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Brazilian Bitcoin Nonprofit Vinteum Announces Utreexo Developer Grant

Fellow Davidson Souza will continue to develop various Bitcoin projects after a Summer of Bitcoin internship, including Utreexo.

Vinteum, a Brazilian non-profit organization dedicated to promoting Bitcoin research and development, announced its second recipient of donations for protocol development, in a statement sent to Bitcoin Magazine.

Davidson Souza will receive the second Vinteum grant to continue providing wallet-enabled implementations for the Rust Utreexo library. Souza will then integrate the library with Spiral’s Bitcoin Development Kit (BDK). Additionally, Souza will develop bitcoin improvement proposals (BIPs) around implementations, assist with protocol development, and contribute to other projects such as Rust Bitcoin.

Utreexo is a Bitcoin hash accumulator initially proposed by Tadge Dryja, co-author of the Lightning Network white paper. The hash accumulator serves as an alternate database used to represent unspent transaction output (UTXO). The alternate dataset allows nodes to obtain and verify information related to UTXOs. By doing this, the information provided to nodes enables scalability benefits, decreasing the amount of storage needed by full nodes without changing anything regarding the security of the Bitcoin protocol. The process can also make running a node cheaper, speed up initial block downloads, and be used as an oracle for pools of UTXOs for different projects.

Souza initially attended some unofficial Venteum seminars that led him to participate in the Summer of Bitcoin, where he met his future mentor Calvin Kim, who is a Bitmex beneficiary. Kim began guiding Souza to port the Go Utreexo library to Rust so that anyone could validate Utreexo tests against Rust code.

“Davidson performed strongly during the Summer of Bitcoin program, demonstrating his understanding of Bitcoin at the protocol level and was productive in understanding and implementing the Utreexo algorithms,” Kim said.

Vinteum launched in August with a mission to train and fund open source developers for the Bitcoin ecosystem in Brazil. The nonprofit organization announced its first member at the launch, Bruno Garcia, who also joined the group as a founding member.

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Goldman Sachs Launches Data Service to Help Investors Analyze Cryptocurrency Markets

Global investment bank Goldman Sachs has launched a new data service in collaboration with MSCI and Coin Metrics to help investors analyze cryptocurrency markets. The new system is “designed to provide a consistent and standardized way to help market participants visualize and analyze the digital asset ecosystem,” Goldman said.

The New Goldman Sachs Cryptocurrency Ranking System

Global investment bank Goldman Sachs on Friday announced “the launch of Datonomy, a new ranking system for the digital asset market,” in collaboration with global index provider MSCI and crypto data firm Coin Metrics. Ad details:

The new digital asset rating framework is designed to provide investors, service providers, developers, and researchers with a way to help monitor market trends, analyze portfolio risk and returns, and help create new products.

“Delivered as a new data service, Datonomy classifies coins and tokens based on how they are used,” the investment bank explained, adding that the new system can be accessed as a data subscription feed directly from Goldman Sachs. , MSCI and Coin Metrics.

For example, Datonomy divides digital currencies into transfer of value currencies and specialized currencies. The latter is subdivided into Meme Coins, Privacy Coins and Remittance Coins.

Decentralized finance (defi) and Metaverse are among the digital asset apps listed on Datonomy. Defi applications are divided into decentralized exchanges, derivatives trading, decentralized lending, stablecoin issuers, forecast markets, asset management, crowdfunding, and insurance. Metaverse applications are divided into virtual worlds, games, and non-fungible ecosystems (NFTs).

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Moneygram allows customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies through its money transfer app

Moneygram has launched a new cryptocurrency service to allow customers to buy, sell and store cryptocurrencies using its mobile money transfer app. Initially, three cryptocurrencies are supported, including bitcoin and ethereum.

Moneygram’s New Encryption Service

Moneygram International Inc. (Nasdaq: MGI) announced the launch of a new cryptocurrency service on Tuesday. Moneygram’s official Twitter account tweeted:

Moneygram announces the launch of a new service that allows consumers to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies through the Moneygram app. This feature gives customers in almost all US states the ability to exchange and store BTC, ETH and LTC.

The company is expected to expand its selection of supported cryptocurrencies in 2023, the announcement adds. According to Moneygram, the new service is available in all US states (except Hawaii, Idaho and New York) and the District of Columbia.

“Moneygram allows instant access to over 120 currencies around the world, and we see cryptocurrencies and digital currencies as another entry and exit option,” said the company’s President and CEO Alex Holmes. He continued:

As consumer interest in digital currencies continues to accelerate, we are uniquely positioned to meet this demand and bridge the gap between blockchain and traditional financial services.

Moneygram describes itself as “a global leader in the evolution of P2P digital payments” and “a pioneering leader in blockchain-enabled settlement and cross-border payment innovation”. The company says it has served more than 150 million people in the last five years.

The ability to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies using the Moneygram money transfer app is made possible by the company’s existing partnership with Coinme, a US-licensed cryptocurrency exchange.

The two companies announced a partnership in May last year “to enable cash financing and payment for purchases and sales in digital currency”. Coinme’s website claims the service is “available at 12,000 Moneygram locations”. In January of this year, Moneygram announced that it had “completed a strategic minority investment in Coinme”, giving the money transfer company an approximately 4% stake in the cryptocurrency exchange.

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Flipkart, the Indian commerce giant, will allow customers to buy items in the metaverse

Flipkart, the Walmart-backed Indian e-commerce giant, has launched a pilot program to let its customers experience shopping in a metaverse environment. The company announced the launch of its own metaverse, called Flipverse, in which different brands will be able to offer their own shopping experiences.

Flipkart to Launch Flipverse: A Shopping Metaverse

Flipkart, one of the largest e-commerce companies based in India, has announced that it will test its own shopping experience in the metaverse. Called Flipverse, this metaverse will allow customers to experience shopping as if they were physically present in an online store through their smartphone.

According to the company, the experience wants to bring gamification and loyalty points to the shopping experience, allowing customers to accumulate supercoins and digital collectibles from different brands that are already accredited to be part of this pilot program.

To create the new platform, Flipkart partnered with eDAO, a company incubated by Polygon, to prepare the metaverse experience for launch this month. The company has already signed up several key partners, including Puma, Noise, Nivea, Lavie, Tokyo Talkies, Campus, VIP, Ajmal Perfumes, and Himalaya, who will be able to offer their own custom booths and experiences in the Flipkart metaverse.

A Flipkart executive stated:

The idea is to get millions of users to experience Flipverse and open the door to the future of shopping. Fifteen years ago, we were the first Indian company to launch Web 2.0-based commerce. And I feel that today we are the first company to launch Web 3.0 commerce.

Retail and the metaverse

While metaverse retail experiences have been fairly limited so far, with video from 2017 resurfacing this year showing an example of how shopping would be done in a hypothetical Walmart-themed metaverse, Flipkart and Polygon believe there is a great opportunity in the future for that. type of virtual shopping experience.

Sandeep Narwal, co-founder of Polygon, stated:

While we're just beginning to scratch the surface of what's possible in the metaverse, we see e-commerce as one of the defining use cases. Combining top brands with Flipkart's eCommerce expertise in a virtual environment revolutionizes online retail as we know it.

Walmart, which owns 72% of Flipkart, already made its first metaverse move into the Roblox universe in September, launching two experiences called “Walmart Land” and “Walmart’s Universe of Play.”

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Are cryptocurrency trading bots a scam?

Scam is such a strong word in today’s world. Why is this the case? It is because scams are rampant in every corner of the world and in every industry where finance is involved. Unfortunately, bad actors are actively working to trick people into stealing their funds, as the cryptocurrency community has witnessed in recent months.

Millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies have been stolen by digital hackers, mainly due to weaknesses in specific dApps or various bridging protocols. Scammers have scoured Twitter and other social apps like Telegram and Discord to steal people’s crypto, claiming it’s the latest and greatest project, only to end up stealing their ETH.

Are cryptocurrency trading bots similar or the same as a hack or a scam? It’s time to take a moment and dig a little deeper into this topic.

How to identify a scam

There is a fine line between a hoax and a legitimate project. How is this line? Scams are often portrayed as too good to be true, or too good to pass up.

If a project promises the moon, it’s time to step back and do more research. Offers of free tokens or large airdrops should be accepted with caution. Legitimate gifts do exist, but with reputable companies that have a proven track record.

Scams usually don’t show the faces or names of the people working on the “project”. If someone isn’t searchable on LinkedIn or Twitter, that’s a big red flag. Be careful when dealing with these so-called “companies” who do not reveal their true identities. If they were legitimate, they would have nothing to hide.

Scams can be easy to detect if the email received or the message read appears to be “spam” in nature. If there are misspellings, grammatical problems, or repetitive language, it is likely a scam and should be ignored.

Can a cryptocurrency trading bot be a scam?

A cryptocurrency trading bot “company” can be a scam, yes. Bots themselves do not have the ability to withdraw funds from a user’s account. Are there bad actors in the cryptocurrency trading bot space? As mentioned above, yes, which is why it is important to do due diligence when selecting a particular company to set up a trading robot.

Most bots on the market today are indeed legitimate, and most of them connect via API to a popular exchange.

How to identify a legitimate cryptocurrency trading robot

Potential crypto bot users are looking for a trusting relationship between them and the company they are going to sign up with. Various ways to detect the legitimacy of a bot can include the following:

exchange associations

customer feedback

verifiable history

performance history

Faces linked to social proof

The above resources will help determine the legitimacy of a cryptocurrency trading bot company. For example, looking at Stoic AI, potential investors can clearly see the features on the main site.