Banks and Institutions
El Salvador has reached an agreement with crypto-asset companies Blockstream and iFinex to continue its integration into the bitcoin market. The country will issue $1 billion worth of Bitcoin bonds in 2022 to "establish a new financial system linked to Bitcoin." In addition, President Nayib Bukele has announced plans to create a "bitcoin city" that would be powered by geothermal energy from a volcano.
The Bank of England estimates that 20% of retail and consumer deposits could soon be in central bank digital currency (CDBC). The Bank of England is also investigating the possibilities of implementing a digital pound CDBC for payments, salary distribution and pensions.
An Australian pension fund with $66 billion at its disposal is going to invest in crypto-assets. Rest Super is actually the second fund to get interested in crypto-assets, after Queensland Investment Corporation, but plans to stay in the market only in the mid-term.
Ecosystem
While institutional investment in Bitcoin in 2021 exceeds $6 billion, $43 million has flowed into Solana in a month. According to data from CoinShares, funds continue to invest primarily in Bitcoin and Ethereum, but interest in Solana has been growing rapidly since this year.
Decentralized lending platform Maple Finance is expanding its services and authorizing a new "liquidity pool" specifically designed to make it easier for institutional investors to borrow money. The sole borrower will be Alameda Research and has committed to borrow $25 million from the pool. Only certain non-U.S., accredited institutions that go through a KYC process are allowed to lend funds.
The Sandbox’s SAND token exploded by 260% in November ahead of the launch of a play-to-earn version of its game in the metaverse scheduled to begin on November 29. 5,000 players will earn up to 1,000 SAND tokens and three non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for spending time in the 18 virtual Sandbox experiences. Adidas mentioned on Twitter the possibility of building an "adiVerse" with Sandbox’s support.
On Nov. 23, a Canadian DeFi investment company, Tokens.com, purchased nearly $2.5 million worth of virtual land on the Decentraland platform. Tokens.com purchased 116 virtual land parcels for a total of 618,000 MANA, the Decentraland project token. This purchase represents the largest transaction of its kind to date in the metaverse ecosystem.
The payment application Paypal will open the possibility for all merchants on its platform to receive payments in Bitcoin. After users, it is now the turn of merchants to be targeted by Paypal’s Bitcoin strategy, which will probably not stop there.
Niantic, the developer of the popular augmented reality mobile game Pokemon Go, plans to build a "real-world" metaverse, without explicitly saying that its metaverse would implement NFTs or cryptocurrencies. "We’re building a future where the real world is layered with digital creations, entertainment and information, making it more magical, fun and educational," said John Hanke, founder and CEO of Niantic.
Technology
The Polkadot parachute auction tops 90 million DOT, or more than $3 billion. Acala is the winner of the first Polkadot parachute auction, Moonbeam could be next. The investors have locked in 32 million in DOT for 2 years in exchange for ACA tokens for Acala, which will have to pay back this amount to the investors.
Figures
