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San Diego, CA, Dec. 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — PAC-MAN™, who became a pop culture icon as the main character of the highest-grossing video game ever, will make a special appearance during the virtual celebration of his induction into the Comic-Con Museum Character Hall of Fame Dec. 17. The public is invited to join the event online 4-6 PM PST. 

Whether you are a fan of professional video game competitions, or simply have fond memories playing PAC-MAN™ in the mall, the event will be a chance to recognize the deep cultural impacts and legacy of PAC-MAN™. Celebrating his 40^th anniversary, the icon is being honored as the original digital game mascot for the enduring impact he has had on the video game industry and the role of storytelling in games.

Registration information is available at the Comic-Con Museum Character Hall of Fame Page. The event is free and open to the public, though donations are encouraged and go toward the Museum’s long-term plans to renovate its physical space in San Diego’s Balboa Park. Museum Charter Memberships are also available. The Comic-Con Museum Character Hall of Fame event will include or highlight: 

• Toru Iwatani, the Japanese game designer who created PAC-MAN™
• Recognition of fan-submitted videos and artwork
• PAC-MAN™ trivia and results from interactive polls – i.e. what is the best color of ghost
• A surprise announcement about the future of PAC-MAN™ from BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment America Inc.
• Ceremony recognition with special guest PAC-MAN™(a translator will be on hand to interpret his WAKA WAKA language)
• Japanese DJ and producer, Ken Ishii, will be closing out the PAC-MAN™ induction ceremony – get ready to party!

The Comic-Con Museum Character Hall of Fame aims to recognize the contributions of timeless icons that have made a significant impact on comics as well as popular arts and culture. PAC-MAN™ joins Batman, who was the first character inducted in 2019. Characters inducted into the Comic-Con Museum Character Hall of Fame will be incorporated into the Museum’s physical space, scheduled to open in 2021.

“Recognizing the impacts of comics and popular arts through the Museum Character Hall of Fame is a way to demonstrate how characters both reflect and shape our cultural landscape,” said Eddie Ibrahim, Senior Director of Programming for the Comic-Con Museum. “By recognizing the work of creators, which includes gaming, we aim to inspire a deeper appreciation of comics and the popular arts.”

“PAC-MAN’s™ enduring popularity and relevance speak volumes to his position as an icon in the video game and pop culture worlds,” said Dennis Lee, Director of Brand Marketing at BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment America Inc. “We look forward to PAC-MAN™ delivering more fun for everyone for years to come.”

PAC-MAN™ is one of the longest-running video game franchises in history and signaled a shift in video game storytelling as well as character development. PAC-MAN™ has been featured in music, television, film and more. After being created by Toru Iwatani, a Japanese game designer, the game was first released in Tokyo in May 1980 and shortly thereafter made its debut in the United States. Since its creation, PAC-MAN™ has become one of the most popular video arcade games of all time. As of 2016, PAC-MAN™ had generated more than $14 billion in revenue and is considered by many to be one of the most influential video games of all time for its simple yet complex approach to restructuring video game narratives. 

About the Comic-Con Museum

The nonprofit Comic-Con Museum celebrates the ongoing contributions of comics and popular art forms. It is a division of the San Diego Comic Convention, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that produces globally recognized comic and pop-culture conventions and events. Located in San Diego, California, the Museum is already offering online programming as it prepares to open its physical location in 2021. The Museum’s programming is inspired by fans and curated to expand awareness of and appreciation for a variety of art forms among the general public through rotating immersive exhibits, theater presentations, and educational programming. The Museum’s activities are designed to be participatory and to reflect the accessible and inclusive spirit of Comic-Con with programming for both day and evening hours. www.comic-con.org/museum

About BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment America Inc.

BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment America Inc., part of BANDAI NAMCO Holdings Inc., is a leading global publisher and developer of interactive entertainment for all major video game consoles, iOS, Android, and online platforms. The company is known for creating and publishing many of the industry’s top video game franchises including PAC-MAN^®, GALAGA^®, TEKKEN^®, SOULCALIBUR^®, and ACE COMBAT^®. BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment America Inc. is the premier publisher in the Western hemisphere for anime based video games including NARUTO SHIPPUDEN™, DRAGON BALL Z^®, and ONE PIECE^®. More information about the company and its products can be found at http://www.bandainamcoent.com or www.facebook.com/BandaiNamcoUS.

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NEW YORK, Dec. 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Lowey Dannenberg P.C., a preeminent law firm in obtaining redress for consumers and investors, is investigating claims of violations of federal securities laws on behalf of investors of Sequential Brands Group Inc. (“Sequential Brands” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ: SQBG).

Sequential Brands owns a portfolio of consumer brands in fashion, home, athletic and lifestyle categories, including Jessica Simpson, Joe’s Jeans, William Rast, Ellen Tracy, AND1 and Avia. The Company has both wholesale and direct-to-retail licensees.

On December 11, 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced that “SEC Charges Sequential Brands Group Inc. with Deceiving Investors by Failing to Timely Impair Goodwill”. Further “by avoiding an impairment to its goodwill in 2016, Sequential inflated its income from operations, created a false impression of its financial condition, and misstated its financial statements and reports for almost a year”.

On this news, Sequential Brand’s stock price fell from its day’s high of $17.50 to close at $16.20 or almost 7.5% during intraday trading on December 11, 2020.

If you are a shareholder of Sequential Brands and wish to participate, learn more, or discuss the issues surrounding the investigation, please contact our attorneys at (914) 733-7201 or via email at [email protected].

Whistleblowers: Persons with non-public information regarding Sequential Brands should consider their options to help in the investigation or take advantage of the SEC Whistleblower program. Under the new program, whistleblowers who provide original information may receive rewards totalling up to 30 percent of any successful recovery made by the SEC.

About Lowey Dannenberg

Lowey Dannenberg is a national firm representing institutional and individual investors, who suffered financial losses resulting from corporate fraud and malfeasance in violation of federal securities and antitrust laws. The firm has significant experience in prosecuting multi-million-dollar lawsuits and has previously recovered billions of dollars on behalf of investors.

Contact

Lowey Dannenberg P.C.
44 South Broadway, Suite 1100
White Plains, NY 10601
Tel: (914) 733-7256
Email: [email protected]

Carlsbad, CA, Dec. 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — (via Blockchain Wire)  We are witnessing an undeniable, broad-based expansion of our financial system through the addition of digital assets to the mix.

The Association for Digital Asset Markets defines digital assets as:

A cryptographically-derived digital instrument available on a public, private or permissioned blockchain or other form of distributed ledger, including without limitation instruments that represent, or facilitate the exchange of or access to, any digital or real-world asset, or any set of rights, protocols, or rules; or (ii) any option, futures contract, swap or other instrument or index, the value of which is derived wholly or principally from the value of underlying instruments meeting the description in clause (i). Digital Assets may be categorized in many different ways and may be subject to varying legal and regulatory regimes depending on their features or the manner in which they are issued or exchanged. This definition is intended to be construed broadly to include all instruments generally meeting the descriptions in clauses (i) and (ii) above.

Broadly construed, the markets covering digital assets has grown to more than $1 trillion, and the World Economic Forum estimates the market will grow to $24 trillion by 2027. Probably the most consequential development responsible for driving the adoption of digital assets is that financial and regulatory institutions worldwide are acknowledging the appeal of blockchain technology and an increasing number are at some stage of the design – implementation phase on some level.

Digital Assets Are Becoming a Core Institutional Offering

Noteworthy Developments in 2020:

• February – ICE acquires Bridge2 Solutions, a leading provider of loyalty solutions for merchants and consumers accelerating the development of a Bakkt consumer application to provide digital asset aggregation, conversion and payments through a single platform. (reference to $1.2 trillion digital assets global ecosystem);
• June – Nasdaq announced the release of its Marketplace Services Platform, a SaaS based cloud platform offering for marketplaces that includes a Digital Assets Suite, a DLT agnostic offering that provides clients with the ability to manage the full lifecycle of digital assets. Nasdaq is trying bring a trusted, financially graded service to market;
• July. The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced that all federally chartered banks can provide custody service for crypto assets.
• July – Arca ArCoin launched the first SEC-registered closed end fund to issue digital securities using Tokensoft’s Transfer Agent and new open source ERC-1404 token standard. The fund is the first Ethereum blockchain-native investment fund registered under the investment Company Act of 1904.
• August – INX registration statement on Form F-1 declared effective by SEC, the first foreign IPO in the US using Tokensoft platform.
• September – Record trading volume of Bakkt Bitcoin Physically Delivered Monthly Futures contracts, 15,955 contracts, 36% increase over previous record of 11,706 in on July 28, 2020.
• September 2020 – Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland announced that it is working with several Reserve Banks to build and test a range of distributed ledger platforms.
• October – HR8524, the Blockchain Records and Transactions Act of 2020 was introduced in the House, modifying the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN Act) to ensure that smart contracts and records created and stored using blockchain may not be denied legal effect or validity solely due to the underlying technology.
• October – The Digital Dollar Project published proposals for nine pilot programs to identify practical opportunities to test and evaluate key features of US CBDC.
• October – The World Economic Forum published blockchain global standards mapping initiative based on input from more than 30 technical standard-setting entities, 185 jurisdictions and nearly 400 industry groups.
• October – The White House issued national strategy identifying distributed ledger technologies as one of 20 “critical and emerging technologies” that US government departments and agencies identified to the National Security Council as priorities for their missions.
• October – Seven central banks (the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the central banks of Canada, England, Japan, Switzerland and Sweden) and the Bank for International Settlements issued a report outlining three key principles for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).
Against this backdrop, Fidelity Digital Assets conducted a survey amongst almost 800 institutional investors across the US and Europe, and found that almost 80% find digital assets appealing, 36% are currently invested in digital assets, and 60% believe that digital assets have a place in their investment portfolio.

Tom Jesop, President of Fidelity Digital Assets said that:

“These results confirm a trend we are seeing in the market towards greater interest in and acceptance of digital assets as a new investible asset class. This is evident in the evolving composition of our client pipeline.”

The upshot from all of this, is that with institutional support, investment (retail and institutional) will continue to stream into the digital asset class. In turn, this will drive liquidity, which will attract more investment, and the digital asset market self-reinforces.

Thomas Carter, founder and CEO of DealBox, Inc; read about Thomas: “This FinTech Veteran Is Making Cryptocurrency Startup Funding Legitimate“; connect on LinkedIn and Instagram.

The post Fintech Mogul Thomas Carter Predicts Trillion Dollar Cryptocurrency Market Cap in 2020 appeared first on Yahoo News.

About Dealbox

Deal Box, Inc.’s mission is to “Democratize Wealth for All” as the World’s First Democratized Venture Capital Firm. Deal Box, Inc. is The new standard for venture investment and funding. We are a specialty capital markets consulting firm focusing on traditional and digital securities industries utilizing blockchain-based technologies, enhancing capital formation for entrepreneurs, and early ventures to growth-stage companies.