Crypto Market Overview July 28th | Dex-Trade
US FTC Accuses Meta of Monopolizing the VR Market
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed a lawsuit seeking to block Meta and prevent its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, from buying VR app company Within because it is "attempting Illegal Acquisition to Expand Their Virtual Reality Empire." In a press release issued by the FTC on July 27, the FTC alleges that Meta and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg are attempting to illegally acquire Within, a dedicated fitness app maker, in hopes of scaling their metaverse by creating a monopoly of VR solutions. Those, Meta is trying to “buy its way out” instead of ethically competing according to the laws of the market. According to FTC representatives, if Meta decided to explore the market on its own, it would cause positive changes on all fronts. But Within's acquisition of Meta "dampen future innovation and competitive rivalry" instead of stimulating "consumer choice, increase innovation, spur additional competition to attract the best employees, and yield other competitive benefits." The complaint from the FTC is seeking a temporary restraining order to oppose Within's acquisition of Meta. In addition, in an attempt to withhold said acquisition, a federal court complaint has already been filed with the US District Court for the Northern District of California seeking interim relief.
Mercedes Benz Launches Data Sharing Platform on Polygon
Daimler South East Asia, part of the Mercedes Benz Group, used the Ethereum Layer-2 Polygon scaling solution to launch the Acentrik platform, which is designed to exchange data in a decentralized ecosystem. Acentrik will allow businesses to buy and sell any type of data, and while auto giant Mercedes-Benz is the formal owner, the platform can technically be used to trade anything from insurance policies to clinical trial results. At the same time, according to the Ledger Insight report, not a blockchain, as such, but an NFT with a metadata hash is used to represent the required data set. Buying and selling data will be carried out on the Polygon and Ethereum Rinkeby testnets. As part of the security measures put in place to protect the monetary value of information, businesses are expected to pay for purchased data with stablecoins. However, since transactions are conducted on Polygon, payment of transfer fees will be charged in the network's native cryptocurrency - MATIC. Against the backdrop of this news, the value of MATIC, over the past 24 hours, soared by more than 10%, which, however, happened almost simultaneously with the global uptrend of the crypto market. This event was also influenced by the news of the latest merger of Ethereum, which will be followed by a long-awaited platform upgrade to version Ethereum 2.0.
FTX.US Opens Access to No-Fee Stock Trading
The American subsidiary of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, FTX.US, in accordance with its promises, has launched support for stock trading with zero fee for all users in the US. This decision was made as part of the expansion of the company's client base. This feature has already worked for a select group of users since May of this year. But until today, the company hasn't said when it plans to make it available to all customers. At the moment, it is known that the exchange will service brokerage accounts, trading operations without commission, and will not require payment for providing data on markets and companies. As such, FTX.US will not charge fees or monetize trades like the Robinhood app, which by the way has already been heavily criticized for its business model. On the technical side, a product called FTX Stocks will initially route orders to the Nasdaq through clearing firm Embed. It was acquired by FTX.US in July to provide the platform with an application programming interface (API) and brokerage services.
