PayPal Embraces Crypto, Igniting Market as Mainstream Adoption Inches Closer
“PayPal officially confirmed Wednesday it is entering the cryptocurrency market. The payments giant, with 346 million active accounts around the world, pledged to make cryptocurrency ‘a funding source for purchases at its 26 million merchants worldwide.’
Initially, the service supports bitcoin (BTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), ether (ETH) and litecoin (LTC). Buy, sell and hold features would be live within the next few weeks.
PayPal’s service does not allow bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to be withdrawn or deposited. Once you buy the coins, they stay in your account until you sell. ‘The Cryptocurrency in your account cannot be transferred to other accounts on or off PayPal.’
Merchants will have no additional integrations or fees, as all transactions will be settled with fiat currency at their current PayPal rates.”
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“The fintech group said it will convert up to 10% of its cash reserves into the cryptocurrency as part of a long-term strategy to ‘protect investors’ assets from currency debasement.’ The firm did not disclose a cash value of the bitcoin allocation.
Mode said it recognized the potential of bitcoin as ‘a reliable store of value and an attractive investment due to the asset’s asymmetric risk/reward attributes and safe haven status.‘
Our confidence in the long-term value of bitcoin has only increased. Today’s allocation is executed through a modern, forward-looking but prudent treasury management strategy.”
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“The Central Bank of the Bahamas has officially launched its national digital currency. The first of its kind in the world to have been fully deployed, the sand dollar is a digital version of the Bahamian dollar.
Digital wallets will be secured with multi-factor authentication security and will be mobile-based, servicing the 90% of the population with smartphones. Underserved communities of the Caribbean nation are the primary target of the initiative.”
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“Filecoin’s miners, developers and users of the network will be able to access ConsenSys’ development tools such as Infura, MetaMask and others to integrate with Ethereum’s decentralized finance ecosystem.
Ethereum DApps and projects can become more fully decentralized by storing relevant data on Filecoin rather than relying on a centralized cloud service.
On Wednesday, Codefi Activate also launched Filecoin Storage, a dashboard for the file storage system available through a web app and an API.”
“Unlike on centralized exchanges, where tether is the go-to stablecoin in dollar-based crypto trades, USDC and DAI seem to have found their niche as the preferred stablecoins in decentralized trades.
One advantage you have from a decentralized stablecoin is that everything is completely transparent. So from a regulatory point of view, this is almost like their dream scenario, right? Because they can see exactly how many dai are in existence and in circulation and they can see in real time.
For stablecoin king tether, more than a few market participants question whether it is as transparent as the company claims.
Tether’s first-mover advantage may have been the leading reason for its overall dominance, but even in Asia, which has historically driven demand in USDT, traders are beginning to turn to other stablecoins for liquidity.”
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“Today ZEC is making its debut within the bustling decentralized exchange (DEX) ecosystem.
Announced Wednesday, WZEC is the first asset to be launched by “Wrapped,” a partnership between Ethereum tokenizers Tokensoft and qualified custodian Anchorage, with over-the-counter (OTC) liquidity provided by CMS Holdings.
It’s great for people to have more alternatives to centralized exchanges (CEXs), and the way that CEXs have to comply with arbitrary demands from their banks.”
“BitMEX, which has been charged by the U.S. government with facilitating unregistered trading, has accelerated its mandate for all customers to verify their identities by Nov. 5, three months earlier than its original deadline of early February.
By Dec. 4., all accounts must be verified in order to process withdrawals from the exchange.”
See Also: Crypto Options Exchange Deribit to Require ID Verification for All Users by Year End
“Minds, the Ethereum-based distributed social network which claims more than 3 million users, announced that it has partnered with decentralized startup Arweave to allow users to save their social media posts to the blockchain-based permaweb.
The addition is billed as a further measure of censorship resistance for social posts.
Given the chaos we are witnessing on mainstream social networks with regards to censorship, surveillance, and algorithmic manipulation, Minds provides users with a more resilient, decentralized, and trustless infrastructure to build their digital archive.”
“Currently, there are almost 2,800 man-made satellites orbiting Earth.
According to Sudler, moving data from one satellite to another can be a lengthy process involving multiple ground stations that stay in touch with the satellite. Using a blockchain network to transact this data could reduce such requirements and lower the operational cost of maintaining ground stations if satellites could “talk” to each other in space.“
“Should it be illegal for the victim to pay the ransom? Earlier this month the U.S. Treasury Department did just that. It notified the world that certain ransom payments are illegal, specifically those to sanctioned ransomware operators. Should a victim pay a ransom to a sanctioned entity, that person may face a big fine.
Punishing ransom victims seems heartless. But it may be one of the best ways to protect the public from extortionists.”
The Disrupt 