Date: 06/07/2021
“There is just an unbelievable possibility here for what Bitcoin can do, it’s just getting started. Don’t focus on the short-term price, think about what the long term impact could be.” — Charles Cascarilla, Paxos co-founder
Weekly News Report:
1. Financial payments company Square and BTC infrastructure firm Blockstream are teaming up to build a solar-powered bitcoin mining facility. Square will invest $5 million in the facility while Blockstream will provide the know-how to build and manage the project.
2. Square CEO Jack Dorsey says the company is considering a new hardware bitcoin wallet that would give consumers greater control over the cryptocurrency they own.
3. The crypto exchange BitMEX recently announced plans to deposit a physical wallet containing a single bitcoin on the surface of the moon.
4. SpaceChain has successfully sent a blockchain-enabled payload into space on Thursday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from NASA‘s Kennedy Space Center.
5. “Everyone should have all eyes on Africa right now,” said Ray Youssef, CEO of Paxful, “Africa’s leading global cryptocurrency adoption.”
6. The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, announced at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami that El Salvado is likely to become the first country to adopt bitcoin as a legal tender. However, El Salvador Commerce Secretary said El Salvador’s proposed embrace of bitcoin would not end dollarization in the Central American economy.
7. The South Korean parliament has begun discussing a number of bills specifically addressing crypto in order to establish legal mechanisms for both fostering the domestic crypto industry and protecting investors.
8. Indian tech mogul Nandan Nilekani believes the country should be seeking to attract investment from the $1.7 trillion crypto-asset industry and urges local lawmakers to allow citizens to speculate on crypto assets.
9. Texas Gov. signed into law a measure creating a legal framework for crypto investments. The law amends adapts commercial law to blockchain and digital assets and defines virtual currencies.
10. Colorado Governor Jared Polis recently spoke at the virtual Consensus 2021 event, hoping to one day allow Colorado residents to pay their state taxes using cryptocurrency.
11. Hamish Baillie, investment director at the London-based asset management firm, revealed that Ruffer has taken more than $1 billion in profit from a $600 million Bitcoin investment it made in November 2020. After profiting $1 billion in less than six months, Ruffer is open to making more Bitcoin trades in the future.
12. The survey, conducted by cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, found that two-fifths of Aussie millennials think crypto investments beat real estate.
13. Switzerland-based investment product provider 21Shares is launching a bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP) in the U.K. on the Aquis Exchange Multilateral Trading Facility (MTF) in mid-June.
14. Joining larger rivals Christie’s and Sotheby’s in offering the ability to pay in crypto, the 225-year-old British auction house Phillips will accept crypto for Banksy artwork worth millions.
15. MicroStrategy offers $400M in notes to buy more bitcoin even as it warns of $284.5M impairment.
16. Former Goldman Sachs executive, Mike Novogratz announces that he will inject $ 100 million in crypto-based projects.
17. US luxury penthouse in Miami Beach sells for record-breaking $22.5M in crypto, smashing world records for the most expensive real estate purchase ever paid in cryptocurrency.
