There is seldom a week in crypto without some eye-catching news. The last week in cryptocurrency news witnessed the continuation of several old as well as new trends. Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, Meta’s declining financials, Google’s push into Ethereum blockchain node services, and the severe impact of the crypto market on venture funds were among the important items. To conclude, these are the stories that sparked our interest last week:
Elon begins his reign on Twitter
Elon Musk has finalized the acquisition of Twitter. The Tesla CEO and tech entrepreneur took over Twitter as well, entering the company’s headquarters with what seemed to be a bathroom sink. The millionaire even renamed himself “Chief Twit” on Twitter.
Musk revised his position last month, declaring that he did not want to proceed with the acquisition after attempting to back out of it in July and being sued by Twitter. Nonetheless, Musk’s acquisition comes at a time when the microblogging network is battling to retain its most active users, according to Reuters.
Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, said that it is now a minority shareholder in Twitter. According to The Block, Binance has invested $500 million to the $44 billion acquisition. “Our initial commitment remains unchanged, and we look forward to discussing future chances to expand the cooperation,” a Binance representative told The Block.
In terms of cryptocurrency, it is expected that the platform will pivot to include more blockchain functionality.
Meta’s massive losses
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, presented its third-quarter earnings report, which revealed enormous losses. Reality Labs, the company’s metaverse branch, reported a $3.7 billion loss. The division has lost $9.4 billion so far this year. The company’s shares was heavily discounted as a result, and its market valuation fell to less than $300 billion.
Meta stated that it does not “expect Reality Labs operational losses to rise considerably” next year. Meta is the world’s largest social media business, with services such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp under its control. Outside of Reality Labs, Meta’s main app businesses continue to earn significant advertising income quarter after quarter.
Facebook renamed to Meta in October 2021, at the height of its success, adopting metaverse technologies. The metaverse is a virtual world in which users may interact and possess various goods. While it is still an abstract idea, the metaverse is frequently discussed in conjunction with cryptocurrency, NFTs, and blockchain technology.
Google now provides Ethereum blockchain node services.
Google’s cloud business ventured into public blockchain infrastructure services, beginning with Ethereum. Google Cloud launched a fully managed node hosting solution named “blockchain node engine” on Friday.
The node engine is intended for web3 developers, who may use it to deploy smart contracts and write data to a dedicated node. A blockchain node is responsible for hosting and synchronizing a copy of the network’s transaction history. As such, the goal of this product is to simplify the process of configuring nodes, as well as the complexity of hosting them on your own hardware.
Google’s initial supported blockchain for node engine is Ethereum, although the company has expressed interest in adding support for other blockchains in the future. Google started forming a web3-focused team early this year with the goal of developing hosted services for blockchain developers. Earlier last month, Google began natively supporting data for Ethereum wallet balances.
Crypto price decline hurts venture capitalists
Some of the industry’s largest venture companies are feeling the effects of the bear market. Consider Pantera Capital, a well-known crypto venture business that has had a difficult year. According to an investor presentation seen by The Block, the value of Pantera’s early stage token fund plunged 71% until the end of September.
The announcement comes at a time when several tokens and cryptocurrencies have dropped by more than 50% due to weak macroeconomic sentiment. Pantera isn’t the only one. According to the WSJ, Andresen Horowitz (A16z), one of the major crypto investors, has experienced a 40% decline in the value of its flagship crypto fund.
MakerDAO holds a vote to dissolve its DAO
MakerDAO, the creator of the DAI stablecoin, has voted to divide its initiative into different entities. This is a significant shift for one of crypto’s major independent organizations (DAOs). On Monday, the MakerDAO community approved the “Endgame” proposal, paving the way for a new governance framework for the DAO. When deployed, Endgame would divide MakerDAO into smaller clusters known as “MetaDAOs.”
MetaDAOs will operate autonomously and have their own parallel governance frameworks. As a result, each MetaDAO will have its own coins and decision-making architecture. While the vote passed, several members of the community claimed that MakerDAO’s creator, Rune Christensen, had excessive influence over it. This is because more than 70% of delegates’ “yes” votes came from voting blocs with links to the Maker founder, raising concerns about governance centralization.
Some DAO members who voted against Christensen accused him of “organization capture,” a situation in which a specific interest takes precedence over the group’s overall interests.
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