Ukraine sells 1,282 war-themed NFTs in one day, G7 and crypto regulations, metaverse potential and more news

Get your daily digest of crypto-asset and blockchain-related news – by investigating stories that fly under the radar in today’s crypto news.
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NFT news

• Ukraine’s newly opened “NFT museum” – Meta History: Museum of War – has already sold 1,282 artworks, raising 190 ETH (653,000 USD), on the first day of sales, according to data from the Ministry of Digital Transformation. They raise funds to rebuild the museums, theaters and other cultural institutions destroyed by the Russian occupiers. Besides, the NFT-Museum team is preparing “a global auction, which will include the first 4 works of Ukrainian artists and the works of the winners of the international PROSPECT100 competition”. Only owners of NFTs from the Meta History Museum’s collection can participate in the auction, according to the ministry.

Regulatory News

• the Group of Seven (G7) countries must accelerate the creation of a common framework to regulate digital currencies, Kazushige Kamiyama, the head of the payment and settlement systems department at the Bank of Japan, told Reuters. He was quoted as saying that it would not be “very difficult to create an individual global settlement system” using stablecoins.
• United States Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) has warned that companies listed in the country that act as custodians of crypto-assets on behalf of other companies should account for those assets as liabilities and disclose the risk associated with those assets to investors. Technological, legal and regulatory risks can have a “significant impact” on the custodian’s operations and financial conditions, they said.
• India will only develop crypto-asset legislation after a global consensus emerges on the regulation of such assets, Bloomberg reported, citing an undisclosed person familiar with the matter. For now, the government is not planning legislation to regulate or tighten the provisions, according to the report.

Metaverse News

• In their new report, the financial giant Town estimates that the target addressable market (TAM) for the metaverse economy is in the range of over $10 billion, while report contributors point to a user range of up to 5 billion of the base. mobile phone users, or just 1 billion based on the virtual reality/augmented reality device user base. However, they added that to create an envisioned Metaverse experience, latency needs to be improved and faster connectivity speeds are required.

Security News

• Decentralized Lending Network Platform Ola.finance was exploited, resulting in a gain of about $3.6 million for the hacker, while the protocol loss is even greater than that, according to blockchain security firm PeckShield noted. The platform added that it has taken precautionary measures so that the attacker does not profit even more from the attack and is working on creating a compensation plan.

Investment News

• Investment management company Digital Galaxy announced that shareholders of the crypto custody specialist BitGo, which the former is in the process of acquiring, will now receive 44.8 million newly issued Galaxy shares, up from 33.8 million previously, which will allow BitGo holders to own 12% of the combined company compared to 10% in the original agreement. Additionally, the company said its comprehensive net income rose 345% to $1.7 billion in fiscal 2021.
• Acting U.S. Comptroller of the Currency Michael J. Hsu said banks considering introducing bitcoin (BTC)-based futures and other derivatives should “consider tail risks carefully.” He clarified that unreliable price histories, the current risk aggregation process and the potential for reverse risk were the factors to consider.
• bitcoin miner FirstBlock announced its intention to go public through a merger with 10X Capital Venture Acquisition Corp.II, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), with an estimated enterprise value of $1.25 billion. They added that in the fourth quarter of 2021, PrimeBlock generated $24.4 million in revenue and had over 110 megawatts of installed data center capacity.

Blockchain news

• Chiliz (CHZ) announced that Scoville, the testnet for their layer 1 blockchain, is now live. More details about the launch of the mainnet, called Chiliz Chain 2.0 (CC2), will be revealed shortly, they added.
• Blockchain platform Phantom (FTM) announced a new FTM 335 million ($543 million) incentive program in partnership with the grantmaking community Gitcoin grants. They added that they will publish an eligibility policy listing all the required criteria in an upcoming blog post.

Legal news

• A Turkish prosecutor is pursuing prison sentences of up to 40,564 years for 21 of the founders and leaders of the Thodex crypto exchange, per Bloomberg. Total losses due to the stock market crash amounted to TRY 356 million ($24 million), he added.

Adoption News

• blockchain domain name provider Unstoppable Domains announced that the crypto platform Blockchain.com supports all extensions of the first, available natively on Brave and Opera browsers, and through browser extensions on Chromium, firefoxand Edge. They currently offer nine domain extensions: .bitcoin, .coin, .crypto, .dao, .nft, .wallet, .x, .zil, and .888, with another, .blockchain, coming soon.

Money News

• Gita Gopinath, the first Deputy Director General of International Monetary Fund (IMF), said financial sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine threaten to gradually dilute the dominance of the US dollar and lead to a more fragmented international monetary system, according to the Financial Times. She clarified that while the dollar would remain “the main global currency even in this landscape”, fragmentation at a lesser level is already being seen “with some countries renegotiating the currency in which they are paid to trade”.

Tax News

• Indonesia plans to charge Value Added Tax (VAT) on crypto-asset transactions and income tax on capital gains from such investments at 0.1% each, effective from May 1, Reuters reported.