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Hey Waivly Crew! 🌊 While speaking at an event yesterday, the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, confirmed that the company is approaching the metaverse carefully. Apple has reported that its App Store has generated a total of $260 billion in revenue since it launched in 2008.

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Microsoft has big plans for the Metaverse

At the Microsoft FutureReady event on Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that the metaverse is the next big thing for Microsoft.

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“Human presence is the ultimate connection. You and I can have a meeting where we are all present together without actually being physically present. That's the next thing, and we are approaching this thoughtfully,” Nadella said.

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Nadella added that “for years, we have been talking about creating digital representation, and now we have the opportunity to do so and bring humanity with us."

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During the company’s event in November 2021, Microsoft revealed that it is set to launch Mesh for its vide-conferencing platform, Microsoft Teams. Mesh is a new mixed reality platform that allows people to create their own digital avatars and collaborate in a virtual environment, such as an office. 

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While Microsoft has big software plans for the metaverse, the company will also develop AR technology. During CES 2022 last week, Microsoft announced its partnership with Qualcomm to develop a new customized Snapdragon augmented reality chip to power future Microsoft AR glasses within its ecosystem.

Lympo loses $18M in a Hot Wallet hack

Lympo, a sports-focused NFT platform and subsidiary of Animoca Brands, has lost $18.7m following a hot wallet security breach.

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A Medium update from the Lympo team stated that on Monday, hackers managed to gain access to Lympo’s operational hot wallet and stole a total of approximately 165.2 million LMT from it.

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During the hack, ten different wallets got compromised. The hacker swapped the stolen tokens for ETH on Uniswap and SushiSwap before sending them to an unidentified wallet.

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LMT’s lost 92% of its value, reaching as low as $0.0093 after the hack became apparent. The team later assured that it was “working on stabilizing the situation and resuming all operations back to normal.” Lympo also temporarily removed liquidity LMT from liquidity pools to avoid disruptions to the price of the token.

The Waves

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🎧 Spotify shuts down its namesake podcast studio

Tech Special

Apple App Store developers have made over $260 billion

According to a press release from Apple, developers have earned more than $260 billion in its App Store since 2008.

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Last January, Apple revealed that developers had earned more than $200 billion since the App Store launched in 2008, so the new figure shared on Monday indicates developers earned $60 billion in 2021.

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Monday’s press release also revealed that it has more than 745 million paid subscriptions to services from developers and Apple. Over the past few years, Apple has introduced premium services like Apple TV Plus, Fitness Plus, and a range of other services.

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"Apple's world-class portfolio of services proved essential in 2021, as people worldwide sought new ways to keep entertained, informed, connected, and inspired," said Eddy Cue, Apple's SVP of Services. "With over 745 million paid subscriptions, Apple continues to connect the world's developers, artists, and storytellers with users across more than a billion devices."

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It may seem like the App Store is making developers a lot of money, some are not happy with certain policies. Apple currently takes a 25-30% cut from all apps along with in-app purchases. In 2021 Epic Games was one of the first publishers to fight against Apple in a lawsuit after Fortnite was kicked off the App Store for refusing to pay the 30% fee.

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Nvidia reveals 12GB GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card

On Tuesday, Nvidia revealed a new 12GB model of its GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card, which is now available from select board partners.

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The most significant upgrade between the upgraded RTX 3080 and the original model is the extra 2GB of memory. This new RTX 3080 model also includes 8960 CUDA cores, a bump of nearly 3 percent over the original, making it the perfect GPU for anyone looking for a slight upgrade.

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While the 12GB RTX 3080 draws an extra 30 watts of power over the original, Nvidia is still recommending it be paired with a 750W power supply. Nearly everything else about the GPU is the same, as it features a 1.71 GHz Boost Clock and the same type of GDDR6X memory used in the RTX 3080.

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The pricing for the RTX 3080 12GB isn’t available yet and will get determined by board partners depending on how the market is. However, we know one thing for sure, no matter the price, it will sell out within minutes.

Own and secure your crypto with Ledger

If you’re into cryptocurrency and own crypto assets, you need a secure place to store your coins and tokens. You probably already know that you shouldn’t store your crypto on an exchange due to potential hacks, not being solely in control of your crypto’s private keys, and for other reasons, and so a hardware wallet is the way to go and the best option to protect your private keys, therefore, you should make the move to a Ledger wallet.

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Ledger wallets are an extremely secure and premium way to secure, manage, and grow your crypto assets with their Bluetooth-enabled hardware wallets, and easy-to-use app which lets you manage your portfolio on the go. They let you manage multiple assets, buy, sell, grow, and exchange crypto, gain financial freedom by you being in full control and ownership of your private keys, and so much more.

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The wallets are really simple to setup, and to move your crypto over to, so there’s no reason not to secure your assets and take control of your cryptocurrency now and get yourself a Ledger device. You can manage 1800+ coins and tokens directly in the Ledger Live app once you’ve got your device up and running, so you’ll always have your entire portfolio covered.

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