Axie Infinity’s Ronin Phase 2 is Now Live (April 29, 2021)
Good morning. Welcome to Thursday Thoughts, part of our new series: BitPinas Daily. We will look at the price of Bitcoin, Ethereum and the major cryptocurrencies. Crypto is global, but sometimes news that matters happens while we sleep. So we bring to you what’s happening in our space here and abroad.
Market Price as of April 28, 2021:
Bitcoin | $54,894 | -0.32% |
Ethereum | $2,748 | +3.08% |
BNB | $562 | -1.06% |
XRP | $1.35 | -3.57% |
DOGE | $0.31 | +14.8% |
SLP | $0.09 | +74% |
Bitcoin closed April 27, 2021, at $54,894 per BTC. We’re up 0.0% in the last 7 days and up 87% since the year began. This is also 15.29% below the all-time high of $64,804, which was hit on April 14, 2021.
Bitcoin’s market capitalization stands today at $1,020,838,979,654 which is 47.26% of the entire cryptocurrency market. The entire crypto market, by the way, now has a market cap of $2,165,281,306,889 (-1.1%).
On the table above, there’s the cryptocurrency SLP. If you wonder what that is, check out this article: Playing Axie Infinity vs Minimum Basic Salary in the Philippines.
Visa
Visa Says It Will Move Into Crypto in a Very Big Way
According to Al Kelly, the CEO of Visa, the company is in an extremely good position to move forward with its crypto ambitions.
Visa is going to take a multi-pronged approach when it comes to Bitcoin, stablecoins, and even central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
“So our focus is on five different opportunities that we see in this space and I would say that this is space that we are leaning into in a very big way and I think are extremely well-positioned,” Kelly said as reported by The Block.
Kelly said they are in discussion with central banks on how Visa can play a role in these CB’s digital currency strategies. “We’re talking to central banks about the criticality of public/private partnership and in particular the criticality of acceptance because for these central bank digital currencies to have value, they’re going to have to both be secure in the minds of consumers, and that’s something we have a long track record with and could help. And then secondly, obviously they have to have some form of utility.”
Ethereum Addresses
The number of Active Ethereum addresses hit an all-time high this week. The previous record was in Jan. 2018 during ETH’s previous all time high record.
(Note: The graph only counts addresses that were active in the last seven days either as sender or receiver.)
MetaMask
DeFI, NFT Booms Send MetaMask Achieves 5 Million Active Users
MetaMask, the cryptocurrency wallet that lives as a browser or mobile wallet recently announced it has reached 5 million active users this month. For contrast, it reached the 1 million active user mark in October last year.
Along with the boom in decentralized finance, MetaMask said NFTs are also a big driver. “On-chain data clearly indicates that NFTs are being widely embraced by users across the Ethereum ecosystem. In fact, accessing NFTs is now the second most popular use case for MetaMask, only behind swaps.”
Axie Infinity
Axie Infinity’s Ronin Phase 2 is Now Live
Sky Mavis announced the launch of Phase 2 of Ronin, its Axie Infinity sidechain built to address network congestion and increasing gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain. In Phase 1, Lands and Land items were migrated to Ronin. This time, the Axies themselves can now be migrated to the sidechain.
This means the following:
- Players can now breed, buy and sell Axies on Ronin;
- AXS and SLP rewards can be claimed on Ronin
Migration to Ronin:
- Make sure to download Ronin if you haven’t;
- Migrate your Axies from the Marketplace Dashboard;
- Deposit ETH, AXS, and SLP to Ronin
Check out the tutorial below:
This is probably the most important part of the announcement:
Read More of Our Axie Infinity Articles here:
- Playing Axie Infinity vs Minimum Basic Salary in the Philippines
- Lunacian Scholarship League Aims to Remind Players What Attracted Them to Axie Infinity in the First Place
- Jeff Zirlin | Axie Infinity | 2020 Year in Review
- Axie Infinity Names Ubisoft, Binance as Initial Validator for Ronin Sidechain
- How to Trade SLP, AXS, ETH to PHP Instantly Through BloomX
OKEx
OKEx Now Supports Lightning Network, Announces #NibbleGames
Crypto exchange OKEx said it now supports Lightning Network for BTC deposits and withdrawals. Lightning Network is a decentralized payment protocol that allows instant off-chain transactions. Very beneficial for small payments, the process is that all small payments are first collected off-chain before they are all lumped together and moved to the on-chain.
OKEx said supporting Lightning allows them to improve user trading experience with lower cost and faster transactions.
Currently, OKEx is running a campaign where users who refer friends to join OKEx allows them to earn more points for a bigger portion of their current prize pool. The friends who joined must be Level 2 KYC verified and must achieve a minimum net deposit. For instructions, click here.
As for the rewards, Top 1 will receive 15% of the total prize pool, Top 2 – 5 will receive 20%, Top 6 – 10 will receive 15% of the total prize pool while the remaining 50% will be shared among the rest of the participants.
What else is happening
- Uranium Finance developer suspected of ‘leaking’ information leading to $50M exploit
- Alchemy raises $80M to power the NFT boom as the ‘AWS of blockchain’
- ‘Damn Huge’: Germany Opens Up to Institutional Crypto Funds
- Kurt Cobain’s Final Nirvana Photoshoot to be Released as NFTs
This article is published on BitPinas: Axie Infinity’s Ronin Phase 2 is Now Live (April 29, 2021)