Cash App Users Can Now Both Send And Receive Bitcoin (BTC) Using the Lightning Network
This week's top news from Stack
Hi Stackers,
Here’s the top news this week:
Reddit's NFTs Surged As Polygon-Based Avatars Reached Millions of Users, and the New UK Prime Minister Is Launching Support for CBDCs
The secondary market sales surrounding Reddit's non-fungible token (NFT) avatars, which are based on the Polygon (MATIC) Blockchain, have surged. Reddit revealed that over 3 million Polygon wallets have also been created by users as a means of collecting these NFTs. Sales have been surging due to the fact that collectors see these NFTs as a major trading opportunity.
Additionally, the new Prime Minister of the UK is known as Rishi Sunak and hopes to push the country into the exploration of digital currencies. Sunak is the third person to have the position within the last two months and has pushed the country towards supporting crypto, where he said that “The G7 is launching a set of policy principles for retail, Central Bank Digital Currencies, CBDCs.”.
Cash App Users Can Now Both Send And Receive Bitcoin (BTC) Using the Lightning Network
Cash App users have been provided with the opportunity to now send as well as receive Bitcoin using the Lightning Network. The Product Lead at the company, Michael Rihani, announced the news through Twitter, and the platform's help page confirmed it afterward. Cash App users were only able to send BTC through the Lightning Network prior to this update, but now they can receive it as well.
The Lightning Network is responsible for speeding up Bitcoin transactions while also reducing the costs by routing transactions through different channels without needing to use the main Blockchain.
Meta Stocks Fall As Metaverse-Driven Reality Labs Posts Losses, Elon Musk Takes Control of Twitter in a $44B Deal, and Binance CEO Confirms Participation in Takeover
Reality Labs, which is the tech-driven division of the company that focuses on Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) hardware and software, posted a loss of $3.7 billion in the quarter alone, which totals nearly $10 billion within a single year. As such, Meta stocks recorded a 6% loss on Wednesday, October 26, and posted 20% in losses after hours. The company also experienced a $25 million fine for campaign finance disclosure violations. Meta is driving high revenues. However, operating margins have decreased, and there is a showcase of costs associated with an evolving identity.
However, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, completed the $44 billion takeover of Twitter, based on a filing with the US government. Elon Musk tweeted, "the bird is freed," and said, "let the good times roll." Furthermore, a number of top executives, such as Parag Agrawal, have reportedly been fired from the company, where Mr. Agrawal and two other executives were escorted out of Twitter's San Francisco headquarters, said Reuters.
Binance also confirmed that it was an equity investor in the billionaire technology entrepreneur Elon Musk's takeover of the microblogging service Twitter. The Founder of Binance, Chanpeng Zhao, said the following statement: "We're excited to be able to help Elon realize a new vision for Twitter. We aim to play a role in bringing social media and Web3 together in order to broaden the use and adoption of crypto and blockchain technology." Furthermore, Zhao said that Binance wired $500 million as a part of the deal.
Google to Update Legal Compliance After Losing Criminal Crypto Exchange Data and Is Launching a Cloud Node Engine for Ethereum Developers
Alphabet Inc, which is the operator behind the search engine known as Google, agreed to improve and update the overall legal compliance process, in a settlement with the US Department of Justice (DOJ), after failing to produce data surrounding the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e in 2016. Google will "reform and upgrade its legal process compliance program to ensure timely and complete responses to legal processes such as subpoenas and search warrants," as per the requirement of the relevant legal authorities.
Furthermore, Google is launching a cloud-based node engine service for any Ethereum developers as well as projects. It is called the Blockchain Node Engine, and it is a fully managed service, which means that customers will not need to hire their own team to maintain or even monitor the nodes. Google will actively monitor them and restart them at points in time when anything goes wrong. This Blockchain Node Engine will also include security features, such as Cloud Armor, which aims to prevent denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that spam and slow down networks, and will exist behind a VPC firewall.
Thanks for reading,
James