Greentube, the NOVOMATIC Interactive division, has completed the acquisition of the majority of CashBet Coin’s CBC cryptocurrency and its underlying blockchain technologies.

Following the acquisition, Greentube will be able to expand the use of cryptocurrency across its social gaming portfolio, something that was successfully trialled last year by integrating the CBC cryptocurrency with its flagship brand GameTwist.

According to Greentube, social casino GameTwist boasts one of the world’s largest online gaming communities, and now offers the CBC cryptocurrency as an alternative payment method in every market.

Discussing the news Greentube’s Chief Games Officer, Michael Bauer, said:

“The acquisition of the CashbBet Coin Treasury allows us to expand the use of blockchain solutions and we are evaluating the spread across our B2C casino portfolio to enhance the customer experience.

“We’ve seen increasing demand from players to offer cryptocurrency as a payment option and the successful integration of CBC on GameTwist has demonstrated the benefits of the technology for social gaming.”

While President at CashBet Coin, Ed Brennan, added:

“This deal completes our ongoing partnership with Greentube and is testament to the technical excellence and versatility of CBC. Given the scale of the company’s social user base and operations the acquisition will further advance development of the technology.

“With CBC now under the control of a leader in the global iGaming industry, we look forward to establishing greater utility of the token and seeing many more integrations across Greentube’s social products and services.”

AYO.NEWS says:

This move is a big vote of confidence in the future of cryptocurrency gaming on the part of Greentube, and a major boost for CashBet. With the big players in iGaming now taking crypto and tokenisation seriously, the future is looking bright for one of the major drivers of mainstream crypto adoption.

Staying with Greentube, just yesterday we reported the company had expanded its Swiss reach, providing the platform for Casino Interlaken’s Starvegas.ch online casino.

AYO.NEWS says features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited.

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020.

Taiwan-based venture studio Nogle has invested $3 million in First Digital Trust (FDT), the Hong Kong-based crypto custodian.

FDT, which is the digital asset arm of Legacy Trust, says it will use the new capital to develop its own crypto asset platform specifically for the Asian market.

Slated to launch in May, FDT’s Rapid Settlement and Clearing Network (RSCN) trading platform is being positioned as a possible alternative to the Silvergate Exchange Network.

Though RSCN will launch offering crypto assets and traditional fiat currencies, it seems likely the company will add support for tokenised securities at a later date, and introduce more features that enable people to “trade and transact digitized assets freely.”

Nogle has also invested million in global messaging app Telegram, cryptocurrency exchange BTSE and FinTech company TNG.

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Brave’s blockchain-based web browser now has more than 4 million daily users.

According to Brenden Eich, Brave’s founder and CEO, and former Mozilla CEO, Brave now has around 12.2 million monthly users, approximately 30% of who are also using its browser on a daily basis.

Almost 550K publishers are now said to be involved in the Brave network, consisting of:

• 268,600 YouTube publishers (up 560% year-on-year)
• 52,150 Twitter publishers (program only launched a year ago)
• 45,400 website publishers (up 220%)
• 33,000 Twitch publishers (up 760%)
• 30,700 Reddit publishers (program less than a year old)
• 10,550 Github publishers
• 6,660 Vimeo publishers

It should be noted that, given there are only 254,327 BAT addresses, many publishers are operating several accounts each.

The Brave browser, which was first released in January 2016, is free and features integrated ad and tracking blocking. However, the users can enrol in Brave’s ad campaign, and earn Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) for viewing advertisements.

Users are also able to support their favourite content creators by making regular BAT donations.

12.2M MAU / 4M DAU — we will put on https://t.co/stKtfDgV01 so I don’t have to remember to tweet ;-).

— BrendanEich (@BrendanEich) March 5, 2020

AYO.NEWS says:

With effective advertising increasingly difficult in a world of ad blockers and ‘banner blind’ users, Brave’s model is intriguing to say the least. But, as with all these things, the difference between success and failure will be adoption rate. And, to go mainstream and scale, Brave needs to get way more publicity… it needs to advertise itself to the masses better. Doh.

AYO.NEWS says features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited.

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020.

Horizon Blockchain Games has secured $5m to develop its Ethereum-based digital trading card game SkyWeaver.

According to TechCrunch the funding round, which was an extension of a 2019 seed round that raised $3.75m, attracted investors including Initialized Capital, Regah Ventures, ConsenSys, Digital Currency Group, Polychain Capital, Golden Ventures, and CMT Digital.

A free-to-play (FTP) trading game, Horizon says its SkyWeaver game combines the best things about digital and physical collectible card games. According to Horizon’s co-founder and CEO, Peter Kieltyka, a “number of novel protocols and transaction infrastructure for Ethereum” have been developed, while the game is “user-friendly and easy to build on”, and is non-custodial, giving players full ownership of their items.

SkyWeaver is currently in closed beta testing with 12,000 users, and has a further 90,000 users on a waiting list for access.

AYO.NEWS says:

As we’ve said many times before here at AYO.NEWS, blockchain technology is finally making the dream of entire parallel digital economy possible. One in which players can freely move between virtual worlds, while retaining ownership and control of their items and wealth.  

Staying with blockchain collectibles, a couple of weeks ago we reported Dapper Labs, the creator of CryptoKitties, has partnered with mixed martial arts promotor Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), to create UFC-branded digital tradeable collectibles.

AYO.NEWS says features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited.

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020.

South Korea is set to introduce strict new anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CFT) rules to its burgeoning crypto industry.

Yesterday, lawmakers in Seoul voted to amend the country’s existing Financial Information Act, passing a bill introducing stringent new rules. The amendment should be signed into law by the president within a couple of weeks, with some of its provisions coming into effect in one year, and the rest six months later.

Tough new rules for crypto companies

All VASPs (virtual asset service providers) will now be required to register with regulators and partner with a single bank for deposits and withdrawals. By linking virtual and traditional bank accounts, both of which must be registered to the real name of the user, authorities are hoping to make it easier to track illicit funds.

All systems used by VASPs will also need to be certified by the Korean Internet Security Agency – something that can take a long time and cost a lot of money, reflected by the fact that, so far, only a handful of companies have been certified.

Bad news for smaller businesses and ICOs?

Though larger businesses will probably be unphased by the new rules, it could signal the end for many smaller projects, especially initial coin offerings (ICO), that can’t afford the added costs in terms of money and time. It is expected this could lead to some market consolidation, as smaller exchanges merge or close down.

AYO.NEWS says:

The crackdown is the latest example of a country trying to comply with the new AML and ATF directives issued by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Just last week we reported that Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi had strengthened their crypto rules, while earlier in February Switzerland also slashed the reporting threshold for crypto transactions, and at the end of January Ukraine enacted similar rules.

AYO.NEWS says features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited.

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020.

AlphaPoint, the white label crypto exchange provider, has raised a further $5.6 million to help it scale its business.

Underpinning 150 crypto exchanges

The New York-based company’s white label tech now provides the backend for 150 cryptocurrency exchanges in 35 countries, which collectively serve over a million end users.

According to AlphaPoint, the new capital will be used to further develop its platform, introduce new features like margin trading, advanced brokerage facilities, and improved liquidity solutions.

Discussing the investment AlphaPoint Co-Founder &. CEO, Igor Telyatnikov, said:

“This capital injection enables AlphaPoint to continue delivering on our mission to enable access to digital assets globally. We are still in the early days of adoption and utilization of blockchain technology. Stay tuned in 2020 as we will soon announce the release of a series of new liquidity, leverage, and lending products and solutions to our customers.”

Since launching in 2013, AlphaPoint has attracted a total of $23.9m in investment, including $15 million from Galaxy Digital Ventures in 2018.

New appointments

The company has also announced the appointment of Tim Scheve, President and CEO of Janney Montgomery Scott, and Jan Mayle, founder and CEO of The Mayle Group, to its board of directors and advisory board.

Commenting on his appointment, Sheve said:

“Blockchain and other emerging technologies have the potential to substantially change aspects of financial services. After personally observing advancements in these technologies for some time, I’m excited to engage more directly with Igor and the team at AlphaPoint to understand their impact on our industry.”

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020.