Weekly news: 17. — 23. January
Holy oath in Georgia, new NFT marketplace, Bulgaria considering crypto payments and $1 million for NFTs.
Citizens of Georgia take holy oath
The citizens of Svaneti, historic province of Georgia, have taken a holy oath that they will not mine cryptocurrency. This oath was taken to ensure so there won’t be no energy shortages and to ensure that power grid will have enough energy. This all is happening for one reason, COVID-19. When Covid hit, the tourism, which is main source of income in Svaneti, fell to all time low. For your info, the tourism in Svantei rose from 2000 to 2019 every year.
So, that was a reason why many of the citizens of Svaneti turned to mining cryptocurrencies. As to the holy oath, it took place on December 30, 2021, and these oaths are seen as unbreakable bonds.
Coinbase +Mastercard = NFT Marketplace
On Tuesday, Raj Dhamodharan (Mastercard executive vice president of digital assets and blockchain products), announced that Mastercard is preparing to make a bond with Coinbase to allow people to invest into NFTs. This deal should help with easing the process of buying your first NFT, especially if you don’t know anything about it. This should cut out the need of creating your own Metamask wallet and buying Ethereum (ETH). If this happens, you would be able to just buy NFT with your credit card.
In October, Coinbase announced launch of their own Marketplace. Since then, more than 1 million have signed up to be on the waiting list. So, this partnership could mean a lot for cryptocurrency enthusiasts and the world of NFTs.
Bulgaria and crypto payments
Bulgaria is not a rookie when it comes to cryptocurrencies. The government may still be one of the biggest HODLers after they seized around 213 000 BTC from an underground crime network. This happened even before 2017 bull run. These Bitcoins were valuated at around $3.5 billion at the time, but at the time of publication, the value is more than $8.2 billion. But, we don’t know if they sold or if they are still HODLing.
Anyways, Assan Vasilev (Bulgaria’s deputy prime minister for EU Funds and minister of Finance) announced that the country is actively exploring ways and options to publish their crypto payment mechanism. According to Bloomberg, the government is in talks with the Bulgarian National Bank regarding crypto payments. Also, Vasillev added that he thinks that even they maybe HODL huge amount of BTC, it is unlikely that Bulgaria would become another crypto mining hub, even considering that miners are thinking about leaving Kazakhstan because of the political situation and disruptions to the internet.
An Indonesian made $1m from selling selfies.
Sultan Gustaf Al Ghozali. He is Indonesian 22 years old student of computer science from Semarang. For years he was taking selfies on his notebook, which he wanted to save as “a way to look back on his graduation journey.” But in todays world of NFTs he decided to upload these selfies on OpenSea with price tag of $3 for one selfie. He did not expect to get any huge response, but exactly that happened.
On Friday, one of the selfies was sold for 0.247 Ether ($806). Some of the selfies were even sold for thousand of dollars. With that said, the whole traded volume reached value of more than $1 million (or 317 ETH). This is just another proof that if you want it enough, you can make money from anything.
Thank you for reading.
