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Crypto CEO becomes one of the world's richest billionaires
A cryptocurrency CEO has become one of the richest people on Earth.
o "CZ", who runs the crypto exchange Binance, has joined the ranks of the world's top billionaires, with an estimated net worth of at least $133 billion, according to new calculations from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index published overnight.
Mr Zhao's projected fortune now rivals that of Oracle founder Larry Ellison and surpasses that of Mukesh Ambani, the Indian tycoon whose fortune has also soared over the last two years. CZ intends to give away most of his wealth, even 99 per cent of his wealth, just like other entrepreneurs and founders.
Meta poaches staff from Microsoft and Apple for Metaverse plans
Employees from Microsoft and Apple are jumping ship to join Meta Platforms as the company sets its sights on creating the Metaverse.
According to former employees of Microsoft quoted by the Wall Street Journal, around 100 people have ditched the tech giant’s augmented reality team over the past year to join Meta Platforms. They claim that Meta has been particularly focused on snapping up people who have worked on Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented reality (AR) headsets.
Microsoft’s first mover advantage in the AR space makes its employees valuable assets to Meta. Microsoft announced its HoloLens project more than five years ago in 2016, with the technology developing into one of the world’s most advanced headsets.
Apple is attempting to counteract an employee exodus to Meta by offering lucrative stock options and bonuses worth between $50,000 and $180,000, according to a report by Bloomberg. In late Dec 2021, the company offered the bonuses to a group of engineers in silicon design, hardware and some software operations workers.
Bored Ape Yacht Club is a huge mainstream hit, but is Wall Street ready for NFTs?
Within months after its launch the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) became one of the main reasons Wall Street should take the emerging nonfungible token (NFT) market seriously, thanks to its recent sales turnover of over $1 billion.
For the uninitiated, BAYC is a collection of 10,000 cartoons of anthropomorphic apes with stylish clothes and disreputable expressions. Each ape is practically an image file that should be worthless in a sane world. Nonetheless, they have been managing to fetch astonishing sums, sometimes from some of the world's most renowned celebrities. For instance, Jimmy Fallon, a popular American TV host, bought the image of a Bored Ape that wears a striped T-shirt and heart-shaped shades for almost $220,000 in November last year. And very recently, Academy Award-winning rapper Eminem paid nearly $462,000 for an ape that somewhat resembled him.
One of the rarest Bored Apes, which had a gold fur trait, fetched $3.4 million in an online auction held by Sotheby's in October, breaking the record of another rare ape with laser eyes, which was sold to The Sandbox for $2.9 million a month before. But rarity is not the only reason people pay millions of dollars for Bored Apes. In addition to owning a unique avatar, people also gain admissions to an exclusive membership club, imposed with tokens. That gives them entry into an inner circle of elites, bringing them status and more profitable opportunities.
Will Wall Street jump into NFTs?
As stated, BAYC's net sales recently crossed the $1-billion-mark, almost 10% of what Apple earned in 2021. Meanwhile, the NFT sector, on the whole, processed sales worth $41 billion, which came to be almost equal to the global art sales in the year.
The chief investment officer of Bitwise Asset Management, admitted that many of their clients had been looking for exposure in the NFT space without needing to crisscross through its daunting technology.
In response, Bitwise launched a dedicated fund last month, which tracks its own Bitwise Blue-Chip NFT Collections Index a basket of the ten largest NFT collections weighted by market capitalization and buys and holds artworks from BAYC, CryptoPunks and other NFT projects.
US lawmaker hints at upcoming crypto legislation as Jerome Powell says Fed will release report on digital currency soon
At his confirmation hearing in front of members of the Senate Banking Committee, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said the agency would be releasing its report on cryptocurrencies “within weeks.”
Addressing Idaho Senator Mike Crapo remotely from the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Tuesday, Powell said the Fed’s report on digital currencies wasn’t “quite where we needed to get it” but would be released soon regardless. The Fed chair cited “changes in monetary policy” as part of the reason for the delayed report, which is expected to address policy surrounding the possible rollout of a central bank digital currency in the United States.