Visa is piloting a suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) that will allow banks to offer bitcoin services, the payments giant announced Wednesday. The Visa Crypto APIs pilot program will let clients “easily connect into the infrastructure provided by Visa’s partner, Anchorage, a federally chartered digital asset bank, to allow their customers to buy and sell digital assets such as bitcoin as an investment within their existing consumer experiences,” Visa said in a press statement.
More on CoinDesk• 2021-02-03
Today, we’re excited to announce that the Ren development team will be joining Alameda. Together, with our collective experience, expertise, and communities, our two teams will be able to contribute more value to the blockchain space than alone. In this blog, Loong and I want to share what this means concretely for the different projects involved, and why we are excited to be working with Sam Bankman-Fried (Founder and CEO of FTX and Alameda Research) and the team at Alameda moving forward.
More on Ren Medium• 2021-02-02
Emirates has partnered with GE Digital Aviation Software and TE FOOD to trial TrustOne, a mobile app that allows passengers to undergo COVID-19 PCR tests at special discounted rates. The app, created in partnership between GE Digital Aviation Software and TE Food, helps passengers adhere to the latest regulations and protocols, making travel seamless and more convenient.
More on Emirates• 2021-01-31
The group “r/Wallstreetbets” (aka WSB) is a longstanding subreddit channel where over 3.5 million Reddit users discuss highly speculative trading ideas and strategies. Described as “like 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal,” the community has caused huge disruption to financial markets this week. On Sept. 19, 2020, a Redditor with the handle Player896 published a post in the channel entitled “Bankrupting Institutional Investors For Dummies, ft GameStop.” In it, the person outlined a strong bullish case for GameStop (GME), a brick-and-mortar business that primarily sells video games and consoles. Since November 2015 the company’s stocks had been steadily declining due to a shift from physical media to digital, and the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic.
More on CoinDesk• 2021-01-31
Blockchain-based startup Presearch has released a decentralized search engine to help provide a more private alternative to Google. Taking a play out of privacy-centric web browser Brave’s book, it also rewards its users with it native crypto token, PRE. The Ethereum-based project uses searches powered by independent nodes to help protect the identity of the people who make queries for data. Moreover, it puts a dent in the monopolistic power of Google to organize and rank results.
More on Decrypt• 2021-01-31
Blockfolio has been here for many moons. Back when we started in 2014, we just wanted to build something for people like us — people who saw the potential of bitcoin and the new industry it was unleashing and needed a better way to keep track of it all. As the years went by, we got clearer and clearer in our mission: to build products that make crypto easier and more accessible to everyone. This is a financial and social revolution; we shouldn’t leave some people behind because the UI is too complicated. Over time, that meant adding new features to this crypto companion that lived in your pocket: more tokens you could track, better automation through integrations with exchanges, direct updates from the teams behind your favorite projects. There was, of course, one obvious feature missing: trading.
More on Blockfolio Blog• 2021-01-29
Coinbase Global, Inc. today announced its intent to become a publicly-traded company pursuant to a proposed direct listing of its Class A common stock. Such proposed listing is expected to be pursuant to a registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). Coinbase Global, Inc. previously announced on December 17, 2020 that it had confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the SEC. The Form S-1 is expected to become effective after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions.
More on Coinbase Blog• 2021-01-28
Reddit has teamed up with the Ethereum Foundation to establish Reddit’s first-ever blockchain partnership! As Reddit continues to grow with more than 50 million daily users and hundreds of thousands of communities, the platform has long maintained a decentralized ethos by empowering users to create, govern, and grow their own communities. Through this partnership, we will be increasing our commitment to blockchain, accelerating scaling and resources for the Ethereum ecosystem, and bringing the value and independence of blockchain technology to millions of redditors.
More on Reddit Ethereum• 2021-01-27
Union Square Ventures said it will invest roughly 30% of its freshly minted $250 million 2021 Core Fund in crypto-related investments as it has with other recent funds. The venture capital firm, known for bets on Twitter, Tumblr and Coinbase, said in a blog post written by Managing Partner Andy Weissman that planned crypto-related investments "will include holding tokens directly as well as equity in early-stage blockchain-related projects."
More on CoinDesk• 2021-01-27
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has revealed that one of its servers has been accessed by an unknown threat actor following a security breach. ASIC is an independent Australian government commission tasked with the regulation of insurance, securities, and financial services, as well with consumer protection as Australia's national corporate regulator. The commission also maintains a searchable database of business information for several types of organizations. The stored data includes both current and historical info including but not limited to addresses and office locations.
More on Bleeping Computer• 2021-01-26
A threat actor has leaked the stolen database for Indian cryptocurrency exchange Buyucoin on a hacking forum for free. Over the weekend, a threat actor known as ShinyHunters posted the link to an archive that contains the alleged database dumps for the Buyucoin cryptocurrency exchange. ShinyHunters is a threat actor well-known for hacking into websites and selling stolen user databases in private sales or via data breach brokers. This past week, ShinyHunters posted the databases for men's clothing store Bonobos and photo editing site Pixlr.
More on Bleeping Computer• 2021-01-26
Nasdaq-listed Marathon Patent Group announced Monday that it has purchased around 4,813 bitcoin for about $150 million in total. The investment is part of the company's treasury funds, Marathon CEO Merrick Okamoto told The Block. This is the first time the company, which itself is into bitcoin mining, has bought bitcoin from the market.
More on The Block• 2021-01-25