Date: 09/17/2021
“We have erected this statue to remind ourselves courage is virtue. We need to keep on dreaming big.” — Debreczeni Barnabás, CEO of Hungarian crypto exchange Shinrai
Weekly News Report:
1. PayPal officially announced on Friday that all eligible customers in the United Kingdom can now buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies using their PayPal accounts. Customers can trade four major cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
2. A bronze depiction of legendary Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto is now on display for visitors of Graphisoft Park in Budapest. The creation of the monument to the digital currency legend was led by Andras Gyofi, the editor of a Hungarian cryptocurrency news site, as well as other key players in the Central European nation’s digital currency space.
3. German financial regulators have approved a security token offering (STO) based on a Bitcoin sidechain. Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) has greenlighted the EXOeu token by game publisher Exordium, making local retail investors eligible to participate in the sale on Stokr, a major European digital marketplace.
4. FDA president Tom Jessop has commented that to strengthen the company’s crypto portfolio, the organization will now be recruiting competent staff and intends to increase its workforce by 70% by the end of 2021. The company will be actively involved in offering cryptocurrency yield funds and will also deal with products related to DeFi and stablecoins.
5. Search engine giant Google is joining forces with Canadian blockchain studio Dapper Labs to help support the development of new Web 3 products and services, including the wildly popular nonfungible token, or NFT, marketplace.
6. Cardano has announced the completion of its Alonzo hard fork, ushering in its long-awaited smart contract functionality. The Alonzo fork enables smart contracts to be written for Cardano using Plutus scripts, which the team describes as “a purpose-built smart contract development language and execution platform.”
7. As Apple unveils a wide range of iPhone 13 models this week, crypto enthusiasts can benefit from a data-driven strategy. BTC and ETH historical data make selecting the right Apple iPhone 13 model quite easy for crypto enthusiasts.
8. The Avalanche Foundation has announced a significant $230M investment from a venture capital group spearheaded by Polychain and Three Arrows Capital for the purpose of supporting the growth of the DeFi ecosystem and their ever-expanding list of applications that utilize the blockchain.
9. Tweeting on Thursday, AMC Entertainment’s CEO, Adam Aron, announced plans for AMC to not only accept BTC payments for movie tickets by the end of 2022 but will also include three other cryptocurrencies — ETH, LTC, and BCH in its crypto acceptance policy.
10. Dan Markham, the creator of the seven-million subscriber What’s Inside YouTube channel, has traded his Tesla Roadster for a single nonfungible token (NFT). “Looking back on this in one year, two years, three years from now it could be a monumentally dumb decision but it also could be a great decision,” said Markham.
11. SkyBridge founder and former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci said the firm had raised more than $100 million toward the newly announced Algorand fund. He added that the firm currently holds roughly $700 million worth of crypto assets.
12. Protesters burn Bitcoin ATM as part of demonstrations against El Salvador president. The Chivo machine could be seen defaced with anti-BTC logos and a sign saying “democracy is not for sale.”
13. Time magazine has named Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin one of the 100 most influential people in 2021, along with musicians, world leaders, activists, and others.
14. The European Union is reportedly looking to bolster technological development like blockchain, data infrastructure, 5G, and quantum computing with a planned $177 billion investment war chest.
15. Resolution 215 of 2021 issued by the Banco Central de Cuba (BCC) — the country’s central bank — recognizing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin is now in effect. With crypto legally recognized by the BCC, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can now be used for commercial transactions and investments in Cuba.
16. Crypto asset investing has become more popular with Aussie boomers, according to the country’s largest exchange BTC Markets. Baby Boomers, which are classified as those born between 1946 and 1964, now compose 5% of the platform’s estimated 325,000 customer base.
