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Tech entrepreneur and billionaire Mark Cuban expressed interest in a transformative crypto real estate project to integrate smart contracts and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to facilitate construction and urban development. This development follows a proposal by Jason Calacanis, a serial entrepreneur, to build ten new cities across the US, each housing a million units. These cities are envisioned to redefine urban living with an emphasis on sustainability and affordability. Cuban’s vision for crypto-driven real estate Cuban took the conversation a step further. The billionaire investor’s proposal involves utilizing a blockchain -based smart contract that operates on a layer-2 scaling solution to ensure privacy and efficiency. So you are saying you will have written a smart contract on a ZK L2 which will check for a construction permit being issued , which in turn will create and send me an NFT that unlocks and delivers 250k in USDC when the oracle checks property and uti...

The creator of the Mutant Ape Planet NFT collection pleaded guilty to wire fraud in a New York federal court. In this week’s newsletter, read about the creator of a Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) knock-off pleading guilty to fraud charges, check out how OpenSea’s non-fungible token (NFT) users received a massive phishing email campaign, and how Bitcoin transaction fees flipped Ethereum network fees as the hype for Ordinals resurfaced. In other news, game distributor G2A has launched a gaming-focused NFT marketplace.  Creator of Mutant Ape ripoff NFTs pleads guilty to $3 million fraud scheme Aurelien Michel, the creator of the Mutant Ape Planet NFT collection, which copies the popular MAYC collection by Yuga Labs, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in a New York federal court. Michel admitted to defrauding investors of $3 million and performing a rug pull. The team behind the MAYC knock-off falsely promised rewards and benefits to their investors and intentionally failed to deliver on thei...

Despite the downturn in the NFT industry, Reddit continues to attract new holders of digital collectibles issues on blockchain. Social media platform Reddit continues exploring digital collectibles despite a significant downturn in the non-fungible tokens (NFT) industry. According to an official announcement on r/CollectibleAvatars, Reddit will drop its latest series of collectible avatars on July 26. According to social media reports, the new drop will be launched at 3:00 pm Eastern Time. Titled “Retro Reimagined,” Reddit’s new collectibles drop will be the fourth generation of collectible avatars launched since the platform debuted the project in July 2022. Just like all previous generations, the latest drop will be issued on the Polygon blockchain and will be available for decentralized trading and third-party sales. Reddit’s Gen 4 CollectibleAvatars’ teaser. Source: Reddit The new drop of Reddit’s collectible avatars brings fresh designs from new and existing creators, including r...

Romania’s Informatics Institute is set to launch an institutional NFT trading platform, using Web3 to create a link between the public and private sectors. Romania’s National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics (ICI Bucharest) aims to drive Web3 adoption in the country with the launch of an in-house nonfungible token trading platform. The institutional NFT platform, dubbed ICI D|Services, will go live on April 26 and aims to create a link between private and public sector institutions and users. The platform is primarily an NFT marketplace , allowing public and institutional users to mint, manage and trade NFTs. Cointelegraph spoke to ICI Bucharest blockchain laboratory coordinator Dr. Paul Niculescu-Mizil Gheorghe to unpack the impetus behind the country’s efforts to adopt Web3-powered technologies. ICI Bucharest has been primarily focused on research and development over the past five years, but shifted its attention to exploring blockchain, Web3 and nonfungible t...

At NFT.NYC 2023, Cointelegraph's team learned firsthand how nonfungible tokens are shaping the digital world of tomorrow. From tokenizing investment assets to game avatars, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have an array of applications that go beyond digital art, with more projects coming online despite the market downturn in 2022.  At the NFT.NYC 2023 conference, Cointelegraph's team learned first-hand from experts, projects, companies, and the NFT community how the technology is shaping the digital world. Check out the highlights of the three-day event below: NFT games show signs of maturing  After years of development, the first batch of NFT-based gaming projects are entering the market, paving the way for a world in which real life and games will be blended, companies and developers told Cointelegraph. "Ten years from now, I could be wearing my VR glasses or still using my phone, or probably using some new system interacting with the Metaverse, but I'm going to be able ...

The last week of 2022 didn't turn out to be a good one as the industry recorded multiple exploits and an exit scam scare. Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. For DeFi, the last week of 2022 saw another slew of exploits , insider job accusations and exit scam drama . It all started on Christmas, when Defrost Finance, a decentralized leveraged trading platform on the Avalanche blockchain, was exploit ed by a DeFi flash loan attack causing $12 million in losses. However, the hacker behind the attacks reportedly returned a portion of the funds the next day. Security analytic firm Certik looked into the chain of events and concluded that the $12 million of funds drained were a part of an exit scam. On Dec. 26, when the Defrost exploit saga was unfolding, Bitkeep, a multichain wallet, was exploited for $8 million by hackers. Later in an analysis ...

Giant consulting firm Accenture’s 2022 Payments report has revealed that more users are turning to virtual assets as a payment method. This is despite the unstable condition of the crypto market over the past year.  The future is digital, even for face-to-face payments,” said the report. Next-Gen Payment Options on the Rise  The company took a survey of 16,000 customers in 13 countries across Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. Per the survey, while banks and traditional finance systems such as credit cards and fiat money are still in the lead in terms of use, digital wallets are also on a steady rise. According to Accenture, digital wallets bridge the gap between offline and online payment. This is reportedly because they often help digitize a consumer’s existing debit or credit card.  56% of the survey respondents revealed that they used digital wallets to process transactions over five times a month. Users in the Asia-pacific region were in the lead regarding th...