DAY LONG NEWS ROUNDUP: LATEST NEWS 10/11/21

• Avinandan Banerjee
• April 10, 2024

We are bringing you the top stories making headlines in the blockchain and crypto space on 10/11/21 so you can stay informed and ahead of the curve.

The city of New York to have its own cryptocurrency

New York City, the city of dreams, is about to receive its personal cryptocurrency.  According to CityCoins, they are planning for expansion to the Big Apple, after they had a very successful rollout in the city of Miami.

Needless to say, this decision was taken right after Eric Adams has started preparing to become the next Mayor of New York City and he is a genuine supporter of Bitcoin. 

The new digital asset will be known as NYCCoin and it will be powered by a protocol that goes by the name Stacks. It is a protocol that can enable the smart contracts to feature on Bitcoin.

It has been announced that those who are willing to engage themselves with this cryptocurrency, through staking or even mining, will be able to keep 70 percent of the rewards. The remainder of the 30 percent will go toward the city of New York and the authorities will eventually decide on how that amount will be spent.

Mastercard to introduce crypto payments to Asia-Pacific

Mastercard, the global payments processing giant, has revealed their plan of launching a trio of payment cards in the Asia Pacific region, which will be linked to cryptocurrencies. 

Coinjar in Australia and Bitkub and Amber Group based in Thailand are in charge of issuing these payment cards. In an announcement made on the 8th of November, Mastercard announced that they will enable businesses and consumers across the Asia Pacific region to apply for Mastercard debit, credit or prepaid cards which will be linked to crypto. For the first time in that region, something like this is taking place. 

The card will instantly enable the users to convert their crypto holdings into traditional fiat currencies. Moreover they can spend the money throughout the world wherever they accept Mastercard.

These cards are a part of the Global Crypto Card Program initiated by Mastercard, where the aim is to provide ease of access for the crypto companies to offer compliant and secure cards through which the consumers can directly pay the merchants while leveraging their crypto holdings.

They also stated that, since Thailand is one of the top crypto markets in the Asia Pacific region, it only makes sense to transform that huge asset base into something usable in a regular context. This definitely proved to be a big step ahead for Bitkub and obviously the users of Mastercard. 

The International Chess Federation is the first association in global sports to introduce their own NFTs

FIDE or better known as the International Chess Federation, has announced their plans for launching an NFT marketplace, welcoming digitization to one of the oldest games in existence. The group has declared that the marketplace will be named ChessNFT.

This is the first association in global sports that have created their very own NFT marketplace. The announcement came just prior to the World Chess Championship scheduled to be conducted by FIDE during the end of November. The event will commence from November 24 to December 1, 2021, at the Expo 2020 Dubai. 

Magnus Carless, who is the current world champion, was awarded an NFT trophy last month for his win at the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour. A replica version of that trophy was sold for 6.88 ETH at an auction. The winner also had the opportunity to play with the world champion. 

FIDE reportedly announced that by delving deeper in the world of Non Fungible Tokens, they are aiming to create entirely new crypto demographic. They are willing to do this through gamification of legendary match moments, chess-related art, collectibles and a lot more.