This week has seen tons of regulatory actions in the crypto industry, along with a market minor crash leading to a fearful situation. We at TheCoinRise are here to summarise it for you.
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Uruguay Installs Bitcoin ATM
The South American country Uruguay has installed its first Bitcoin ATM, marking itself as the 11th nation in South America to do so. Ambito reports that the crypto ATM is located in the City of Punta del Este, which is the hottest tourism attraction these days.
The new ATM was installed in collaboration with two of the country’s growing crypto startups, URUBit and inBierto. The government has also contributed to the program, displaying a broad crypto acceptance.
Rio de Janeiro to Allocate City’s 1% Funds into Bitcoin
Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian City, has decided to invest 1% of its Treasury Reserves into Bitcoin and becomes the first City to do so. The action comes into effect as a result of City’s Mayor Eduardo Paes’ goals to make the city BTC friendly. Paes, along with Francis Suarez, Miami Mayor, spoke at the Rio Innovation Week event about the same.
Reports say that the Mayor was quoted saying, “We are going to launch Crypto Rio and invest 1% of the treasury in crypto.”
Paes also pointed out that an active team will be established, and the residents who pay their property taxes in Bitcoin to reimburse as much as 10%.
Tesla accepts DOGE payments for merchandise
Crypto enthusiast, Twitter star, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that the company would accept Dogecoin (DOGE) for merchandise. The news soared the DOGE value by 25% within hours.
Musk has always been advocating DOGE. He recently said that he would prefer DOGE over BTC for daily transactions.
“Bitcoin is not a good substitute for transactional currency. Even though it was created as a silly joke, Dogecoin is better suited for transactions,” he says.
As TheCoinRise reported, roughly a month back, Musk showed interest in accepting DOGE as a test payment.
Polygon launches Ethereum EIP-1559 upgrade
The layer-two scaling network Polygon (MATIC) has deployed the Ethereum EIP-1559 upgrade, which in August last year introduced a partial network fee burning system. Following a successful delivery on the Mumbai testnet, the team announced that the upgrade is live on Polygon Network at block 23850000 this Tuesday and is expected to improve “fee visibility.”
NYC Mayor Eric Adams to receive his first crypto paycheck
Bitcoin supporter and New York City Mayor Eric Adams revealed that he would be receiving his first paycheck in crypto on Friday. However, it would not be an exact crypto paycheck but will be given in fiat currency, which subsequently will be used to convert the amount into digital currency on Coinbase.
United States residents are often not allowed to receive their salary in crypto as the Internal Revenue Service considers dollar wage payments as the income while crypto is considered assets.
Google Pay hires PayPal exec to achieve crypto payments goals
The internet search giant Google has appointed a former PayPal executive to assist with strengthening Google Pay, marking a solid step for the company’s financial services growth.
Arnold Goldberg has been hired to lead Google’s payment section under the company’s push into financial services.
The president of commerce at Google, Bill Ready, said, “Crypto is something we pay a lot of attention to […] As user demand and merchant demand evolves, we’ll evolve with it.”
Stacks ecosystem is the biggest Web3 project on Bitcoin
The Stacks blockchain (STX), an open-source network of decentralized apps and smart contracts built on Bitcoin, reached over 40,000 Hiro wallet downloads, 2,500 Clarity smart contracts, and 350 million daily API requests on its first anniversary. As per the report by the venture capital firm Electric Capital, this achievement makes Stacks Ecosystem the biggest Bitcoin project.
Bitcoin helps Tonga to fight the tsunami
A Twitter user asked Bitcoin supporter and former Tongan politician Lord Fusitu’a to set up a wallet address to let the crypto community help Tonga by donating Bitcoins. Till January 17, the address received 0.11728659 BTC.
Notably, the Kingdom of Tonga suffered a massive volcanic eruption, after which the situation intensified, threatening the residents of Tonga’s biggest island Tongatapu with a tsunami.
Funding events
Crypto accounting and data company Lukka has successfully raised $110 million in a Series E funding round led by hedge fund giant Marshall Wace. Lukka, while announcing the completion of the round, said that it had received from accounting advisor CPA.com. Soros Fund Management- a fund founded by the billionaire investor and crypto supporter George Soros, Liberty City Ventures, and S&P Global.
Hong Kong-based venture capital firm Animoca Brands has grabbed a $5 billion funding milestone after its recent investment round, where the company raised $358.88 million. The recent valuation is more than double the huge treasury growth of $2.2 billion it attained back in October 2021 when it completed a $65 million round.
NFT and its craze
After the previous hint by Instagram on NFT integration on the platform, the tech giant and emerging metaverse pioneer Meta Platforms Inc is apparently looking at NFT functionality for its Facebook and Instagram (IG) platforms. Despite citing many persons acquainted with the development, the Financial Times claim has not been formally verified by the company.
According to two of the insiders, the NFT plans include the development of a marketplace as the company looks into ways to compete with OpenSea, which has dominated the NFT trading sector for the past several years.
An Indonesian computer science college student named Sultan Gustaf Al Ghozali has minted and sold around 1,000 selfies as NFTs, earning millions of dollars on the NFT marketplace giant OpenSea. The 22-years old claims that he has taken these selfies in the duration of five years, from the age of 18 to 22, reflecting his graduation journey.
Ghozali was not expecting many serious buyers and initially set the price for each NFT selfie at $3. One of Ghozali’s NFT sold for 0.247 Ether on January 14.
The automaker giant Lamborghini is the newest in the list of big names entering the crypto and NFT world. Lamborghini has launched an NFT collection featuring its International Space Station (ISS) linked experimental material. In 2019, Lamborghini transported a 3D composite sample to the ISS for use in cooperative research, and the material was returned to the Italian firm.
The payment network processor company Mastercard has partnered with the crypto exchange giant Coinbase to enable Coinbase users to use Mastercard credit and debit cards to buy the exchange’s long-awaited NFT marketplace. Coinbase is aiming to be an easy and accessible NFT marketplace for its users.
Exchange activities this week
Bitfinex this week announced that the Ontario-based users with no funds on the platform would see their accounts getting closed. The exchange is also limiting access to users with no open positions in the peer-to-peer financing market or open margin positions. Bitfinex urged the accounts with open positions to remove their funds before March 1.
Crypto.com was taking the necessary precautions when some of its users’ accounts reported improper activities on their accounts. Crypto.com’s initial response was to disable withdrawals on its platform in order to prevent funds from moving around improperly.
Later, it confirmed the platform compromise in a blog post published on Thursday. It stated that the hackers’ unlawful withdrawals had affected 483 accounts and would be reimbursed.
Binance has officially partnered with the nonprofit organization the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance or NCFTA to fight against cybercrime.
Regulatory activities
Singapore is the latest country to crack down the public crypto-related advertisements from the digital currency service providers in the country. The regulatory body, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), has published a new set of regulations directed to the digital payment tokens (DPT) service providers, instructing that they must act in this regard as trading of these nascent assets is not appropriate for the general public.
The regulatory body says that “these Guidelines set out MAS’ expectation that DPT service providers should not promote their DPT services to the general public in Singapore.”
The Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores (CNMV), the financial regulator in Spain has brought a new regulatory framework for crypto marketing. Under the new regulations, advertisers targeting 100,000 or more people must additionally notify the regulator 10 days before the airing date.
Arif Alvi, the president of Pakistan, said that the country needs more training in new advanced technologies such as blockchain, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence.
The president said that the talent pool of the country should be prepared for the Fourth Industrial Revolution’s requirements.
The vice-chair of the European Union Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), Erik Thedéen, has highlighted a serious concern about the usage of renewable energy sources for Bitcoin or Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining in the EU countries. In discussion with the Financial Times, Thedéen stated that Bitcoin mining and its energy use has become a “National Issue” that nations are required to take a stand against.
“We need to have a discussion about shifting the industry to a more efficient technology,” he says.
Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael J. Hsu emphasized the significance of communication and collaborations with major crypto players to better understand the risks in the $2 trillion market.
Hsu, who presented on “The Future of Crypto-Assets and Regulation” at the Transatlantic Finance Forum, emphasized the numerous venues — crypto exchanges, NFT, and the metaverse — where anyone with internet connectivity can participate.
We at TheCoinRise wish you amid the death cross situation and will be back with another weekly roundup next Friday.
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