From video game enthusiasts monetizing their passions as shout casters to fashion influencers supercharging their careers into livestreamers on e-commerce platforms, the creator economy flourished, evolved and matured in the past year. Largely catalyzed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, contemporary creators benefited from the gradual shift in consumer behaviors as more people came online across the globe. Now valued at over $100 billion, the creator economy is witnessing staggering growth as the worlds of e-commerce, social media and online communities converge. With opportunities mounting in social tokens and corresponding virtual playgrounds such as the Metaverse, the year ahead seems to …

Part of what makes trading cryptocurrency so complex is the sheer number of blockchains and exchanges at play. For example, users who want to transfer a Binance (BNB) token that exists on Binance Smart Chain (BEP-20) may have to go through several steps to achieve their end result of LUNA tokens on the Terra network. Especially when considering new users, this process may require significant time searching and comparing decentralized finance (DeFi) tools. Even advanced users must consider how they will track wrapped tokens blockchain fees and learn the ropes of multiple UIs. In fact, a quick look on Twitter …

KuCoin Labs, the investment and research arm of crypto exchange KuCoin, has released its annual report, predictin that decentralized finance (DeFi) will still be a significant trend in the crypto industry in 2022 and governance will be run through decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). With the DeFi ecosystem continuing to be plagued by criminal whales, the risks of financial loss within the sector are becoming more apparent. Because of this, calls to regulate decentralized finance began taking flight in 2021, and the sector has started to face enforcement actions over the past year. As regulators close in on DeFi, KuCoin Labs …

This week on “The Market Report,” we jump right into our main event. Join Cointelegraph analysts Benton Yaun, Jordan Finneseth, Sam Bourgi and Ornella Hernández as they debate each other on the top metaverse projects on the market. First up, we’ve got Bourgi’s pick of Wilder World, which allows you to interact with its immersive 3D world via nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and is also based on the massively popular Unreal Engine 5. Following Bourgi, we have The Market Report first-timer Hernández, who has decided to go with Boson Portal, which aims to revolutionize metaverse commerce. Will its high-profile partners such …

The 2022 Winter Olympics, officially called the XXIV Olympic Winter Games, kicked off on Feb. 4 in Beijing with crypto being a major part of the event, partly because of the Chinese government’s digital currency ambitions. The cryptocurrency community hasn’t had strong ties to the Olympics over the last few years. The last major headline-grabbing interaction was when the Dogecoin (DOGE) community helped fund the Jamaican bobsled team in 2014 so they could attend the event in Sochi. The 2022 Winter Olympics, however, are making history due to the presence of nonfungible tokens (NFTs), Bitcoin- (BTC)-supported athletes, the launch of …

The Axelar Network has announced the completion of a $35 million Series B funding round, pushing its market value above $1 billion. Participants of the round include Dragonfly Capital, Polychain Capital and North Island Ventures, among others. The raise succeeds a previously undisclosed round led by the head of Crypto.com Capital, Bobby Bao in late-November 2021, a nine-investor $25 million Series A raise led by Polychain Capital, and participated by Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital in mid-July 2021, in addition to two seed rounds across the year of 2020. Founded in early 2020 by inaugural team members at Algorand and esteemed …

Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance newsletter. As the DeFi space continues its technical resurgence, essential news on funding, innovation and DAOs continues to drive adoption in what remains a nascent industry. For the full version of this newsletter including longer, more descriptive analysis of the top stories this week, subscribe below: Alchemy raises $200M in latest funding, ACH token soars 77% Web3 platform Alchemy announced the launch of a $200-million Series C funding round this week, giving the company a decacorn status and a valuation of $10.2 billion. The seven-investor round was led by two California-based …

An experience-to-earn (E2E) nonfungible token (NFT) ecosystem rewards people on-chain for doing everyday activities, bringing new forms of value creation to everyone. This was previously reserved for invested gamers in play-to-earn (P2E) worlds. While P2E has experienced a record-breaking year ($4.5 billion in-game NFT sales, according to the recent DappRadar report), most blockchain games still rely on some level of skill such as battling, breeding or collecting strategy that attracts gamers with the downtime, temerity and sometimes some starting funds to invest — prerequisites that can put off any non-gamer from entering NFTs to earn. In contrast, experience-to-earn aims to …

In 2021, crypto has been one of the biggest trends shaping tech and finance, and according to mainstream news headlines, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are set to be a force to be reckoned with in crypto in 2022. Mark Cuban called them the “ultimate combination of capitalism and progressivism.” Yet, while DAOs are relatively easy to understand conceptually, they’re a segment of the crypto market in a state of rapid flux, with many innovative use cases emerging. However, setting up and running a DAO also comes with its own set of unique challenges, which are also changing and developing over …

Experts say that China’s corner of the Metaverse is likely to evolve very differently to other international markets and that decentralized infrastructure may not be part of the game plan. The Sino Metaverse seems likely to repeat what happened with the web. When the internet first went mainstream in the 1990s, many people theorized that it might accelerate democracy in China. NewZoo’s 2021 trend report “Intro to the Metaverse” claimed that the Communist nation’s distaste for decentralization won’t necessarily deter it from participating in the Metaverse, but the experience may be very different, similar to the way the internet looks …

Czechia, a country of 10.7 million people in Central Europe, is known for its beautiful capital (Prague), rich history, and good beer. Within the last decade, however, one can now add cryptocurrency adoption to that list. In fact, the Trezor wallet, the first cryptocurrency hardware wallet in the world, was invented here in 2014, and is still going strong. Its parent company, SatoshiLabs, has expanded into creating secure chips for electronic hardware via Tropic Square and advancing cryptocurrency education via Invity. What's more, the country also gave birth to the world's first Bitcoin (BTC) mining pool — Braiins (Slush Pool), …

The Metaverse is quickly becoming one of the biggest trends of 2022. Recent data found that the metaverse sector currently has a market capitalization of over $26 billion. While impressive, new capabilities are also being added to virtual worlds to create more immersive experiences. For example, metaverse communities that cater to creatives are starting to unfold, allowing users to customize their own interactive experiences. Although this is still an emerging concept, the incorporation of music appears to be one of the defining characteristics of social metaverse environments. Music as NFTs For instance, music in the form of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) …