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Sunflower Land developers explained in detail the new Bumpkins NFTs

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Sunflower Land, a PlayAndOwn game on the Polygon Network, is developing a new dynamic profile picture project called Bumpkins.

Sunflower Land is a MetaVerse game where you grow your farm and build your empire. Each NFT in this collection is a pass which enables players access to the game. You can mint a player pass at https://sunflower-land.com.

It is not recommended to purchase someone else’s pass, The live Sunflower Land price today is $0.116589 USD with a 24-hour trading volume of $9,481.03 USD.

The goal of this project is to create a decentralized and community driven MetaVerse style game. This repo includes the front-end game in which users can play and interact with the game on the Polygon Network and off chain data.

The team explained the concept in a Twitch stream on Sept. 2 where the developers talked about the future of Sunflower Land. The first half of the stream focused on the upcoming Goblin War within the game. The second half focused on their new project, that allows players to mint base NFTs that can evolve throughout its lifespan.

The [previous] process [of PFP minting] is pretty static. Once you mint something and its not a super rare item you’re kind of disappointed, Spencer Dezart-Smith said in Sunflower Land’s live stream. “We utilized this idea of NFTs and Semi-Fungible Tokens, and combined this idea where players can control the destiny of their NFTs.

Each item that the base Bumpkins NFT possesses is its own token which the players have ownership over. Ideally, the base NFT can be customized with other tokenized assets, changing its rarity in the process. Trading these NFTs will also move the tokens equipped to the base NFT itself, making the entire project dynamic in nature.

I, think its where the [NFT] community needs to go,” Sunflower Land’s CEO, Adam Hannigan, said on the stream. “We need to move away from projects where there’s an exclusive club. We want everyone in the world to have a Bumpkin.

FTC Orders Mastercard to Stop Debit Practices that Stifle Competition

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In a new order, the Federal Trade Commission has mandated Mastercard to end illegal business tactics it has been using to force merchants to route debit card payments through its payment network.

The order, which was announced on Wednesday, demands that Mastercard end the practice of blocking the use of competing debit payment networks. The payment giant is also required to “start providing competing networks with customer account information they need to process debit payments.”

The FTC alleged that Mastercard has been using the practice, which violates provisions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act known as the Durbin Amendment and its implementing rule, Regulation II, to keep other payment companies out of the ecommerce debit payment business.

“This is a victory for consumers and the merchants who rely on debit card payments to operate their businesses,” said Holly Vedova, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition. “Congress directed the FTC to enforce this part of the Dodd-Frank Act and prevent precisely this kind of illegal behavior. We take this responsibility seriously, as demonstrated by our action today.”

The FTC said in a statement on Friday that Mastercard, by trying to monopolize debit payment, is trying to stifle competition in the US payment market. The regulator said the Congress enacted the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010 to stop dominant payment companies from completely ruling the $4 trillion industry.

Debit Card Payment Networks

With more than 80 percent of American adults carrying at least one debit card and over $4 trillion in debit card purchases made every year, debit cards occupy a significant place in the current payment landscape. The popularity of debit cards has been growing especially quickly for purchases consumers make using their personal devices equipped with ewallet applications such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Wallet.

Payment card networks play a critical role in those debit card transactions. When a customer presents their debit card to make a purchase, the network transmits the payment information to the card’s corresponding bank for approval, and then transfers the payment approval or denial back to the merchant. Payment card networks compete for the business of banks that issue cards and for the business of merchants that accept card payments.

Mastercard, along with Visa, is one of the two leading payment card networks in the United States. The processing fees charged by networks total billions of dollars every year, affecting every purchase made with a debit card, according to the FTC. Most of these fees are paid by the merchants to the card-issuing banks and the payment card networks.

To spur more competition among payment card networks, Congress enacted a provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act known as the Durbin Amendment, which required banks to enable at least two unaffiliated networks on every debit card, thereby giving merchants a choice of which network to use for a given debit transaction. The Durbin Amendment—along with its implementing rule, Regulation II—also bars payment card networks from inhibiting merchants from using other networks.

The Commission also outlined “illegal tactics” that Mastercard has been using to dominate the market. The agency alleged that Mastercard uses “tokenization” to block the use of competing payment card networks. In addition, Mastercard refuses to provide conversion services to competing networks for remote ewallet debit transactions.

Mastercard’s Illegal Tactics

With the post-Durbin rise of debit ecommerce and ewallet debit transactions, Mastercard was flouting the law by setting policies to block merchants from routing ecommerce transactions using Mastercard-branded debit cards saved in ewallets to alternative payment card networks, including networks that may charge lower fees than Mastercard, the FTC alleged.

Specifically, Mastercard used its control over a process called “tokenization” to block the use of competing payment card networks, the agency alleged. Transactions commonly are “tokenized” by replacing the cardholder’s primary account number with a different number to protect the account number during some stages of a debit transaction.

Tokens are stored in ewallets such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Wallet and serve as a substitute credential to provide additional protection for a cardholder’s account number.

When a debit cardholder makes a debit purchase using an ewallet, the merchant receives a token from the cardholder’s device and sends it to the merchant’s bank, which in turn sends the token to a payment card network for processing. For the transaction to proceed, however, the network must be able to convert the token to its associated account number.

Mastercard’s policy requires use of a token when a cardholder loads a Mastercard-branded debit card into an ewallet, while banks issuing Mastercard-branded debit cards nearly universally use Mastercard to generate the tokens and store the corresponding primary account numbers in its Mastercard “token vault,” the FTC alleged. Since competing networks do not have access to Mastercard’s token vault, merchants are dependent on Mastercard’s converting the token to process ewallet transactions using Mastercard-branded debit cards.

According to the FTC, Mastercard refuses to provide conversion services to competing networks for remote ewallet debit transactions (i.e., online and in-app transactions, as opposed to in-person transactions made by the customer in a store), thereby making it impossible for merchants to route their ewallet transactions on a network other than Mastercard.

These practices, the FTC said, violate the law, prompting the order which will give other players a level playing ground in the market. The order prohibits Mastercard from carrying on with te practices.

Under the FTC consent order, when a competing network receives a token to process a debit card payment, Mastercard is required to provide them with the customer’s personal account number that corresponds to the token. The order also bans Mastercard from taking any action to prevent competitors from providing their own payment token service or offer tokens on Mastercard-branded debit cards and requires Mastercard to comply with provisions of Regulation II.

Will The Crypto Industry Recover From Its Hapless State?

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The crypto industry has been faced with an unfriendly period as the price of crypto assets has continued to decline massively.

With the year 2022 almost over, Crypto traders have been faced with huge losses after so many challenges that affected different crypto platforms negatively impacted their investments.

The collapse of the FTX Crypto exchange platform had a major negative impact on the crypto industry as investors pulled out huge sums over concerns of further decline in the prices of crypto.

The Impact of FTX collapse on The Crypto Industry

The World’s second-largest crypto exchange filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on November 11, after the $32 billion company saw its revenue massively decline which forced investors to pull out their funds until the platform halted withdrawals.

This affected the crypto market which was already in an awful state as the prices of crypto assets fell further.

Ever since reaching astronomical highs in November 2022 which saw Bitcoin hit $69,000, it price has so far plummeted to around $18-20 with other altcoins following suit.

The FTX collapse further fueled volatility in the crypto market as the price of tokens continue to jump up and down throughout this period.

The impact of the FTX failure on the entire crypto industry is ongoing and challenging the measure.

The ongoing implosion of FTX will no doubt have an impact on the public perception of the industry, as well as regulatory and political consequences.

Some analysts have predicted that the impact of the FTX collapse on the crypto industry will take some time to recover, also, on the other hand, clients on the FTX platform will have to take legal action to recover their assets.

Regulatory Impact of FTX Collapse on the Crypto Industry

After the shutdown of the FTX crypto exchange platform, at least 11 major exchanges including Binance, Crypto.com, Gate.io, Kraken, KuCoin, Poloniex, Bitget, Huobi, OKX, Deribit, and Bybit have all announced plans to publish proof-of-reserve statement regularly, or have pointed out that they already do.

Crypto exchange Kraken went a bit further as it already has proof-of-reserve audits in place, which it tweeted not only a statement about its commitment to such audits but have also detailed instructions on how to ensure that individual users’ accounts have been audited.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and state securities regulators have also been getting increasingly aggressive about their contention, which they fined BlockFi $100 million for failing to register its crypto lending operation under the securities act.

At the beginning of the year, SEC chairman Gensler warned cryptocurrency exchanges that the SEC would be targeting them for failing to register with the SEC as securities brokers.

Also, the ftx collapse has attracted political power, as the industry has been facing a fair amount of success in pushing its agenda in Washington, D.C. this year, where a duo of bipartisan bills seeking to regulate the industry has been introduced.

Many members of the house and senate in the U.S. have also put out statements calling for speedy legislation as they disclose that the latest upheaval in the industry, calls for reinforcement and the need for greater federal oversight of the digital asset industry.

What Investors And Analysts Are Saying About The Recent Crypto Industry Upheaval

Investors don’t appear to be concerned about the impact of FTX on bitcoin’s future,” said Alyse Killeen, founder and managing partner of venture firm Stillmark.

To that end, her company recently invested in bitcoin infrastructure firm Hoseki, a company that is also backed by the parent company of Fidelity.

Killeen added that the drop in bitcoin prices that was occurring even before the FTX meltdown is a sign that cryptocurrencies are not yet a true hedge against inflation and a stronger dollar.

On the other hand, CNBC’s Jim Cramer has told investors that they still have time to sell their cryptocurrency holdings.

Cramer, who has warned against staying in speculative assets while the Fed continues to tighten the economy, reiterated his argument and said that investors shouldn’t be fooled by some coins’ inflated market capitalization. 

He added that he expects more marginal names including XRP, dogecoin, Cardano, and Polygon to fall much further, possibly to zero.

Meanwhile, American Billionaire Entrepreneur Mark Cuban believes that crypto still has a lot of value.

Cuban who has endorsed crypto investments, while investing heavily in several projects and firms in the industry, disclosed that people should not be discouraged by the FTX collapse, rather they should ignore the noise and look at the big picture.

In an interview, he said “Separate the signal from the noise. “There’s been a lot of people making a lot of mistakes, but it doesn’t change the underlying value.”

He further stated that, as long as investors have viable options in the crypto world, he doesn’t foresee virtual assets going into oblivion.

The FTX upheaval has no doubt put immense pressure on exchange platforms everywhere, with users nervous about exchange holdings, as few analysts disclose that rebuilding the market confidence will likely take months or years. 

Conclusion

While some investors and analysts have predicted a possible surge in the prices of crypto assets, several others have predicted a further decline in the price of cryptocurrencies, as investors are left with no option but to do whatever they feel is the right for them.

As the dust of FTX collapse is still yet to settle, investors are skeptical if this is the end of Bitcoin or if this is just one of those occurrences in the industry. Only time will tell.

TikTok Parent Company ByteDance Fires Employees Over Improper Improper Data Access

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Tiktok parent company Bytedance has reportedly fired four of its employees over improper assessment of journalists personal data on the platform.

According to the management, the employees violated the company’s policies by accessing data of TikTok users which included two journalists, in an attempt to track down the source of information leaks.

In a report released, the employees accessed IP addresses of two U.S based reporters via their TikTok accounts, one of which is a staff at BuzzFeed news and the other one a staff at the financial times.

A spokesperson for BuzzFeed news displeased with Bytedance breach on the data of its employee said in a statement, “We are deeply disturbed by a report that ByteDance employees accessed the personal user data of a reporter for BuzzFeed News, showing a blatant disregard for the privacy and rights of journalists as well as TikTok users.”

Also, a spokesperson at U.K.-based Financial Times said, “Spying on reporters, interfering with their work or intimidating their sources is completely unacceptable. We’ll be investigating this story more fully before deciding our formal response.

The guilty employees have however had their employment terminated for gross misconduct.

In a bid to douse the rising tension, a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement, “The misconduct of those individuals, who are no longer employed at ByteDance, was an egregious misuse of their authority to obtain access to user data.

“This misbehavior is unacceptable, and not in line with our efforts across TikTok to earn the trust of our users. We take data security incredibly seriously, and we will continue to enhance our access protocols, which have already been significantly improved and hardened since this incident took place.”

This disclosure comes as Tiktok faced a backlash among American lawmakers who view it as a threat to U.S. national security given TikTok’s ownership by a China-based conglomerate that is under the jurisdiction of the Chinese Communist Party.

TikTok has been trying to finalize a deal with the Biden administration to address U.S. concerns about the security of user data in the app and ensure China’s government would not be able to access that information.

The social media company is reported to have spent $1.5 billion to date to form a U.S.-based data security division aimed at meeting the U.S. government’s requirements.

TikTok has admitted that it used its own app to spy on reporters as part of an attempt to track down the journalists’ sources, according to an internal email.

The data was accessed by employees of ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company and was used to track the reporters’ physical movements. The company’s chief internal auditor Chris Lepitak, who led the team involved in the operation, has been fired, while his China-based manager Song Ye has resigned.

They looked at IP addresses of journalists who were using the TikTok app in an attempt to learn if they were in the same location as employees suspected of leaking confidential information. The effort, which targeted former BuzzFeed reporter Emily Baker-White and Financial Times reporter Cristina Criddle among other reporters, was unsuccessful, but resulted in at least four members of staff based in both the US and China improperly accessing the data, according to an email from ByteDance general counsel Erich Andersen. All four have been fired. Company officials said they were taking additional steps to protect user data.

6 Important Things To Know About Property Investments

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You need to understand some things before deciding to make a critical investment. When it comes to buying real estate, location is among the most critical factors; however, it is not the only one. There are numerous factors that will assist you in determining whether the investment is appropriate for you. So we have compiled a list of the things you should consider before you decide to make a property investment.

You Need to Think of the Location

Just as we have previously mentioned, location is the critical factor for profitability in real estate investments. There are many reasons why location is one of the most important things, and these are the proximity of amenities, scenic views, green space, and the neighborhood’s status, not to mention that the place where the estate is located is the top factor influencing its value. With local real estate companies, such as a real estate company in Singapore, you will be able to confidently find the most suitable place for you. Hence, the closeness to markets, freeways, and transport hubs, as well as the tax exemption, play an immensely important role in commercial property values. The top thing to consider when choosing the location of your property is the mid-to-long-term view of how the area will evolve in the future and what aspects of the market will grow during the investment period.

Value of the Property

Property valuation is an important aspect of the purchase, investment analysis, listing price, taxation, and insurance. All of these aspects are bound up with real estate valuation. A couple of approaches need to be considered, and some of them are:

Sales Comparison Approach: this is the comparison of properties with some similar characteristics.

Cost Approach: this approach includes the cost of construction and land.

Income Approach: income approach is mainly based on cash inflows and is quite suitable for rentals.

Investment Horizon and Investment Purpose

The low liquidity and high value of investments in real estate, as well as the lack of clarity on the main purpose of this investment, may lead to unexpected results. One of them can be financial distress, which can be especially burdensome if the investment is mortgaged. A couple of categories may suit your purpose, and you should plan out your investment accordingly. Categories such as buy and self-use, buy and lease, and buy and sell both short-term and long-term can be of great use and help you decide if the investment is worth it.

Profit Opportunities

Cash flow is the amount of money that is left after all the expenses are paid. Therefore, positive cash flow is key to a good rate of return for an investment property. On the other hand, there are some modes of profit that can help you gain better insight. Expected cash flow, the benefits of depreciation as well as the available tax benefits, an expected increase in the intrinsic value (this is due to long-term price appreciation), and the cost-benefit analysis of the mortgaged loans are just a couple of crucial modes that can help you estimate cash flow.

You Need to Be Careful With Leverage

Loans are very convenient, but you need to be very careful since they can also come at a big cost. For you to remain stable and actually profit from investing in real estate, it is of the utmost importance to understand how to handle these loans and their nature. Also, you must learn how to avoid high debt, or what is professionally called “over-leverage.” Truth be told, even the greatest experts in finance can have problems with market conditions and over-leverage. This can take many forms, including market conditions and shortages of liquidity associated with debt obligations, which can derail real estate projects.

New Construction and Existing Property

All things considered, new construction typically offers attractive pricing and some options to customize hand-in-hand with modern amenities. Risks in a project can include fundamental issues such as delays, unfamiliar or newly developed areas, and rising costs. For instance, the pricing for bathroom partitions can greatly affect your budget and schedule when designing restrooms. Therefore, it is crucial to plan carefully.

On the other hand, existing properties can offer you faster access, established improvements such as landscaping and utilities, and in many cases, much lower costs. There are some things to look at when deciding whether to construct a new property or buy an existing one. Some of their means include reviews of past projects and research on the reputation of the construction company for the sake of new investments.

Real estate is one of the greatest business opportunities nowadays. First things first, if you invest your money properly, the value of your property can increase a lot and help you profit in so many aspects. Also, it can pave the way for some future investments as well.