CoinDesk Crypto

Multinational payments firm Sia is partnering with cryptocurrency custodian Hex Trust to help its European banking clients hold digital assets.

“When you have one bitcoin, it’s not a big problem, but when you start adding 10, 20 or 100, you have a treasury and you have to decide where to store this,” said Daniele Savarè, SIA’s innovation and business solutions director. “We are discussing digital custody needs with banks in Europe.” 

Following MicroStrategy’s purchase of $425 million in bitcoin, Square’s $50 million bitcoin investment and PayPal’s support of crypto buying and selling on its platform, SIA hopes to prepare its bank clients for a presumptive wave of increased interest in crypto investing, Savarè said. 

Related: Signature Bank Gains $1B Deposits in Q3, With Notable Growth From Stablecoin Issuers

The firm is also helping banks manage and safekeep security tokens and central bank digital currencies, he added.

Milan-based SIA is a multinational company that often serves as a gateway to European payments. In early October, Italy’s largest payments processor, Nexi, announced it would acquire SIA in a €4.6 billion ($5.4 billion) stock deal that will close in 2021. The company also provides the network infrastructure for a system running Italian interbank transfers on R3’s Corda.

Through SIA, Hex Trust plans to offer European banks the software to custody digital assets on behalf of their customers. Hex Trust will also act as a sub-custodian for banks that don’t want to directly offer the service, said Hex Trust CEO Alessio Quaglini. 

Read more: This Liechtenstein Bank Can Now Custody Crypto

Related: Around 100 Italian Banks Are Officially on a Blockchain

Currently, Hex Trust works with three banks – Mason Privatbank Liechtenstein AG and two unnamed Asian banks. Quaglini said Hex Trust has 10 other banks that are exploring the custodian’s products.

In April of this year, Hex Trust also partnered with R3 to offer the consortium’s banking clients another option for issuing security tokens.

Going forward, SIA will be the primary distribution partner for Hex Trust to offer digital-asset services to banks in Europe, Quaglini said. 

• BitFlyer Japan’s Assets Under Custody Reach Highest Point Since 2018
• JPMorgan’s Blockchain Lead Is Now in Charge of Ethereum-Based Interbank Information Network

Collider Labs has raised $1 million to be invested in early-stage blockchain and cryptocurrency startups.

In an announcement Thursday, the venture builder said the raise had brought on board several notable limited partners including Efficient Frontier CTO Alon Elmaliah and Follow [the] Seed Founding Partner Andrey Shirben.

Collider provides funding and liquidity and actively participates in building up startups alongside their communities and founders, according to the firm’s founding partner, Avishay Ovadia.

Related: O(1) Labs Raises $10.9M More for Lightweight Mina Protocol

The company is actively seeking to invest in early-stage blockchain and crypto startups globally, with a focus transparency, privacy and “fairness.”

Collider “is a venture builder that somewhat resembles an accelerator” Ovadia said. With some “key characteristics” that differentiate it from a typical accelerator.

Venture builders, also known as startup studios, pair with early-stage startups and utilize their own ideas and resources to, if all goes according to plan, construct viable enterprises.

According to Ovadia, Collider forms partnerships with founders, invests in teams and works alongside them as what he calls “Investors in Residence.”

Related: UK-Listed Firm Mode Putting Up to 10% of Cash Reserves Into Bitcoin

See also: Boardroom Raises $2.2M for Blockchain Governance Toolset

• Algorand’s New Europe Accelerator to Boost Startups With Up to $500K in Funding
• Grayscale Announces Best Ever Quarter With Over $1B Raised

Two cryptocurrency trading firms are merging, and in a rare twist, so are their tokens.

Voyager Digital, a publicly traded digital asset brokerage with offices in New York, has agreed to buy LGO, a French crypto exchange primarily serving institutional investors, as the company expands to Europe.

The transaction requires regulatory approval, which the parties said they expect to receive by the end of this year, along with the token swap. The value of the deal will depend on the value of Voyager’s shares, and the firms’ tokens, at closing; at current prices, it would be in the low seven figures.

Related: PwC Report Points to Banner Year for Crypto M&A and Fundraising Deals

As such, this deal is dwarfed by this year’s blockbuster crypto M&A deals such as Binance’s acquisition of CoinMarketCap, estimated to be worth $400 million, and FTX’s $150 million deal to acquire Blockfolio.

Read More: ‘They Have the Users’: Binance CEO Explains Why He Bought CoinMarketCap

What makes this deal unusual is that the two companies’ utility tokens, VGX and LGO, will be swapped into newly minted tokens featuring decentralized finance (DeFi) functions such as community governance and staking at an initial interest rate of 7%.

“We think this is really taking the old-school mergers and acquisitions to the token world, which hasn’t been done before,” Steve Enrlich, Voyager’s co-founder and chief executive officer, told CoinDesk.

Related: Italian Payments Giants Merging to Form Entity That Will Dominate Local Market

Upon completion, Voyager, which is publicly listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange, will issue one million shares for the acquisition and operate in the European retail market with LGO’s Virtual Asset Service Provider registration with the French Financial Markets regulator (AMF). All activities will be conducted under the Voyager brand and LGO will discontinue its institutional services on Oct. 31. Shares of Voyager closed at C$0.67 ($0.51) on Wednesday. 

Read More: Voyager to Pay Interest on DeFi Tokens to Gain Brokerage Clients

Hugo Renaudin, co-founder and chief executive officer of LGO, told CoinDesk that the French company made the deal after it decided to shift its focus from institutional clients to increasing value for its token holders.

“The key decision-maker is what will bring the most value to our tokens,” Renaudin said. “So we have this token. We have token holders and they’re mostly retail [clients].”

LGO launched an initial coin offering (ICO) in February 2018, according to its website, which raised 3,600 bitcoin (worth about $36 million at the time). The company’s white paper shows that 60% of the tokens were distributed through a pre-sale process, while 20% of the supply went to LGO’s founders and advisors.

At its peak in April 2018, the LGO token’s market cap was nearly $40 million, according to data from CoinMarketCap. On Wednesday, that value was calculated to be $1.5 million. 

Renaudin told CoinDesk that the company’s other option would have been focusing on better serving its institutional clients, which means its spot exchange would have to provide new and exotic derivatives products. After consideration, he said that the team had decided to change its focus to retail customers instead.

The merger comes during a time of regulatory crackdown on crypto derivatives trading around the globe. Popular crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX was charged by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) with facilitating unregistered trading activities, while in the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has banned crypto derivatives for retail consumers.

This is not the first acquisition by Voyager, which went public in early 2019 in a reverse merger with the shell of a Canadian mineral exploration company. Previously, it acquired wallet startup Ethos.io for about $4 million.

Read More: Voyager CEO Says Revenue Growth Accelerates 8-Fold as DeFi Trading Surges

Voyage’s revenue in the most-recent fiscal quarter, which ended Sept. 30, surged to about $2 million, compared with $1.1 million during the fiscal year ending in June.

“We are becoming the financial service firm of the future, which means I will look at acquisitions that can add products, customer assets to the platform, or tokens and other communities that can be accretive to what we are trying to do,” Enrlich said. “And adding these pieces together we are going to either do it organically or through more acquisitions.”

• Voyager CEO Says Revenue Growth Accelerates 8-Fold as DeFi Trading Surges
• Diginex Moves Closer to Backdoor Nasdaq Listing With Merger Approval

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has released an advisory to futures commission merchants (FCM) providing clarity on how to look after users’ digital currencies in segregated accounts.

• According to a Wednesday press release from the CFTC’s Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight, the advisory informs FCMs on how to hold and report certain digital assets held by customers in connection with physically delivered futures contracts or swaps.
• A segregated account means customer funds are strictly separated from a company’s money.
• The CFTC noted that holding customer assets as segregated funds may let greater risks arise for the other customers under the same banner.
• The financial watchdog’s advisory also provides guidance on best practices FCMs should follow when they design and maintain risk management programs when dealing with digital assets as customer funds.
• The advisory does not pertain to foreign FCMs’ digital assets custody of customer’s assets in relation to trading futures or options on futures.
• The CFTC’s Division Director Joshua B. Sterling said in a statement that the commission was “committed to fostering responsible fintech innovation” as it works toward creating a “holistic framework for digital asset derivatives.”

See also: Tassat Gains CFTC ‘No-Action’ Relief Ahead of Eventual Bitcoin Swaps Contract Listing

See the CFTC’s guidance in full below:

• Pelosi, Kudlow Signal Market-Moving US Stimulus May Wait Till After Election: Report
• Hong Kong ‘Exploring’ Collaboration With China on Digital Yuan: Finance Chief
• Bitcoin Hits Fresh 2020 High, Approaches $13K
• UK-Listed Firm Mode Putting Up to 10% of Cash Reserves Into Bitcoin

Bitcoin (BTC) has risen above $13,000 in less than 24 hours after breaking the $12,000 level on news that PayPal will support cryptocurrencies on its platform.

• Prices of BTC rose to $13,005.51 at 22:22 UTC (6:22 p.m. ET) by press time, representing a 8.7% gains in the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index (BPI).
• The 24-hour price range: $11,898.03 – $13,030.86.
• The oldest cryptocurrency has continued its price rally after payment giant PayPal announced that it will allow its users to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies.
• The new service initially will support bitcoin (BTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), ether (ETH) and litecoin (LTC).
• Prices for bitcoin cash, ether and litecoin also rallied on the news, up between 7% and 13%in the past 24 hours.

• Market Wrap: PayPal Powers Bitcoin Past $12.8K as Ether Dominance Drops
• Baby Steps or Handcuffs? Crypto Pros Assess PayPal’s Bitcoin Play
• How Registered Investment Advisor ‘Downtown’ Josh Brown Talks Bitcoin With Clients
• Litecoin Surges After PayPal Includes It Among the Cryptos Customers Can Buy, Sell, Hold

U.S. administration officials and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi broached the possibility of passing the pandemic-relief package after the Nov. 3 election, indicating that a deal might not be able to be reached before then, the Wall Street Journal reported.

• With a strong correlation between stocks and the price of bitcoin (BTC) in recent months, analysts say a stimulus package could boost BTC as well. The godfather cryptocurrency surged to 2020 highs on Wednesday on confirmation of fintech giant PayPal adding the coin to its services.
• White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on CNBC negotiators were running out of time to get a deal passed before the election as talks went on past a Tuesday evening deadline set by Pelosi.
• The White House has proposed a $1.8 trillion stimulus package while the House Democrats are holding out for $2.2 trillion.
• Should President Donald Trump lose the presidential election, the WSJ article noted, the chances for a quick passage post-election would be slim as the Democrats would likely want to wait until Joe Biden takes office to get a bigger package approved.

Read more: US House Speaker ‘Optimistic’ About Reaching a Stimulus Pact: Reports

• Hong Kong ‘Exploring’ Collaboration With China on Digital Yuan: Finance Chief
• Bitcoin Hits Fresh 2020 High, Approaches $13K
• UK-Listed Firm Mode Putting Up to 10% of Cash Reserves Into Bitcoin
• US House Speaker ‘Optimistic’ About Reaching a Stimulus Pact: Reports

Bitcoin blows past its previous 2020 high while ether’s crypto market share dips from its 2020 high in September.

• Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $12,709 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Gaining 6.4% over the previous 24 hours.
• Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $11,863-$12,916
• BTC above its 10-day and 50-day moving averages, a bullish signal for market technicians.

Bitcoin’s price has been on a tear this week, rising for the third straight day and hitting as high as $12,916 on spot exchange Bitstamp on Wednesday. The recent development from payments firm PayPal confirming it will incorporate crypto for its users and merchants helped sparked the record 2020 high for the world’s oldest cryptocurrency, at $12,709 as of press time. 

Read More: PayPal Pledges to Bring Crypto to 26M Merchants, Confirming Market Entry

Related: Bitcoin Rallies Above $13K Less Than 24 Hours After Breaking 2020 Highs

“PayPal dropped the most important piece of news for large retail adoption this year, full support for bitcoin,” noted Henrik Kugelberg, an over-the-counter crypto trader based in Sweden. PayPal’s stock price (NASDAQ: PYPL) is also hitting record highs in 2020 and is up 92% this year so far. 

The potential for bitcoin to be inserted further into consumer finance is what is helping its bull run, noted Zac Prince, CEO of crypto lender BlockFi. “This coalescing of fintech and bitcoin is yet another bullish development for investors,” he said. “It’s going to be an exciting 12 months ahead as bitcoin continues to expand further into consumer finance.” 

It is not just the PayPal news helping bitcoin trend higher, noted Micah Erstling, a trader at GSR. “It’s promising to see bitcoin holding above the $12,000 mark with continued institutional interest and wider regulated adoption taking place,” Erstling told CoinDesk. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s speech on central bank digital currencies (CBDC) “clearly demonstrates that digital assets are being taken seriously, while Square and PayPal headlines are fueling a better digital ecosystem via payments and treasury.”

The last time bitcoin hit this price level was back on July 10, 2019. The overall excitement has led to volume on major USD/BTC spot exchanges Wednesday that were much higher than normal, at $1,165,166,691 as of press time. In fact, the last time volume was so high was back on Sept. 4, when daily volume was $1,089,417,516.

Related: Baby Steps or Handcuffs? Crypto Pros Assess PayPal’s Bitcoin Play

Several market analysts see bitcoin heading much higher before 2020 is over, including Katie Stockton, a technical analyst for Fairlead Strategies. “The breakout in July put the next major resistance on the chart at the 2019 high, aligned with a long-term Fibonacci retracement level near $14,000, she said. “We think a test of this level is likely in the months ahead.”

Constantin Kogan, a partner at cryptocurrency fund-of-funds BitBull Capital, echoed that sentiment. “Bitcoin has a good chance of reaching its $14,000 resistance mark for about a two-times gain this year as the market hasn’t fully absorbed all the positive news.”

As for derivatives, bitcoin open interest on CME, a venue for sophisticated investors that is often used to hedge risks, has been on an uptrend, noted William Purdy, a derivatives trader and founder of analysis firm PurdyAlerts.

“Futures open interest rising as price rising is a bullish trend that suggests the trend will likely to continue as fresh money is seen entering the market,” said Purdy. “CME volume surging shows strong institutional interest.”

Read More: Kik, SEC Propose $5M Settlement Over $100M ICO, Ending Yearlong Battle

However, quant trader QCP Capital highlighted some 2020 uncertainty still ahead in its investor note Wednesday. “We look to the U.S. elections as a medium-term risk still. With all the regulatory reminders we’ve already had this month, anything emanating from that department around election time would be a major cause for concern.” 

Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was up Wednesday trading around $391 and climbing 6.2% in 24 hours as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET). 

After hitting a 2020 high of 14% on Sept. 1, ether’s share of the cryptocurrency market cap has declined. A measure of an asset versus the larger crypto market capitalization, “dominance” is a metric traders watch to gauge sentiment. As of press time, the number was at 11.7% Wednesday. 

Despite the drop, George Clayton, managing partner at investment firm Cryptanalysis Capital, doesn’t put too much stock in ether’s dominance decline and remains ebullient on decentralized finance, or DeFi, deployed on the Ethereum network. “DeFi has Ethereum going gangbusters – lots of utility going on,” he said “I cannot be bearish ETH.”

Digital assets on the CoinDesk 20 are all green Wednesday. Notable winners as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):

• litecoin (LTC) + 12.2%
• chainlink (LINK) + 9%
• bitcoin cash (BCH) + 7.5%

Read More: Litecoin Surges After PayPal Includes It Among the Cryptos Customers Can Buy, Sell, Hold

Equities:

• The Nikkei 225 in Asia ended the day in the green 0.31%, led higher by gains in consumer holding company Takara Holdings, up 7.6%.
• Europe’s FTSE 100 closed in the red 1.9% as a stronger British pound, which hurts multinational companies, weighed on sentiment.
• In the United States the S&P 500 was flat, up 0.10% as investors signaled their uncertainty amid the ongoing coronavirus-related stimulus talks by U.S. lawmakers and the Trump administration.

Commodities:

• Oil was down 2.6%. Price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $40.03.
• Gold was in the green 0.86% and at $1,924 as of press time.

Treasurys:

• U.S. Treasury bond yields were mixed Wednesday. Yields, which move in the opposite direction as price, were up most on the 10-year, jumping to 0.811 and in the green 2.5%.

• How Registered Investment Advisor ‘Downtown’ Josh Brown Talks Bitcoin With Clients
• Litecoin Surges After PayPal Includes It Among the Cryptos Customers Can Buy, Sell, Hold

Hong Kong Treasury Secretary Christopher Hui said Wednesday the region’s government is considering collaborating with mainland authorities on China’s digital currency project, the digital yuan.

• Hui said during a Legislative Council Q&A Hong Kong is most interested in wholesale and cross-border digital currency use cases, a contrast to China’s primarily retail-facing digital yuan, also known as DC/EP.
• “If the [digital yuan] can be applied to cross-boundary payments, it would further promote the mutual connectivity” between China and Hong Kong, he said.
• Officials at the Hong Kong Monetary Authority plan to continue discussing the digital yuan with their counterparts at the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), he said.
• “In addition, the Financial Services Development Council has formed a working group to study how Hong Kong can seize the opportunities from DC/EP’s development,” Hui said.
• Hui appeared to throw cold water on reports Wednesday that PBoC is already planning to trial-run the digital yuan in Hong Kong. But HKMA “will actively respond and collaborate” with PBoC if the interest is there, he added.

• Pelosi, Kudlow Signal Market-Moving US Stimulus May Wait Till After Election: Report
• Bitcoin Hits Fresh 2020 High, Approaches $13K
• UK-Listed Firm Mode Putting Up to 10% of Cash Reserves Into Bitcoin
• Bitcoin Price Breaches $12K for First Time Since August

Villanova University’s College of Engineering is sending a private Ethereum blockchain into space to test whether distributed ledger technology (DLT) can help satellites exchange data. 

Working in collaboration with the non-profit Teachers in Space, Villanova’s engineering school secured a flight for its blockchain on a Firefly Aerospace rocket slated for launch on Nov. 20 from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The rocket will carry a “Serenity” satellite that will include Villanova’s private blockchain mounted on a Raspberry Pi, a credit card-sized single board computer.  

Hasshi Sudler, an adjunct professor at Villanova who is leading this project, said the large number of communications and other types of satellites that are already in space brought into focus how blockchain technology could help this sector. Currently, there are almost 2,800 man-made satellites orbiting Earth, 1,425 of which belong to the U.S., according to data collected by the Union of Concerned Scientists. 

Related: Around 100 Italian Banks Are Officially on a Blockchain

This concentration of satellites in outer space means there could be constraints on launching new ones in the future, Sudler said. But this also creates an opportunity to reduce the number of new satellites needed by creating a way for existing satellites to communicate with each other. 

“We want to be able to allow satellites to leverage the existing data that current satellites have, but that raises the question of how do you do that transfer and ensure that the transaction has taken place, even ensure that it’s been paid for. And this is where the blockchain plays a unique role,” he said. 

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.

The blockchain that will be sent into space uses a Proof-of-Authority consensus mechanism as a way of minimizing energy requirements, which can be quite significant compared with those mechanisms commonly used in public blockchains. 

Related: German Lawmakers Vote ‘Nein’ on Blockchain for Transparency on Megaprojects

In an emailed statement, Villanova said the satellite will remain in low-Earth orbit (altitude of 1,200 miles or less) for 30 days. The first 15 days will be used for controlled blockchain experiments conducted by researchers, followed by 15 days of testing to measure transaction performance under heavy traffic conditions. 

Using blockchain may also rectify another problem when it comes to satellites: their movements. “If you have a number of satellites talking to one another and moving in and out of view of each other fairly quickly, it makes it difficult for the entire network to establish consensus really quickly,” said Sudler. 

According to the university’s statement, the flight planned for Nov. 20 is the first of many aimed at testing how low-Earth-orbit satellites could carry out transactions using a private blockchain. 

• US Lawmakers Advocate for Blockchain Use in COVID-19 Relief Efforts
• Thailand Is Prepping to Move Judicial System Records to a Blockchain

Call it Crypto Lite – for now.

Fintech giant PayPal confirmed its long-awaited move into digital assets Wednesday, offering its 346 million users the chance to buy, hold and sell bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether and litecoin, with the blessing of New York state regulators. 

While the cryptosphere acknowledges the bullishness of a firm the size of PayPal making a move into the space, there was also concern the new 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.

Related: How Registered Investment Advisor ‘Downtown’ Josh Brown Talks Bitcoin With Clients

“Currently, you can only hold the cryptocurrencies that you buy on PayPal in your account. Additionally, the crypto in your account cannot be transferred to other accounts on or off Paypal,” states the PayPal FAQ page published with Wednesday’s announcement.

Self-custody and moving your coins around is what crypto is all about though, right?

The view from some informed takes is that while PayPal did not need to impose such restrictions, it’s probably a case of taking things by degree – a “crawl before you can walk” approach. 

Read more: PayPal Embraces Crypto, Igniting Market as Mainstream Adoption Inches Closer

Related: Litecoin Surges After PayPal Includes It Among the Cryptos Customers Can Buy, Sell, Hold

As such, the current setup is being compared to investment company Robinhood – which also offers crypto but in a confined space – but moving in the direction of Square, which started the same but now allows limited withdrawals to non-custodial wallets.

The lack of withdrawals to self-custody and inability to transfer between accounts constituted “the highlight of the PayPal news” for Jake Chervinsky, general counsel of DeFi platform Compound, who added that such restrictions aren’t required for regulatory compliance. (Chervinsky did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.)

However, it may well be the case that PayPal is simply setting out to cater to what it perceives to be the needs of the average user, pointed out Jerry Brito, executive director of Coin Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

“Simply allowing people the ability to buy and hold and sell back crypto I imagine is something they studied,” Brito said in an interview. “It may simply be that’s what most people want to do with cryptocurrency at the moment, and the demand to move it around and transact is not as high. And if that’s the case, it’s much easier from a regulatory perspective and from a user support perspective to simply allow that option without having the ability to transact.”

Read more: Square Puts 1% of Total Assets in Bitcoin in Surprise $50M Investment

Providing the most obvious route for people to have exposure to the asset class without necessarily getting into the more complex issues of running private keys and understanding cryptography and digital signatures is possibly what PayPal is thinking, said Charles Hayter, CEO and co-founder of data site CryptoCompare.

“Yes, if you’re a pure libertarian, it’s not ideal. But being pragmatic about bitcoin’s trajectory and global adoption penetration rate, this certainly brings more options,” Hayter told CoinDesk.

Brito of Coin Center agreed that to be compliant with regulations, PayPal did not perhaps need to wall in its garden, but he pointed to gray areas like the Financial Action Task Force’s Travel Rule and other areas of anti-money laundering (AML) enforcement, which come into play when transferring crypto in a regulated environment.

“It’s certainly the case that it’s a much bigger hurdle to allow for sending [crypto] than not,” Brito said. “So, sort of top of the list would be the Travel Rule. People are finally developing solutions to comply with that but they are not there yet. This will be a relatively small part of PayPal’s business, so the easiest thing to do is not engage in transfer and take on that compliance risk.”

Read more: PayPal, Venmo to Roll Out Crypto Buying and Selling: Sources

Stephen Palley, a partner at the Anderson Kill law firm, said the functionality of the PayPal crypto announcement is not important compared to what it says about crypto as an asset class.

“They’re going to be cautious, and they’re going to roll it out slowly,” Palley told CoinDesk, adding: 

“My takeaway is that the importance is not the functionality. The importance is from the normalization of the asset class. If PayPal is saying you can somehow use this via our platform, however it works, that takes it one step away from the notion that this is just for criminals.”

PayPal did not return requests for comment.

• PayPal Adds Bitcoin: Most Bullish News of the Year?
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Following a similar move by one of its rivals, popular cryptocurrency options exchange Deribit will require all of its users to be ID verified before the end of the year, according to a report by The Block. 

The largest crypto options exchange by trading volume will ask its users to submit government-issued photo identification, such as a passport or driver’s license, as well as a proof of residence, under its revamped know-your-customer (KYC) program. 

• The move comes less than a day after rival exchange BitMEX announced it was accelerating its own planned mandatory ID verification requirement. Charged by the U.S. government with facilitating unregistered trading, BitMEX said all of its customers would need to verify their identities by Nov. 5, three months earlier than the original deadline. 
• While Deribit currently uses a two-tiered KYC system that allows withdrawals up to one bitcoin (BTC) or 50 ether (ETH) without a photo ID or proof of residence, the change in policy will eliminate the tiers and make the requirements uniform across users.

• BitMEX Accelerates Mandatory ID Verification After Charges of Lax Anti-Money Laundering Controls
• ‘Only in Crypto’: What the OKEx Mess Says About New and Old Finance
• BitMEX Exchange Hires First Compliance Chief After US Charges
• Revamped Crypto Derivatives Exchange Qume Set to Fly in Wake of BitMEX Woes

Harvest Finance, a decentralized platform that lets users automatically “farm” assets for the highest returns in other decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, now has more than $700 million in total value locked, according to DeFi Pulse, unseating decentralized derivatives exchange Synthetix.

• The total value locked in Harvest Finance surged to $704.1 million on Tuesday, up 110% from $334.41 million a week earlier.
• The project is now ranked seventh on DeFi Pulse in total value locked (TVL), surpassing popular DeFi projects including Synthetix, yearn.finance, RenVM, and Balancer.
• According to Harvest Finance's website, the total value of its deposits has crossed $1 billion Wednesday.
• Harvest Finance’s dramatic growth took place during a time when enthusiasm around the DeFi space has slowly hit a wall.
• The anonymous team behind the project told CoinDesk in a Telegram message the gain was partly due to “vault migration,” meaning users were moving their funds from existing pools to newly created ones in order to maximize returns on assets.
• The asset management platform, which was launched in September, aims to make so-called “yield farming” easier for small and novice investors in the DeFi sector.
• According to Harvest Finance, yield farming has become harder for small investors due to volatility in the DeFi space, high transaction fees and potential security risks on smart contracts.
• The project itself is audited by third parties and 10% of the protocol’s token supply is used to support the audit process.
• The platform’s token FARM also saw a big jump, up by 35.72% over the past 24 hours, according to Messari.
• At the press time, FARM was trading at $322.64.

Read more: With COMP Below $100, a Look Back at the ‘DeFi Summer’ It Sparked

• USDC Is Coming to Solana Blockchain in Potential Boost for Non-Ethereum DeFi
• Tether Still Dominates Stablecoins, but USDC and Dai Are Winning DeFi
• With COMP Below $100, a Look Back at the ‘DeFi Summer’ It Sparked
• Uniswap’s First Governance Vote Ends in Ironic Failure

PayPal merchants will soon accept crypto payments as part of a major push into the “virtual currency marketplace.” The Bahamian central bank unveiled the world’s first CBDC. Kik and the SEC are nearing an end to a yearlong court battle over its $100 million initial coin offering (ICO). Here’s everything people are talking about in crypto today.

PayPal’s play
PayPal will be offering trading and transaction of bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether and litecoin in the next few weeks to its 346 million customers and 26 million merchants through a partnership with Paxos Trust Company, although for some users, the features are already available. The New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) has granted the first “conditional BitLicense” to PayPal, a regulatory arrangement where interested companies can operate in the state’s “virtual currency marketplace” by working with already chartered firms. “DFS will continue to encourage and support financial service providers to operate, grow, remain and expand in New York and work with innovators to enable them to germinate and test their ideas,” the watchdog said. Many in the industry see this as a year-defining event that could rapidly expand crypto’s pool of potential users. Others take umbrage that the payments firm will not initially allow users to transfer crypto outside of the PayPal network. “You own the cryptocurrency you buy on PayPal but will not be provided with a private key,” the company wrote in a help post.

Another allocation
Mode Global Holdings, a London Stock Exchange-listed company, has announced plans to make a “significant purchase” of bitcoin as part of its treasury investment strategy. 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.” “Faced with the challenges of COVID-19 and with U.K. interest rates at the lowest level in the Bank of England’s 326-year history, our confidence in the long-term value of bitcoin has only increased,” said Jonathan Rowland, Mode’s executive chairman.

Related: First Mover: PayPal Rushes In and Bitcoin Breaches $12K, While USDC Gains on Tether

It’s official
The Central Bank of the Bahamas has officially launched its national digital currency, the sand dollar, an attempt to reduce the friction of bringing financial services to its dispersed, and often underbanked, population. This marks the first official deployment of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), which will be rolled out initially to private-sector banks and credit unions. Personal wallets are secured with multi-factor authentication security and will be mobile-based, servicing the 90% of the population with smartphones. The sand dollar is backed 1:1 to the Bahamian dollar (BSD), which, in turn, is pegged to the U.S. dollar.

Future bulls?
Bitcoin futures traders are significantly less bullish as bitcoin traded past $12,000 Tuesday compared to when bitcoin reached the same level nearly two months ago. When bitcoin traded near $12,000 throughout August, finally reaching the key level mid-month, funding rates for perpetual futures turned acutely positive across leading derivative exchanges, reflecting the market’s bullishness. As bitcoin revisited $12,000 Tuesday, however, funding rates reacted differently, staying flat or turning negative, indicating a lack of the same bullishness two months ago.

Decentralization metric
A New York law firm unveiled a new metric to test the decentralization of particular blockchain projects. Called the “Ketsal Open Standards” rubric, the toolkit, developed by the Ketsal law firm, outlines 33 data points – including node count, GitHub statistics and measurements of the inter-node communication times – to weigh the distribution of a network. The lawyers looked to Bitcoin as the benchmark. “It’s a tool to push along an informed discussion on what you’re talking about when you’re saying, ‘my network is decentralized,’” Ketsal partner Josh Garcia said.

Most Influential 2020: Cast Your Vote
2020 has not been a good year by most metrics. There is no way to avoid this in a year-end retrospective.

Related: Blockchain Bites: Bitcoin and the BSA, Signature Deposit Growth, Darknet Crypto Donors

Every year, CoinDesk recognizes the “Most Influential” people working to expand cryptocurrency and blockchain’s reach. It’s a list of the 10 outsized individuals who have gone the furthest and done the most.

In this most unusual year, we need your help determining who should be named as Most Influential. Check out the list of the top contenders and cast your vote by Oct. 31.

• Why the Government Is Suing Google (Shira Ovide/New York Times)
• ‘Garbage’ Market Data Is Holding Bitcoin Back: MicroStrategy CEO (Zack Voell/CoinDesk
• Tether Still Dominates Stablecoins, but USDC and Dai Are Winning DeFi (Muyao Shen/CoinDesk)
• DeFi deja vu as another stealth Andre Cronje project launches (Samuel Haig/CoinTelegraph)

Kicking the can?
Kik’s yearlong battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) appears to have reached an end, with the sparring parties proposing a settlement.

A proposed fine of $5 million, 5% of the $100 million raised in the 2017 token sale that sparked the battle, is regarded as being relatively light, all things considered. 

Tim Swanson, head of market intelligence at clearmatics, noted the penalty – if approved – would be in line with another high-profile lawsuit and settlement from last year: Block.one’s $24 million paid for a $4.1 billion unregistered securities offering.

More pattern pieces were placed earlier this year when Telegram paid a fine and abandoned its blockchain-based network. Kik, however, plans to keep its Kin network alive, with promises to alert the watchdog of any future token sales. 

For many, including CoinDesk, Kik’s persistence in fighting the SEC was a laudable effort. In 2019, Ted Livingston, Kik CEO, was named Most Influential for his determination to bring the fight to court, potentially creating a precedent for how token sales might be treated under U.S. securities law. 

Pressure mounted in recent months, especially after a judge found Kik’s ICO in clear violation of the Howey Test, the gold standard to determine whether an asset is a security. 

Kik General Counsel Eileen Lyon said the SEC should create clear rules for the crypto industry, rather than publish “conflicting statements” and other non-binding forms of guidance in September. It’s a statement we’ve heard before. 

• First Mover: Monero Leads Privacy-Coin Rally as Bitcoin Trips on Path to $12K
• Blockchain Bites: Filecoin Strike, Bitcoin Fees Fall, Coinbase Censorship

Remember when crypto exchanges were strong-armed into delisting privacy coins like zcash (ZEC) in order to protect their brittle banking covenants?

But crypto keeps moving, and today ZEC is making its debut within the bustling decentralized exchange (DEX) ecosystem in the form of wrapped zcash (WZEC). 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.

Wrapping is the act of taking a blockchain asset like bitcoin and issuing an equivalent representation on another blockchain such as Ethereum. Wrapped bitcoin (WBTC), for instance, is an ERC-20 token that’s backed on a 1:1 basis with bitcoin held in reserve by qualified custodian BitGo Trust.

Related: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Tests $12K; Ethereum Fees Fall to 3-Month Low

In a similar fashion, wrapped zcash is a 1:1 representation of zcash on Ethereum held in custody by Anchorage. Wrapped tokens provide a big shot of liquidity to DEXs and offer otherwise staid assets the ability to frolic in the wilds of decentralized finance (DeFi).

Read more: Wrapped Bitcoin Sees Record $57.1M in Tokens Minted by CoinList for Customers

“I’m thrilled that there is such interest, and that people can, and do, innovate and deploy extensions on top of Zcash without the Electric Coin Company’s knowledge or approval,” Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn, Zcash founder and Electric Coin Company CEO, told CoinDesk in a direct message.

“I also agree that 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,” he added.

Related: Cryptographers Are Always Going to Be ‘One Step Ahead’ of Regulators: Monero’s Spagni

Today, zcash can be used in either of two ways: transparent or shielded. The shielding of the transacting crypto wallets enables a degree of privacy not found on the public-by-default Bitcoin blockchain, for example. It’s ZEC’s shielding capabilities that make regulators nervous, narrowing the scope somewhat for this clever use of technology.

The wrapped version of zcash on Ethereum “really brings the best of both worlds,” said Mason Borda, CEO of Tokensoft. 

“Obviously Zcash enables shielded transactions, so now holders of zcash can have assets in a shielded pool and wrap a portion of these assets to use on Ethereum, maintaining their privacy,” said Borda. “They would love to use their zcash, but they don’t want to disclose how much they have. They just want that information private.”

Wrapping zcash on the Tokensoft platform for use on Ethereum also makes the shielded version of the coins more palatable to regulators, Borda believes. That’s because it involves a know-your-customer (KYC) process performed upstream, he said, plus the ZEC holder also has to meet with Anchorage’s compliance as a qualified custodian. 

Read more: Nearly $100M in Bitcoin Moved to Ethereum in July, Led by Retail Traders

“Wrapping the zcash and putting it on the Ethereum rails does open up the door for these jurisdictions to support this asset,” Borda said. “So it’s a big deal. It’s going to open up zcash to every other market out there that is currently concerned about enhanced privacy and shielded transactions.”

But doesn’t loading lots of KYC and compliance around zcash defeat the purpose of privacy coins in the first place?

“The goal with zcash was never to shield from authorities, regulators or your financial providers,” said Diogo Monica, co-founder and president of Anchorage. “The shielding of zcash came as a response to the fact that bitcoin is pseudonymous. So who you’re shielding from is the public at large and the internet at large. And so the fact that we’re using ERC-1404 standard allows us to guarantee on-chain that we have the advantages of regulation with the advantages of zcash on-chain anonymity.”

Tokensoft developed the ERC-1404 standard for SEC-registered assets on Ethereum, a streamlining system that also involves Anchorage as custodian.  

The ERC-1404 is basically a template smart contract with compliance functions baked in, including the whitelisting of investors so regulators know exactly who everyone is.

“There are certain things we’re switching off, but other things we’re leaving on,” Borda said of WZEC’s ERC-1404 debut. “The main difference is that the whitelisting is off, so the tokens are ERC-20 compatible and freely transferable.”

Read more: Regulated US Exchange Gemini Now Offers Confidential Zcash Withdrawals

For its part, Anchorage became a qualified custodian in the state of South Dakota back in July 2019, following crypto custodian BitGo, which got the green light from state regulators in 2018.

“This is what Anchorage was built to do,” said Monica. “Anchorage was built to use private keys safely for active participation in blockchains. Our technology permits us to have better liquidity, and public auditability of every single asset that we have on the platform. And also our platform allows us to just add more wrapped assets in the near future.”

CMS Holdings, the institutional crypto firm founded by Bobby Cho of Cumberland and former Circle trader Dan Matuszewski, praised the new partnership.

“Wrapped is the best wrapping I’ve ever wrapped with,” Matuszewski quipped via email.

• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Has Light Response to OKEx While Ether Options Traders Make Beacon Bets
• Wrapped Bitcoin Sees Record $57.1M in Tokens Minted by CoinList for Customers

Blockchain startup CasperLabs has banked $14 million from investors who pledged to secure its proof-of-stake Casper network at launch.

CasperLabs CEO Mrinal Manohar confirmed the private CLX token presale to CoinDesk and further revealed that Digital Strategies had led the investment, with headline participation from HashKey Capital and Blockchange Ventures, as well as 52 others. Nearly half of subscribers already held CasperLabs equity, he said.

All together, the 55 new CLX holders wield a share of the Casper network that Manohar said ranges “in the teens.”

Related: Kik, SEC Propose $5M Settlement Over $100M ICO, Ending Yearlong Battle

Casper’s future node runners lend an early security force to the Swiss-based company’s upcoming blockchain. Jumping on ahead of Casper’s mainnet launch, and even before the native token’s public sale, these “genesis validators,” as Manohar called them, will confirm transactions on the smart contract-based network when it goes live early next year.

“Everyone is mandated to be a validator,” said Manohar, adding the sale will “create the initial security of the network” that CasperLabs has no interest in raising alone.

Read more: CasperLabs Pivots Away From Ethereum to Fundraise With Its Own Blockchain

“It’s a completely open and permissionless system,” he said. 

Related: Indian Trade Finance Startup Raises $3.7M in Token Sale Led by Arrington XRP

CasperLabs is among the many lesser-known blockchain projects hoping to steal even just a sliver of crypto’s decentralized finance (DeFi) scene from Ethereum. Industry tracker DeFi Pulse now estimates that Ethereum blockchain DeFi projects are locking up over $10.6 billion in value. 

But with DeFi’s market leader struggling under high fees and long confirmation times – not to mention a long-promised network upgrade looming but hardly assured – Casper’s team is eager to prove that an upstart competitor can handle booming industry demand.

CasperLabs understands Ethereum’s scaling woes perhaps better than most. Ethereum Foundation developer Vlad Zamfir used to advise the company. But he’d left the project by March 2020, when CasperLabs said it was pivoting away from Ethereum.

Excitement for Casper’s mainnet launch is running high if the CLX round’s numbers are any indication. Manohar said the oversubscribed round brought in $4 million more than initially planned. All that cash came from 55 “medium-sized checks,” he said.

Coming one year after CasperLabs’ Series A sale raised $14.5 million, the fresh cash will fuel Casper’s 40 employees through their final pre-launch development, according to Manohar. Twenty-nine of them are engineers. Money’s “always gone very heavily into engineering” he said. 

Manohar has no plans to run another private sale before the public offering in “early Q1” 2021. And there’s no need to, he said. The sale’s primary function, now complete, was to establish Casper’s launch-day validators.

Also read: Validators Drop Off Ethereum 2.0 Testnets as Mainnet Release Looms

Next year’s public CLX sale, which CasperLabs has previously said would take the form of an “Exchange Validator Offering” on Singapore’s BitMax exchange, will give the public (but not U.S. investors) a shot at staging nodes as well. 

But Casper will be ready to go even without public buy-in.

“We’ll only do our first public sale once the network’s already decentralized,” he said.

• Dapper Labs Raises $18M in Token Sale for NFT-Centric Flow Blockchain
• Token Sales Are Back in 2020

Litecoin (LTC) rose more than 10% on Wednesday, outperforming bitcoin (BTC) to top the list of the best-performing major cryptocurrencies after PayPal confirmed it’s entering the cryptocurrency market and included LTC on the list of cryptos its customers will be able to buy, sell and hold.

• LTC, the ninth-largest cryptocurrency by market value, jumped more than 12% to $52.64, the level last seen on Sept. 3.
• The surge came after PayPal, 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 BTC, ether (ETH), bitcoin cash (BCH) and LTC, the payments giant said.
• The announcement acted like rocket fuel to the crypto market overall as it may be a step to bringing crypto usage one step closer to the mainstream.
• BTC, the crypto market leader, jumped 6% to a fresh 2020 high of more than $12,700 before settling down to $12.688, up 5.99%, while ETH and BCH rose 4% and 7%, respectively.
• While LTC’s double-digit price rise is impressive, its relatively less liquid than BTC so a relatively big orders can have substantial impact on price.
• “LTC markets are thinly traded and its largely spot, so traders don’t have many ways to express sentiment other than trade spot,” CoinShares CSO Meltem Demirors told CoinDesk in a Twitter chat.

UPDATE: 17:40 UTC: Adds commentary on litecoin’s lack of liquidity.

Read more: First Mover: Privacy Is Litecoin’s Ace in the Hole as JPMorgan Touts Bitcoin

Related: PayPal Adds Bitcoin: Most Bullish News of the Year?

• Bitcoin Hits Fresh 2020 High, Approaches $13K
• PayPal Embraces Crypto, Igniting Market as Mainstream Adoption Inches Closer
• First Mover: Privacy Is Litecoin’s Ace in the Hole as JPMorgan Touts Bitcoin

The Coinbase- and Circle-backed CENTRE Consortium announced support for its USDC stablecoin on the Solana blockchain Wednesday, marking the dollar-backed asset’s fourth blockchain integration, after Ethereum, Algorand and Stellar, announced barely a week ago. 

Compared to Ethereum’s approximate rate of 15 transactions per second (TPS), Solana offers over 50,000 TPS, which Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire told CoinDesk helps USDC function “at scale and in a highly performant condition.” 

USDC was launched with the goal of creating technical and regulatory standards supervised by governments and regulators for a dollar-pegged money format and protocol, Allaire told CoinDesk. The stablecoin is “just now moving into the growth phase,” he added. 

Related: Harvest Finance Doubles Total Value Locked to $704M in One Week

Read more: Tether Still Dominates Stablecoins, but USDC and Dai Are Winning DeFi

USDC and USDT, the two largest stablecoins by market capitalization, have been rapidly expanding across new blockchains throughout 2020 as both stablecoins aggressively pursue cross-chain growth strategies. This year, five new protocols have announced support for one or both of the leading stablecoins. 

In early September, Tether also announced its planned integration with the “ultra high-speed” Solana blockchain. 

Use cases for stablecoins now extend beyond simple trading and funds transfers, Allaire explained. Operating on multiple protocols is key for USDC to meet the needs of novel stablecoin use cases created by a burgeoning decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.

Related: First Mover: PayPal Rushes In and Bitcoin Breaches $12K, While USDC Gains on Tether

Concurrent with its support on Solana, USDC announced a partnership with FTX; Serum, the exchange’s decentralized trading platform built on Solana; and Alameda research, the exchange’s sister company. 

As to whether USDC will continue to expand to other blockchains, Allaire told CoinDSesk “absolutely,” noting there are “many credible blockchains” that could be considered in the future for USDC support.

• Tether Still Dominates Stablecoins, but USDC and Dai Are Winning DeFi
• With COMP Below $100, a Look Back at the ‘DeFi Summer’ It Sparked

A solution being implemented to safeguard against so-called 51% attacks on the Ethereum Classic (ETC) network may not be as secure as other alternatives, according to a new analysis.

This summer, the ETC blockchain suffered three such attacks in a month. Soon after, ETC Labs – leading organization supporting the network – announced it would roll out the Modified Exponential Subjective Scoring (MESS) solution as an “innovative and low-risk” means to mitigate the risk of future 51% attacks.

But, according to a report from the ETC Cooperative and Cardano developer IOHK on Tuesday, an analysis concluded that “the ‘MESS’ solution will not provide “robust security” and there’s “no guarantee that further attacks will not succeed.”

Related: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Slips to $11.2K; Uniswap Flows Dominate Ether

Further, MESS doesn’t provide “high confidence for stakeholders to reduce confirmation times to desirable levels,” the report reads.

A 51% attack occurs when a nefarious actor gains the majority of a network’s computing power, allowing them to carry out a reorganization (“reorg”) of blocks on the chain and potentially double-spend transactions.

MESS is designed to make large block reorgs up to 31 times more costly, in theory negating any profit motive behind 51% attacks.

The firms looked at various solutions proposed by developer teams from across the ETC community for the analysis, and said checkpointing and timestamping solutions would provide superior security.

Related: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Regains $10.6K; High-Balance Ether Addresses Decline

According to the report, timestamping enables ETC to base its security off another secure blockchain such as Bitcoin.

Meanwhile, checkpointing occurs when a “trusted authority” chooses a block to become the canonical chain all participants must follow, and cannot be later “dropped or reverted.”

ETC Co-op Executive Director Bob Summerwill said he hoped the report was the “first step” toward centralized decision making among ETC’s leadership, “allowing technical and other ecosystem proposals to be essentially peer-reviewed, improving them, and ensuring they are sound.”

The report also suggested the implementation of a “decentralized treasury,” providing an ongoing source of funding for the future development of the ETC platform.

“A democratic and transparent funding mechanism will also allow the ETC community to determine its future direction by allowing it to choose which innovations are incorporated into the ETC product offering,” it reads.

This, the report claimed, would ultimately allow ETC to “keep pace with and exceed the capabilities of other platforms.”

See also: ETC Labs Rolls Out Fixes to Thwart Further 51% Attacks on Ethereum Classic

• Downvoted: Security Researchers Slam Voatz Over Stance on White-Hat Hackers
• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Gains Steadily to $10.7K; Ethereum Fees at 2-Month Low

Bitcoin’s price clocked fresh 2020 highs on Wednesday after online payments company PayPal announced support for cryptocurrencies.

• The cryptocurrency was trading at $12,833, a gain of 7.3% in 24 hours, as of 17:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. ET).
• Bitcoin jumped to $12,481 during earlier U.S. trading hours to reach the highest level since July 2019, surpassing the previous 2020 high of $12,476 reached on Aug. 18, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index.
• PayPal launched a new service enabling its customers to buy, hold, and sell bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash and litecoin, directly within the PayPal digital wallet.
• The move is expected to increase cryptocurrency’s utility as a funding source for digital commerce at PayPal’s 26 million merchants.
• “This PayPal news is the biggest news of the year in crypto. All banks will now be on a race to service crypto. We have crossed the rubicon,” large crypto investor Michael Novogratz tweeted.

• How Registered Investment Advisor ‘Downtown’ Josh Brown Talks Bitcoin With Clients
• Litecoin Surges After PayPal Includes It Among the Cryptos Customers Can Buy, Sell, Hold
• PayPal Adds Bitcoin: Most Bullish News of the Year?
• Nigeria Protests Show Bitcoin Adoption Is Not Coming: It’s Here

Bitcoin’s price clocked fresh 2020 highs on Wednesday after online payments company PayPal announced support for cryptocurrencies.

• The cryptocurrency jumped to $12,481 during the U.S. trading hours to reach the highest level since July 2019, surpassing the previous 2020 high of $12,476 reached on Aug. 18, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index.
• PayPal launched a new service enabling its customers to buy, hold, and sell bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash and litecoin, directly within the PayPal digital wallet.
• The move is expected to increase cryptocurrency’s utility as a funding source for digital commerce at PayPal’s 26 million merchants.
• “This PayPal news is the biggest news of the year in crypto. All banks will now be on a race to service crypto. We have crossed the rubicon,” large crypto investor Michael Novogratz tweeted.

• Nigeria Protests Show Bitcoin Adoption Is Not Coming: It’s Here
• First Mover: PayPal Rushes In and Bitcoin Breaches $12K, While USDC Gains on Tether
• Bitcoin Price Hits Two-Month High Above $12,300
• PayPal Pledges to Bring Crypto to 26M Merchants, Confirming Market Entry