far what we know is that Bluesky will be interoperable with other social platforms and that it will be based on the decentralised AT Protocol.

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Young Monday: crypto-themed G20, Dapper Labs and Avalanche on Opensea

OpenSea news: you can buy NFTs on Avalanche (AVAX)

NFTs available with Avalanche (AVAX) on OpenSea, G20 overhauls crypto framework and Russian accounts restricted by Dapper Labs

We start off this Young Monday with news coming from OpenSea: from Tuesday the 11th October, it will be possible to buy NFTs with AVAX, Avalanche’s crypto. On the 13th October 2022, a review of the CARF (Crypto Asset Reforming Framework, the international regulation in place regarding cryptocurrencies) took place at the G20 meeting in Washington, and Dapper Labs decided to restrict the use of its platform to Russian users. After creating a countdown dedicated to The Merge, Google now allows users to see the balance of Ethereum contained within a wallet through its search engine!

On OpenSea you can buy NFT with Avalanche crypto (AVAX)

As of Tuesday, the 11th of October, it is possible to buy NFTs with Avalanche on OpenSea. The AVAX crypto joins the six others with which it is possible to buy NFTs on the Web3’s most widely used marketplace: Ethereum, Polygon, Klaytn, Solana, Optimist and Arbitrum.

To date, the NFT landscape on Avalanche is still in an embryonic stage. The first non-fungible tokens appeared on Emin Gün Sirer‘s blockchain in early 2022 and never really took off, unlike on other blockchains. The only NFTs from the Avalanche network that have enjoyed some success are from the ecosystem’s play-to-earn games, such as Crabada hermit crabs or Ragnarock avatars.

Compared to its main competitors, Ethereum and Solana, Avalanche’s NFT scene is still a long way from the volumes and number of sales generated by these ecosystems. In fact, if we look at Crypto Slam’s September 2022 data, we can see that Avalanche’s blockchain produced around $2.4 million in trading volume and generated 25,000 transactions. Meanwhile Solana had almost 130 million USD in volumes from almost 3 million transactions.

Will Avalanche be able to catch up thanks to the new stage offered by OpenSea or will it remain an outsider in the NFT sector?

Crypto Kitties startup restricts use to Russian accounts

Dapper Labs, the startup that created the CryptoKitties NFT collection and the NFT card game NBA Top Shot has decided that it will restrict the use of its services to users residing in Russia. The decision was made following sanctions imposed by the European Union on Russia as of Thursday, the 6th October 2022.

Specifically, users residing in Russia will not be able to buy and sell NFTs and game items from Dapper Labs. In addition to not being able to interact with the Dapper Labs marketplace, which is built on the Flow blockchain, they will also not be able to withdraw funds from their accounts on the platform. The EU sanctions for Russian citizens participating in Web3 have tightened considerably compared to previous months. In fact, as of April 2022, regulations in this regard only restricted wallets holding more than EUR 10,000 in cryptocurrencies.

The G20 focusses on crypto for a common law plan

During the fourth G20 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which took place on the 13th of October 2022 in Washington, cryptocurrencies were also a topic of discussion. For what purpose? To update already drafted documents on the subject. The Annual Meetings are regularly attended by the Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors of the G20 countries. The document that was the subject of discussion was the CARF (Crypto Asset Reporting Framework).

In April 2021, the G20 commissioned the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to draft a method that would automate and standardise tax reporting for cryptocurrencies across nations. Out of this came the CARF, which is also responsible for defining so-called ‘crypto assets’ and NFTs. But why was it necessary to revise this document? The review was necessary according to the OECD because cryptocurrencies and NFTs are currently not covered by the CRS, the plan in place to prevent international tax evasion. The second topic of discussion was CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies), cryptos issued by states’ central banks.