Ethereum Upgrades, Super Bowl FTX, New Bitcoin ETFs + More News

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Get your daily digest of crypto-asset and blockchain news – by investigating the stories that go under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Blockchain news

The Altair hard fork, the first mainnet upgrade to the Ethereum Beacon Chain (ETH), went live today. As noted, the update is seen as a “low stakes warm-up” for the upcoming merger, when the current Ethereum backbone, which is secured by a Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, “merges” with proof of the tag chain. participation system (PoS).

Crypto exchange FTX bought an advertisement in the Super Bowl, the annual championship of American football, according to at Bloomberg. As the exchange has expanded the space in the sport at large, football is the center of attention, said FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

Valkyrie, the company behind one of the futures contracts Bitcoin (BTC) Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) now approved in the United States, has deposit a request with the United States Securities Commission to launch the Valkyrie XBTO Levered BTC Futures ETF. The fund would produce returns worth 1.25 times the return of a benchmark bitcoin price and would be able to hold derivatives such as futures and options, in accordance with the deposit.
Supplier of financial products Direction foresees a Direxion Bitcoin Strategy Bear ETF that would offer managed short exposure to CMF Bitcoin futures contracts, according to to a filing with the SEC.
Trading application Robin Hoodcrypto trading revenue fell 78% from $ 233 million in the second quarter of this year to $ 51 million in the third, according to at Bloomberg.
Blockchain infrastructure platform QuickNode To raised $ 35 million in a Series A funding round led by Global Tiger. The new funding will be dedicated to growing the company’s services by enabling them to support new channels and further expand the product offering, they said.

Miami-Dade County in Florida has approved a resolution to create a working group to study the feasibility of accepting crypto as a form of tax payment. The working group will explore how Miami-Dade might accept crypto as a payment method for taxes, fees, and services, but will also explore crypto and blockchain initiatives.
Payment provider Visa inc. joined his rival Mastercard Inc. as an investor in Merit, the latter’s CEO, Kalpesh Kapadia, Recount Bloomberg. Deserve has already launched a Visa credit card in partnership with a cryptocurrency financial service provider BlockFi.

A unique non-fungible (NFT) token from the Bored Ape Yacht Club the collection was sold for $ 3.4 million at the auction house Sotheby’s Natively Digital 1.2 online auction, the first to be held on its new Sotheby’s Metaverse marketplace. The NFT is listed through Rarity tools as the third rarest golden furry monkey in the collection of 10,000 randomly generated avatars, and is ranked 17th overall based on the combined rarity of traits seen in the image.
Briefing The Economist To sold the NFT version of his cover titled Down the Rabbit Hole for 99.9 ETH (valued at $ 420,000 at time of sale). The cover art was originally made by a digital artist named Justin Metz and is based on Alice in Wonderland.
NFT project Drops announced the launch of testnet for its NFT lending platform. The platform allows participants to use their metaverse items as loan collateral.

Spain’s central bank is to present new registration guidelines for local virtual currency service providers, including banking institutions. Establishments are required to submit a registration request even if their end customers are not located in Spain, and it is recommended that they use the electronic register form but can also proceed through other channels such as mail.