Weekly news: 14. — 20. February

Warren Buffet invests in a crypto bank, Harmony is introducing new NFT passport, FBI formed new unit aimed at crypto, and new NFT marketplace that pays to authors is coming to the light.

Warren Buffet and Nubank

In a filling from Monday (February 14) by company Berkshire Hathaway, which is the company that made Warren Buffet so rich and famous, was announced that new huge investment was made. The company sold a portion of its Visa and MasterCard holdings, specifically $1.8 billion worth of Visa stocks and $1.3 billion worth of MasterCard stocks. On the other hand Berkshire Hathaway made huge investment worth $1 billion into Nubank. Nubank is the largest fintech bank in Brazil. This bank is also popular among the Bitcoin investors in the country. Maybe Warren changed its mind about BTC after calling it as an asset “that does not create anything.”

Harmony’s NFT passport

Blockchain platform Harmony announced on Friday launch of its Bored Ape Yacht Club Passport. The platform, whose mainnet runs on the Ethereum network and is claiming to have only two-second transaction finality and fees 1,000 times lower than Ethereum, said that it will allow its owners to upload their apes into DeFi Kingdoms. That is a play to earn game which is built on the Harmony blockchain and which currently has over 120,000 monthly active users. Thanks to the passport the owners of the apes will be able to validate and display their assets in the game when they connect their MetaMask wallet.

FBI’s team addressing crypto exploitation

On Thursday Lisa Monaco, U.S. Deputy Attorney General, announced formation the Virtual Asset Exploitation Unit. This team will be dedicated to work specially on cryptocurrency thefts. The team will have crypto experts onborad and also all the resources to track, seize and recover stolen funds. This unit will be closely working with Justice Department’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, which was formed just four months ago.

“Ransomware and digital extortion, like many other crimes fuelled by cryptocurrency, only work if the bad guys get paid, which means we have to bust their business model,” said Monaco.

NFT marketplace that pays royalties

As ETH Denver developer conference keeps going on, the attendees will get special first look presentation about the TreeTrunk marketplace. The team debuted details about TreeTrunk, which is new NFT platform whose main mission is to eliminate the risk of centralized platforms failing to pay royalty payments from secondary sales to authors correctly or on time.

According to the company, the TreeTrunk is introducing a new pioneering smart contract. This contract collects and distributes royalty payments from the secondary sales of NFTs almost immediately and securely on the blockchain. John Wolpert, co-founder of TreeTrunk and head of R&D at ConsenSys Mesh, said that same as other art creators the authors of NFTs need to reach a certain level of popularity to see a sustainable profit. That is why TreeTrunk will distribute royalty payments to collectors who make and sell authorized NFTs.

Thank you for reading.