Immutable’s Guild of Guardians Avatars overtook NodeMonkes to claim the top spot on CryptoSlam’s daily non-fungible token sales charts on Thursday.

The Immutable game-linked collection led NFT sales with a daily volume of $828,697, representing a 19% increase from $696,862 the previous day.

NodeMonkes, a Bitcoin-based collection that topped Wednesday’s sales, fell to third place with sales dropping to $756,950 from $935,770. Earlier this week, NodeMonkes became the 26th best-selling collection in the industry, surpassing $228 million in all-time sales.

DMarket, a Mythos collection for in-game items from popular online games, secured second place with $774,176 in sales, reinforcing the dominance of game-related NFTs on the weekly charts.

Bored Ape Yacht Club, the second-best selling NFT collection of all time, maintained the fourth spot with $567,631 in daily sales, pushing its all-time sales volume to $3.15 billion.

Polygon’s Unstoppable Domains soared to the fifth position with a daily sales volume of $491,535, up from just $1,075 the day before. This surge followed the announcement of a new self-custody wallet in collaboration with digital asset custodian Fireblocks.

New entries to the top 10 include the Validat3rs collection, debuting with a daily sales volume of $362,942 on Solana.

Despite NodeMonkes dropping from the top spot, the Bitcoin network led the daily blockchain sales for the second consecutive day with $5.51 million, a 9.86% increase from the previous day’s $5.01 million.

Meanwhile, Ethereum’s monthly blockchain sales total stands at approximately $159 million, on track to end the month with the lowest NFT sales since October 2023.

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Stablecoin issuer Tether Holdings Ltd. has acquired a $100 million stake in Bitdeer Technologies Group (NASDAQ:BTDR), a US-listed Bitcoin miner owned by Chinese billionaire Jihan Wu, with an option to buy an additional $50 million in shares within a year.

The companies signed a subscription agreement for a private placement of 18.6 million Class A ordinary shares, raising $100 million in gross proceeds, according to Bitdeer’s statement on Friday. The agreement also includes a warrant to purchase up to five million more shares at $10 each. The private placement was completed on Thursday, with Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. serving as the placement agent.

This investment will support Bitdeer’s data center expansion, the development of ASIC-based crypto mining equipment, and other corporate purposes. The percentage of Bitdeer now owned by Tether was not disclosed. Tether did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This acquisition marks a significant advancement in Tether’s strategy to become a prominent Bitcoin miner, following the initiation of its mining facilities in Uruguay, Paraguay, and El Salvador last year. Tether, which is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands and issues the widely-used cryptocurrency USDT, announced in November its plan to invest half a billion dollars in this effort within six months.

Bitdeer, one of the largest public crypto miners listed in the US with a market capitalization of around $670 million, is headquartered in Singapore and operates data centers in the US, Norway, and Bhutan. Bitdeer’s shares, which had dropped over 40% this year, rose approximately 6.5% to $6.20.

In March, Bloomberg News reported that Bitdeer was in discussions with private credit firms to secure about $100 million in financing. It is unclear if those talks are ongoing following Tether’s investment.

Bitcoin mining, which involves running energy-intensive computers to secure the blockchain and earn new tokens as rewards, became less profitable in April due to a programmed network upgrade known as “the halving,” which reduces rewards by half every four years.

Conversely, Bitcoin’s price reached a record high in March, partly driven by optimism around newly-launched spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the US. On Friday, Bitcoin traded up around 0.7% at $68,800.

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NodeMonkes, the leading Bitcoin-based NFT collection, once again led CryptoSlam’s daily sales chart on Wednesday, achieving US$935,770 in sales.

This marks the second time NodeMonkes has topped the sales chart this week. The recent surge has propelled NodeMonkes’ cumulative sales volume to US$229.06 million, placing it 26th on the all-time sales chart, surpassing the Avalanche-based Crabada.

The second highest-performing collection of the day was Guild of Guardians Avatars on Immutable, with daily sales reaching US$693,704, moving up from third place the previous day.

In third place, DMarket on the Mythos chain recorded daily sales of US$672,737.

Just outside the top three, Ethereum’s Bored Ape Yacht Club had daily sales of US$415,991, while Solana’s DogeZuki Collection saw a sales volume of US$397,332.

Solana Monkey Business also made significant contributions with US$317,537 in sales, aiding Solana’s total daily sales of US$2.42 million.

NodeMonkes’ performance significantly boosted the Bitcoin network’s standing on the blockchain NFT sales chart, which totaled US$5.17 million in sales on Wednesday, up from US$4.23 million the previous day.

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Mastercard Inc. (NYSE:MA) has launched a new service called “Crypto Credential,” aimed at enhancing the security and ease of peer-to-peer crypto transactions across various European and Latin American countries. This service enables users to create a Mastercard username for sending and receiving Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies via exchanges such as Bit2Me, Lirium, and Mercado Bitcoin, operating in regions like Brazil, Argentina, and France.

Walter Pimenta, Mastercard’s Executive Vice President of Product and Engineering for Latin America and the Caribbean, highlighted the need for secure transactions in the expanding blockchain and digital assets space. “With the rising interest in blockchain and digital assets in Latin America and globally, it is crucial to provide trusted and verifiable interactions across public blockchain networks,” Pimenta stated.

Crypto transactions traditionally involve complex wallet addresses, which are lengthy and random strings of characters. Mistakes in these addresses can lead to lost funds. Mastercard’s new service addresses this issue by alerting the sender if the recipient’s wallet does not support the specific asset or blockchain, thereby preventing the transaction and protecting users from potential losses.

Additionally, the service combats scams involving lookalike addresses. Fraudsters often exploit truncated wallet addresses, showing only the first and last few characters. Mastercard’s Crypto Credential mitigates this risk, ensuring safer transactions for users.

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Mastercard (NYSE:MA) is launching a peer-to-peer (P2P) platform for cryptocurrency users in Europe and Latin America. The new network, called Mastercard Crypto Credential, aims to facilitate cross-border digital asset transactions.

In its pilot phase, Mastercard Crypto Credential supports transactions on Bit2Me, Lirium, and Mercado Bitcoin exchanges, enabling cross-border payments between Europe and Latin America. This initiative is part of Mastercard’s strategy to leverage digital assets for cross-border payments, a rapidly growing sector in the payments industry.

“As interest in blockchain and digital assets continues to surge in Latin America and around the world, it is essential to keep delivering trusted and verifiable interactions across public blockchain networks,” said Walter Pimenta, executive vice president of product and engineering for Latin America and the Caribbean at Mastercard.

The P2P network will also feature Mastercard Crypto Credential aliases, which are shorthand labels for crypto wallets. These vanity addresses, similar to those offered by the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) on the Ethereum network, are designed to simplify cross-border payments. This feature is expected to help Mastercard capture market share in the fast-growing remittance services sector, a key focus of the company’s crypto initiatives.

According to data from the United Nations International Organization for Migration, migrants sent an estimated $831 billion in remittances worldwide in 2022, up approximately 16% from the $717 billion sent in 2020.

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