Crypto Insider

2023-02-27 21:00:40 Dapper Labs said to lay off 20% more of its full-time employees

Dapper Labs lays off another 20% of staff. Less than four months after parting ways with more than 20% of its employees, Dapper Labs decided to let another 20% of full-time staff go, according to a document obtained by The Block.Gharegozlou also said that the company is in a “strong cash position with no outstanding debt.”

In an email to investors on Dapper Labs’ CEO Roham Gharegozlou announced a “corporate restructure” and the layoffs. “As part of this restructure, we have made the difficult decision to part ways with team members representing 20% of full-time employees," he wrote. The move to let more staff go comes as the NFT market has recently shown some signs of rebounding after a prolonged downturn. Dapper Labs, once celebrated as one of the elite NFT shops around thanks to its early success with NBA Top Shot, at one point achieved a valuation of $7.6 billion. Открыть/Комментировать

2023-02-27 14:00:48 Tencent to Offer Metaverse-Building Services for Asian Markets

Tencent, the Chinese software and tech company, has announced its metaverse suite of services designed to target Asian markets. The company revealed that it will revamp its media offering with its new “metaverse-in-a-box” proposal, which aims to facilitate the task of building. Tencent, one of the biggest Chinese tech companies, has revealed its hand regarding the future of its metaverse strategy. The company announced that it will focus on offering “metaverse-in-a-box” services to its customers through its cloud division. This move, which comes as a complement to the media services offering that the company launched last year, aims to facilitate the task of developing virtual worlds for Tencent customers. The tools launched by Tencent will reportedly be used to build and design these metaverse spaces. Открыть/Комментировать

2023-02-26 21:00:39 NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang claimed that Nvidia's GPUs had boosted AI processing performance by a factor of ONE MILLION in the last 10 years – and that it will do it all over again in the next 10 years:

"Moore's Law, in its best days, would have delivered 100x in a decade," Huang explained. “By coming up with new processors, new systems, new interconnects, new frameworks and algorithms and working with data scientists, AI researchers on new models, across that entire span, we've made large language model processing a million times faster."

"Over the course of the next 10 years, I hope through new chips, new interconnects, new systems, new operating systems, new distributed computing algorithms and new AI algorithms and working with developers coming up with new models, I believe we're going to accelerate AI by another million times." Открыть/Комментировать

2023-02-26 14:00:39 Manuscript of book that coined the term 'metaverse' to be auctioned by Sotheby's

The manuscript of the cult classic novel "Snow Crash," the book known for coining the term metaverse, is going up for auction online. The never-before-seen manuscript is expected to fetch between $40,000 and $60,000, Sotheby's said on Thursday. The sale will also include the typesetting manuscript of "Snow Crash," as well as 35 mm slides used to pitch the project — which was originally conceived as a graphic novel — and a hand-forged tachi sword inspired by the weapon wielded by the novel’s protagonist. Alongside the auction, Sotheby's is selling an NFT collection (Infocalpyse) with images related to the graphic novel project that preceded Snow Crash, "Dioxin Posse.". a hand-forged tachi sword inspired by the weapon wielded by the novel’s protagonist. Открыть/Комментировать

2023-02-25 21:20:10 AlUla’s UNESCO World Heritage site Hegra open to visitors in metaverse

Saudi Arabia has opened its UNESCO World Heritage site, Hegra, to virtual visitors in the metaverse. Created in the vast online landscape of Decentraland, the digital Hegra offers desktop tourists a chance to get inside the site’s ancient tombs.

A digitally created image of the first UNESCO World Heritage site to enter the metaverse, the virtual recreation of the Tomb of Lihyan, which allows visitors to experience Hegra's history in vivid detail. Image provided on February 21, 2023. “As you visit the site in real world, in real life, you won’t be able to access the inside of the tomb for conservation reasons because it's a very delicate site that's obviously an ancient old site,” Ahmed H. Daoud, Executive Director of Innovation at the Royal Commission for AlUla said. Открыть/Комментировать

2023-02-25 14:00:42 BlackRock Issues Metaverse Thematic ETF

BlackRock becomes the latest ETF issuer in the United States to launch a thematic equity fund aimed at companies around the world that are shaping the evolution of the metaverse. The expense ratio of the NYSE Arca-listed iShares Future Metaverse. An Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) is a collection of securities that can be traded on the stock market. It combines the traits of conventional shares and mutual funds because it is a group of securities dispersed across companies, much like a mutual fund, but it can also be traded as a package on the stock market, just like shares. BlackRock’s belief in the metaverse as the next major investment opportunity is supported by society’s growing interest. and music events all being transformed by metaverse technologies. Открыть/Комментировать

2023-02-24 21:00:37 Ruja Ignatova, 42, nicknamed 'Crypto Queen' went on the run after disappearing with over $3 billion of investors money with her scam crypto "OneCoin."

Documents discovered by two journalists claimed that Ruja Ignatova was actually killed on a drug lord's orders as he wanted to cover up his involvement in the OneCoin affair.

The incident allegedly happened on a yacht in Greece, in November 2018, after which Ignatova's body was dismembered and thrown into the Ionian Sea, as stated in the documents. Открыть/Комментировать

2023-02-24 14:00:42 Ubisoft Continues Web3 Push With Rabbids NFTs in The Sandbox

Ubisoft was the first major video game publisher to release in-game NFT items with Ghost Recon Breakpoint in December 2021—and while the reception was decidedly mixed, the firm has continued to make moves in the Web3 world. Today’s launch of Rabbids NFT avatars for Ethereum metaverse game The Sandbox. The NFT release comes one year after Ubisoft initially announced plans to bring its popular Rabbids characters—which spun out of the classic Rayman game franchise—to The Sandbox. Ubisoft began the sale today for users who had already been added to an allowlist, while the public sale will commence on Wednesday. The drop is themed after the Lunar New Year, given that 2023 is the year of the rabbit, and the Rabbids will feature various designs that will be unveiled to buyers this Friday. Открыть/Комментировать

2023-02-23 21:00:35 A brain interface startup called Synchron is working on technology designed to transform daily life for people with paralysis.

The Synchron Switch, which is a cutting-edge technology that enables individuals with little to no physical mobility to control devices such as cursors and smart home systems using their thoughts, is inserted into the bloodstream. Currently, this emerging technology has been successfully utilized on three patients in the United States and four patients in Australia.

In December, Synchron announced a $75 million financing round that included funding from the investment firms of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Открыть/Комментировать

2023-02-23 14:00:40 YouTube Has a New CEO Who Actually Gets NFTs

Crypto fans have another reason to be hopeful of Web2 giants going Web3: YouTube has a new chief executive officer who once floated integrating NFTs into the video sharing platform. stepped down last week, ending her 25-year-long stint at the Google subsidiary. Mohan, an engineering graduate from Stanford University, was appointed chief product officer at YouTube in 2015. He was instrumental in building some of the platform’s biggest projects including YouTube TV, YouTube Music and Premium. He was once offered the role of chief product officer at Twitter, but turned that down after Google put forth a counteroffer of $100 million so he would stay, TechCrunch reported in 2011. Neal will be a terrific leader for YouTube,” Wojcicki said in a blog announcing her departure. Открыть/Комментировать