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's Michael Saylor: " , the American dream of "

Are we hearing this just?

American fast-food behemoth ’s is the latest major brand to make a move into the by filing no fewer than twelve trademark applications on February 4, eleven of which make direct references to virtual restaurants, cafes, concerts, and other virtual services, goods, and events.

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Luxury fashion brand Gucci has bought itself some land on the digital world platform known as The Sandbox.

The move will allow the fashion brand to create virtual fashion experiences for consumers, though details on what that experience will entail are not yet public, nor is it public how much the fashion brand invested to obtain the digital land rights.

Upcoming features to give merchants a way to accept payments!

“Tap to Pay on iPhone will work with contactless credit and debit cards from leading payment networks"
https://cointelegraph.com/news/upcoming-apple-iphone-feature-to-give-merchants-a-way-to-accept-crypto-payments

The German sportswear brand Adidas Originals earned 5,924 ETH, or $23.5 million, from its collaborative “Into the Metaverse” drop with Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), the non-fungible token (NFT) collector gmoney and the crypto-focused media group PUNKS Comic.

Adidas Originals began its Early Access minting stage on December 17, in which holders of an Adidas Originals proof-of-attendance protocol (“POAP,” which are given to attendees of virtual or physical events), gmoney POAP, a BAYC or Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT or a Pixel Wallet NFT gained entry. The Early Access stage minted 20,000 NFTs for 0.2 ETH — $15.5 million — and finished a little after 5pm ET.

Those without these assets could still mint one of the 9,620 “Into the Metaverse” NFTs in a general sale beginning at 6pm ET. Upon completion, that added about $7.5 million to the total mint earnings. Adidas Originals and its partners are holding 380 NFTs for future events.

As The Block previously reported, Adidas Originals paused its Early Access mint soon after its launch due to an issue with Mutant Ape Yacht Club. The brand assured users that those with failed transactions will be able to mint once the sale resumes and that they’ll cover the cost of lost gas fees.

Parachains have launched, bringing Polkadot's multi-chain capabilities to life.

Parachains Finally Land on Polkadot
Polkadot has launched its first five parachains, kicking off the blockchain’s path to becoming an interoperable ecosystem.

The first five auction winners were Acala, Moonbeam, Parallel Finance, Astar, and Clover, projects focusing on decentralized finance, cross-chain interoperability, and other use cases.

Each project now has a parachain lease until Oct. 20, 2023.

Acala, a project aiming to create a DeFi hub on Polkadot, is among the most anticipated parachains set to deploy on the network. The project’s co-founder Bette Chain said of the launch:

“We couldn’t be more excited to be launching Acala’s parachain to provide a DeFi platform and native, decentralized stablecoin to the Polkadot ecosystem and beyond.”

Polkadot is a smart contract blockchain that will host up to 100 parachains. Founded by former Ethereum CTO Gavin Wood, it focuses on enabling application-specific parachains to communicate with each other. Parachains are secured by Polkadot’s main central chain, which is called the Relay Chain. Parachain slots are auctioned off to teams over a period of 96 weeks.

With only five parachains operating on Polkadot so far, additional slots will be allocated in batches over the coming months.
The next batch of Polkadot parachain auctions is slated for Dec. 23, with auction winners to be awarded on Mar. 11, 2022.

WhatsApp has launched a cryptocurrency payment feature for a small number of users in the United States, thanks to Novi integration, a digital wallet owned by Facebook (now Meta).

Novi WhatsApp
The pilot program lets users of the encrypted messaging app send and receive money "instantly, securely, and with no fees" using the Paxos Dollar (USPD) stablecoin, whose value is linked to the US dollar.

The way the payments work in WhatsApp is similar to sending regular attachments in a conversation. Users tap the plus (+) icon and then select Payment from the menu that appears. Users who are paid this way receive USDP, which can be withdrawn to a bank account in its equivalent value in US dollars.

There's no cap on the number of times the Novi system can be used to send and receive money through WhatsApp. Regardless of frequency of use, there are no fees associated with keeping a balance in a Novi account or withdrawing it to a bank account. In addition, the inclusion of Novi in the chat platform has no effect on the end-to-end encryption of personal messages. The small pilot program is available to some users in the US from today. For more information about the WhatsApp integration, check out the Novi website.
The pilot is one outcome of Meta's cryptocurrency plans, which have changed since they were officially announced in 2019. Back then, the plan was to develop a cryptocurrency called Libra that would be linked to a Facebook digital wallet called Calibra.

However, Libra has since become Diem, and Calibra has become Novi, and instead of using Diem, Novi has adopted the Paxos stablecoin in partnership with Coinbase, which is the custody partner that holds the funds for the pilot.