The third week of May was an exciting time for JPEX users across the globe as an official version with a Chinese Name which means Green Stone was officially unveiled.
Aside from this, JPEX announced that new users can compete in the Boxing Ticket Lottery by not only registering but completing Know Your Customer (KYC) as well.
The exchange also alerted users to the event of a non-fungible token (NFT) staking while JPEX’s Asia Future Development Roadmap was also released.
Overall, around $6 billion was added to the market capitalization of the crypto economy within seven days, data from TradingView showed.
While many traders poured liquidity into the crypto market, news content made rounds across the space.
Lawmakers in the United Kingdom made it known that crypto should not be exempted from regulation but instead, be treated like gambling.
NFT marketplaces continue to thrive and within the period, one called DIBA went live and it’s primarily tailored to Bitcoin (BTC) smart contracts. Blend is an NFT lending platform introduced by the dominant digital art trading marketplace Blur and it had so much success during the period in terms of total volume.
Axie Infinity remains the biggest-selling NFT collection and its game was launched on the App Store during the third week of the fifth month of the year.
Below is an extensive review of the aforementioned news.
Axie Infinity Game Was Launched on the Apple Store
Axie Infinity: Origins is a card-based strategy game. During the week, the development team behind the project Sky Mavis announced that it is launching Origins on Apple’s Store in several key markets where it believes the game is extremely popular. The regions where the game would be made available are Latin America and Asia (Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, and Argentina).
While the game currently has more than one million installations across many platforms, Sky Mavis plans to expand Axie Infinity to more users of Android and iOS-backed smart devices.
Due to the success of NFTs, Sky Mavis is launching a curated marketplace called Mavis Market which would be backed by Ronin blockchain.
As of May 20, 2023, Ronin remains the second-largest NFT blockchain by all-time sales volume, data from NFT data aggregator CryptoSlam showed.
UK Lawmakers Say Crypto Should Be Regulated Like Gambling
The crypto market has been struggling since crypto winter set in during 2022 and continues to suffer due to consistent bearishness.
The billions of dollars in lost money have led to calls for regulation across many bodies from several countries.
During the 3rd week of May, a panel of lawmakers in the U.K. from the country’s Parliament Treasury Committee said that Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and others should not be given more time to do additional damage to the fortunes of risk takers.
Instead, they believe it should be subject to the same regulatory standard as gambling to help prevent millions of residents in the country from losing billions of pounds.
DIBA NFT marketplace went live
In November 2021, TAPROOT was triggered. This was an upgrade that unlocked the potential for smart contracts.
On Thursday, May 18, DIBA, a new NFT marketplace was launched, and its primarily tailored to the exchanging of Bitcoin-based NFTs.
According to Coindesk, DIBA will be allowing users to trade assets issued on BTC smart contracts on layer two (2) networks (Lightning Network). Since NFTs cannot exist without blockchain technology, crypto wallets, and cryptocurrencies, DIBA released a wallet solely for BTC and it can store art and music files.
The NFT marketplace sector continues to see above-average volumes.
As of 11:00 UTC on May 20, 2023, the total volume from all marketplaces was around $430 million, data from the Block Crypto showed.
Blend Surpasses 100,000 Ether (ETH) in Volume
Blend is the newly launched NFT marketplace by Blur, the largest NFT marketplace by trading volume in 2023.
Per data retrieved from Dune Analytics, more than $180 million (around 100,000 ETH) have been processed in total volume. This came in just seventeen (17) days after its launch.
Blend works by allowing users to put up their NFTs as collateral for ETH loans. These loans can then be used to buy digital art on the Blur marketplace.
Many analysts believe Blend has added another form of passive income to what already existed in the crypto industry as liquidity providers (LPs) receive interest.
Blend’s impact has contributed to Blur’s $251 million in volume in the first three weeks of May. This has given birth to a new area and terminology called NFT finance (NFTfi).
Ethereum continues to trade below $2,000. While it continues to see a minimum of $1 billion in daily trading volume, it was exchanging hands for $1,813, data from CoinMarketCap showed.