Tezos, who hasn’t been bashful when it comes to creative and exciting sports collaborations, is snatching a piece of the esports action for itself.
Tezos has announced a partnership with Team Vitality, a big European esports group, to close out the first week of the new year. Let’s take a look at what Tezos has been up to in terms of sports sponsorship recently, as well as how esports and gaming involvement has looked with crypto and blockchain enterprises thus far.
The agreement between Tezos and Vitality is already being billed as the largest European esports contract in history. The collaboration will begin this year and will last through 2024. Tezos will have brand marks on all player jerseys for Vitality, an organization having competitive players in League of Legends, Rocket League, and CS: GO – three of the biggest titles in competitive gaming history. The transaction was dubbed “the largest partnership in Team Vitality history” by Vitality.
Mason Edwards, Chief of Staff at the Tezos Foundation, had the following to say about the new collaboration:
“This is a significant step forward for Europe’s leading esports team as the blockchain and gaming industries continue to build a fan and player-centric future for esports. The decision from Team Vitality to choose the energy-efficient Tezos blockchain as a technical partner is another signal to the established and growing gaming vertical that low gas fees, forkless upgradability, and ease-of-use are the key factors driving the next wave of adoption for blockchain technologies.”
While Tezos has dabbled in esports before, they haven’t done so at a scale comparable to this week’s agreement.
Tezos’ most notable relationship in sports thus far is unquestionably last year’s agreement with Red Bull’s F1 racing squad. The blockchain also collaborated with Ubisoft for their first NFTs centered on their game titled Ghost Recon Breakpoint, which had a lukewarm market response.
Tezos aims to promote itself as a business enterprise solution and major rival for enterprises looking to participate in the NFT and blockchain ecosystem, emphasizing the platform’s low gas prices and energy efficiency.
Ertha has launched its native ERTHA coin on Huobi Primelist to great success, one of the most eagerly anticipated metaverse projects. The play-to-earn game made significant development in 2021 and is currently on track to provide a one-of-a-kind experience to NFT gaming aficionados later this year.
Ertha has grabbed the attention of some of the largest names in DeFi, resulting in high-profile investments and, now, valuable cooperation with a team well-known for its shining reputation within the game development community.
Cryowar, a next-generation play-to-earn arena brawler powered by the Solana blockchain, has partnered with Ertha. The passion of the Cryowar crew for their craft and commitment to highlighting NFT gaming unites the two teams’ shared principles. The collaboration will be exciting news for both communities, as their interchange of ideas will undoubtedly open up new pathways and viewpoints, together pushing the boundaries of blockchain gaming.
More on Cryowar
Cryowar is a real-time multiplayer 1v1v1 arena brawler powered by NFT. The game’s closed beta has received rave reviews, created in Unreal Engine 4 for the Solana blockchain. In a huge Medieval Sci-Fi metaverse playable on PC, Android, and iOS, players fight in violent multi-realm conflicts.
The Cryowar team’s journey began at Gamescom 2018 in Cologne, Germany. Four members of the development team were on hand to demonstrate participants an early build of their game. Gamescom is well-known for attracting gamers from all over the world, and while the stakes were high, the team’s demo dazzled, paving the way for a bright and profitable future.
Collaboration with Industry Leaders
While an experienced team and strong fundamentals are critical to the success of any project, so are the alliances created along the road. Each is critical in producing the necessary exposure to recruit new gamers from around the world. Their collaborations have demonstrated the success of the Cryowar teams in this field with DeFi titans such as Mechanism Capital, GD10 Ventures, Polygon Studios, Animoca Brands, Kucoin Labs, and Alameda Research.
Cross-Metaverse Marketing? Keep an eye out
Ertha joins this illustrious group of collaborators at an ideal time, and fans can expect the relationship to go far beyond sharing ideas and thoughts. There’s also the intriguing prospect of cross-metaverse NFTs, which will add to the excitement of Ertha’s massive globe map’s continuing expansion.
Ertha has just completed its TGE debut, first on Huobi Primelist and then on PancakeSwap, much to the pleasure of NFT gaming aficionados. It’s an exciting time for everyone involved with the project since 2022 is building up to be a massive year for the game. Head over to Discord or follow the project’s announcements on Twitter to join one of the most welcoming and active communities in blockchain gaming.
Betting on sports is fun and simple; especially if you’re a sports enthusiast. It’s also a great way to make some money. But, getting started on the right foot takes some time. Rushing into things could set you up for failure in the long run.
It’s important to plan, research, and analyze things before placing your first bet to get a good head start.
That’s why in this post, we look at the things every beginner should follow to avoid discouragement.
Set a Budget & Use a Staking Plan
When it comes to sports betting, you’re far more likely to lose money than make some. That’s why it’s mega important to set a budget and know how much you are ready to lose.
As part of the staking plan, you must determine the amount you can stake on each wager in relation to your overall budget. Ideally, it should be no more than 1-2%. So, if you currently own a thousand dollars, don’t go above bets costing more than ten dollars.
You WILL make mistakes. That’s a given. The best you can do is make plenty of bets and learn from them before running out of money. The longer you can manage to stay within the game, the better chances you will have to create a winning system and understand how the betting system works.
Play in Quality Leagues that You Know Well
Avoid betting on too many sports. Ideally, go with the ones you know inside out. You should definitely avoid any sports you don’t fully understand or follow religiously. The concept of leagues is relevant to only certain sports.
For example, you can easily bet on every single tennis tournament since mostly it’s the same players participating in most games. It’s not hard to keep track of things in a sport like Tennis. With soccer, however, things are completely different. There are way too many leagues and tournaments to keep track of. Though in 2-3 leagues, you should know the players and teams well enough.
Analyze the Situation of The Teams
In betting, never leave anything to chance. Sure, there can be instances where you could make predictions that no one else could. But, mostly that takes a lot of practice and strong instincts.
To increase the odds of winning a bet, always analyze the history of a team, their defeats, victories, scores, player form, goals conceded, etc. All these things are essential for winning a sports game; especially a game like Football.
Avoid Dangerous Sports
As a sports bettor, you won’t generally suspect a game to be fixed. However, that can happen at times. While some sports are more difficult to fix, there’s always a possibility with some of them.
And, if that happens, it could cost you a ton of money. For example, golf and tennis are the easiest to fix since the entire outcome of the game can be manipulated by just one person. Team sports like football, however, are harder to fix. As such, avoid betting on risky sports.
Place Your Wagers Online
Today with online betting sites, it’s easier than ever to place wagers online. The only hard part is picking which sites to join. And, while most of the sites are safe, there may be occasional scammers. So, be careful with what you pick.
As such, it’s always good to select a few sites and sign-up with those. Doing so has several clear advantages. The biggest one is – it makes it easier to compare the odds and lines. Also, when you use multiple sites, you get access to multiple rewards and bonuses.
Learn the Concept of Value
The ability to spot value is something that comes slowly over time. It’s the ability to recognize when the odds are high, systematically, and consistently. With this ability, you have better opportunities to capitalize on.
The overall principle is similar to that of successful stock trading. You buy a stock when it’s undervalued hoping it will appreciate later on. In sports betting, you’re essentially ‘buying stocks’ of undervalued teams, hoping for a win later on.
Your advantage over a bookmaker lies in how successfully and consistently you can avoid betting on matches with unfavorable odds. Recognizing value is the most difficult thing to do in sports betting. This is something that requires consistency and tons of practice. But, once there, you will have a systematic and winning edge over others.
Always Compare Odds & Lines
This one tip is highly promising and super easy to follow. There’s not much to compare odds and lines. It takes only a couple of moments every time you have to place a wager. You will notice that different sites and bookmakers offer different odds and lines.
All you have to do is shop around for a while checking out each wager. By doing so, you can get the best possible outcome. Although the difference between odds and line is generally small, it does add up over time.
Take a look at this example –
Let’s say you were betting $50 on Daniel Jacobs in this case. Going by the odds on the first website, you would stand to win $36.50. The odds at the 2nd website give you a chance to win $37.50.
If we look at the odds at the 3rd website, you stand to win $40. The total difference between the worst and the best odds is $3.50. This may not look like much of a difference but it’s about 10%. Such an analysis, over time, certainly adds up!
In Conclusion
To be successful at sports wagers, you must have a few qualities like patience, consistency, restraint, an analytical mindset, and most important – intuition. Don’t expect miracles to happen when you are just starting. It may take some time until you finally get the hang of things.
We’ve all heard stories about lucky crypto investors who became millionaires virtually overnight when the value of their initial investments skyrocketed in the early years. Crypto has progressed so far that many people believe it is already mainstream, especially with institutional investors making large stakes in the industry.
Those who did not take advantage of the early investment chances may have felt they had missed out. On the other hand, the beauty of cryptocurrency is that it has opened up an entire world of possibilities for individuals who are serious about making money.
Cryptocurrency derivatives
With cryptocurrency now firmly established, it’s less probable that purchasing and keeping tokens would yield the desired results. That is not to imply that investing opportunities do not exist. Instead, the smart money is betting on higher potential gains via crypto derivatives, which allow investors to speculate on the movement of Bitcoin and other tokens without actually possessing the assets.
Crypto derivatives are a type of trade in which two parties enter into a financial contract to speculate on the future price of a cryptocurrency. The buyer and seller will have made opposed forecasts about the asset’s future trading price and will bet on what they feel it will be worth in the future. Smart investors can profit from derivatives by purchasing cryptocurrency at a lower price than its market value and selling it at a higher price.
Crypto derivatives can be accessed on decentralized exchange platforms such as SynFutures, allowing Ethereum-native, cross-chain, and off-chain assets to be synthesized and freely exchanged for those willing to take a risk.
SynFutures’ Synthetic Automated Market Maker is one of its features, allowing participants to offer a single digital asset of a trading pair, with a smart contract to synthesize the other. The platform also provides user-generated markets, which allow anybody to list trading pairs in seconds, as well as a unique architecture that allows you to list crypto majors, altcoins, NFTs, and other assets with a single token.
You Can Get Paid to Write Reviews
There are various ways to earn cryptocurrency for individuals who do not have the stomach for trading. One of the simplest options for many people may be to write reviews of the products and services they buy.
That is the goal of the Lum Network, which has developed a mechanism for businesses to compensate consumers who review their products honestly and transparently, even if those reviews are bad. Companies have a strong incentive to do so because research suggests that up to 95% of consumers currently read at least one review before purchasing a product or service. As a result, trustworthy evaluations can be extremely beneficial to businesses, allowing them to sell significantly more things.
Lum Network aims to eliminate the possibility of consumers falling for phony, bought reviews. It accomplishes this by using a blockchain-based decentralized rewards system. Anyone can examine the unchangeable records for each review and prove that a consumer who submitted a 1-star review received the same compensation as someone who provided a 5-star judgment.
The protocol works by awarding prizes based on the quality of the reviews rather than the number of stars provided, taking into account elements such as the number of characters used, connected photo or video, and more.
Lum Network assures that everyone reading reviews can trust what they’re reading, while those who buy things and post a high-quality but honest review will be compensated for their time.
Sell Your Talents
Another option for those with abilities to offer is traditional freelancing. However, many people — whether they are writers, graphic designers, logo designers, or developers – are turned off by the exorbitant prices and the risk of being scammed through traditional services such as Freelancer, Upwork, and Fiverr.
There is no risk of being scammed with the HUMAN Protocol, and there is no middleman who will take a huge cut of whatever cash is promised. HUMAN Protocol is a blockchain-based open-source infrastructure that has developed a decentralized marketplace for freelancers.
The advantage for freelancers is that they do not have to join up for workpools or go through a time-consuming identification verification process. They will receive the promised amount in full, with no costs deducted. Furthermore, they are compensated in the HUMAN Protocol’s native $HMT token, eliminating the need to use an expensive payment source like PayPal to get their revenue.
Stake Your Cryptocurrency Assets
One of the most reliable ways to earn is to stake those coins in exchange for rewards for individuals who already have crypto assets. Staking is the process of validating crypto transactions. When staking, the user retains their money’s ownership while storing it in a bitcoin wallet.
Proof of stake networks then utilizes those currencies to validate transactions, rewarding the user in exchange. Staking is essentially the lending of coins to the network, maintaining security, and validating transactions. The benefits are similar to the interest offered by banks for keeping a credit balance open.
Venus Protocol’s $XVS is one of the most popular staking coins. The Venus Protocol is a decentralized lending protocol that enables liquidity providers to stake their currencies in exchange for a highly competitive yearly percentage yield of up to 40%. It’s a terrific opportunity for investors to make extra coins and protect themselves from the volatility of the cryptocurrency market in general.
Give Crypto Networks Liquidity
One last approach to profit from cryptocurrencies is to supply liquidity for the hundreds of cryptocurrency tokens required. A liquidity provider is a user who contributes crypto assets to a liquidity pool to support trade on a platform.
In exchange, clients obtain a passive income on their deposits. Liquidity providers play an important role in many networks and are seen as vital trade facilitators, with transaction fees paid for trades they helped allow.
There are numerous liquidity providers in crypto, but one of the most fascinating is izumi Finance, which provides programmable liquidity as a service on Uniswap V3 and multi-chains. Izumi Finance’s LiquidBox protocol, which distributes incentive payouts at several price ranges, assists investors in maximizing their returns.
It says liquidity providers can earn higher trading fees with capital efficiency while benefiting from additional incentives with linked protocols by providing simple, easy-to-use tools for users to stake their tokens.
The examples above are only a few of the countless ways crypto aficionados can earn more tokens and put their assets to use. More effort is required, but for adventurous individuals, the tactics outlined above can yield significantly bigger gains than the simplistic “Buy and HODL” strategies that rewarded early crypto investors so well in the past.
Logan Paul, a popular internet star and controversial figure, reveals how much money he made selling his first NFT. Many people would only dream of having this number after a successful sale overnight.
The bitcoin market is becoming increasingly profitable these days. Aside from the high value of crypto coins, digital assets already command exorbitant prices. Mostly to the benefit of the seller who creates them digitally. Logan Paul, a notable figure whose rise to prominence is attributed to having a strong internet presence, is such a donor.
So, what does this former YouTuber-turned-boxer have to sell, and how much money does he make from it?
After selling his initial digital artwork straight from the horse’s mouth, Logan Paul posted what he received. It involves the “World of Women” NFT, which sold for a whopping 200 ETH, according to his January 5 tweet. That is 200 Ethereum crypto tokens, the corresponding cash value of which is currently estimated to be roughly $765 thousand. However, Paul reveals revenue of at least $535 thousand, despite the fact that the total profits are not the net income.
That is a lot of money for a single piece of art that a computer can create with zeroes and ones. On the other hand, Logan Paul is no new to the realm of NFT in general. He is an enthusiastic spender in it, claiming to have spent roughly $2.6 million on NFT in December 2021. That is not a tiny sum.
However, this does not necessarily equate to his more recent Pokemon Trading Card Game boxes, which cost him $3.5 million. Regardless of whether the purchased things are genuine or counterfeit, as some critics assert.
But what does being an NFT vendor imply for someone as well-known as Logan Paul?
Logan’s celebrity will undoubtedly play a significant factor in his NFT endeavor. Some people, it appears, find value in what others in vogue do, which includes something digital and creative like NFT. And for something that can be done quickly and cheaply, this is something Logan could continue and grow on with little effort. We can only speculate on what the result would be.
It appears that the Solana blockchain is having a rough week, as it has faced yet another network performance degradation incident for the second time this week. According to the blockchain, this failure occurs due to the increase of high compute transactions.
Because of these transactions, the network capacity decreased to only several thousand transactions per second (TPS) from the original 50,000 TPS. Solana claimed this to be the primary reason users’ transactions failed this week. However, the network assures us that its team of developers is already in the process of fixing these issues.
This latest issue happened only a couple of days after a similar occurrence on Tuesday, where users had experienced the same issues. The community theorizes that the initial incident from Tuesday was because of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. However, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko disputed these claims on Twitter by saying that it’s only the “pain of getting a new runtime commercialized.”
On a related note, Justin Bons, the chief investment officer of Cyber Capital, expressed that he disapproves of Solana. In the middle of the network’s recent issues, he sent out a thread of tweets explaining why he doesn’t support Solana. According to Bons, Solana continuously shows a “pattern of bad behavior” and “prioritizing attracting ignorant investors over good blockchain design.”
Other than that, Bons also criticized Solana’s level of security, noting that DDoS attacks aren’t the only thing the network is concerned about. He adds that DDoS can be merged with a 51% attack. As such, attackers can acquire “proportional-staked control over the network” by striking at the other stakeholders, albeit temporarily.
However, Yakovenko disregarded Bons’ criticisms by saying this was only “exhausting nonsense” and that “it’s impossible to DDoS a private key.”
A DDoS attack in the Solana network last year caused a similar effect that degraded its performance. Austin Federa, the head of communications for Solana Labs, explained that the outage occurred after several transactions in the middle of an initial DEX offering “landed in a Solana block” and it took a massive amount of “compute power.”
Norton, considered by many to be one of the top-ranking antiviruses for laptops and PCs, recently integrated its crypto mining extension during Q3 of 2021. However, most users never realized or noticed the existence of that extension.
During the last weeks of 2021, Norton improved the extension to ensure the mining services worked as intended. However, the updates they’ve made didn’t change any of the policies, leaving many users quite dissatisfied.
Users suggest that Norton 360, which is what the mining extension is called, significantly slows down their computers. Not only that, it doesn’t offer any real profit. As such, its operation is pretty much considered pointless. The only upside that some users found is that the extension has a minimum requirement of 6 GB of RAM and an NVIDIA model video card. If your computer or laptop doesn’t reach those requirements, the extension won’t work without your consent.
Unfortunately, there’s no way for you to stop or pause the mining process if your device meets those requirements, even if you don’t want to use the extension.
Norton’s Clarification
Norton explains that it created the crypto-mining extension to easily help users acquire Ethereum through an uncomplicated process. The crypto project undoubtedly seems like a breath of fresh air amidst the complexities of crypto mining, but it may not be as popular as Norton had hoped due to the lack of free will.
Not only that, Norton doesn’t offer the mining extension for free. In exchange, it asks for 15% of the mined proceeds. On top of that, users are charged with an interest rate to move their funds to a cryptocurrency exchange. Many are baffled by how poorly organized this project is, not to mention that it also discredits the crypto market in general and what it has achieved thus far.
It’s expected that more complaints against Norton will soon flood in, especially since at least 50% of the company’s customers aren’t happy with the service they’ve provided. On the other hand, some users claim that they received real profits from the crypto mining extension, although they fail to mention how much ETH they accumulated in a month.
Ethereum’s native coin Ether trades at $3,811 at this time, with a slight improvement of 0.65% compared to its price over the last week. Ether has become the second most profit-making option after Bitcoin for those who choose to mine crypto due to how much simpler the process is.
Kevin O’Leary, millionaire and crypto advocate, thinks that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) could someday become more valuable than Bitcoin (BTC).
During an interview with CNBC’s Capital Connection last Wednesday, O’Leary a.k.a “Mr. Wonderful” reasoned that NFTs have more potential to draw in more capital than Bitcoin. Why? Because they can tokenize and authenticate material assets like cars, watches, and even real estate.
However, he also admits that he’s not restricted to that bet, and would, therefore, invest in both sectors. Believe it or not, but Mr. Wonderful used to be one of the crypto skeptics. However, he admitted in a recent interview with Cointelegraph that his change of mind toward blockchain and digital assets was because more and more regulators have been warming up for the last few years.
the-design_org (CC0), Pixabay
However, not everyone agrees that Bitcoin and NFTs can be compared. Specifically, CoinGecko co-founder and chief operating officer Bobby Ong said to Cointelegraph that he doesn’t think it’s fair to compare BTC to NFTs, as the former is only one asset while the latter is an entire sector.
Nevertheless, Ong notes that the adoption of NFTs in 2022 will only keep increasing, especially since the sector is still in its early days and that there’s “a lot of room to grow.”
In other news, CoinGecko recently published a brand-new book entitled How To NFT. It’s essentially a one-stop guide for NFT newcomers, giving them a thorough rundown on how to buy, sell, store, and mint non-fungible tokens.
These days, it seems that more and more politicians are diving into the world of cryptocurrency. And while it’s not new for US mayors to support crypto, NYC mayor Eric Adams has officially shown his support for Bitcoin, even encouraging investors to embrace this leading digital asset.
During the Squawk Box television show, Adams disclosed that he has yet to receive his first crypto payment, but he trusts that he will receive it soon. The politician is set to receive a check worth 1.51 Bitcoin every month, which is equal to $21,562 when converted to USD.
He believes it’s sometimes better to purchase cryptocurrencies when they’re down, referring to Bitcoin specifically. Adams believes in the importance of taking advantage of new technologies, so he wants NYC to be a leader in all these crypto advances in the USA.
Is New York Essential to the Crypto Market?
Even though it seems as if New York is just another state that typically accepts Bitcoin, the “big apple” is also the headquarters for leading national regulators like the SEC and the attorney general’s agency. If Adams keeps his promise to create crypto-related laws, the penalties related to the market will most likely be forgotten.
As mentioned, Adams still hasn’t received his first check-in Bitcoin. However, he promised to accept three consecutive payments in support of decentralized commerce after being elected. While it’s true that NYC and Miami mayors put much of their focus on the crypto market, Bitcoin and Ethereum don’t break their bearish streak.
Bitcoin is now trading at $43,351, as it decreased by 5.99% in the last 24 hours. On the other hand, Ether loses its footing within the virtual market with a value of $3,433 after decreasing more than 8% during its last day.
Although non-fungible tokens (NFTs) aren’t exactly a necessity during this time, we can’t deny that they have been increasing in popularity as of late. As Castlevania’s 35th anniversary quickly approaches, it appears that renowned Japanese gaming giant Konami will be celebrating it with the Konami Memorial NFT collection.
The new project is expected to feature 14 unique, never-before-seen artworks from the fan-favorite series. What’s more, the collection contains game scenes, background music, and newly-drawn visuals.
The entire collection will be posted for worldwide auction starting this January 13, 2022, at 6 AM (UTC+8) OpenSea, the popular NFT marketplace. Interested fans can expect more details coming soon on the official website.
This event will mark Konami’s first steps into the world of NFTs and blockchain technology. After releasing this initial collection, the company is looking to “explore new developments and listen to player feedback.”
These are some of the pieces you can expect to find in the collection:
Castlevania – Dracula’s Castle Pixel Art: This is a brand-new original pixel art that Konami drew only for this collection. The piece is based on ‘Dracula’s Castle,’ a map that appears in the first Castlevania game. It also comes with companion stages and creatures to relive the action-packed adventure.
Castlevania – Vampire Killer: The second piece in the collection isn’t artwork but the iconic musical piece from the opening level (Block 1) of the first Castlevania title. It comes as a video with several in-game scenes displayed.
Castlevania – Highlights: This NFT comes in the form of a highlight movie reworked with different gameplay footage. It concentrates on the most memorable scenes from the Castlevania franchise. The entire movie abridges the story of the legendary vampire hunter, Simon Belmont, and his incursion against Dracula and Dracula’s Castle, fitting the entire event to only 3 minutes and 34 seconds.
Before announcing the NFT collection, Konami recently released the Castlevania Advance Collection. This collection featured three classic titles from the Game Boy Advance and was remade for PC and console optimization. Not only that, but the company also released Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls for Apple Arcade in 2021.
