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That interest reached a new peak on Tuesday when Republic Realm, a firm that develops real estate in the metaverse, said it paid $4.3 million for land in the world Sandbox, the biggest virtual real-estate sale publicized to date, according to the company and to data from the website NonFungible.com, which tracks digital land sales.

Republic Realm bought the digital land from videogame company Atari SA and the two firms said they plan to partner on the development of some of the properties.

From Metaverse Real Estate Piles Up Record Sales in Sandbox and Other Virtual Realms – WSJ:

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Dan Scholey, COO of Moneyhub held this sentiment: “Open Banking powered payments are a much quicker and cheaper alternative to regular card payments. Using Open Banking the money leaves the purchaser’s bank account and goes directly into the business’. With an expensive middle man no longer present- businesses could make significant savings, which could ultimately be passed onto the end-consumer.”

From The fintech sentiment: Revealing the impact of the Amazon Visa payments news:

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An analysis of more than four million payment cards being hawked on the dark web reveals that they belong to citizens of 140 countries and are selling for an average of $9.70.

From Payment cards going for an average $9.70 on dark web:

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A wholesale-CBDC is an old idea. It is basically a proposal to permit free-entry into the business of narrow-banking. Let Novi, Square, PayPal and other reputable firms have Fed accounts. Let them issue “stablecoin” liabilities fully-backed by interest-bearing reserves.

From MacroMania: On the Necessity and Desirability of CBDC:

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To make all that work, the smart contract must monitor the price of bitcoin using a third-party source of data called an “oracle.” Oracles allow smart contracts to get external information needed for transactions. Right now oracles are mainly used to stream crypto prices, but they could provide information on almost anything, from stock prices to weather data to election results.

A number of oracle networks aggregate data from multiple sources and provide it to DeFi projects. The biggest is Chainlink, whose creators say it supports over $80 billion worth of assets tied up in various smart contracts. Its data sources include the Associated Press, which agreed in October to provide data on the economy, sports and elections through Chainlink.

Pyth is undercutting rivals with free data—unlike Chainlink, for instance, whose oracles cost money to use.

From Why the World’s Biggest Traders Are Betting on Blockchain Data – WSJ:

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For DeFi to succeed, it needs data—and that’s where services like Pyth come in. The creators of Pyth hope to unseat rival services to become the leading source of financial data for DeFi projects. The idea is to provide fast, accurate data that could enable innovative mashups of traditional and crypto markets.

From Why the World’s Biggest Traders Are Betting on Blockchain Data – WSJ:

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Blockchain startup MonoX Finance said on Wednesday that a hacker stole $31 million by exploiting a bug in software the service uses to draft smart contracts.

From Really stupid “smart contract” bug let hackers steal $31 million in digital coin | Ars Technica:

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On the merchant side, deploying digital wallet capabilities in-store is a lucrative choice. According to Blackhawk Network’s survey, 43% of respondents reported shopping more often since they began using a digital wallet; 38% reported spending more money at retailers where they can use digital wallets.

From Digital Wallets Are in Store for In-Store Shopping – PaymentsJournal:

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Crypto exchanges operating in the UK will have to pay the 2% digital services tax as they do not qualify for an exemption because HMRC doesn’t recognise digital assets as financial instruments.

From This Week in Fintech | Nik Milanović | Substack:

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Differences in prices for digital avatars based on race, gender and skin color are emerging among a popular collection of NFTs known as CryptoPunks, belying the utopian and egalitarian ideals touted by the closely connected world of crypto, decentralized finance, blockchain and non-fungible tokens.

From CryptoPunk NFT Prices Suggest a Diversity Problem in the Metaverse – Bloomberg:

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