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Mastercard Inc (NYSE: MA) Announces That it Will Directly Support Cryptocurrency

By
Adam Barry
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0

Mastercard Inc (NYSE: MA) has recently authorized the direct usage of cryptocurrencies on its platform. This move creates effective means for financial institutions functioning in the same system to offer their services to users and merchants worldwide.

Due to the incorporation of digital assets into products, Mastercard users will soon use cryptocurrency for various services such as rewards and loyalty programs

The creation of the initiative 

Mastercard’s partnership with Bakkt Holdings Inc (NYSE: BKKT) led to the development of the initiative. Bakkt, an asset trading platform, will oversee the running of the new system.  Mastercard previously announced its partnership with Bakkt at Money 20/20. Their partnership was to allow banks and merchants to offer cryptocurrency services and solutions to people.

Mastercard also aims to make cryptocurrency mainstream while joining the growing market. In 2021alone, revenues earned by crypto platforms have tripled. Many companies, including Mastercard, believe that this trend is bound to remain.

The Executive Vice President of Digital Partnerships in Mastercard, Sherri Haymond, said that the company is anticipating the exposure of cryptocurrencies by introducing crypto services on the platform.

To ensure the system’s effectiveness, Mastercard has placed a few elements to keep its consumers protected. First, it has put measures to ensure that participants’ privacy and information are well stored.

Mastercard has also made strict protocols that users have to comply with to prevent any illegal activities. For this reason, Mastercard is willing to follow the laws and regulations of every region they establish the system.

Other companies make moves to adopt cryptocurrency

With approximately 2.8 billion clients using the system around the globe, Mastercard is currently in business with at least 20,000 financial institutions to ensure that the system is effective.

The move is the latest in a series of attempts to adopt cryptocurrencies over the recent weeks. Other digital services that announced the same include PayPal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: PYPL), which aided in launching Bitcoin and other crypto services in the U.k within a year after introducing a feature that allows U.S residents to use crypto services on its platform.

With the recent surge in converting crypto products into traditional payment systems by consumers, the move would be innovative for all users in the system.

THORChain’s Price Surges by 78% After Being Triggered by the Reactivation Ethereum Pools

By
Adam Barry
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0

THORChain recently went through many different protocol exploits in the beginning of this year. This led to the depletion of their reserves by about $8 million. These successive attacks also pool sooner rather than later. The protocol said that it would also reopen the BTC-based and altcoin pools. This announcement helped strengthen the RUNE price.

Data from TradingView and Cointelegraph Markets show that ever since it hit the $2.95 low on 20th July, RUNE price had shot up to $11.64, representing a 283% increase. There were also some notable upticks in trading value.

The April hack is what led to the restriction of Trading activity. However, after thoroughly checking the code again, the Binance Coin (BNB), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Ethereum (ETH) pools will now soon be reopened once again. According to THORChain, the almost instant trading volume worth $2 million for ERC-20 coins a few minutes after the reopening showed.

Token Launches and Future Airdrops

Another reason RUNE had such bullish prices is that they’re set to launch several new interesting projects on their network, all of which will be on the XRUNE (Thorstarter) platform. This is the RUNE ecosystem’s decentralized Launchpad. Some of the other launches include XDEFI, DeFiSwap, Skipp Swap, Brokkr Finance, THORWallet, THORSwap. According to Cointelegraph Markets Pro, RUNE market conditions have been good for quite some time.

Cointelegraph exclusive VORTECS Score is algorithmic comparisons of the current market and historical conditions derived from data points including Twitter activity, recent price movements, trading volume and market sentiment.

THORChain administrators have showcased the projects that need to cover stolen assets from users. They made a Telegram post that stated how treasury can cover funds lost through hacks or theft. They said that they were looking to implement something called bug bounty.

Korea Teacher’s Credit Union Looks to Make Bitcoin-Related Investments

By
Adam Barry
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0

One of the biggest South Korean pension funds, KTCU (Korea’s Teacher’s Credit Union), plans to make bitcoin-based investments through EFTs (exchange-traded funds) next year. KTCU manages assets worth $40 billion and it was formed to provide teachers in South Korea with retirement benefits.

However, KTCU won’t purchase bitcoin directly. Instead, the pension fund will get exposure via financial products like BTC ETFs. According to Korea Economic daily, KTCU will start making bitcoin-based investments next year when a Korean-based firm, the first of its kind, introduces its BTC ETFs. The firm will debut this product around the beginning of 2022.

This will be the first time a local domestic fund based in South Korea will allocate capital in its control into digital assets and cryptocurrency. The fund decided to do this based on the assumption that cryptos and digital assets are finally starting to make their way into the mainstream investment space. KTCU believes that there will be a shift in the way people see bitcoin, and it will slowly become a supervised and transparent investment as more BTC ETFs start to spring up.

This announcement was made just after the company had launched its first BTC ETF on United States soil. The company now has two bitcoin-based products that are currently live on the market.

Details of Investment

The pension fund wants to buy many different BTC ETF products, including products from Mirae Asset Global Investments, an asset management firm based in Korea. The company has a pair of ETF products tracking BTC futures’ value through Horizons ETFs, its Canada-based subsidiary.

One of the KTCU’s executives said that there Mirae Asset Global had a couple of well-manufactured bitcoin-based ETFs that the fund is interested in. However, the executive confirmed that they would only do this after consulting the firm’s asset managers.

This Korean-based pension fund controls assets worth $40 billion, making it the second-largest pension fund in South Korea. The fund has decided to use 40% of the capital it controls to invest in alternative assets.

Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) Says That it Could Soon Resume Cryptocurrency Payment Support

By
Adam Barry
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0

Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA), the huge electric vehicle manufacturer run by Elon Musk, said it would soon be bringing back support for cryptocurrency payments.

In the company quarterly filing with the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission, the company claimed that it may soon restart to support the payments made using cryptocurrency. This suggests that the company is looking to support buys made using cryptocurrency and digital assets. Tesla also confirmed that it believed in the long-term viability of digital assets and crypto as means of payment and store of value. In addition, it stated that it has faith and believes in crypto’s long-term potential as cash’s liquid alternative and as an investment tool.

This year between January and March, Tesla was accepting BTC as payment for its electric vehicles. In addition, the company was trying to have a broader embrace of bitcoin. In fact, in Q1 of 2021, the company even invested about $1.5 billion of its treasury into cryptocurrency.

Why Did They Stop?

Tesla stopped supporting BTC payments after the company had to deal with criticism regarding why it was supporting bitcoin even though there was a perception that mining the coin impacts the environment negatively. However, in June this year, Elon Musk, Tesla’s Chief Executive Officer, said that the company would think about continuing to support payments made using cryptocurrency once renewable energy powers at least half of BTC’s network hash rate.

This report comes after Tesla had just secured a landmark deal with Hertz Global, a car rental company, which triggered a market cap topping of $1 trillion. This led to a shooting up of the company’s share price to about $1,000. A figure that has never been realized before. Elon Musk recently tweeted that he only invests in Dogecoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin, much to Shibu Inu Coin’s dismay.

Bakkt Share Prices Skyrocket after Fiserv Inc (NASDAQ: FISV) and MasterCard Inc (NYSE: MA) Partnership

By
Adam Barry
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0

MasterCard Inc (NYSE: MA) recently announced that it would work closely with Bakkt, a digital asset platform, to allow US-based customers to hold, buy and sell digital assets via custodial wallets. The same day they made this announcement, Fiserv also said that it would strategically collaborate with Bakkt to help them provide its customers with merchant-based digital asset services.

The news of these announcements had a great impact on Bakkt shares. It caused the company’s stock to rally by over 50%. The $9.15 closing price recorded on 22nd October surged to an 25th October closing price of $30.60. this represented a 120% increase.

In August 2018, Intercontinental Exchange, NYSE owner and Coinbase investor, said that it was launching a digital asset tool that would be called Bakkt. The next year, this digital asset platform gave the world Bitcoin futures contracts that traders and institutional investors could use.

Bakkt Futures’ Physical Delivery of Bitcoin

Bakkt future’s physical delivery of BTC is doing well even though the markets have been experiencing a tumultuous few months. Data recently showed that the number of investors and traders that opted to receive their digital assets via physical delivery rose by around 44% in March this year.

The platform’s future contracts were brought to life in 2019. At that time, most financial commentators said that physically delivered digital assets would help further encourage the institutional acceptance of digital assets and cryptocurrency. However, while there has been an increase in the physical delivery of digital assets and cryptocurrency, other Bakkt metrics, like the open interests and trade contracts, have decreased drastically.

Paper Trading

Alex Kruger, a global markets trader, and analyst, previously noted how not many traders want physical delivery of BTC during the first few months of the launch. However, he said that the platform has BTC bulls excited and that the volume was growing rapidly. Yes, the growth was from a low base but incredibly fast nonetheless. However, he claimed that what made Bakkt special for BTC bulls was how much crypto was being physically delivered.

MonoX Announces Launch of Mainnet On Polygon and Ethereum

By
Adam Barry
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0

MonoX has announced the public launch of the mainnet with liquidity and swap features on Polygon and Ethereum. The launch comes after MonoX raised $5 million to eliminate inefficiency on DeFi and disrupt traditional DEXs. MonoX has put a year of work, extensive testing, and ongoing development on mainnet.

MonoX enables projects to launch tokens at a lower cost

Traditional DEXs have reduced barriers for businesses launching tokens. However, launching tokens is expensive as the project development team has to deposit two tokens to make the liquidity pair. Through MonoX’s one-sided liquidity pools, developers can eliminate the need for another asset, making it easier and more cost-effective to launch a token.

MonoX also gives liquidity providers a conducive and capital-efficient experience.  The liquidity providers will only deposit a single token into the liquidity pool and receive fees for borrowing and swapping. As a result, swapping will be cheaper on MonoX than on other platforms because MonoX eliminates long transaction paths used on traditional automated market makers that make token launching more expensive.

On the mainnet launch, the liquidity pools are MATIC, WETH, USDT, USDC, and WBTS on Polygon and USDT, USDC, WBTC, and ETH on Ethereum. The firm will add more pools in the next few months.

Trustless listing pool will go live at the launch

The company will provide support to these official pools in the next few months. However, Trustless Listing Pools go live at the initial launch. These pools enable projects to launch tokens without any permissions by setting an initial deposit and depositing liquidity for the token. The firm groups the tokens into a virtual pair with Vcash STABLECOIN, supported by all MonoX pool assets.

MonoX is a great solution to add liquidity to Value-added tokens, such as Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs), gaming tokens, insurance tokens, and synthetic assets. These assets have intrinsic value hence individual users and projects do not need to get any collateral with an appropriate liquidity pair.

MonoX is an automated market maker in the DeFi ecosystem. It enables liquidity providers, traders, and developers to participate in a capital-efficient, accessible and open marketplace. The platform also plans to change DeFi by repairing the inefficiencies within its protocol models.

4 Crypto Currencies That Could Double or Even Triple Before Christmas: Shiba inu (SHIB), iBG Finance (IBG), DOGEcoin (DOGE), Samoyedcoin (SAMO)

By
Adam Barry
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0

Dog inspired and one of the most active cryptocurrency, shiba inu (SHIB), made a new all-time high while Bitcoin has pulled back from its all time high that was reached last week. It gave back some of its gains since hitting its all-time high and remain the 10th biggest digital currency by market cap ($38.3 Billions as of thursday). Shiba (SHIBA) has a supply of 1 quadrillion.

iBG Finance (IBG) could bounce back from current levels as it already did two times this year. On september, iBG bounced from 0.24 to 0.77 within a few days, then pulled back to 0.26 and bounced again all the way to 0.71 in the first week of october. Traders could have made over 200% swinging iBG token in September and again in October. iBG volume was up over 75% yesterday, trading volume can be useful in identifying bullish signs.

DOGEcoin (DOGE) surged to $0.335 on Coinbase on Thursday, reaching the highest level since August 20th. Justin Bennett, a well known crypto strategist told his more tan 70,000 followers on twitter that it is within the realm of possibilities that Dogecoin (DOGE), in the short term, may be gearing up for another rally as last two triggered gains of 1,000% or more. DogeCoin has a circulating supply of 131 billions and still remain the 9th biggest digital currency by market cap ($39.7 Billions as of Thursday).

Samoyedcoin (SAMO) surged over 130% in the last 24 hours, many are connecting its success to that of Shiba Inu. Samoyedcoin has showed that it could be trending with the most active canine-related digital currencies on the market. SAMO chart is showing that pullbacks should be taken as a buying opportunity. Samo has a market cap of $484M and a circulating supply of 2.7 billions. 

Tokns Commerce Inc and Martha Stewart to Launch FRESH Mint Collection

By
Adam Barry
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0

Tokns Commerce Inc, a leading provider of NFTs, has partnered with Martha Stewart to launch a digital boutique, FRESH Mint. Collections.

Stewart will create a collection of NTFS with the help of photographers, artists, world-class designers, and new creators in the NFT community. The boutique will launch on October 19, which she will incorporate into her website. NFTs assign immutable data units to digital assets such as audios, videos, or photos and mints them to the Blockchain to show ownership. In this way, FRESH Mint NFT will use physical artifacts from Stewart’s collection to create digital art that will celebrate holidays, changing seasons, and other occasions.

Stewart will release the first line of NFTs in time for Halloween

The first line from the collection, Carved Collection, will be released in time for Halloween. It consists of Chris Soria and Mark Evan’s pumpkin carving art, incorporating Stewart’s Halloween costumes into pumpkins that they handpicked from different New York farms. Crypto Punk, Bored Apes, and other owners of popular NFT art will bid on the chance to turn their most valuable NFTs into Carved Collection Pumpkins for Halloween.

According to Stewart, she has been fortunate to partner with creators, talented artists, and entrepreneurs all her life. She views NFTs as a new way for artists to channel their creativity and Blockchain to protect their intellectual property while supporting their work. Her collaboration with Tokns allowed her to reach an approach in line with her vision and remain authentic.

FRESH Mint will add to the growing number of NFT users

Jamie Tedford, the co-founder of Tokns, adds that the company is excited to help Stewart realize her vision for the project. Stewart has created various intellectual property and historical artifacts through her innovation over the years. Tokns can now give her fans a different way to celebrate her works and thus cement her legacy.

The CEO of Marquee Brands, Neil Fiske, states that the NFT has grown tremendously largely due to the contribution of a small group of early adaptors. FRESH Mint will allow fiat currency and crypto transactions, thus introducing first-time collectors to NFTs.

The NFT market has seen an increase in popularity. In early 2021, Christie’s auction house made a record sale for an NFT at $69 million.

Lark Davis Tweets That Some Giant Social Media Companies Use Ethereum

By
Adam Barry
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0

Lark Davis, a popular on-chain crypto analyst, has stated that some of the biggest social media companies such as TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook use Ethereum (ETH). While no one knows if these companies own ETH, Davis’ tweet shows his surprise about the crypto sensation in Q4 2021.

Many rushed to respond to Davis’ tweet by saying these companies use ETH since it gives a simplified security solution. Others commented that 2021 had been the most successful year for cryptocurrency.

Experts are still not sure if crypto can achieve long-term success

Experts think this trend will continue as talks of regulatory measures increase and more institutions buy crypto. People have also shown an increased interest in crypto in 2020. Dave Gemini, the head of global developments at Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange, has said that the attention paid to the industry has led to a breakthrough year.

However, even with the success of cryptocurrency, the industry is still at its infancy stage, making it harder to predict whether the market will succeed. Experts are curious to see if the crypto market can sustain its growth in the long term. As a result, they are now evaluating factors that affect the industry, such as regulation and the institutional adaption of crypto payments, to understand crypto better.

Legislators worldwide are now trying to find out how to make laws that will make investing in cryptocurrency safer and keep off cybercriminals.  According to the head of the Americas at Amber Groups, a crypto firm in Canada, Jeffrey Wang, regulation is one of the biggest issues in the crypto industry. Many cryptocurrency firms would like to have clear guidelines and rules that would allow them to carry out their operations smoothly.

The U.S not clear on its stance on cryptocurrency

China has halted progress in the crypto industry by saying that all cryptocurrency transactions are illegal. It is still unclear how the U.S will deal with digital currency. Gary Gensler, the chairman of the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission, has commented on the agency’s opinions on the industry, saying that regulations could negatively impact investors. However, Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve Chair, has said he has no plans to ban cryptocurrency. On the other hand, the IRS wants to ensure investors know how to report virtual taxes when they file their taxes.

Digital Currency Group (DCG) Is Authorized to Purchased Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (OTCMKTS: GBTC) Shares

By
Adam Barry
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0

Digital Currency Group (DCG) has announced that it can purchase Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (OTCMKTS: GBTC) shares for $1 billion. Grayscale is the biggest digital currency asset manager in the world. It manages over $53.5 billion in assets.

The amount is an extension of the previous $250 million authorization. As a result, the company has now purchased $338 million worth of GBTC. The firm had previously bought $193.5 worth of GBTS when its limit was $250 million.

DCG will use cash on hand to purchase the shares on the open market as per provisions in Rule 10b-8 of the Exchange Act. The authorization does not require the DCG to acquire a particular number of shares in a given period. It might be discontinued, modified, extended, or expanded at any point.

Grayscale plans to convert its GBTC product to Bitcoin EFT

The value, amount, and timing of share purchases will depend on various factors such as current market conditions, price, and cash available. This news comes after Grayscale’s plans to change its GBTC product to Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). However, the move will only be possible if the U.S Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) changes its view on Bitcoin EFTs.

Gary Gensler, the chairman of the SEC, had spoken favorably about BTC EFTs backed by Bitcoin futures and not EFTs based on the spot price of cryptocurrency when he commented on the Proshares’ Bitcoin Strategy EFT and the issues it raised. He made this statement after it became the first BTC EFT launched in the U.S.

Grayscale adds more cryptocurrencies to its portfolio

Grayscale has so far added more cryptocurrencies to its catalog. Its additions include Horizen (ZEN), Stellar Lumens (XM), and Zcash (ZEC), which the company added in October.

Barry Silbert, the CEO of Digital Currency Group, started the company in 2015. The company is an active investor in the blockchain sector. It aims to speed up creating an improved financial system through the growth of blockchain technology and digital assets.

DCG supports over 175 blockchain-related companies in more than 35 countries. It also invests directly in digital assets such as digital currency. DGC has various subsidiaries, including Grayscale Investments, Genesis, TradeBlock, Luno, Foundry, TradeBlock, and CoinDesk.

Grayscale has headquarters in New York.

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