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Hey Waivly Crew! 🌊 Ready Player Me has raised $56 million in a Series B round to develop cross-platform metaverse avatars. Meta is officially rolling out Meta accounts and Meta Horizon profiles.

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Ready Player Me raises $56M in Series B led by a16z

Ready Player Me, an Estonian company focused on bringing cross-platform avatars to the metaverse, has raised $56 million in a Series B funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz's crypto and gaming funds.

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According to a press release, investors also include Roblox co-founder David Baszucki, Twitch co-founder Justin Kan, sports and entertainment company Endeavor, Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat Ventures, the D’Amelio family, and Punk6529, among others.

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The funding will go towards scaling the team up from the current 51 members, while building tools that enable developers, brands, and individual artists to create customization assets that can be used across thousands of virtual worlds.

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“Our bigger vision is to connect the metaverse through avatars,” said Timmu Toke, co-founder and CEO, Ready Player Me, in an interview. “There may be metaverses owned by big companies, who will make all the rules, but there is a vision of an open one where people can travel, built by millions of developers, where no one controls the whole thing. Like the internet. We’re trying to push the world towards that metaverse.”

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Ready Player Me initially raised $13 million earlier this year in a round led by venture capital firm Taavet+Sten. Since then, it has partnered with over 2,000 companies, including RTFKT, HTC, Tencent, Huawei, and VR Chat.

The Waves

👀 JPMorgan: Coinbase will benefit from the Ethereum Merge

🖼️ Rarible proposes no-fee ApeCoin marketplace

🤔 Ontario securities regulator warns against Kucoin in latest alert

🚀 The Waivly Crew platform is now open

Tech Special

Meta rolls out new metaverse ID system

Meta has officially rolled out Meta accounts and Meta Horizon profiles. The global launch will be gradual, but both accounts will replace Facebook and Instagram, previously used to log in to the company’s virtual reality (VR) platform.

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Users will be required to sign up for a Meta account to log in and access Oculus VR apps. The company cited privacy implications for abandoning the old way of logging in.

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However, users can still choose to create Meta accounts with their Facebook or Instagram account. If a person chooses to create their Meta account via their social media account, they’ll be connected in the Accounts Center, the hub for connected experiences across Meta.

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While Meta is encouraging users to log into their VR devices via a Meta account, those using an Oculus account can continue to do so until January 1, 2023.

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The company noted that after making the transition, users will still have access to all of their previous VR purchases and downloads.

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Gamescom Opening Night Live recap

GamesCom 2022 kicked off yesterday with Geoff Keightley’s Opening Night Live. Here are three of the most exciting announcements made during the two-hour event!

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Everywhere teaser trailer debuts from Build A Rocket Boy

Build A Rocket Boy unveiled a first look at its upcoming multi-world game experience “Everywhere”. Set to release in 2023, the title aims to blend “gameplay, adventure, creativity and discovery in an all-new multi-world gaming experience that redefines how players connect with one another and the digital world around them.”

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Mini reveals Pokémon-themed Mini Aceman concept

Mini announced a new collaboration with Pokémon to develop a Pikachu-themed version of its all-electric Mini Aceman concept car.

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According to Oliver Helmer, head of Mini Design, you can connect your games console and project your gameplay from the front of the vehicle.

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With the “Experience Mode” that comes installed on this car, Pikachu takes over the main display when the vehicle’s turned on, while digital lightning bolts travel across the entire dashboard.

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Dune: Awakening is a survival MMO set on Arrakis

Funcom released the first cinematic trailer for Dune: Awakening, a new "open-world survival MMO" inspired by Frank Herbert's classic science fiction book Dune, coming to PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

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The trailer didn’t show any gameplay, but Funcom said it'll combine the "grittiness and creativity of survival games with the social interactivity of large-scale, persistent multiplayer games" in a "vast and seamless Arrakis shared by thousands of players".

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 son 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.

Share The Wave

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