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  • This Week in Web3—Coinbase officially launches in India, crypto tax to jump to 50%?, the environmental problem with NFTs and more!

This Week in Web3—Coinbase officially launches in India, crypto tax to jump to 50%?, the environmental problem with NFTs and more!

GM people of web3!

Here's your captain Kabl3 ready to take you through the weekly monumental updates of the web3 land. Come aboard!

Here's what we have for you today:

  • Coinbase debuts crypto trading in India

  • Weekly Web3 Wrap

  • Learn with Kable Recap

  • Are Leaner, Greener, Carbon Neutral NFTs possible?

  • Interesting reads from this week

This week in crypto 📈

Coinbase debuts crypto trading in India

Coinbase, one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges globally, announced the launch of its trading services in India at an event in Bengaluru this Thursday.

The co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong said the company would make long-term investments in India, adding that Coinbase was attracted by the country's developer talent, entrepreneurial spirit, and "willingness to embrace new technologies".

Here's what the firm has done so far and plans to do soon:

Coinbase UPI Integration & Incentive

The firm began testing payment instruments UPI and IMPS in the country, a few weeks ago, to make its services broadly functional and more accessible to Indian users. Though the names of its banking partners for the UPI payments rollout have not yet been disclosed.

With this integration now in place, users will be able to add money to — and withdraw from — their accounts by using the UPI network.

The company will also be offering $2.65 to everyone who signs up on the Coinbase app to incentivize customers.

Investing in and Hiring Indian Talent

Coinbase plans to hire and invest in India to explore ways to bring the potential of the crypto-economy to India. Coinbase Ventures has already invested $150 million in home-grown Indian technology companies in the crypto and Web3 space like CoinSwitch Kuber and CoinDCX and is looking to expand its portfolio.

The company launched its Indian tech hub in 2021 with over 300 employees and will be hiring 1,000 people in the hub this year.

How the Indian Government is reacting

While Indian crypto investors celebrated the news with great enthusiasm, primarily because of the UPI payment feature, the Indian Government doesn't seem to halt its plans on crypto regulation.

The National Payments Corporation of India, the governing body that oversees UPI in the country, has said that it is not aware of any cryptocurrency exchange using UPI. The statement came only hours after Coinbase launched the service in the country with UPI support.

While crypto is not illegal in India, the central bank maintains that digital assets need more scrutiny. The NPCI's statement clearly states that crypto will still undergo more regulations.

Coinbase has said they are aware of the statement published by NPCI and are committed to working with them and other authorities to ensure the company aligns with local expectations and industry norms.

More web3 news you should know about:

MetaMask has announced Apple Pay integration to its app and website. Apple doesn't support crypto payment directly, but MetaMask users will be redirected to Wyre, a crypto exchange.

You can now:

👉 Make payments via credit or debit card through Apple Pay.

👉 Deposit a daily maximum of $400 into your wallet using Visa or Mastercards and the Wyre API.

OpenSea's long-anticipated integration with Solana finally went live this week. However, according to recent reports, sales dropped by over 21% in the next 24 hours.

Although Ethereum holds the most significant number of NFTs, Solana is a cheaper, faster and more energy-efficient alternative product that people have gravitated towards in the last few months.

Former Bihar deputy CM and finance minister and now Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Kumar Modi voiced for a 50% tax on gains made from cryptos and digital assets — up from 30%.

Modi said that only countries with unstable finances are legalising cryptos to increase their revenues. According to him, India is in a good financial position and hence does not need to regularise cryptos. Modi also added, "crypto is like gambling, it is like a lottery, it is like a casino, it is like horse racing -- and in all these things the tax rates are very high."

Weekly web3 wrap 🗞

Learn with Kable 👩‍🏫

This Tools Tuesday, we explored a web3 social app for you to create NFTs, follow creators and show off your NFT collection. It's like Instagram, but for web3! Let's take a look at Showtime.io 👇

Showtime.io

The United Kingdom—a leading DeFi spot in Europe, is creating a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency trading businesses. We shared a detailed thread on what the government's plans could look like 👇

The U.K. Crypto Regulatory Package

Are Leaner, Greener, Carbon Neutral NFTs possible?

With the exponential growth of new technology comes a new set of challenges. Like with the rapid rise of NFTs, their impact on the environment can't be overlooked. A major reason for this impact is the presence of most of the NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, which uses proof-of-work and is highly energy-intensive.

How do NFTs using POW use so much energy?

  • Listing an NFT: The location of the NFT listing will generally determine how much energy the minting process will require. For example, an NFT on Ethereum would be more energy-intensive than Solana.

  • Purchasing an NFT: The NFT is minted—"mined" by cryptocurrency miners who control extensive computing resources. The process is energy-heavy, with their hardware using vast amounts of electricity.

  • Transferring/Storing NFT: You either store the NFT or transfer it to another person after the purchase. If you transfer the NFT to another NFT marketplace that uses POW, then the same energy-intensive process is repeated for the transfer. Simply storing an NFT does not consume energy.

So if you invest in NFTs, you are paying a hefty price yourself, but you are also making the environment pay for your purchase.

Creating sustainable NFTs

To create an eco-friendly NFT, developers need to have a roadmap of how they will release and sell their products.

Some steps that can be taken to create sustainable NFTs include

  • Lazy minting (not minting the NFT till it is first purchased)

  • Minting NFTs on chains other than Ethereum.

  • NFT bridging, where an NFT is made operable on and transferable between multiple blockchains, thus making it possible for users to switch.

  • The popularity of Layer 2 scaling solutions is also a result of their energy efficiency. The energy consumed from the numerous transactions done on Layer-2 is insignificant relative to the energy that will be consumed by the blockchain for carrying out such an amount of transactions.

  • NFT investors who wish to offset the environmental impact of an NFT purchase can also buy carbon offset credits. It provides a financial incentive for others to minimize their total emissions annually.

💡 The POS uses staking, while POW uses energy-guzzling problem-solving.

Stepping towards energy efficiency

One great thing about the energy-hogging issue is that organizations acknowledge it and are actively working to solve it.

For example,

  • The Ethereum blockchain is planned to gradually transition to using the POS operating method in Q2 2022, claiming its energy usage will reduce by ~99.95%.

  • Solana's Energy Use Report says an average Solana transaction uses less energy than 3 Google searches. And it's constantly working towards energy efficiency.

  • ReFi DAO is exploring ways to embed justice, equity, diversity and inclusion into the fabric of ReFi while creating content and communities that onboard the climate community into web3 and the web3 community into climate action.

  • Celo's Climate Collective is a community-driven effort for tokenizing rainforests and other carbon-sequestering assets. They support products and protocols that progress the ReFi ecosystem using Celo’s carbon-negative blockchain.

Where to buy energy-efficient NFTs for now?

If you want to buy an NFT without causing harm to the environment, then you have several options for purchasing them and many will follow, like:

  • Solana: The Solana blockchain supports marketplaces including Magic Eden, Solanart, Rabbit Hole and now, OpenSea.

  • Algorand: The Algorand blockchain supports Aorist, a climate-focused NFT blockchain for artists and several NFT marketplaces.

  • Cardano: Developed by the co-founder of Ethereum, Charles Hoskinson, Cardano is known for being environmentally friendly.

  • Tezos: The Tezos blockchain hosts marketplaces like Rarible and supports artists' creation of green NFTs.

Leaner, Greener NFT Initiatives

TrashPiles is a charity NFT project that intends to donate US$100,000 to the ocean-cleanup fundraising campaign, TeamSeas, from the profits from the sale of NFTs.

  • Greenverse – reducing resource consumption

Greenverse is a green metaverse hoping to reduce the effects of climate change by incentivizing the preservation of underground resources using a preserve-to-earn model.

Here's an inside scoop for you:

C Negative is a Climate Action protocol that allows individuals and Web3 companies to go carbon neutral by permanently retiring carbon emissions on-chain. It's a possibility; one of making climate a public good problem, creating incentives through web3, bringing transparency and access to everyone.

Interesting reads from this week 🤓

Terra is a rapidly growing blockchain offering UST, the largest uncollateralized stablecoin ever. In this post, I give recommendations to the Terra ecosystem and propose Terranova: an EVM on Terra.

DeFi options have been a hot topic in both DeFi and CeFi as the next untapped financial primitive, and despite a large number of DeFi options receiving funding, none have quite yet reached the breakout success of DeFi spot or perps products.

“You're going to get wrecked if you don't understand Tokenomics.

But what IS Tokenomics and what should you watch out for?

Here's everything you need to know about Tokenomics:

(+ a free Tokenomics checklist)”

That’s a wrap for This Week In Web3!

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wagmi 🚀