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Hey Waivly Crew! 🌊 Coinbase has partnered with Mastercard to make it easier to purchase NFTs from its upcoming NFT marketplace. Yesterday Microsoft announced plans to acquire Activision Blizzard in a deal worth nearly $70 billion.

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Coinbase partners with Mastercard to make NFT purchases easier

Crypto exchange Coinbase has teamed up with payments giant Mastercard to simplify purchasing NFTs.

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According to an official blog post today, Coinbase is planning to make it easier for newcomers to join the NFT community. Despite the insane growth of the NFT space over the past year, the company believes the process of purchasing NFTs is still too difficult.

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“That’s why we’re working with Mastercard to classify NFTs as “digital goods”, allowing a broader group of consumers to purchase NFTs. And, coming soon we’ll “unlock” a new way to pay using Mastercard cards,” said Senior Director of Product Prakash Hariramani.

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In October, Coinbase announced its NFT marketplace called “Coinbase NFT,” a peer-to-peer marketplace that aims to make minting, purchasing, showcasing, and discovering NFTs easier. Since then, the company has opened a waitlist for users to join the marketplace, and it has received huge demand, with over one million people signing up.

Bithumb to launch NFT Marketplace

The South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb, with the support of a “large company”, will launch an NFT marketplace in the first half of 2022.

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In an interview with Bithumb’s CEO, Ho Baek-young, he confirmed that the exchange is currently developing an NFT marketplace to maintain its position in the fight against competitor exchanges Korbit and Upbit that have both launched NFT marketplaces.

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“An NFT marketplace will be important in promoting blockchain-based content, which will become a driving force in the future,” Baek-young said.

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In a conversation with Newsway, Bithumb representatives neither confirmed nor denied the rumors that the NFT marketplace is being developed with the support of LG CNC, a subsidiary of LG Corporation.

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The Korbit crypto exchange, owned by gaming giant Nexon, was South Korea’s first exchange to launch an NFT marketplace back in June. Korbit is South Korea’s fourth-largest crypto exchange, with around $7 million in 24-hour trading volume. Upbit quickly followed and launched its NFT marketplace in November in partnership with Hybe, the music label behind BTS.

The Waves

🏀 Brooklyn Nets enter the metaverse

👀 Bitcoin and crypto is here to stay

🎮 Banjo-Kazooie returns to Nintendo hardware this week

⛏️ Georgian citizens made to swear an oath to stop mining crypto

Tech Special

Microsoft plans to acquire Activision Blizzard for nearly $70 billion

Microsoft plans to acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in the biggest gaming industry deal in history as it looks to expand its gaming business and position in the metaverse.

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The technology giant announced on Tuesday that it would acquire the videogame publisher for $95 a share in an all-cash transaction that values Activision at $68.7 billion. The per-share bid represents a 45% premium to Friday’s closing price of $65.39.

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It’s amazing news for gamers, as Microsoft plans to add both new and old Activision Blizzard games to Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass, from its popular franchises including Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, StarCraft, Call of Duty, and even Candy Crush.

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With the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft will likely play a big part in the emerging metaverse. "Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today and will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms,” said Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella.
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Once the deal closes, Microsoft will become the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind China’s Tencent and Sony.

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Meta’s Project Cambria might be coming in 2022

Announced back at the Facebook Connect event on 28th October 2021, Meta’s next major VR headset, "Project Cambria' got revealed, but when will it debut?

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Cambria will be a different kind of headset for Meta, as unlike the $299 Meta Quest 2, it is not focused on expanding the VR userbase and instead will focus on providing high-end features to lead the future of VR in a range of different ways.

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For starters, Project Cambria’s hardware will be more advanced than any Oculus headset that has come before it, featuring two of Apple’s custom chips, one for general processing and the second for sensor-related duties, along with onboard cameras to track the user.

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If this sounds too good to be true, it’s because it might be. The headset is expected to cost somewhere between $2,000 and $3,000 range and only allow users to use it for short periods to force them back into the real world.

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While Project Cambria is rumoured to be currently in development, there has yet to be an official announcement of a release date. Meta first said that we could see Project Cambria release at some point in 2022, but with all the shortages in the tech industry, this seems unlikely.

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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