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Facebook Rebrands to Meta, Seeking to Develop the Metaverse

The pioneering social media giant, Facebook Inc, has rebranded its name to Meta as it seeks to foster the development of the metaverse, a term made popular by the current craze in the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) ecosystem.

As announced by the company, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg introduced the new outfit, the umbrella term under which Facebook, Instagram, and the rest of the company’s apps will operate.

Facebook said the change of name would not impact how it handles its user’s data, but it noted that it would change the model in which it reports its financials.

“Our corporate structure is not changing, however, how we report on our financials will. Starting with our results for the fourth quarter of 2021, we plan to report on two operating segments: Family of Apps and Reality Labs. We also intend to start trading under the new stock ticker we have reserved, MVRS, on December 1,”

Meta said in its name, unveiling that the company seeks to push its broader focus into developing the metaverse so that it connects online social experiences and the physical world. Even though the approach is still in its infancy, Non-Fungible Token projects have advanced these surreal metaphysical experiences for users in the past year.

While Meta’s pursuits are most prominent in the Virtual and Augmented Realities areas, the name change can be a springboard for the company to go all out on NFTs. The company recently launched its Novi wallet and announced the capabilities of the wallet to integrate NFTs. Going by the company’s deep pocket, securing the interest of digital artists who can utilize the wallet through a form of incentive will not be an arduous task.

Since the growth of the metaverse is partly dependent on digital currencies, revisiting its estranged Diem cryptocurrency project may be one of the company’s plans in the mid to long term.

Metaverse's MANA Token Price Leaps after Facebook Rebrand to Meta

Citing data from Coinbase, the New York Post reported on Oct 31 saying that the price of a MANA token, which can be used in a metaverse leapt 164% in 12 hours.

A week earlier, Decentraland’s MANA virtual reality cryptocurrency had been just valued around 80 cents, before reaching $4.33 on Saturday evening.

According to the report, the increase in its value followed Facebook’s rebranding to Meta, reflecting the company’s plan to create a “metaverse.”

Experts also noted that this had created huge potential in the virtual world market.

“MANA’s leading position in the metaverse ecosystem will likely be solidified further by Facebook’s move to rebrand and focus on building its own extension to the digital world,” said Denis Vinokourov, head of research at Synergia Capital, according to Coindesk, as reported by the New York Post.

The report also noted that in Decentraland’s metaverse, users can buy digital art or create a virtual social world. It can be accessed with digital tokens.

On Oct 28, Facebook changed its name to Meta which was announced at the Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference, which also showed the company’s drive to shake off its social media origins.

“Today we are seen as a social media company, but in our DNA we are a company that builds technology to connect people, and the metaverse is the next frontier just like social networking was when we got started,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter.

Facebook seeks to foster the development of the metaverse, a term made popular by the current craze in the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) ecosystem.

Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg introduced the new outfit, the umbrella term under which Facebook, Instagram, and the rest of the company’s apps will operate.

Facebook said the change of name would not impact how it handles its user’s data, but it noted that it would change the model in which it reports its financials.

Meta said in its name, unveiling that the company seeks to push its broader focus into developing the metaverse so that it connects online social experiences and the physical world.

KuCoin Exchange Launches its Meta Office As KuCoin’s First step on Metaverse

KuCoin Exchange has announced it will launch virtual offices in a visually stunning virtual reality skyscraper called Bloktopia.

The Kucoin team stated that this is a very important and biggest step for KuCoin to enter Metaverse. This virtual office will become an important milestone in the virtual world.

The announcement issued on November 2 stated that the office was designed as a skyscraper, and all Metaverse elements exist in KuCoin Meta Office, including VR experience; cyberpunk decoration; allowing customers to interact with interactive virtual furniture, accompanied by instant Chat and voice communication, etc.

The Bloktopia platform allows all kinds of visitors to earn income, play games with friends, and build networks in this virtual skyscraper. The skyscraper is divided into 21 different levels, covering a total supply of 21 million Bitcoins (BTC) to attract outstanding creators.

Kucoin will provide support for Bloktopia’s native token BLOK and the utility token of the Metaverse-centric blockchain game platform Dreams Quest (DREAMS).

As reported by Blockchain.News on Wednesday, KuCoin exchange has launched the KuCoin Fiat Account, an avenue by which its customers around the world can fund their accounts using either a Visa or Mastercard debit or credit card.

Singapore-based KuCoin is one of the most advanced platforms worldwide by offering spot, margin and futures trading, the highly liquid platform lets users lend out their digital assets to others to earn interest. To date, KuCoin has facilitated over 722 million trades with transaction volume exceeding $100 billion, with users able to pose questions of customer service agents available 24/7.

Last week, the pioneering social media giant, Facebook Inc, has rebranded its name to Meta as it seeks to foster the development of the metaverse, a term made popular by the current craze in the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) ecosystem

Image source: Kucoin

Metaverse Seen to Bring in Big Investments, Says Morgan Stanley

The metaverse is a booming investment topic, Morgan Stanley said in a research note on Thursday, and stock sectors are already making the most of it.

Since major companies such as Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) and Microsoft have already started to build metaverses on their own company platforms, the internet’s next big thing has gathered a lot of attention from investors and companies.

According to the report, companies that can benefit from the metaverse include tech and gaming stocks. Shares of Roblox, an online game platform and game creation system which is currently building a metaverse of its own, are already moving on the trend.

Currently, the metaverse does not exist in its “purest form”, but many companies are already building their own versions of it, heightening investment prospects, Morgan Stanley said.

According to the multinational investment bank, a “true” metaverse is only when interoperability across all the companies is possible which will take time.

Cross-company collaboration to allow users to seamlessly move across millions of experiences and take their digital avatars and possessions around with them is estimated to take many more years as the metaverse is still in its infant stage.

The report described the metaverse as a “virtual world for immersive co-experiences that is persistently available and where users can explore vast numbers of experiences concurrently,” and “within these experiences, people across the world can meet, play, watch, trade and learn across millions of experiences.”

“It (metaverse) can fundamentally change the medium through which we socialize with others,” equity strategist Edward Stanley said.

The report also stated that currently the target audience for the metaverse is young gamers mostly under 17 but noted that the average age is rising as the metaverse is expanding.

In Asia, South Korea is currently seen as an important hub because its more than 400 technology firms could accelerate the interoperability of metaverse in the future.

$400M Funding helps Gemini valued at $7.1B to Build a Decentralized Metaverse

American cryptocurrency exchange Gemini raises $400 million through growth equity financing, led by Morgan Creek Digital.

Other investors include private equity firm 10T, ParaFi, family office consultant Newflow Partners, Marcy Venture Partners and Commonwealth Bank of Australia. For Gemini, this is the first time Gemini has received external financing.

After completing this financing, the Gemini platform is valued at US$7.1 billion.

The announcement stated:

“With this round of financing, Gemini will continue to bring simple, innovative, and secure products to market, and advance its geographic expansion.”

In an interview with Forbes on November 18th, Taylor and Cameron Winklevos expressed their hope that the influence of Gemini will extend to Metaverse in the future.

In addition to the acquisition of shares in Singapore-based NFT company Alethea AI and Florida-based Recur. The brothers purchased a piece of virtual land for the construction of a three-dimensional virtual location in a collaboration with The Sandbox (SAND) Metaverse, which is based in Hong Kong.

Tyler said that:

“we’re gonna build a Gemini experience in different metaverses, where you can go into Gemini and trade, but it would be immersive instead of on your phone.”

Unlike Meta, previously known as Facebook, Gemini’s goal is to decentralize, which would provide more choices, independence and opportunities, and technology that protects individual rights and dignity.

Gemini, launched by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss in 2015, is a New York trust company regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYSDFS). They are subject to capital reserve requirements, cybersecurity requirements, and banking compliance standards set forth by the NYSDFS.

Winklevoss twins launched Nifty Gateway, Gemini’s NFT trading platform, in 2018. Thanks to the booming NFT market, Nifty Gateway has achieved more than $420 million in sales through the collaboration of 375 unique artists

In 2020, the Winklevoss twins’ Gemini exchange has been granted licenses by UK’s Financial Conduct Authority. It also submitted a license to the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Meta Lifts its Crypto Advertisement Banning Policy

The social networking giant Meta, previously known as Facebook, announced on Wednesday that it would withdraw its policy of banning most cryptocurrencies from advertising on its social platforms.

In the statement, Meta stated that advertisers are now allowed to submit applications and need to provide the relevant licenses, regardless of whether they are trading on a public stock exchange or other related business disclosure backgrounds.

Meta disallowed the advertising of cryptocurrencies as early as January 2018. The policy started to be slightly relaxed in May 2019.

The acceptance of advertisements related to cryptocurrency has positive significance for the entire cryptocurrency industry, which will make it easier for more retail investors to access the news of the cryptocurrency industry.

Meta team said in a statement that:

“We’re doing this because the cryptocurrency landscape has continued to mature and stabilize in recent years and has seen more government regulations that are setting clearer rules for their industry.”

Former Facebook employee Emad Hasan said that the new policy will also bring good news to start-ups engaged in blockchain work.

The latest lifting get relief to advertising sectors. Last month on October 19, Facebook Inc announced that it has launched its new digital wallet for crypto assets called Novi.

David Marcus, the head of cryptocurrency projects at Meta Platform Inc (formerly Facebook), announced on Tuesday, November 30, that he will be departing the firm by the end of the year to begin working on something new.

Binance.US to Establish Office in Portals, the Metaverse Platform on the Solana Blockchain

The US branch of the world-leading Binance exchange, Binance.US, is opening an office in Portals, the Metaverse platform on the Solana blockchain.

Portals is a web-based metaverse platform that allows users to explore buildings and interactive rooms. A cityscape is presented on this platform.

Binance exchange is not the only exchange with Portals building space. Chris Lund, Head of Community and Partnerships at Portals, said FTX.US, an offshoot of U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange FTX, will also establish its own office at Portals.

Lund said that:

“Binance.US is getting a space in Portals Downtown with a focus on delivering the latest news, charts, and events virtually.”

The expansion of Binance.US’s office in the virtual world aims to become a gathering place for exchange users.

In addition, other projects on the Solana blockchain including Raydium, Magic Eden, Audius, and Bonfida will set up their own offices in the Portals virtual world.

More and more companies and celebrities are scrambling to enter the open metaverse. As reported by Blockchain.News on Jan 7, Samsung Electronics America is defining the scope of its metaverse ambitions as it has launched a new store dubbed the Samsung 837x on Decentraland”

Professional drone racing League joined the Metaverse world by launching its first game on the Algorand blockchain in partnership with Playground Labs on Jan 6.

Meta to Build World's Fastest Supercomputer for Metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg Confirms

Meta is reported to be building the world’s fastest artificial intelligence supercomputer.

The announcement was made by the company’s founder Mark Zuckerberg, adding that the computer is being built as part of the plans to build a virtual metaverse.

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, said that the infrastructure is a major requirement since the metaverse will need heavy computing power. It also claims that the AI supercomputer – dubbed AI Research SuperCluster (RSC) – is already the fifth fastest in the world, but it is expected to be the fastest computer of its kind by summer after further developments are completed.

Zuckerberg said via a blog post:

“The experiences we’re building for the metaverse require enormous compute [sic] power (quintillions of operations/second!) and RSC will enable new AI models that can learn from trillions of examples, understand hundreds of languages, and more,”

Metaverse is a concept that blends the physical and digital world via virtual and augmented reality but is still years away from being a working concept. To do so, AI is a key foundation as it mimics the brain’s underlying architecture in computer form and is capable of processing and spotting patterns in vast amounts of data, the Guardian reported.

Meta owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp messaging services. In total, the company enjoys 2.8 billion daily users and generates a significant amount of data.

Meta’s RSC – currently housed in an undisclosed location – made up of thousands of processors is believed to help identify harmful content on its platforms and is expected to translate talks between gamers worldwide quickly.

Meta also claims that the RSC will allow large groups of players globally to play a game on augmented reality. It said that the game has a digital layer put over reality normally via a user’s phone. Still, major requirements to access augmented reality include special headsets and glasses which are under development at Apple and a few other firms.

“We hope RSC will help us build entirely new AI systems that can, for example, power real-time voice translations to large groups of people, each speaking a different language, so they can seamlessly collaborate on a research project or play an AR game together,” researchers at Meta said.

The researchers added that users’ data is end-to-end encrypted before being fed into the RSC. “Before data is imported to RSC, it must go through a privacy review process to confirm it has been correctly anonymised. The data is then encrypted before it can be used to train AI models,” said the researchers.

Meta’s development of RSC comes at a time when virtual gaming is growing at a significant pace.

According to the recent story, November 25, 2021, reported by Blockchain.News, cryptocurrency investment giant Grayscale reported that by 2025, the revenue of the virtual gaming world might grow to $400 billion.

The report added that Grayscale said that metaverse will be a trillion-dollar market, which indicates that user investment in the virtual game world may increase from $180 billion in 2020 to $400 billion in 2025.

In projects like Decentraland – a decentralised 3D virtual reality platform that consists of 90,601 parcels of land – users can carry out daily activities such as trading, learning, socialising with friends, and other activities similar to the physical world.

Blockchain. News’ reports also stated that the future prospects of virtual worlds indicate that investment opportunities will continue to grow as users spend more time on them.

Tencent to Offer Metaverse Business Support in Japan before Feb

Reportedly, Chinese tech-giant Tencent will provide support services for the virtual space “Metaverse” business to Japanese companies as soon as before February, according to Japan’s Nikkei media report on Monday.

Tencent said it would provide services through its Japanese subsidiary, offering comprehensive support from the construction of virtual spaces, the production of avatars to content distribution.

As a Shenzhen-based game development giant, Tencent has accumulated virtual space through games, built a “Digital Twin” that reproduces the real world in the virtual space, and created a “Digital Human” that can vividly present a human image. Technology.

These technologies are the key to differentiating from other metaverse competitors such as Meta (previously known as Facebook) in the world-building process of the metaverse.

In addition to this, these technologies can also utilize autonomous cloud services for content distribution.

Gaming, social networking, and VR devices are the three core elements of the universe. On January 10, it was reported that Tencent plans to acquire Black Shark Technology, a gaming mobile phone company, and the focus will be shifted from gaming mobile phones to VR devices. Black Shark provides VR hardware access, and Tencent delivers content.

If the acquisition of Black Shark Technology succeeds, it will join the Tencent Group Platform, and Content Business Group (PCG) led by Ren Yuxin.

Furthermore, Tencent recently registered trademarks such as “King Metaverse”, “Tianyuan Universe”, and “QQ Metaverse”.

Tencent Holdings Ltd is a global multinational conglomerate holding company founded in 1998 based in China, specializing in various internet-related services and products, artificial intelligence and technology globally. The firm has been preparing to explore the metaverse field long before.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings has partnered with blockchain firm ShareRing to deploy a blockchain-powered digital document and identity management solution to stimulate the travel sector, which has been among the hardest hit by in November 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic.

Instagram to Welcome NFTs Feature, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Confirms

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Meta will add the Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) function to its video and photo social app Instagram in the coming months so that users might display their NFTs on the platform.

Zuckerberg reportedly said at a South by Southwest forum Tuesday in Austin, Texas:

“We’re working on bringing NFTs to Instagram in the near term.”

Zuckerberg hopes that Instagram users will be able to mint their own NFTs on the platform in the near future. However, “I’m not ready to kind of announce exactly what that’s going to be today,” Zuckerberg refused to share specifics on when and how the framework might work.

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, its application Instagram reportedly developed non-fungible tokens (NFT) feature on its app, a mobile developer reveals since last July.

On the other hand, last June, Mobile developer Alessandro Paluzzi indicated that Instagram is working on NFT bidding options to users by providing a platform to sell their “Collectible” products on its platform. However, Instagram has yet to announce the launching of NFT on its platform or show any potential payment features on the platform.

Online adult content subscription platform OnlyFans has launched a feature for users to display verified NFTs as profile pictures, Blockchain.News reported on February 11.

As reported by blockchain. News on January 21, social media platform Twitter announced that it was rolling out an official verification mechanism for NFT avatars, allowing some users to set the NFTs they own as their profile picture.

Following in the footsteps of Twitter, Reddit is eyeing to permit users to have NFT-based profile pictures through a feature that is being tested on January 27.