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Amazon Crypto Rumors Send BTC Over $40,000, Tether Executives Facing Criminal Charges and More People Trading Ether Than Bitcoin This Year? These stories and more are coming this week in Cryptocurrency.
Reports surfaced early this week that Amazon was looking to accept cryptocurrencies for payments in the future. After the news, the price of Bitcoin soared to over $40K, although the trading excitement subsequently subsided once it was revealed that the initial reports were based on rumors and that Amazon is not yet looking to accept BTC.
The executives behind the popular stablecoin Tether are likely to face criminal charges following an investigation that suggests they defrauded banks and financial institutions. The Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged that Tether may have committed bank fraud by concealing the fact that its transactions were largely related to cryptocurrencies rather than the US dollar.
Binance – one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world – is working to limit activity among unverified users. Customers who do not participate in the platform’s KYC protocols will be allowed to withdraw 0.06 BTC, which is a significant decrease from the previous figure of 2 BTC. Customers who wish to upload supporting documents can withdraw up to 100 BTC per day.
Payments provider PayPal revealed that the initial release of the company’s super-wallet was “token full” and that the wallet will be fully ramped up in the US in the next several months. The premium app wallet will feature high returns, early access to direct deposit funds, messaging capability, and additional crypto features.
Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch its first-ever DeFi ETF. The fund will invest at least 80% of its assets in companies that are developing blockchain technology and digitizing finance. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is now reviewing more than a dozen crypto-related ETF applications with overdue decisions on many of them.
Coca-Cola is selling a series of four non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that will be sold as a single asset with proceeds benefiting the Special Olympics International. One of the features of this NFT launch is that the digital assets can be worn inside the virtual world of Decentraland and Coca-Cola will host a “rooftop party” on the platform to celebrate the launch.
E-commerce giant Shopify has made it possible for eligible sellers to sell NFTs directly with a credit or debit card on its platform. One of the first Shopify merchants to offer NFTs will be Chicago Bulls, who launched the NFT “Legacy Collection” that includes the six World Franchise Championship episodes.
Figures from some of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges indicate that Ether trading in the first half of 2021 has surpassed that of Bitcoin. While ETH’s volume has risen over 1,400 percent over the first six months, BTC has lagged in comparison, with the asset’s trading volume up just 489 percent over the same period.
This is what happened this week in cryptocurrency, see you next week.
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