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CARV brings on Animoca Brands as strategic investor and node operator

SANTA CLARA, California, May 31st, 2024, Chainwire

CARV, the largest modular data layer for gaming and AI, announced today a strategic investment from Animoca Brands, the company advancing digital property rights for gaming and the open metaverse. In addition, Animoca Brands will become an operator of CARV’s Tier 6 verifier nodes in support of CARV’s decentralization of its data layer. The partnership will facilitate deeper integration and long-term synergies as they expand their respective gaming and open metaverse ecosystems.

Founded as a gaming credential platform, CARV has evolved into a modular data layer protocol with strong traction from over 2.7 million users, 790 integrated games, and partnerships across major chains like Linea, BNB Chain, zkSync, and Ronin. The company has come good on its gaming credential roots by initiating ERC-7231, the standard approved by the Ethereum Community that binds multiple Web2 and Web3 identities to a single NFT, and partnering with the likes of Google Cloud and Netmarble’s web3 arm, MARBLEX.

To support rapid scaling and growth, CARV is introducing community-operated verifier nodes that scrutinize outcomes at each protocol layer. These nodes are crucial for maintaining decentralization, security, and equitable value redistribution as the network expands. CARV aims to accelerate user onboarding and adoption to grow the pie for all stakeholders in its user-owned data ecosystem through partnering with Animoca Brands as a strategic node operator, relying on their experience and expertise in operating various blockchain infrastructures. Node holders will have the option for one-click delegating to Animoca Brands for node operations, ensuring network uptime and robustness.

The rewards from node operations will initially be in the form of $veCARV, the staked version of CARV tokens. This also allows Animoca Brands and its portfolio of more than 400 gaming and metaverse companies to participate in CARV’s Infinite Play, a token-lock voting bribery system (CURVE & CONVEX model for gaming) for governance voting.

Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, commented: “CARV’s mission to advance data self-sovereignty and the interoperability of personal assets in both Web2 and Web3 fits perfectly with the work we do at Animoca Brands. This strategic partnership with CARV will amplify our efforts to pioneer a more equitable framework via new asset classes, economies, and digital property rights.”

“This is a multi-faceted alliance between two leaders in their respective domains,” said Victor Yu, co-founder of CARV. “Through Animoca Brands’ strategic investment, its support as a node operator, and collaboration across our gaming ecosystems, we are taking a comprehensive approach over many years to come. By leveraging our modular data layer with Animoca Brands’ far-reaching ecosystem, we aim to unlock new frontiers in user-owned data economies.”

For more about CARV’s highly anticipated node sale, set to begin on June 3, 2024 for whitelisted participants and June 5, 2024 for the public, users can visit https://node.carv.io.

About CARV

CARV is the largest modular data layer for gaming, AI, and ∞, pioneering a future where data generates value for all. As the sole author of ERC7231, CARV has built CARV Protocol, the modular data layer which has integrated with 40+ blockchains, Google Cloud, and other identity, storage, infra and AI providers. CARV’s flagship gaming superapp, CARV Play, is integrated with more than 790 web2 & 3 games and serving 2.7M+ gamers. CARV is backed by top-tier funds and ecosystems such as Temasek’s Vertex Ventures, ConsenSys (developer of Metamask), Tribe Capital, IOSG Ventures, Animoca Brands, HashKey Capital, Infinity Ventures Crypto, MARBELX, and more. For more information, users can visit carv.io.

About Animoca Brands

Animoca Brands (ACN: 122 921 813), a Deloitte Tech Fast winner, a Fortune Crypto 40 company, and one of the Financial Times’ High Growth Companies Asia-Pacific 2023, is a Web3 leader that leverages blockchain to deliver digital property rights to consumers around the world to help to establish the open metaverse. The company develops and publishes a broad portfolio of products including original games such as The Sandbox, PHANTOM GALAXIES™, Life Beyond, and Crazy Defense Heroes, and products utilizing popular intellectual properties from the worlds of sports and entertainment, such as The Walking Dead, Power Rangers, MotoGP™, and Formula E. It has multiple subsidiaries, including The Sandbox, Blowfish Studios, Quidd, GAMEE, nWay, Pixowl, Forj, Lympo, Animoca Brands Japan, Grease Monkey Games, Eden Games, Darewise Entertainment, Notre Game, TinyTap, SPORTPASS, PIXELYNX, WePlay Media, Gryfyn, and Azarus. Animoca Brands is one of the most active investors in Web3, with a portfolio of over 400 Web3 investments, both directly and through Animoca Ventures, including Yuga Labs, Axie Infinity, Polygon, Consensys, Magic Eden, Fireblocks, OpenSea, Dapper Labs, Yield Guild Games, and many more. For more information users can visit www.animocabrands.com or follow on X (Twitter), YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and TikTok.

Contact

Co-Founder & COO
Victor Yu
CARV
media@carv.io

Ethereum Set to Surpass All-Time Highs as Bitcoin Dominance Declines

Blockchain News/Crypto News Today

Ether may surprise crypto markets by hitting new all-time highs before Bitcoin reenters price discovery.

In his latest market analysis, Michaël van de Poppe, founder and CEO of trading firm MNTrading, predicted a likely move by ETH/USD.

According to new analysis, Ether is expected to surpass its current all-time highs soon.

As reported by Cointelegraph, crypto traders are anticipating strong Bitcoin price action in response to the launch of spot ETF products for Ether in the United States.

These products, while not yet fully approved for trading, have received a notional green light from regulators following a surprise U-turn.

This development could reduce Bitcoin’s share of the overall crypto market cap, potentially giving altcoins more room to grow.

“The Bitcoin dominance has likely peaked this cycle at 58%,” Van de Poppe stated.

“The valuations of altcoins are super low compared to Bitcoin. Likely the next all-time high is going to be reached for Ethereum.”

At the time of writing, ETH/USD traded at around $3,850, based on data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, still significantly below its record of $4,900 set in late 2021.

The Bitcoin ETF battle reached a symbolic milestone on May 28 as BlackRock’s IBIT surpassed the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) in BTC holdings for the first time.

According to inflows tracked by sources like crypto reviews portal Apollo, at the close of Wall Street trading, IBIT had accumulated 288,670 BTC compared to GBTC’s 287,450 BTC.

This “flippening” had long been anticipated by market observers.

Since converting to a spot ETF in January, GBTC has steadily lost assets under management as investors shifted their funds. Initially, GBTC held nearly 620,000 BTC, but the tally has now decreased by 53%.

“Biggest news: Blackrock now holds more BTC than GBTC,” popular commentator WhalePanda noted on X (formerly Twitter).

WhalePanda also mentioned upheaval at Grayscale, with CEO Michael Sonnenshein announcing his resignation earlier this month.

Bitcoin ETF operators have experienced a resurgence in interest recently, with inflows remaining net positive for ten consecutive days.

To submit a crypto press release (PR), send an email to sales@cryptointelligence.co.uk.

Israeli Government Accelerates Development of Digital Shekel with Innovative ‘Digital Shekel Challenge’

Blockchain News/Crypto News Today

Israel is accelerating the development of its central bank digital currency (CBDC), known as the digital shekel.

The Bank of Israel (BoI) plans to collaborate with various service providers to create an advanced digital payments ecosystem centered on this currency.

In a statement, the central bank announced the “Digital Shekel Challenge,” inspired by the “Project Rosalind” from the BIS Innovation Hub.

Project Rosalind is a joint effort between the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Bank of England to develop prototypes for an application programming interface (API).

The BoI will provide a sandbox environment with a layer of APIs as part of the challenge. Participants will compete to develop real-time CBDC payment systems for the public.

Shauli Rejwan, managing partner at Masterkey Venture Capital, explained the initiative’s details to Cointelegraph.

The program consists of three phases: application and presentations, access to the new network for selected projects, and a final presentation to judges, including notable figures from recent crypto events.

Rejwan believes this initiative could bridge the gap between the Web3 industry and the government, despite the current exclusion of decentralized finance, zero knowledge, and permissionless solutions.

Israel has invited entities from private, public, and academic sectors to join the experiment. The central bank emphasized:

“Priority will be given to uses with original and innovative characteristics in the payments world, whether they are improvements to existing applications or completely new applications.”

While CBDCs are designed for universal use, participants in Israel’s experiment can also develop solutions for specific niches and scenarios.

On April 16, BoI deputy governor Andrew Abir expressed that competition between CBDCs and banks benefits the economy.

He believes public support for the digital shekel is strong.

“The digital shekel will not be developed by some anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto.

“Everyone will know who is behind the digital shekel and who is responsible for it — […] the same Bank of Israel that stands behind the cash we all know and trust.”

Abir noted that the digital shekel could also benefit the BoI by encouraging banks to offer higher interest rates.

A public consultation report from May 11 confirmed Abir’s views, showing broad support for CBDC research.

However, respondents unanimously expressed concerns about potential privacy breaches.

To submit a crypto press release (PR), send an email to sales@cryptointelligence.co.uk.

Bitcoin Bulls Face Battle Ahead of $6.5 Billion Options Expiry Amid High Hopes and External Influences

Bitcoin/Blockchain News/Crypto News Today

Bitcoin investors are known for their bullish outlook, and despite multiple failed attempts to sustain prices above $71,000, derivatives betting on $80,000 and $90,000 continue to rise.

This is driven by expectations of high-volatility events such as geopolitical tensions, socio-political changes, U.S. presidential support, and increased corporate adoption of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin bulls were overly optimistic, betting on $72,000 or higher

Bitcoin’s $6.5 billion options expiry on May 31 is a prime example.

Bulls’ failure to break the $70,000 resistance over the past week suggests these optimistic call (buy) options may become worthless.

Notably, 91% of these instruments were placed at $72,000 or higher, indicating a reliance on a sustained rally before May 31.

As the deadline nears, it appears Bitcoin bears may avoid significant losses.

Contrary to Bitcoin-only investor beliefs, BTC’s price is influenced by external factors like monetary policies, economic trends, inflation, unemployment, and confidence in the government’s bond-issuing capability.

Regardless of Bitcoin’s temporary correlation with the stock market and gold, investors usually hold cash and short-term U.S. Treasury bonds when market fear prevails.

The Nasdaq Composite index hitting an all-time high above 17,000 points on May 28 shows investor confidence in the U.S. Federal Reserve’s soft landing plan.

This plan aims for inflation to return to its 2% target while maintaining favorable corporate earnings.

This scenario boosts the outlook for risk-on assets, including Bitcoin, as reduced interest rates are expected.

The optimistic bets for Bitcoin’s monthly options expiry at 8:00 am UTC on May 31 reflect the 25% gains as BTC soared from $56,883 to $71,417 in early May.

However, this rally was unsustainable, especially after the approval of the spot Ethereum exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the U.S., creating competition for institutional funds.

Aggregate data predicts a $270 million profit for bulls if BTC trades above $70,000
To understand the odds for each BTC expiry price level, analyzing the open interest of calls (buy) and puts (sell) is essential.

Call options dominate with a 70% higher notional value, but Deribit’s $4.62 billion open interest will likely be much lower if BTC trades below $70,000 on May 31.

Similarly, put option investors will be disappointed if Bitcoin remains near $67,800, as only 5% of those $1.7 billion contracts were placed at $68,000 or higher.

Deribit leads the options market with a 71% market share of Bitcoin’s monthly open interest in May. However, aggregate data from various exchanges show different investor profiles.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) is the second-largest player with $745 million, followed by OKX with $600 million. Binance and Bybit totaled $315 million and $160 million, respectively.

If Bitcoin stays near $67,800 on May 31, the aggregate open interest for call options will be $135 million, while put options at $68,000 will amount to $145 million.

This level is fairly balanced, but both bulls and bears have incentives to influence the price before expiry.

For instance, a $65,900 price would favor put options by $95 million, while an expiry at $70,000 or higher would give call options a $270 million advantage.

With less than three days until expiry, it seems unlikely bulls will push Bitcoin’s price above $70,000 without short-term catalysts, favoring a neutral outcome near $68,000.

To submit a crypto press release (PR), send an email to sales@cryptointelligence.co.uk.

Supra To Present Its Cutting-Edge Moonshot Consensus Mechanism At DSN 2024 Conference

Press Releases

Zug, Switzerland, May 30th, 2024, Chainwire

Supra, a fully vertically integrated Layer-1 blockchain and leading oracle data feeds and verifiable randomness provider across 80+ blockchains, announced that its consensus mechanism Moonshot will be featured at DSN 2024, the world’s preeminent annual conference on dependable systems and networks and one of the longest running events by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

At the event, also known as the 54th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, Supra’s team will present Moonshot’s official whitepaper describing the consensus mechanism, and demonstrate how it sets a new standard for the blockchain industry. The demonstration will compare Moonshot’s significant increases in throughput and reductions in latency to Jolteon, which is currently recognized as one of the world’s fastest and most-performant decentralized consensus algorithms.

Supra is the creator of industry-leading oracle price feeds and verifiable randomness services that have been adopted by more than 80 blockchain networks. Supra’s Distributed Oracle Agreement (DORA) is designed to advance blockchain capabilities and pave the way for the integration of real-world data, while addressing challenges around Byzantine faults and data integrity for smart contracts in Web3 environments.

Designed for on-chain and off-chain use-cases such as spot and perpetual DEXes, lending protocols, and payments protocols, DORA plays a key role in bridging deterministic blockchain networks with the real world. Supra’s network is powered by their innovative Moonshot consensus mechanism, which brings blazing-fast performance and robust security guarantees to its data feeds. In its advanced global testing phase, Supra demonstrated Moonshot’s ability to process 530K transactions per second throughput across 125 nodes globally distributed, with 500-millisecond optimistic finality and ~1.5–2 secs full block finality, placing it head and shoulders above many other competing consensus mechanisms.

DSN 2024 will be hosted by the University of Queensland at its campus in Brisbane, Australia. It’s one of the longest-running IEEE conferences, focused on advancing research that pushes the envelope in terms of robustness and resilience across a wide spectrum of computing systems and networks.

In November 2023, Moonshot’s capabilities were formally verified by Microsoft’s IVy Verifier, which represents the industry gold standard in terms of network security. As part of that process, its algorithms were mathematically modeled and reasoned to guarantee that they will never fork, even when run for an infinite duration, so long as Byzantine or malicious validators account for less than a third of its network.

The acceptance of Moonshot underscores how Supra has become a leading force in advancing the technical capabilities of decentralized networks, pioneering a novel approach that balances the need for robustness and performance with iron-clad security.

In addition to presenting Moonshot, Supra’s database and code submissions have been awarded Reproducible Badges, which certify their performance has been independently verified using the same author-created research objects, methods, code, and analysis.

Supra is furthermore pushing the limits in consensus mechanisms with major innovations in their newly presented DAG based protocol called, “Sailfish.” Sailfish is designed to outperform the state-of-the-art in terms of latency and combining Sailfish with Supra’s Moonshot consensus algorithm is expected to yield promising performance outcomes.

About Supra

Supra is an all-new blockchain that vertically integrates oracles, bridges, automation and randomness into a powerful Layer-1 with MultiVM compatibility. It’s designed to give developers all the tools they need to build on one chain, enabling a new breed of Super dApps.

Supra is also a leading provider of oracle price feeds and verifiable randomness across 80+ blockchains with Layer-1 security guarantees. They focus on solving real problems for dApp developers and scaling Web3, supported by a developer toolkit with extensive guides and technical whitepapers.

Contact

Avishay Litani
pr@marketacross.com

Australia Tax Authorities Demand Client Data from Crypto Exchanges

Blockchain News

Australia’s tax agency has notified the crypto exchanges operating in the country to submit personal details and transactions carried out by its citizens. The move was made after it was discovered that a portion of the 1.2 million Australians who are signed up on various digital currency exchanges fail to pay tax.

Cryptocurrency Use and Tax in Australia

Australia considers virtual currency assets that can be held for tax purposes. In essence, once a profit is made from a cryptocurrency sale, the trader is legally required to pay capital gains tax.

In April, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) revealed that the details collected from these exchanges, such as user dates of birth, phone numbers, social media accounts, and transactional details, will help the agency track down users who evade taxes. Any user who exchanged their tokens for another coin or fiat currency and failed to report it would be penalised.

Many individuals use digital currency for various reasons in Australia, including investing in alternative assets, making e-commerce purchases, and gaming and gambling online at Australian Bitcoin casinos. Kane Pepi shares that crypto gambling has become very popular in Australia due to large bonuses and huge game selections.

Nevertheless, the investigation will affect crypto users across all sectors. Whether it’s a Bitcoin enthusiast who makes money through mining, trading, or merely receiving crypto as a payment option, the asset will be subject to taxes.

This move made by the ATO is set to improve tax revenue inflow to the government’s coffers. A treasury report in 2022 revealed that 800,000, or 3.9%, of 20.5 million Australian taxpayers used cryptocurrencies at least once in the past three years. Essentially, since an increasing number of Australians have begun to use cryptocurrency, there’s a potential for increased tax revenue.

The Ripple Effect on the Crypto Community

The steps taken by the Australian Tax Office (ATO) are bound to affect crypto users across all sectors of the economy. Digital currency enthusiasts have always revelled in the anonymity offered by blockchain technology, and this change could trigger uncertainty about using crypto.

For one, cryptocurrency traders in Australia will have to deal with increased scrutiny concerning their trading losses and gains. Since the tax agency will focus more on crypto investors, they’ll be bound to reevaluate their strategies and pay more attention to tax compliance.

The focus on tax evasion in the crypto community is certain to affect the average crypto enthusiast’s trust. Since everyone who turns a profit using crypto is required to pay tax, many investors could decrease their participation in the crypto market. Others who are willing to navigate the new landscape are likely to contact their accountants and lawyers for professional tax advice before dabbling in it willy-nilly.

In the crypto gambling space, casino gamers who have managed to evade taxes will most likely stop participating in gambling activities, which is seen by many as a win-win for both sides as it weans out the bad eggs. Gamblers on the opposite side of this spectrum are bound to support this move since it could legitimise the crypto-gambling industry in Australia.

Nevertheless, even gamblers supporting the move can leverage the increase in the number of no-KYC casinos to make a switch. These casinos give users a free hand in terms of anonymity. In essence, these no-ID casinos don’t require players to provide KYC information or any other extensive identity verification process, allowing them to maintain some level of anonymity despite the ATO ruling.

The ATO’s increased scrutiny will cascade over to e-commerce outlets accepting cryptocurrency. Many of them may have to reconsider their choice, especially if it was made with profits in mind, which may be eaten into when they start paying taxes. Their option then becomes to disallow crypto payments and consider alternative options or put all or some of the tax burden on their customers, which can lead to reduced adoption of crypto by the everyday shop-goer.

Israel Accelerates Development of Digital Shekel with Innovative ‘Digital Shekel Challenge’

Blockchain News/Crypto News Today