#24 Banks in the metaverse: yayy or nay? 🤔
The successful Ethereum Merge, Meta's mega metaverse push in India
By Muskaan Sethi and Aditya Humnabadkar
gm guys!
The much-awaited Ethereum Merge happened this week amidst a lot of fanfare, although Ethereum has been on a falling spree, dipping 8% to under $1,500.
BTC, Avalanche & Polkadot also fell significantly.
Let’s walk through the stories of this week.
This week in the cryptic land🤔
The successful Ethereum merge 🎊
What’s poppin’ — The switch from proof of work to proof of stake on the Ethereum network was completed successfully, with no major disruptions or issues. The crucial test of whether the integration was effective was when it achieved a conclusion. Major cryptocurrency exchanges including Binance, FTX, Coinbase, and Kraken momentarily halted trading for ETH and other tokens connected to Ethereum as a precaution. However, none of the digital assets, applications, or decentralized finance (DeFi) systems supported by the Ethereum network appear to have been negatively impacted by the network's switch to proof of stake.
Bottomline — The Ethererum merge has been touted as a stepping stone in solving the negative environmental impact of cryptocurrency amongst a host of other issues. So all in all, in the famous words of Borat it’s a:
To read more about Merge and its benefits, refer to this article.
Opera adopts crypto wallets👀
The most recent version of Opera's desktop browser includes a wallet selector, domain handles, and additional features. It now supports MetaMask wallets. Users may pick any wallet extension from the Google Chrome or Opera store to connect with a particular dApp or website using the new wallet selector. The wallet selector functions as a combination of many wallet extensions to streamline the connection process.
How’s India holdin’ up?
A concerning surge of banks embracing the metaverse😟
What's popping - Since JP Morgan developed its virtual lounge in the metaverse in February, banks all over the years have been rushing to establish themselves in the virtual world. Not feeling left out, Indian banks have started rolling out their own metaverse plans. Union bank of India launched its Virtual Lounge, titled ‘Uni-verse’ which would store information about bank products and instructions.
Although these moves have been termed praiseworthy, there are many sceptics who mention that all virtual experiences are nothing beyond 'innovative customer experiences. According to the study by Razorfish, customers using these virtual platforms have also accused them of being laggy and not being of any real value to their banking experience.
Bottomline - Concepts like metaverse are introduced to make different industries more accessible. But one must keep in mind that not every institution would be represented in the metaverse successfully
Banks rushing to make their presence in the metaverse be like:
Starbucks adapts Polygon for customer incentives😄
In order to offer NFT incentives to consumers and employees in the United States, Starbucks has announced that it would use the Ethereum scaling network Polygon. Through the Starbucks Odyssey initiative, customers and employees will be able to earn digital stamps as rewards, which may be used to purchase limited-edition digital stamps using credit cards. An NFT version of each stamp will be created.
Meta's mega metaverse push in India💪
Meta is partnering with India's IT Ministry to set up a startup hub that'll accelerate the country's innovation in emerging technologies like AR & VR. The XR Startup program, as it will be called, would provide 40 early-stage startups with a grant of over $2500. The program will kickstart at four premier Indian institutions and will also have a grand challenge for innovative products in education, climate action, tourism etc.
What else are we nibbling on?
India’s first Real Estate NFT collection launched by the House of Hiranandani honours engineers
Growth in the number of female crypto investors in India even with the slump in prices.
South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT reveals plans to introduce special metaverse laws.
That’s it for this week folks. We’ll see you next week with more interesting content. We’ve also been revamping our structure, so, you can expect to enjoy richer content in the forthcoming weeks.👋