PrimeBlock, a crypto miner based in the United States, announced on Friday that it had reached an agreement to merge with 10X Capital Venture Acquisition Corp. II, a blank-check firm. The contract had a total value of $1.25 billion when it was signed.
PrimeBlock has 12 data centers in North America with a total capacity of over 110 megawatts, mostly for Bitcoin and Ethereum mining. The merger is expected to be finalized in the second half of 2022, with PrimeBlock becoming a Nasdaq-listed firm managed by the former Goldman Sachs VP and current CEO Gaurav Budhrani.
Since November, there has been speculation about the agreement. PrimeBlock and 10X also announced that they had received $300 million in equity funding from an affiliate of asset management firm Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.
PrimeBlock The Latest Crypto Company To Debut On The Nasdaq
PrimeBlock, which made $24 million in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2021, will join a slew of other crypto companies on the Nasdaq. The technology-heavy exchange has attracted multiple crypto industry players, including Coinbase, the world’s second-largest exchange, as well as miners Riot Blockchain and Marathon Digital.
A public listing allows companies to attract large sums of public funding, allowing them to significantly expand their activities.
However, this tendency may be coming to an end shortly. According to Reuters, the SEC recently announced new guidelines requiring more disclosures from blank-check companies. The move comes as a growing number of blank-check mergers have seen their stock prices plummet in a short time.
Citi Group: The Metaverse Is A $13 Trillion Opportunity
Since the second half of 2021, there has been a surge in interest in the virtual world. Following the introduction of several projects, sales of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) also increased. Citi, an investment banking firm, forecasted that the Metaverse market might expand between $8 trillion and $13 trillion by 2030, based on a variety of factors. It went on to say that by that time, Metaverse users may number five billion.
Citigroup has released a 184-page paper on the metaverse ecosystem and its applications. According to the report, Metaverse is currently most commonly accessed through video games on a virtual reality (VR) headset. The Open Metaverse, on the other hand, will be community-owned and regulated as Web3 progresses.
Building a massive ecosystem necessitates accessing the virtual world via personal computers, game consoles, and smartphones. However, achieving that achievement will necessitate a significant investment in infrastructure. To support the ecosystem, computational efficiency must be raised by 1,000 times above what it is now.
In The Virtual World, Money Will Be Different
Surprisingly, the Open Metaverse definition of money differs from what is considered money in the real world today, according to the paper. That world will be dominated by various sorts of cryptography. Digital currencies, on the other hand, will exist alongside fiat currencies, CBDS, and other stable coins. The Metaverse will be used in a variety of areas, including art, commerce, media, advertising, healthcare, and social collaboration, according to the report. Meanwhile, gaming is expected to remain a prominent Metaverse use case for the foreseeable future.
