Cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced plans on Jan. 18 to enhance its local presence in Poland while remaining compliant with local regulations. Binance Poland sp. z o.o., Binance’s Polish entity, will adhere to Polish regulatory standards for virtual asset service providers (VASPs), which requires Polish users to sign new terms and conditions with Binance Poland, in order to continue using the company's services. Witam, Poland #Binance is fully compliant with Polish regulatory standards for virtual asset service providers (VASPs). This registration enables #Binance to provide crypto asset exchange and custody services in the country. — Binance (@binance) January 18, 2023 Kyrylo …

2022 was “the perfect storm” for Bitcoin (BTC) miners, according to Jaime Leverton, CEO of Hut8 mining, one of the largest crypto miners and digital asset experts in the space. Leverton sat down with Gareth Jenkinson, senior reporter at Cointelegraph, in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Topics included were the 2022 bear market, Web3 diversification and, crucially, Bitcoin’s growing positive impact on the environment and broader economy. Leverton shared that 2022 was a turbulent year for miners: “Obviously depressed Bitcoin prices, global hashrate continues to hit all-time highs and then an energy crisis is thrown …

Despite the ongoing crypto winter, which has affected many businesses in the greater Web3 space, investments continue pouring into the space. On Jan. 17, the Hong Kong-based global asset manager HashKey Capital announced the closing of a $500 million investment round for its FinTech Investment Fund III. According to the company, Fund III will be used to invest in infrastructures, toolings and applications that will help push mass adoption of blockchain and crypto technologies. Speaking with Cointelegraph, Xiao Xiao, an investment director at HashKey Capital, said the synergies in the Web3 space are a key factor to what keeps investors …

Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Polygon, joined hands with Xternity, a Web3 gaming development platform, to migrate and onboard a multiplayer Web3 game — Synergy Land — to the Polygon network from Solana. As blockchain platforms, Solana focuses primarily on scalability and cost-cutting, while Polygon allows for seamless interaction with the Ethereum ecosystem. To help transfer Synergy Land’s resources onto the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chain, Xternity proposed a process — via its network migration tool — that can be used to migrate games or projects across chains. Speaking about Xternity’s goal to accelerate Web3 game development, co-founder and CEO Sagi …

The liquidators of Alameda Research have reportedly incurred at least $11.5 million in losses since taking control of Alameda's trading accounts. On Jan. 16, a Twitter thread from Arkham Intelligence reported that one wallet under the control of liquidators has seen a string of "significant losses" due to liquidations, some of which were "preventable losses." Over the past two weeks being under Liquidator control, the account incurred significant losses: Largest single liquidation: $4.85M Total liquidated amount: $11.5M Preventable losses: $4M+ — Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) January 16, 2023 As one example, Arkham noted that the account ending 0x997 initially had a short …

The nonfungible token (NFT) industry has experienced some market turbulence over the past few months, but this hasn’t stopped both Twitter and Instagram from making moves into an industry that some estimate could be worth $231 billion by 2030. This comes off the back of Twitter having recently announced NFT Tweet Tiles and Instagram releasing an array of different NFT-related tools, and many NFT enthusiasts are naturally starting to deliberate which one will come out on top as the go-to social media platform for NFTs. Going by their unique value proposition and recent events, it is evident that Instagram currently …

The blockchain gaming industry is experiencing a "massive shift," with the once-popular play-to-earn (P2E) model falling out of favor and focus directed now at improving gameplay experience, a new survey has found. The survey results were included in a newly released annual report from the Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) on Jan. 12, which was conducted with 347 professionals, representing 252 different projects or companies in the blockchain sector. Most of the respondents were young adult males working for blockchain gaming companies in middle and top management positions, according to BGA. One of the trends gleaned from the report was an …

Web3 accelerator Beacon has wrapped up its first cohort with 13 graduating companies and has provided a venue for project founders to demo their blockchain-based startups. Beacon’s first 12-week cohort, dubbed Cohort 0, kicked off in October with 15 companies across various cryptocurrency subsectors, including decentralized finance (DeFi), gaming and infrastructure. Beacon held a demo day on Jan. 10 with 13 graduating companies: Arcana, Blinkmoon, ChapterX, Colexion, Community Gaming, Cubist, FastLane, Meta Apes, Mystic Moose, Nillion, Davos Protocol, Timeswap and Ylide. Polygon co-founder and Beacon creator Sandeep Nailwal described the first batch of graduates as the “MVP of Beacon” because …

The Easy Company, a startup focusing on building a consumer layer for the decentralized web, has raised $14.2 million in a seed round for its “social” crypto wallet, which seeks to help onboard more mainstream audiences into the Web3 ecosystem. As reported by TechCrunch, the seed funding round was supported by a diverse group of investors, including venture capital firms Lobby Capital, Relay Ventures and 6th Man Ventures, as well as Tapestry, Upside and Scribble. Additionally, the round featured angel investors with backgrounds in traditional social media and Web3, including former executives from Instagram, Novi, Airbnb, Twitter, Uber, OpenTable and …

Arguably the most popular blockchain amongst developers building decentralized applications (dApps), the Ethereum Network is credited with introducing the Web3 community to innovations like smart contracts while maintaining robust security standards. However, in order to solve Ethereum’s scalability issue, a new type of Layer-2 (L2) blockchain was introduced that relies on the Ethereum Mainnet (Layer-1) for its security but processes transactions on separate third-party networks in order to increase throughput speeds. EVM compatibility for higher transaction speeds Importantly, developers had to ensure that these L2 blockchains were compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), a run-time environment where Ethereum’s application …

The Web3 space is growing rapidly, and new startups are emerging daily. Overall investment into Web3 projects skyrocketed to $30 billion in 2021 and $36 billion in 2022, even amid the market crisis. While many projects have good ideas and a strong value proposition to bring to the space, this is a challenging field riddled with competition and a lack of trust from the broader audience. Cointelegraph has established itself as a leader in the digital asset, Metaverse and emerging technologies media business since 2013, and is now looking to help other rising stars reach their full potential. Cointelegraph is …

The retail industry is one of the most important sectors of the United States economy. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has left the trillion-dollar retail sector vulnerable to in-store theft. Findings from the National Retail Federation’s 2022 Retail Security Survey show that retail losses from stolen goods increased to $94.5 billion in 2021, up from $90.8 billion in 2020. Some retailers also have to lock away certain products to prevent theft, which may lead to decreased sales due to consumers’ inability to access goods. Retailers look toward blockchain to solve retail theft Given these extreme measures, many innovative retailers have started …