How Videogame about Cats Could Bring...

Alla Petriaieva

published in Blogs

Nov 28, 2018

How Videogame about Cats Could Bring Blockchain into the Mainstream

Dapper Labs, the decentralized app (or dapp, pronounced ‘dee-app’) developer behind CryptoKitties, recently announced a $15 million funding round. Venrock, who led the round, were joined by GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Samsung NEXT. According to the press release announcing the deal, the funds “will be used to help Dapper Labs, a Canadian-founded company, expand locally and globally,” including “establishing a U.S. subsidiary led by former executives from Unity and Disney, with additional hires for the Canada office from Ubisoft, EA Sports, Amazon, ESPN, Hasbro, and Zynga.”

CryptoKitties, which is billed in the press release as the “world’s first and most successful consumer blockchain product,” is a key part of Dapper Labs’ mission “to use games and entertainment to bring the values of decentralization to billions of consumers worldwide,” says CEO Roham Gharegozlou.

The game is centered around creating, managing, and trading the titular “collectible digital art forms”, each of which is “a unique digital asset, or non-fungible token (NFT).” Blockchain is used to establish true, indisputable ownership of each cat, which can be bred within the game to create new cats with special attributes; peer-to-peer transactions to acquire new cats are facilitated by smart contracts. CryptoKitties’ smart contracts represent “the world’s most popular outside of exchanges, with over 3.2-million transactions recorded to date,” according to the press release.

Investors are betting that Dapper Labs’ game-centric approach to blockchain will be a crucial step towards widespread mainstream adoption of decentralized ledger technology. Dapps have been slow to gather users thus far, despite their considerable promise – while developers are hard at work creating decentralized alternatives to traditional apps, functionality, and consistency can be elusive between myriad glitches and operating issues. Coupled with the familiar hindrance of scaling on Ethereum (which Fortune notes results “in prohibitive transaction fees when there is an uptick of activity”), CryptoKitties hovers between 300-400 users per day – down significantly from the 14,000 daily users it boasted at its peak (not coincidentally, near the peak of 2017’s crypto boom).

The numbers remain strong for a dapp but representative of how far there is to go to reach the numbers associated with wider engagement. The fact that CryptoKitties continues to attract attention from investors (this is its second investment round, following a $12 million round in March) speaks to the belief in the potential of blockchain outside of virtual currencies. Dapper Labs will use the latest influx of capital to improve the app’s infrastructure to make it more user-friendly, in hopes of creating a similar product to the traditional app-based games that are now proven money makers. The prospect of doing so while subsequently aiding large-scale blockchain adoption remains tantalizing.

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Sergey Savastiouk

published in Blogs

Mar 07, 2021

4 Tricks Hedge Funds Use to Get Ahead

If the stock market were Major League Baseball, hedge funds and institutional investors would be the pros on championship teams while everyday self-directed investors (SDIs) are the benchwarmers in the minors.It’s how they get ahead, and it’s why 90% of SDIs lose money trying to play (invest and trade) in the major leagues. The 4 tricks we discuss below are rooted in one common theme: they all use Artificial Intelligence and algorithms to generate data and ideas.

John Jacques

published in Blogs

Mar 22, 2018

A.I. Stock Market Predictions: Head & Shoulders

Statistics for the Head-and-Shoulders Bottom Pattern The days where only hedge funds used algorithms to trade stocks are officially over. Now retail investors can use Artificial Intelligence (A.I. Here’s an example of the algorithm in action: Late last year, Tickeron’s A.I.

Sergey Savastiouk

published in Blogs

Jul 10, 2020

3 Stocks to Buy if Coronavirus Second Wave Hits

By analyzing market trends from the first wave, you can predict behavior for the second. Technology stocks have performed at historic levels this year, but the market is severely overbought.To compensate for that, look at performance during Q1 and Q2, the height of global Covid shutdowns.

Edward Flores

published in Blogs

Feb 06, 2021

How to Become the Millionaire Next Door

The Golden Gate Bridge is always a fixture of these walks too, one of man's most beautiful creations. As we were walking, at one point she turned to me and said, "Man, I'll never have a million dollars."" My girlfriend is 27 years old and works as a graphic designer, making about $75,000 a year.

Alla Petriaieva

published in Blogs

Feb 23, 2021

Is Ethereum’s Bomb about to Explode?

Ethereum’s software is set for an update in October.Until it is finished, participants in the Ethereum blockchain must determine how to delay the difficulty bomb – code that necessitates a steadily increasing amount of computer power to mine blocks and unlock rewards – that is already in place.

Sergey Savastiouk

published in Blogs

Aug 07, 2018

When Is the Next Recession Coming?

However, we also know that economists predicted 22 recessions out of 11 that took place since 1945. Are there real recession signs we should watch for?Indeed, the answer is yes, and here are a few very important ones: The first one is almost obvious and known to everyone – it is the Fed.

Abhoy Sarkar

published in Blogs

May 22, 2020

Central banks have been buying $2.4 billion in assets every hour for the past two months

Some $17.8 billion has been poured into bond markets over the past week, the biggest move in more than three months.Around $3.5 billion has been invested into gold, the second largest on record.

Rick Pendergraft

published in Blogs

Feb 07, 2021

Mid-January Short Interest Report Shows 8 Stocks with Good Fundamentals and High Short Interest

Sergey Savastiouk

published in Blogs

Mar 10, 2021

How to Start Trading Penny Stocks

Penny stocks have long been marginalized within the professional investment community, oftentimes being painted with a broad brush of simply being “too risky.” Leonardo DiCaprio’s depiction of the penny stock peddling conman, Jordan Belfort, in the Wolf of Wall Street certainly didn’t help.Here are four reasons to start trading them now. Reason #1: Let’s State the Obvious -- Penny Stocks are Cheap A single share of Apple Inc. costs over $350.

Abhoy Sarkar

published in Blogs

May 08, 2020

US unemployment rate jumps to 14.7%, the highest in series history

The U.S. economy’s employment fell by -20.5 million in April. The coronavirus crisis led to unemployment rate soaring to 14.7% in the U.S, the highest rate in the Bureau of Labor Statistics-tracked series history that goes back to 1948. However, the figures were better compared to several economists'/analysts' forecasts of 22 million job losses and 16% unemployment rate. Another unemployment measure that includes those who have stopped looking for work as well as those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons also touched an all-time high of 22.8%.