FinTech Weekly - Fintech News Issue Crypto Special

Matrixport launched a cryptocurrency investment program, BTC-U Ranger Sniper, that permits program participants to earn high APY. Participants can earn APY ranging from 6% to 200% on their USDC, USDT, and BTC. This passive stream of income is in addition to the money made from lending stablecoins to other crypto investors.

Coinstar and Coinme have partnered to offer Bitcoin at Coinstar kiosks all over the USA. The kiosks will allow retail shoppers to buy cryptocurrency using fiat currency. Walmart is a test site for the program. It will have 200 Coinstar kiosks deployed in its stores across the USA. The overall goal is for the cryptocurrency to achieve more acceptance and legitimacy among members of the general population.

Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower, has criticized Worldcoin for offering to give subscribers a free orb in exchange for subscribers’ biometric data, the subscribers’ eye-scan data. The company claims that the biometric data will only be used to make sure that subscribers only receive one free orb. It has also stated that the biometric data will not be sold to third parties. Worldcoin’s claims are doubtful because it is funded by major venture capital firms. Another critic, Zach, has stated that Worldcoin is an MLM Ponzi scheme.

Over 3 million CoinMarketCap (CMC) email addresses were leaked to the dark web. The accounts’ passwords were not leaked. Binance, its parent company, has stated that the leak didn’t come from its servers. CMC account holders have been advised to use different passwords on all of their accounts.

Colombia has more than 50 cryptocurrency ATMs. Most of them are located in its capital city, Bogota, Medellin, Bucaramanga, Pereira, and other scattered locations. Crypto ATMs are popular in Colombia because it’s a heavy cash use society and the current restriction on banks makes it difficult for people to access cash from banks. The crypto ATMs allow Colombians to continue to access cash and use it despite banking restrictions.

BitGo, a provider of institutional-grade liquidity, custody & security for digital assets, announced support for Stacks, a network that has created the technology needed to bring applications and smart contracts to the Bitcoin network. To meet institutional demand for bitcoin, BitGo now offers institutional token holders the opportunity to earn BTC rewards for holding Stacks’ native token (STX) in a process known as Stacking. This in turn makes Bitcoin DeFi immediately accessible to large financial institutions and BitGo’s massive network of clients.

Bakkt has partnered with Mastercard to integrate Mastercard’s network of banks, merchants, and fintechs to integrate cryptocurrency services into their products, allowing more consumers to use crypto for purchases. Mastercard’s banks and merchants in the US will be able to issue branded crypto debit and credit cards and enable consumers to buy, sell, and hold digital assets through custodial wallets supported by Bakkt. Master-card customers will also be able to offer its consumers the ability to earn and spend rewards points in cryptocurrency in lieu of loyalty points and convert their crypto to pay for purchases. After the announcement, Bakkt’s stock prices soared by more than 100%.

The IOTA Foundation launched the beta of the network’s zero-fee new smart contracts. It offers the emerging digital marketspace high speed, low impact, and transaction fee-free functionality. The smart contract beta also enables interoperability between IOTA and ERC-20 tokens due to its inclusion of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), Go, and Rust. Other features include the usage of full network sharding to enable developers to wrap smart contracts onto the base layer of native tokens. The update will also empower developers to set their own IOTA smart contract execution fees. The dynamic pricing will create an incentive to drive fees down.

The Ukraine has the advantage of being a tech-savvy nation, that is progressive in terms of digitalization in various industries, and has the highest cryptocurrency adoption rate in the world. It is building on this by creating the friendliest crypto jurisdiction in the world. It will do this by creating progressive legislation to attract crypto businesses and build the world’s biggest digital economy. Blockchain and crypto companies will have a central place in its digital economy, supported by adaptive legislation that caters to the “realities of the crypto industry.”

A Dutch firm auctioned off 50 NFTs $7 million. The NFTs will not be minted until December 2021. The NFTs come from Tyler Hobbs’ popular NFT series Fidenza. The series will have 100 one-of-a-kind NFTs from his latest collection Incomplete Control. All the tokens were sold within 90 minutes at prices between 30 ETH ($120,000) and 80 ETH ($320,000).

After eight years of consideration, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) quietly approved a Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF). The SEC has long argued that the market underlying these proposed instruments is a minefield for unwary traders. The regulator’s chief issues consisted of possible Bitcoin cost control, inadequate liquidity, cybersecurity problems, and the absence of openness of trading information required to cost the possession. While it is unclear why the regulators’ approved the ETF, it is favorable for crypto adoption and mainstreaming. The ease of acquiring direct exposure to Bitcoin from the convenience of one’s routine brokerage or pension appears to be of interest to big swaths of U.S. financiers.

A U.S. public pension fund has invested in bitcoin for the first time. The Houston Firefighters’ Relief and Retirement Fund (HFRRF) acquired an undisclosed amount of BTC. The investment “represents a watershed moment for bitcoin and its place in public pensions,” the global head of asset management at NYDIG said.

Crypto Blockchain Industries (CBI), a French-based company focused on blockchain technology, will go public on the Paris stock exchange. CBI’s initial public offering is a direct listing on the Paris Euronext Growth stock exchange. It is the first listing of its kind on the Paris stock exchange. Its stock will be sold at 2 euros per share.