From popular metaverse platforms like Axie Infinity and Decentraland Recording low activity to Meta’s game, Horizon World Suffering technical setbacks and recent developments from the world of the metaverse is far from being palatable.
This week, Meta released its 2022 Q3 report and it shows that the platform recorded a $3.67 billion loss in the third quarter of 2022. Not impressive considering the amount of investment Mark Zuckerberg has exerted into the supposed future of the internet.
Also, after six months of back-and-forth, centibillionaire Elon Musk has finally acquired twitter. Due to his well-known pro-crypto stance, there are now different conjectures on what this massive development means for the crypto world.
Here is a bit of all the major stories from the crypto space this week.
Here we go:
New UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak is Pro-crypto
Rishi Sunak officially took over as the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister on Monday after opponents Penny Mordaunt and ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson dropped out of the Conservative Party leadership election.
Recall that Liz Truss resigned last week after only 45 days in office. While Sunak is assuming office at a time when the global economy is stuttering and inflation remains stubbornly high, the consensus is that his appointment for the UK premiership is good news for the cryptocurrency sector in the country.
Related: UK’s Crypto-friendly PM, Liz Truss has resigned, what should we expect?
Rishi Sunak has repeatedly voiced his support for cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Last April, while serving as the chancellor of the exchequer, Sunak called for the Bank of England and Her Majesty’s Treasury to create a task force to explore the creation and issuance of a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
Sunak reiterated his support for crypto earlier this year when he laid out plans to make the UK an international crypto tech hub.
Also, under Sunak’s chancellorship, the Royal Mint — the official maker of Britain’s coins — was assigned the responsibility of developing non-fungible tokens to signal the government’s “forward-looking approach” to crypto.
As fas as we know, the future of cryptocurrency regulation and innovation in the UK looks promising.
Twitter introduces tweet tiles for NFT
Yesterday, a tweet from the Twitter Dev account revealed that the site will pilot a feature called Tweet Tiles in order to enhance links to certain NFT marketplaces.
The new feature allows users to include a link to an NFT on an external site. The link will automatically expand to show a full-size image of the NFT, plus metadata and a link to its location on its respective marketplace.
Marketplaces supported during the trial include Rarible, Magic Eden, Dapper Labs, and Jump.trade. Rarible acknowledged the feature, writing that Tweet Tiles will allow users to “experience NFTs in a whole new way”.
Twitter’s developer account said that the newly-added feature is “one more step in our journey to let developers impact the Tweet experience”.
We know that Twitter is working on features that will integrate cryptocurrency as well. In September 2021, the site introduced crypto tipping, and this week as well as rumours that it is building a crypto wallet.
Related post: Twitter might be working on its own crypto wallet prototype
Elon Musk now owns Twitter
Elon Musk, the billionaire and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has completed his acquisition of Twitter. Among his first actions as the owner of the company was to fire the managers.
CEO Parag Agrawal and chief financial officer Ned Segal left the company’s headquarters in San Francisco. Head of legal policy, Vijaya Gadde, who made the decision to close the account of Donald Trump was also fired.
Since April, the social network and Elon Musk have exchanged legal accusations. And now that the acquisition is complete, it remains to be seen whether dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies will be incorporated into Twitter by Elon.
Meta suffers loss
Meta’s metaverse division released its third quarter report yesterday, showing a $3.67 billion loss adding to its woes. Losses for the company have continued to grow as its second-quarter losses stood at $2.28 billion, bringing its yearly loss to over $9 billion.
As losses mounted for the firm, its revenues also plunged to new lows. According to the report, the company recorded a third-quarter revenue of $285 million way below the estimated $406 million after it recorded $452 million in the second quarter.
Despite taking several hits, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg remains unwavering about the company’s recent problems adding that they are going in the right direction to have a strong impact on the future.
“While we face near-term challenges on revenue, the fundamentals are there for a return to stronger revenue growth. It would be a mistake not to focus on the metaverse as it will have a strong impact in the future.”
Zuckerberg has reiterated his commitment to spend more developing the metaverse saying that he believes that in a few years, more users will embrace virtual reality workplaces.
Google launches blockchain blockchain node
According to an announcement yesterday, Google is launching an in-house Blockchain Node Engine (BNE) based on Google Cloud. As a node-hosting service, BNE enables Web3 companies to relay transactions, deploy smart contracts, and read or write blockchain data directly on Google Cloud.
Read also: 30% commission and more: what Apple’s new rules on NFT & crypto
Ethereum will be the first blockchain supported by BNE, according to Google.
“Today, manually deploying a node is a time-intensive process that involves provisioning a computer instance, installing an Ethereum client, and waiting for the node to sync with the network. […] Google Cloud’s BNE can make this process faster and easier by allowing developers to deploy a new node with a single operation and specify the desired region and network.”
Google has been active in the Web3 sector. Recall that it partnered with Near Protocol to provide technical support for its grant recipients. Also, the tech giant earlier partnered with Coinbase to bring crypto payments to its cloud services.
That is all from us this week. See you same time next week.
Technext Newsletter
Get the best of Africa’s daily tech to your inbox – first thing every morning.
Join the community now!
