Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
__________
Payment news
- Digital asset gateway Fasset announced a collaboration with global payments technology company Mastercard to expand financial capabilities in Indonesia and create economic opportunities, they said. Fasset is focused on promoting “financial inclusion and democratizing access to opportunity by enabling a new wave of digital asset owners in our target emerging markets,” they added.
Adoption news
- Bitcoin company NYDIG announced a multi-year partnership with professional baseball team New York Yankees to become the team’s official Bitcoin Payroll Platform. This offers employees of the Yankees organization access to NYDIG’s Bitcoin Savings Plan (BSP), which allows them to convert a portion of their paycheck to bitcoin (BTC) via the NYDIG platform.
- Data transfer technologies company Plaid added support for thousands of crypto exchanges to its data network, per TechCrunch. “This is something many customers have asked for, particularly companies offering wealth management and financial planning services,” Alain Meier, head of Identity at Plaid, told the outlet.
- Entertainment giant Disney announced that blockchain project Polygon (MATIC) has been chosen to be part of the 2022 Disney Accelerator program. They added that over the course of the program, each participating company will receive guidance from Disney’s senior leadership team and a dedicated executive mentor.
NFT news
- China’s internet giant Tencent has shut down one of the two non-fungible token (NFT) platforms owing to declining sales aided by the regressive monetary policies of the Chinese government, a local outlet reported. They added that the primary reason for the slowdown in sales and ultimate closure of Tencent’s digital collectible platform is being blamed on flawed government policy prohibiting buyers from selling their NFTs in private transactions after purchase.
Politics news
- US Senator Cynthia Lummis collected thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the crypto industry over the last three months, according to the Wyoming Republican’s latest campaign finance report. Donors included executives from venture capital firms Multicoin Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Pantera Capital, and Compass Mining, among others, along with a pair of former social media giant Meta employees who recently launched the blockchain startup Aptos.
Exchange news
- OKX announced it has been awarded a provisional virtual assets (VA) license in Dubai. The license, issued by the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), will allow OKX to provide trading services to investors in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
- Binance-launched blockchain network BNB Chain announced it launched DappBay, a decentralized application (dapp) aggregator with a feature called ‘Red Alarm’, to warn users of potential rug pulls and scams.
- Bitpanda announced the launch of new thematic Bitpanda Crypto Indices (BCI), which will offer investors the opportunity to invest in crypto projects in the areas of the metaverse, infrastructure, smart contracts, and decentralized finance (DeFi). Crypto projects within each ‘basket’ are chosen based on the overarching theme, and balanced around market capitalization, they added.
- Bitfinex announced it will donate BTC 36 and USD 600,000 in Tether (USDt) to assist small businesses and communities in El Salvador. The funds are being distributed in towns and cities where street gangs have been accused of extorting money from businesses, they said.
- Digital investment firm CoinShares announced the listing of their physically-backed staked Algorand (ALGO) exchange-traded product (ETP) on Germany’s primary market Xetra.
Regulation news
- A recently published policy brief from the United Nations (UN) recommended developing nations take action against crypto, warning of risks associated with leaving the industry unregulated. The document goes as far as to suggest developing nations require the mandatory registration of all crypto wallets and ban advertisements related to crypto.
Legal news
- The US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn, in the case of payment system Ripple versus the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has denied the SEC’s motion to keep the speech by its former official William Hinman protected under attorney-client privilege, calling the agency’s litigation tactics “hypocrisy.” Ripple has argued that Hinman’s remarks that applying federal securities laws to ETH would “add little value” contradict the SEC’s claims that XRP is a security, while the watchdog fought hard to keep the speech under wraps and block it from being used as evidence in court.
Blockchain news
- Ethereum (ETH) scaling solution StarkNet announced the launch of their native token that will be used to operate the ecosystem, and maintain and secure it. They added that they have minted an initial 10bn tokens, which are being allocated to Core Contributors of the StarkNet ecosystem, to StarkNet software developer partners, and to the Foundation behind the project.
- Blockchain project The Internet Computer (ICP) announced that it has surpassed one billion blocks on the network after more than one year since its launch.
Wallet news
- Crypto wallet MetaMask announced that it reached 30m monthly active users (MAUs) in March 2022, up from 21m in November 2021, largely due to play-to-earn gaming. The current bear market has been moderately impacting MetaMask Monthly Active Users, they added.
Investment news
- Distributed ledger fintech company Millicent announced that it has successfully performed a test of a Full-Reserve Digital Currency (FRDC) aimed at the retail market. Millicent’s FRDC are privately-issued digital currencies pegged to a traditional fiat currency and 100% collateralized by liquid ‘cash’ deposits, held in a ringfenced account safeguarded by a regulated third party, at the central bank, they explained.
Mining news
- Bitcoin miner CleanSpark announced that it has acquired 1,061 Whatsminer M30S machines that are now fully operational. The move adds about 93 petahashes per second (PH/s) of computing power to the company’s existing mining capacity, they said.
