DAY LONG NEWS ROUNDUP: LATEST NEWS 09/12/21

• Avinandan Banerjee
• December 09, 2021

Those who fail to keep a track of the latest news in crypto can now take a sigh of relief as we are here to help you. Here is a list of top news content of 9/12/2021 that grabbed the attention of the industry. Read on:

 

Waitlist For ‘Community Points’ Program: Reddit Present

Leading social media platform that connects people through shared interests, Reddit has launched a waitlist for the upcoming ‘Community Points’ token rewards scheme and website. With the site-wide expansion of its Ethereum-supported rewards program, Reddit is making a big move into the crypto industry. The program will be initiated as an opt-in function for subreddits across the entire network of Reddit devoted fully to its users.

Well, this is not the first time that Reddit has shown interest in cryptocurrencies and digital token rewards programs. In December 2019, the platform played its first bet on crypto by launching ETH-based token rewards titled ‘Donuts’ in the r/Ethtrader subreddit. Further, in May 2020, Reddit expanded the crypto rewards scheme to the r/Cryptocurrency subreddit named ‘Moons,’ and r/FortniteBR named ‘Bricks’ on an ETH testnet.

The tokens will be easily tradeable, exchanged, or swapped on crypto trading portals after moving to the Ethereum mainnet. When the beta program goes live, the users, as well as mods, will be allowed to sign up for the waitlist and request for the addition of the Community Points feature to their subreddit. Each participating subreddit will be allowed to design ‘Special Memberships’ which customers can purchase through points. These memberships will provide various features including badges, GIFs, and animated emojis. Those having more Community Points will get access to a ‘weighted polls’ feature too. The tokens will be stored on-chain in the personal Vault where they can easily use community points within the portal.

The entire Reddit system runs on upvotes that earn karma scores for customers. Now, with the new Community Rewards program, Redditors will get Community points instead of Karma scores for making contributions to a subreddit. This includes creating or uploading interesting content or volunteering to support the community.

The Reddit team is being very cautious about the rewards program and has clearly mentioned that selling, exchanging, or trading the points is against the rules. They added that as points are on a testnet, these practices can prove quite risky. The points might get lost or moved to the main ETH channel. The program is currently running on the Rinkeby testnet version of the Ethereum network, however, Reddit plans to shift it to the mainnet via Eth layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrum soon.

 

Investors Moving Towards Crypto Over Shares Says Survey Report

With crypto enjoying a successful run across the global financial sphere, the industry is giving stiff competition to the traditional market especially the stock market field. In a recent survey conducted by consumer data aggregator firm, CivicScience it was revealed that a growing number of investors are willingly choosing crypto over stock. The report stated that people are selling off their shares to expand their crypto portfolios.

As per the latest report, the CivicScience survey involved a stream of questions that were answered by people over 18 years in the U.S at different times through 2021. The outcomes were derived in sync with the U.S census data records. Each question was answered by 1,000 to 40,600 people. Interestingly, out of the 3,700 people surveyed, the number of people who chose crypto over traditional stocks as an investment tool rose by 140% in a short span of five months. In June, merely 10% of the surveyors stated that they would choose crypto over stocks. The figure rose to 24% in November.

The investors who followed the financial sector and economy very keenly or somewhat keenly were more likely to exchange shares with crypto. Nearly 44% of the 1,988 people who sold shares for crypto revealed that the sale formed less than 10% of their full portfolio. However, one-fifth of respondents traded half of their stock to purchase crypto tokens. CivicScience derived the results through digital and mobile content collaborations. The report clearly mentioned that interest in blockchain has reduced significantly over the years as it quickly moved from 80% to 68% by December.

 

OpenSea Refuses IPO Launch Following Backlash from Users

Taking pride in being a popular NFT marketplace for global fans, OpenSea has released an official statement denying the launch of an IPO in the near future. This comes after Brian Roberts, the new CFO hired by the team, hinted towards the firm’s plan to follow the IPO route. To everybody’s shock, the news didn’t go down well with the OpenSea community as the investors started sharing their anguish on social media platforms against the entity.

As per the report, Roberts’ statement gave birth to an upsetting situation amongst the OpenSea NFT users who described it as the loss of decentralization on the portal. Many investors advocated that public listing indicates sell-out to big institutional traders. The users flooded social media platforms with a stream of criticizing posts on the IPO decision of OpenSea. A majority of users complained to the team about not launching governance tokens and choosing the IPO program. The investors feel that governance tokens will offer more exposure to the community in matters related to the future of the project.

Countering this, Roberts stated that the whole matter was a misunderstanding and blamed inaccurate reporting of the firm’s future plans in public for the chaos. The NFT marketplace is quite popular amongst the users and has recorded $2 billion in trading volume against the 1.1 million transactions of 250,000 users over the past 30 days span.  The portal fetches 2.5% from every transaction which brings its earnings to $50 million in the revenue pool.