The Sandbox (TSB) raised over $2M in funding from big-name backers, including Square Enix, between July and September last year.

Attracting big-name backers

Between 9 July and 19 September 2019, TSB Gaming says it secured a total of $2.01M from investors including Square Enix, B Cryptos, Mindfulness Capital, and True Global Ventures. The funding consisted of 83% cash and 17% digital assets – SAND tokens and simple agreement for future equity notes.

In total, TSB Gaming, which is now a standalone company, with Animoca Brands as a major shareholder, has now raised $4.51m.

Though The Sandbox game has been around for eight years in non-blockchain form under Pixowl, which was acquired by Animoca Brands in 2018, the launch of the Ethereum blockchain version will allow players to monetise their own voxel gaming creations and experiences.

A true virtual world and economy

Players can buy virtual land (LAND), build and create gaming experiences for others to enjoy. Assets can be traded and a whole virtual economy is made possible. A truly decentralised world, it gives users true ownership of their creations via non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Though right now relatively few people know about The Sandbox and how it works, the company has stressed that anyone will be able to play its games, without needing to know anything about blockchain, meaning it has the potential to go mainstream in a big way.

In February we reported TSB had sold out of LAND within hours during its second presale, with 90% sending in the first hour.

The Sandbox game is expected to launch sometime in the second-half of 2020.

AYO.NEWS says:

The Sandbox Game really does pull together so many strands that have been floating around for a while, into one coherent vision for a truly virtual world and economy, and given its obvious appeal to a generation who have grown up with voxel games like Minecraft, we’d reckon’ its going to be huge.

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.

The White House has issued a call to action to the tech community to help develop new machine-readable COVID-19 dataset.

On 16 March, researchers from the Allen Institute for AI, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), Microsoft, and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health released the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19) of scholarly literature about COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, and the Coronavirus group.

The dataset was requested by The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and represents the most extensive machine-readable Coronavirus literature collection available for data and text mining to-date – containing more than 29,000 articles, of which over 13,000 have full text.

Officials hope America’s artificial intelligence (AI) experts will be able to develop new data mining techniques to help the scientific community answer high-priority questions related to COVID-19.

CORD-19 is available at SemanticScholar.org and will be updated as new research is published in archival services and peer-reviewed publications. New text and data mining tools and insights can submitted via the Kaggle platform – a machine learning and data science community owned by Google Cloud. The tools will be openly available to researchers worldwide.

Discussing the project U.S. Chief Technology Officer, The White House, Michael Kratsios, said:

“Decisive action from America’s science and technology enterprise is critical to prevent, detect, treat, and develop solutions to COVID-19.

“The White House will continue to be a strong partner in this all hands-on-deck approach. We thank each institution for voluntarily lending its expertise and innovation to this collaborative effort, and call on the United States research community to put artificial intelligence technologies to work in answering key scientific questions about the novel Coronavirus.”

While Director of Data Science at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), Dr. Dewey Murdick, added:

“This valuable new resource is the fruit of unselfish collaboration and now offers the opportunity to find answers to important questions about COVID-19. Once the crisis has passed, we hope this project will inspire new ways to use machine learning to advance scientific research.”

AYO.NEWS says:

If ever there was a pressing use-case for AI, this must be it! People often forget that, despite our advanced technologies and access to information, scientists, researchers and medical professionals can still struggle to find information in time, or even miss it completely, due to the sheer amount available. Hopefully this project will help find the crucial missing pieces of the multitude of puzzles experts are now trying to answer.

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.

AYO.NEWS’ Simona Pinterova talks with Susan Oh, Co-founder & CEO of Muckr.ai, at DELTA Summit 2019, Malta.

Susan Oh, Co-founder & CEO of Muckr.ai (and Professional BS Detector) talks trolls, propaganda, fact checking and the critical importance of being willing to be moved by reason. Filmed at Delta Summit 2019, Malta.

Find out more about the Muckr.ai at https://muckr.ai/

The US state of Hawaii has launched a new Digital Currency Innovation Lab, to help develop a better understanding of digital currencies and inform regulation.

Crypto firms can conduct business without money transmitter license

Announced by the governor’s office on 17 March, the blockchain and cryptocurrency incubator has been developed in collaboration with the state’s Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Division of Financial Institution (DFI), and the Hawaii Technology Development Corporation (HTDC).

Set to run for two years, the initiative will enable digital currency issuers to conduct business in the state without having to obtain a money transmitter license. Confirming this, Hawaii’s commissioner of financial institutions, Iris Ikeda, says the DFI has issued a ‘no-action’ message to prevent any regulatory action being taken against companies participating in the sandbox.

It has been stressed that, despite not needing a license, all companies will be “carefully reviewed to ensure that Hawaii’s consumers are protected, with participating companies demonstrating they have the essential capital, financial and technical expertise to conduct business in the State.”

Those behind the program hope that the knowledge gained from it will enable Hawaii to create and attractive but effective regulatory framework for the blockchain and digital currency sectors, and help the state “reap the economic benefits that accompany the leadership stand taken.”

Companies interested in participating must apply before 1 May, and pay a $500 application fee, along with $1,000 for each term.

Is it enough to convince firms?

Although cryptocurrency companies have been permitted to operate in Hawaii, its double-reserve requirement (stipulating companies must maintain fiat reserves equal to the total of their own + their clients crypto holdings), sent most firms, including Coinbase, running back in 2017.

AYO.NEWS says:

Though this is a welcome move on the part of Hawaiian authorities, we aren’t so sure it will convince many firms to bother with the state again. After all, there are no indications of what will follow after two years. It just goes to show the folly of jurisdictions introducing knee-jerk rules, and scaring companies away, in the early years of the crypto industry.

Staying with blockchain sector incentives, just yesterday we reported the South Korean government announced plans to support nine projects with new funding.

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.

A couple of Canadian Bitcoin scammers are starting prison sentences in the United States after being found guilty of stealing 23.2 BTC via a Twitter scam in 2017.

Impersonating HitBTC reps

The two British Columbia residents, 23-year-old Karanji Khatkar and 24-year-old Jagroop Khatkar, have been sentenced to 24 months in a federal prison and 3 years of supervised release, for money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

The audacious crime saw the Khatkars use the Twitter handle ‘@HitBTAssist’ to impersonate customer service representatives of Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange HitBTC, and trick an Oregon resident to disclose sensitive information about their HitBTC, Kraken and email accounts.

Once in possession of the key information, the Khatkars transferred 23.2 BTC to Karanjit’s wallet – worth around $130,000 at the time (approx. $119K today).

Flash cars and handcuffs in Las Vegas

In keeping with bungling crypto scammers everywhere, the pair promptly sold the Bitcoins and splurged the cash on living the high life – Karanjit buying a $40K Mercedes-Benz within 48 hours, then hightailing it to Las Vegas to gamble away thousands of dollars.

Unfortunately for Karanjit, one of his trips to Vegas ended in handcuffs, as he was arrested at McCarran International Airport on 18 July 2019. His partner in crime, Jagroop, handed himself in to police.

The pair pleaded guilty and were ordered to pay back $184,511 in addition to serving two years in a federal prison and three years of supervised release.

AYO.NEWS says:

Though this crime was committed back in 2017, when the crypto industry was still something like the ‘Wild West’ in North America, its worth remembering that scammers are still hard at work, and have become much more sophisticated.

For example, a couple of weeks ago we reported on a massive €63M ($70M) Ukrainian Bitcoin (BTC) scam targeting investors in Australia, New Zealand, Sweden and the United Kingdom. In that case, the operation involved a company with up to 200 employees working from 2 floors of an office building in Kiev!

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.

The South Korean government has announced plans to further support the blockchain industry in the country with $3.2m in dedicated funding.

According to local media, a pilot program called ‘Blockchain Technology Validation Support in 2020’ is being jointly launched by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Ministry of Information and Communication Industry Promotion.

Specifically, nine blockchain projects will be chosen, with each one receiving up to 450M won (approx. $360,000) in grants. Apparently, the projects will be selected based on current performance, feasibility of future performance and technology verification, business goals and the employment potential offered.

Basically, to be in with a chance of getting funding, the projects will have to demonstrate they will create social and economic value through blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and big data.

Just a couple of weeks ago we reported that South Korea is set to introduce strict new anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CFT) rules to its burgeoning cryptocurrency industry.

AYO.NEWS says:

Its fantastic to see the South Korean government continue to support the sustainable development of blockchain and other emerging technologies, even at a time when much of the world seems to be paralysing itself with COVID-19 reactions.

By not ‘taking its eyes of the ball’, will South Korea emerge as even more of a global leader when the dust has settled?

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.