The plane touches down and comes to a halt. Heading to passport control, one of the passengers stops at a vending machine to buy a bottle of soda — but the device is absolutely indifferent to all of their credit cards, cash, coins and everything else. All of that is part of a foreign economy as far as the machine is concerned, and as such, they can’t buy even a droplet of Coke. In the real world, the machine would have been quite happy with a Mastercard or a Visa. And the cash exchange desk at the airport would have …

Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have been in the headlines for the past few years. While swaths of the population have tried to get their head around why NFTs exist, demand has soared, institutions have been built, and the lingo has entered our collective consciousness. There is an elephant in the room, though: NFTs are difficult to use and a majority of them are digital snake oil. But these problems create the opportunity to provide answers. The accessibility and legitimacy of NFTs are both ripe for change. As funding pours into the space, the market is starting to mature, and that change …

“The Metaverse” and “Web3” are the buzzwords of the moment, with their concepts permeating across the worlds of fintech, blockchain, and now even mainstream media. With decentralization thought to be at the core of the Web3 Metaverse, the promise of a better user experience, security and control for consumers is what’s driving its growth. But with users’ identities at the heart of the Metaverse, coupled with unprecedented amounts of data online, there are concerns over data security, privacy and interoperability. This has the potential to hinder the development of the Metaverse, but both regulated and self-sovereign identities could play an …

The insurance industry has a long history of providing vital support for major leaps in innovation. It’s no coincidence that the modern insurance industry and the industrial revolution arose in parallel. Indeed, it has been convincingly argued that the invention of fire and property insurance — in response to the Great Fire of London — lubricated the gears of capital investment that powered the industrial revolution and is likely the reason why it started in London. Through that first and each subsequent technological revolution, insurance has offered innovators and investors a safety net and served as an outside, objective validator …

The Metaverse is poised to become tech’s next trillion-dollar opportunity, as an increasing number of companies are showing interest in immersive virtual spaces that will allow consumers to go beyond what’s possible in real life. This was highlighted in a recent report from CB Insights, which found that the Metaverse will disrupt at least 13 leading industries including fashion, retail, gaming, education and more. While notable, various metaverse environments are still underway. For example, tech giant Microsoft announced on May 24 the creation of an “industrial metaverse,” which will allow workers to wear augmented reality headsets to manage supply chains. …

Excitement for the Metaverse and virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR) is much greater in developing countries than in high-income countries, according to a survey conducted for the World Economic Forum (WEF). Market research firm Ipsos released the results of the survey on Wednesday, showing the concept is now widely recognized: 52% of more than 21,000 adults surveyed across 29 countries are familiar with the Metaverse and 50% have positive feelings about engaging with it in daily life. China, India, Peru, Saudi Arabia and Colombia were the top five countries where two-thirds or more of respondents said they had positive feelings toward it. …

The prices of graphics processing units (GPUs), also known as graphics cards, are undoubtedly still a far cry from the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP). However, they aren’t what they used to be either, especially considering what GPU prices looked like just a year ago. For instance, the price of a GPU from Nvidia GeForce RTX 30-series is 14% over its MSRP, according to reports from 3D Center. Whereas AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 is up 7% from its MSRP from April 17 and May 8. On the other hand, it is the first time since January that AMD’s Radeon RX …

We all know about staking cryptocurrencies, whereby you make a return on your investment. Nowadays, you can also make money by staking your nonfungible tokens (NFTs)! By staking your nonfungible tokens (NFTs) on NFT staking platforms, you can make additional returns on your investment. NFTs have become even more attractive due to this development. More and more people are looking for new ways to make money without having to work for it. Passive income used to be something wealthy people could get through the bank because the interest rates on savings accounts were quite high. Nowadays, you hardly receive any …

Three years after being ousted as CEO of WeWork, Adam Neumann has jumped on the crypto bandwagon, raising $70 million in the first major funding round for his climate tech venture Flowcarbon. The project aims to make carbon trading more accessible by putting carbon credits on the blockchain. Neumann is an Israeli-American businessman and investor famous for his role in founding coworking space provider WeWork in 2010, a company once heralded as the future of workspaces. However, it all came crashing down in 2019 when the company attempted to go public, which instead lifted the lid on WeWork’s unprofitable business …

If all goes to plan, Wednesday’s SpaceX rocket launch in Florida will blast a “crypto-satellite” into low Earth orbit, paving the way for secure blockchain-related cryptography in space. Cryptosat, as the name hints, is the company that created Crypto1, a crypto-satellite module hitching a ride aboard a Falcon 9 rocket for SpaceX’s Transporter 5 mission. The blockchain satellite technology has already been trialed on the International Space Station. “We’re basically joining the Uber of spaceflight,” co-founder of Cryptosat Yonatan Winetraub told Cointelegraph, “Everybody goes into the same orbit and we’re one of the passengers.” “SpaceX launch a bunch of satellites, …

American electronics retail firm GameStop has taken a step into the world of cryptocurrencies, unveiling a proprietary blockchain wallet that will feature nonfungible token functionality. The GameStop Wallet will allow gamers to acquire, send and store Ether (ETH), ERC-20 tokens and NFTs through a self-custodial browser extension running on the Ethereum blockchain. A mobile application is also in the works. It’s official! The GameStop Wallet is here. Download: https://t.co/dK2dmRmwRI — GameStopNFT (@GameStopNFT) May 23, 2022 The wallet will run on Ethereum’s Loopring layer-2 scaling protocol designed for decentralized exchanges, which boasts of high throughput, low-cost trading and payment capability. Users …

It’s predicted that nonfungible tokens (NFTs) will have a vast impact on society. Given this, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the trillion-dollar healthcare sector has begun to explore NFTs tokens to advance medicine. It’s also important to point out that blockchain technology can play an increasingly important role within the healthcare sector. This was recently highlighted in a report from the European Union Blockchain Observatory, which specifically documents how blockchain applications can solve challenges facing the healthcare industry. For example, the paper notes that patient engagement and transparency of how data is stored, along with the effective distribution …