“Cryptocurrencies do not remain aloof from politics, and they are weakly confirming the role of an alternative to the banking system now,” shared Alex Kuptsikevich, financial analyst at FxPro, in an email to CoinDesk. “With a sharp decline over the weekend, bitcoin wiped out the initial gains, gave away the positions to bears after the third straight week of gains.” Original
Crypto exchange Coinbase, however, plans to make participation easier. Its much anticipated NFT marketplace will allow users to buy NFTs with fiat using their credit cards. Indeed, companies like eBay, Reddit and Instagram all have plans to integrate NFTs, also likely using fiat options that may cause NFTs to further decouple from crypto. But until that happens, the connection between the two markets remains pertinent, and besides, NFTs will always need a blockchain like Ethereum and Solana to function. Source
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Non-fungible token (NFT)-scaling platform Immutable has raised $200 million in a Series C funding round that was led by Singapore state investment fund Temasek at a $2.5 billion valuation, according to a press release provided to CoinDesk. The funds will be used toward global expansion, including boosting Immutable Gaming Studio and merger-and-acquisitions activity. Source
A council formed by traditional finance conglomerates American Express, Discover, Visa and Mastercard welcomes a decentralized finance (DeFi) banking firm to a forum of participating organizations that help toimprove payment data security worldwide. Scallop, a regulated DeFi banking app recently announced its entry to the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC), a global community with a goal to improve payment data security worldwide. According to the DeFi firm, it will be working with the PCI SSC by assisting in the ongoing development and adoption of the PCI Security Standards. Lance…
Espresso Systems is developing layer 1, or base blockchain, infrastructure to deliver fast, low-fee transactions by integrating a proof-of-stake consensus protocol with a zero-knowledge (zk) rollup mechanism that can bundle multiple transactions in a more resource-efficient way. Source
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volumes, is moving to boost its fiat-to-crypto payments technology by launching its own crypto payment provider. The crypto exchange officially announced on Monday the launch of Bifinity, Binance’s official fiat-to-crypto payment company, to connect crypto service providers with the traditional financial system. Bifinity supports more than 50 cryptocurrencies, including major coins like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), as well as popular payment platforms like Visa, Mastercard and others. The new crypto payment platform specifically allows merchants and businesses to adopt and provide…
Bitcoin was trading flat to negative even as the European stocks and the S&P 500 futures got a slight tailwind. Original
Dmitri Galinov’s over-the-counter (OTC) platform, 24 Exchange, announced on Monday that the platform has closed a fresh funding round, raising $7.025 million. Big names like Morgan Creek Digital, Aspire Financial and Blackwells Capital LLC led the funding round and several other individual investors also participated. The latest funding came after the company raised $14.25 million last August in a Point72 Ventures-led round. The Bermuda-based company detailed that the fresh proceeds will be utilized to expand its offerings, primarily by adding cryptocurrencies and equities Equities Equities can be characterized as stocks…
Bitcoin (BTC) plunged to below $38,000 on March , giving up all the gains it had made last week, which saw BTC/USD rally over $45,000. BTC back below $40K as oil soars The losses appeared due, primarily, to selloffs across the risk-on markets, led by the 18% rise in international oil benchmark Brent crude to almost $139 per barrel early March 7, its highest level since 2008. Nonetheless, Bitcoin’s inability to offer a hedge against the ongoing market volatility also raised doubts over its “safe haven” status, with its correlation coefficient…