Good morning, Asia. This is what makes news in the market:
Welcome to Asian morning briefings, daily summary of top stories throughout the US time, and an overview of market movements and analysis. For a detailed overview of the US market, see Coindesk’s Crypto Daybook Americas.
South Korea Air has signed a research agreement with Stockholm-based Wingbits to provide real-time ADS-B data to the airline’s airline air transport coordination system.
The agreement will provide carrier R&D department with access to coverage across Korea’s Incheon FIR, North America and Europe to test how drones, freight aircraft and ultimately Evtol Taxis share crowded skies.
Wingbits runs a distributed network of encrypted ADS-B (real-time data of flight information) receivers and rewards token contributors to place hardware in the best possible location.
Depin Startup previously closed a $5.6 million round in January led by Bullish Capital. Bullish is the parent company of Coindesk.
“All aviation relies on this data to some extent, and is a very large and profitable market,” co-founder Robin Wingerd told Koindsk in an interview with South Korea’s Blockchain Week. “It was kind of weird for all these people to do that for free, but three out of the four networks were acquired for hundreds of millions of people and nothing returned to the community.”
According to Wingårdh, the incentive is a different wing bit than its rival.
“If incentivized properly, you actually have people put receivers where they are important, roofs, businesses, or even renting space in high demand areas,” he continued. “And on average, we see coverage from our competitors more than twice as much as our competition just because the incentives are there.”
In the Korean atmosphere, collaboration is as much about the future as the present. Its R&D department is experimenting with advanced air mobility, and Wingårdh said it will only increase the demand for low latency, safe data.
“Our view on the Advanced Air Mobility segment is what it’s actually coming, the taxis flying, the flying cargo. You’re going to have more things in the sky,” he said. “We don’t think there is an infrastructure that can actually function as the right tracking infrastructure for a combination of aviation, advanced mobility and drone.”
The Korean Air Partnership shows Wingbit’s first airline collaboration and the heritage airlines see value in decentralized infrastructure.
In the case of Wingbit, it is a test case of the transition from crypto-native hype to mainstream aviation, with a long-term bet that blockchain-assisted data networks can support the next era of urban air mobility.
Market movements
BTC: Bitcoin is trading at $112,730. Despite a continuous influx of ETFs totaling over $385 million from September 18-19, Bitcoin prices have struggled to gain momentum, reflecting wider profits and careful market sentiment.
ETH: Ethereum is trading nearly $4,200, and even if Spot ETH ETFs gained net inflows of more than $260 million on September 18-19, it is falling sharply over Bitcoin in the short term. Pullback highlights how ETH remains sensitive to changing risk-feeling and declining speculative demand, but its long-term basis is related to debt, staking, and institutional adoption.
gold: Gold continues to trade record highs, supported by demand from the US Federal Reserve, central banks, inflation concerns and expectations for further interest rate cuts from geopolitical risks.
S&P 500: US stock futures were flat on Monday night, with each Dow and S&P 500 contract slipping 0.04% as investors saw risk at record highs.
Other locations in the code
- CleanSpark shares rise after winning $100 million in Bitcoin-backed credits from Coinbase Prime (Coindesk)
- Metamask’s Musd Stablecoin exceeds $65 million supply one week after its launch (block)
- Ethereum Wallet Rainbow reveals RNBW token airdrop.