Weekly Blockchain News, January 17, 2022

Welcome back in the weekly summary of leading developments in the crypto/blockchain space, presented from Billon's point of view. Check what happened in the last days when it comes to CBDC and other enterprise uses of blockchain. Enjoy the read!

Associated Press launching NFT marketplace for its photographs. The marketplace will be built by blockchain technology firm Xooa, with NFTs to be minted on the Polygon blockchain.

Cardano reaches goal of planting 1M trees. A restoration effort using the Cardano blockchain reached its first goal of planting over 1 million trees, the Cardano Foundation, a non-profit that oversees developments on the Cardano network, said over the weekend.

Binance CEO CZ is among the 15 richest billionaires. Changpeng Zhao, the CEO and founder of Binance, the leading crypto exchange by trading volume, is among the richest billionaires globally. According to a report by Bloomberg, with a fortune of $96 bln, CZ is now ahead of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Larry Page, and ranks 11th.

Jack Dorsey proposes non-profit bitcoin legal defense fund for developers. The main purpose of the fund will be to defend developers from lawsuits regarding their activities in the bitcoin ecosystem, the Block founder and former Twitter CEO wrote in an email to the bitcoin-dev mailing list.

NFT art sales are booming. Just without some artists' permission. NFTs were hyped as a way to make sure artists get paid for their work. Now, many creators are struggling to stop a wave of piracy.

This Tesla owner says he mines up to $800 a month in cryptocurrency with his car. San Francisco-based Siraj Raval mines ethereum by hooking up graphic processing units directly to the Tesla car battery.  It is a big part of his plan to make his Tesla a fully autonomous robotaxi that earns crypto anytime it’s not driving.

House of Lords committee sees 'no convincing case' for UK CBDC.  "While a CBDC may provide some advantages, it could present significant challenges for financial stability and the protection of privacy," the committee said.

Swiss National Bank trials CBDC in transactions with five banks. The Swiss National Bank has successfully employed a wholesale CBDC to settle transactions with five commercial banks, the monetary authority announced. The tests are part of an experiment carried out together with the Bank for International Settlements and Switzerland’s financial services provider SIX.

And that's it for now. See you next week!