News & Reviews:   NFT

Global cryptocurrency platform Luno has today revealed that Malaysia is one of its strongest markets. In a statement by Luno Malaysia country manager Aaron Tang, 12 percent of the platform's new customers in the past 6 months are based in our country.

That amounted to approximately 120,000 new customers from Malaysia in just half a year. Globally, Luno now has over 10 million customers across 40 countries, securing one million new customers worldwide in the past six months for a a 35 percent year-on-year growth.

Malaysia is no stranger in the gaming industry, although we are mostly known for our e-sports athletes who are amongst the best in the world in various competitive gaming titles. However, did you know that we have a thriving game development scene too?

In fact, the first ‘Buatan Malaysia’ massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), Fung Wan Online was launched way back in 2003 by Phoenix Games Studios. Now, after nearly two decades, another MMORPG developed entirely in Malaysia is finally close to release and it's called Soulbond: Rebels Arise.

It looks like Malaysia won’t be recognising cryptocurrency as legal tender anytime soon as despite the urging to do so by the Ministry of Communications and Multimedia (K-KOMM). Previously, K-KOMM deputy minister called crypto ‘the future of finance’ and urged for the relevant authorities to held discussions in order to legalise it.

However, the proposal was unceremoniously turned down by the Ministry of Finance (MOF) confirmed that the federal government has no intention of recognising crypto as legal tender. This was asserted by the ministry’s first deputy minister, Shahar Abdullah in the Dewan Rakyat yesterday.

The Deputy Minister of Communication and Multimedia (K-KOMM), Datuk Zahidi Zainul Abidin has urged for the Federal Government to adopt cryptocurrency as legal tender in Malaysia. Claiming that crypto is ‘the future of finance’, Zahidi also said that his ministry will be looking into ways to increase youths' involvement in digital currencies.

The K-KOMM Deputy Minister made the statement in the Dewan Rakyat today in reply to a supplementary question from the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ledang, Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh. The latter asked K-Komm on the government’s stance on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) trading which are becoming more popular in our country.

Meta Platforms chairman and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg yesterday confirmed that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are coming to Instagram soon. In fact, the Facebook founder said that Meta is currently working on doing just that and hopes that it would be accomplished ‘in the near term’.

This announcement comes as no surprise as Meta has previously announced its interest with NFTs. Earlier this year, Instagram top executive Adam Mosseri said that the company is ‘actively exploring’ NFTs and even made plans to add NFTs into its crypto wallet Novi.

Malaysians may soon be able to own their vehicle registration number and other mainstream assets as a non-fungible token (NFT) after My E.G. Service Bhd (MyEG) announced that it is officialy entering the NFT space. The company yesterday launched NFT Pangolin, a marketplace that allows users to mint, sell and trade NFTs.

According to a report by The Star, NFT Pangolin currently supports ethereum and will operate on the Zetrix Layer 1 blockchain network after its launch in the near future. The latter serves as parallel chain to the International Backbone and Supernodes of Xinghuo, China’s national blockchain infrastructure.

Short videos have become a thing, but maybe too short isn't enough for a lot of people. There's a demand for slightly longer short videos, with TikTok allowing for uploads of up to 3 minutes last year. Instagram is also planning to expand the length of Instagram Reels soon.

NFTs are sure getting a lot of buzzes these past few weeks. So much so that YouTube is actually considering exploring this option for video content creators to earn some profit. This came from Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube when she wrote an opening letter for the company's direction in 2022.

If you've been following various news, you might have heard of the term NFT (Non-Fungible Token). We won't go into the details today, but NFTs are essentially pieces of data that represent digital items of value. Now, Meta could be looking to join this bandwagon.