Mastercard will accept some crypto assets as a way of payment in its network
Mastercard said compliance and security will be among the key attributes when evaluating which cryptocurrencies to support
Mastercard will consider cryptocurrencies that are appropriate for payments
Whether you’re a cryptocurrency enthusiast or not, it’s hard to deny that the industry is growing rapidly. We can see massive growth in the amount of users entering the cryptocurrency space, especially in the wake of the recent Bitcoin bull run. Mastercard, one of the world’s leading financial service providers, has noticed that cards using the Mastercard network are increasingly being used to purchase crypto or to change crypto into fiat.
Mastercard says it will add support for certain cryptocurrency assets to be transacted directly on its payments network, which will allow interested merchants to accept them directly.
According to the company, adding support for crypto assets is one way of enabling businesses and people to transfer value in digital form. While the company isn’t necessarily endorsing its cryptocurrency, it says it wants to making it possible for customers to spend their money on what they want.
All crypto coins are not suitable for Mastercard
There’s a huge variety of crypto assets, and not all of them are not suitable for Mastercard. Many of these coins won’t meet the strict criteria that the company is putting in place. The payment giant says it will only be considering crypto assets that prove to be secure and reliable. The supported coins will also have to be regulated, and allow for compliance through KYC and other processes. Stablecoins are promising candidates due to their compliance and price stability. Stability is a critical factor for Mastercard because it is integrating crypto assets as a payment method, not as an investment.
The payment giant unveiled some exciting partnerships last year with cryptocurrency companies such as Wirex and BitPay. The collaborations aimed to make it possible for users to utilize their cards and buy crypto. Another essential collaboration was added this year, and it was with LVL, a promising crypto exchange. Crypto is not on the Mastercard network right now, and users have to convert their coins to fiat before they can make transactions. When the new initiative is implemented, cryptocurrencies will be used directly on the network.
Elon Musk has been mentioning Dogecoin a lot recently, and he has encouraged people to buy it
Now, other people like Snoop Dogg are joining in promoting the meme cryptocurrency
Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that was initially started as a lighthearted parody of cryptocurrency. However, due to its relatively early entrance into the cryptocurrency space, Dogecoin has managed to display staying power and has a somewhat legendary status in the cryptocurrency community. After being mentioned by Elon Musk multiple times, Dogecoin was brought into the spotlight once again, and attracted the attention of an army of speculators. As a result, the Dogecoin price has increased by almost 650% in the last month alone.
Famous rapper Snoop Dogg recently joined other celebrities like Elon Musk and Gene Simmons to promote the meme cryptocurrency higher. His tweet featured Shiba Inu, a dog breed that’s used as a mascot for Dogecoin.
Dogecoin price reacted to the tweet
Dogecoin was trading at around $0.056 at the beginning of Sunday. Soon after the tweet, it touched $0.0872, which was a new all-time high. The coin experienced more than 55% growth in 24 hours. The recent rise of Dogecoin is outstanding, and many people are dreaming about Dogecoin having a price of $1.
Some hours after the tweet, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla who is not just pumping Dogecoin, tweeted a Lion King-inspired picture that featured Dogecoin, Snoop Dogg and Gene Simmons, a member of the legendary rock band Kiss. Simmons has recently gone viral in the cryptocurrency community on Twitter by promoting cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin and XRP.
The cryptocurrency market is small enough that celebrity endorsements can result in major price movements. The recent attention given to Dogecoin was enough for the coin’s market cap to temporarily surpass Bitcoin Cash, Chainlink, Litecoin, and Binance Coin. Dogecoin has since dropped back to the 10th spot in the cryptocurrency market cap rankings, and currently has a market cap of $9.9 billion.
Dogecoin started as meme cryptocurrency, and from a technological point of view, it does not offer much in the way of unique features. However, its recent ascent has shown the power that memes and viral social media activity can have on the cryptocurrency markets.
Tesla spent $1.5 billion to buy BTC, and also says it will adopt Bitcoin payments in the future
Elon Musk has had an active presence in the cryptocurrency space recently
Tesla has also warned about the volatility and risk of Bitcoin
Tesla buys $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin
Tesla, the electric car manufacturer that has captivated the world’s attention, has made another bold move. On Monday, the company announced that it had bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, and that it plans to accept the cryptocurrency as payment for its products. Portfolio diversification is essential for Tesla, and the company started buying BTC to materialize this and potentially make additional profits.
The news was foreshadowed by recent comments made by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. In the last weeks, he has been actively talking about cryptocurrencies on his Twitter account, primarily mentioning Bitcoin and Dogecoin. In a recent chat, he also stated that he is a supporter of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin price had a positive reaction to the news
Elon Musk featured Bitcoin in his Twitter bio about two weeks ago, and stated that he supports the cryptocurrency. Since Musk is an extremely influential figure in the technology and investing spheres, his comments were quickly followed by a noticeable price spike in the Bitcoin market.
Unsurprisingly, the Bitcoin markets also quickly responded to Tesla’s $1.5 billion Bitcoin investment. As the news started circulating, Bitcoin created new all-time highs, eventually hitting a peak at around $48,000 per BTC. Tesla is a leading company, and the news could be a catalyst for other companies to imitate its strategy and allocate some of their money to the king of cryptocurrencies.
The price of Tesla’s shares also saw an uptick following the news, with investors seemingly welcoming the fact that the company now has exposure to Bitcoin, an asset that has displayed rapid growth. However, Tesla also acknowledged the volatility and risks of Bitcoin as well. The volatility in the Bitcoin markets is massive compared to traditional assets. Crypto is also a new technology, and could have undiscovered security issues. Crypto space faces issues like hacks, market manipulation, and many more. Investors who want to come to the area have to account for both the potential upside, as well as the risks.
The recent news shows Tesla’s flexibility as a company. The Bitcoin investment could very well turn out to be a smart move that diversifies the company’s portfolio and provides better returns than just holding cash. Tesla’s support for Bitcoin is a major milestone, and shows that the mass adoption of crypto is on the horizon.
February 10, 2021 – Ethernity, a NFT project that’s focused on charitable causes, auctions artwork featuring artists and stars from music, film, sports, crypto and other industries. Each of the digital artworks is represented as a non-fungible token (NFT) and has been created by renowned artists. The pieces feature well-known public figures and a portion of all funds raised from the endeavor will be donated to charitable causes.
Public figures who are participating in the debut Ethernity collection include Gemini founders the Winklevoss brothers, soccer legends Christian Vieri and Paolo Maldini, Philadelphia 76ers owner Michael Rubin, Swedish DJ Alesso, Belgian DJs Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike. In fact, Ethernity has already secured a vast amount of NFTs that are endorsed by celebrities and created by artists. Their goal is to build the biggest library of authenticated NFTs (AFNTs).
Operating at the intersection of crypto and digital art, Ethernity provides a way for celebrities to support charitable causes while participating in interests that are close to their heart.
Established digital artists including Mad Dog Jones and Esteban Diacono have been asked to create collectible NFTs that are unique to each celebrity. Ethernity is focused on creating one of a kind quality trading card NFTs as well as unique animation art pieces. The Vintage Card Collection will be kickstarted by 76ers owner Michael Rubin, who has already raised over $60 million for children and adults in need via the All in Challenge.
NFTs are already synonymous with basketball thanks to the success of NBA Top Shot, which assigns memorable in-game moments to unique NFTs. Mainstream interest in digital collectibles has been growing rapidly, with $8.6 million of blockchain-based artwork sold in December, and a digital Bitcoin artwork selling for $130,000 at Christie’s auction house.
About Ethernity
Ethernity is a new initiative exploring applications for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) within the context of art, decentralized finance (DeFi) and charity. It provides a way for celebrities and public figures to endorse digital artwork created by renowned artists. Anyone can purchase each limited edition artwork, with a portion of the proceeds going to charitable causes that the celebrity supports. Ethernity was founded by early Bitcoin investor and NFT innovator Nick Rose Ntertsas.
10th Feb 20201 – Binance Smart Chain (BSC) surpassed the daily transaction volume of Ethereum by 30%.
BSC daily transaction volume is up by 300% from YTD and bolsters an ecosystem of 100+ DeFi projects. Furthermore, the platform has succeeded in maintaining GAS costs as low as $0.04. Compared to Ethereum’s $5.53, BSC is 135 times less expensive! (BSC transaction data here)
“We are thrilled to see in just six months since we officially launched Binance Smart Chain (BSC) that we have flipped Ethereum on daily transactions,” said Changpeng Zhao (CZ) CEO at Binance. “With low fees, faster network and interoperability between blockchains, we have been able to attract more users and projects. We will continue to work with the BSC community as well as our ‘Most Valuable Builder’ accelerator program to build more.”
Last week, Binance launched the Most Valuable Builder program to bolster the cryptopreneurial community and provide more support to builders innovating on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). The program’s main aim is to help BSC-based startups create real-life innovations, gain industry exposure, receive funding, accelerate community and business growth.
To-date, BSC supports 42 cryptocurrencies across the chain to BSC, the total value of cross-chain assets has reached $1.37 billion, and the total market value of Binance BTokens has reached $1.8 billion.
With transaction fees that are a fraction of the cost on the Ethereum network, as well as connectivity with various other blockchains, BSC has attracted many blockchain projects, which drove the number of daily transactions on the BSC network to more than 1.66 million as of February 10, a new record and a figure that surpasses Ethereum’s transaction numbers by 30%.
There are now $4.2 billion worth of digital assets, called BEP-20 tokens, that use BSC. The recent market movement mainly points to the willingness of blockchain users to increasingly go for Ethereum alternatives, and BSC’s attributes and growing popularity have played a key role in the BNB rally.
Konstantin Anissimov, Executive Director at CEX.IO
BTC/USD
BTC/USD opened the trading session of 9th February at 46,550 and had slipped to 43,833 by 03:00 UTC. At 03:00 UTC, the trading pair began rising and had reached 48,200 by 07:00 UTC as per the CEX.IO exchange rate. Being challenged by the 4.236 Fibonacci retracement level, the price was driven down. From 48,200, a corrective downswing began and took BTC/USD to 45,403 at 13:00 UTC. Starting from 13:00 UTC, the trading pair began rising again and had reached 47,110 by 19:00 UTC.
After taking the decisive breakthrough above 42,000 on the news of Tesla’s investment in Bitcoin, BTC/USD has decreased its rising momentum and turned sideways. The sideways dynamics indicate a drop in the buying volumes, which is an early sign of a corrective downswing. Considering the extraordinarily high pace of the rising move against the backdrop of Tesla’s Bitcoin buy-in, a corrective move is only reasonable. Therefore, we expect the downswing to take place before the end of the week of 8th February with the target level of 43,000.
At 43,000, the selling volumes are expected to drop gradually as traders will be locking the profits on their short orders and opening countertrade buying orders. This should first lead BTC/USD to a consolidation above 43,000 and then to the start of another bullish wave.
ETH/USD
ETH/USD started off the trading session of 9th February at 1,751.9. A slight correction between 00:00 and 03:00 UTC first took the pair to 1,710 – 1,720. After that the pair began mounting gradually and had risen to 1,810 by 09:00 UTC as per the CEX.IO exchange rate. The pair then bounced down between 09:00 and 12:00 UTC to 1,725 and then turned sideways, trending between 1,720 and 1,760 until 19:00 UTC. A slight upside move between 19:00 and 21:00 UTC then took ETH/USD to 1,721.2.
The buying sentiment in clearly dominating ETH/USD and will likely continue doing so until the end of the week of 8th February. The pair has reached another all-time high, having for the first time risen above 1,800 on the recent news of Tesla’s Bitcoin buy-in. However, another fundamental stimulus driving ETH/USD higher is the massive growth of the DeFi market, whose total value locked has risen from $15.5 billion since 1st January 2021 to $36.9 billion on 9th February 2021, according to DeFi Pulse.
The only intraday resistance has formed at 1,810 and may put some selling pressure on the pair. But considering the fundamental background, we expect the bullish price action in ETH/USD to continue this week, with the target level set at 1,900.1.
Would you like to experience how it feels to mine Bitcoin at blistering speeds, courtesy of StormGain’s integrated cloud miner? Here’s your chance! StormGain is an all-in-one crypto asset management platform that enables users to buy, sell, trade and hodl a range of cryptocurrencies from its website or mobile app. One of the more unique selling points of the StormGain platform is its integrated Bitcoin miner — basically, StormGain mines Bitcoin for you and gives out BTC rewards to all its users so long as they’re connected to the service, at no charge to the user.
It’s an exciting idea that integrates convenient and cost-free mining with the usual trading activities on a crypto exchange. To showcase its cloud miner, StormGain is making it the star of its latest promotion. Starting 8 February, anyone can register on StormGain and test their trading skills in the demo account to win one of the fastest Bitcoin mining rates on the platform.
Tournament rules
Each StormGain user has a free demo account they can use to practise trading with virtual money in real market conditions. This enables users to test trading strategies and experiment with the platform at no risk to themselves.
To join the tournament, you just need to register on the tournament page and start trading on a demo account. The goal is to generate as much profit as possible during the tournament period. The top 50 players with the highest profit totals (in USDT) will all receive a prize by the end of the contest. All trades opened and closed during the tournament period are used to calculate the rankings. It doesn’t matter when you join the tournament, so new users shouldn’t be afraid to jump in and try for the prize. Even a latecomer has nothing to lose and everything to gain!
The contest begins on 8 February 2021 (21:01 GMT) and runs until 22 February 2021 (21:00 GMT).
On the morning of 9 February 2021, a scoreboard will appear on the website’s tournament page. The scoreboard will update once every hour, providing you with an ongoing indicator of where you stand in the rankings and what numbers you need to beat! The tournament will last for two weeks. During that time, new players can join and appear on the scoreboard the day after registering.
Top prizes: Boost your mining level up to 12x
The top 20 winners will see their StormGain Bitcoin miner speeds supercharged up to the highest levels, just as if they had ranked up to the StormGain loyalty programme’s top tiers.
1st place — mining speed 12x (Diamond level)
2nd through 5th place — mining speed 3x (Platinum level)
6th through 20th place — mining speed 1x (Gold level)
All mining speeds gained via our demo tournament are valid for one month. In addition to the increased mining speeds for the top 20 participants, those placing 21st through 50th in the rankings will receive $100 in bonus funds to trade on StormGain.
How to register and join the contest
Registering with StormGain is easily done via website’s tournament page. Just enter your e-mail address and password, and you can join and start trading in one click. If you’ve thought about getting into the crypto trading game, the new tournament offers an exciting opportunity to get a head start with a fast cloud miner giving you extra BTC.
Yearnyfi Network is making the Yearnyfi Token (YNI) accessible by holding an exclusive presale. Here, we would like to take the opportunity to inform our community that we have confirmed listing: 5th march 2021, On Hotbit & Uniswap exchange.
Token Type : ERC-20 Token symbol : YNI Token Name : YEARNYFI NETWORK Token Contract : https://etherscan.io/token/0xdeaa665ab71785ccf576dc76e5fcb5a2283ea0c6
Total Fixed Supply : 18000 YNI Uniswap Liquidity : 30% YNI Sale Allocation : 30% YNI Ecosystem Development : 20% YNI Team & Founders : 10% YNI Reserve Fund : 10% YNI
2 Year Token Lock Allocation : Uniswap Liquidity : 30% YNI Reserve Fund : 10% YNI Ecosystem Development : 3% YNI Team & Founders : 2% YNI Unsold Token : ?
About Yearnyfi Network
Yearnyfi Network ecosystem combining the best elements of decentralised finance with measured regulatory control, Yearnyfi is bridging DeFi and traditional finance.
We are dedicated to Growth Your Financial System Decentralized Better Safer by interacting with our best protocol, solving problems inherent to the world of cryptocurrency. Our products make transactions safe, fast, and easy.Yearnyfi.Network Token Reliability, Transparency, Profit & Low Risk.
The announcement of Tesla’s $1.5 billion investment into Bitcoin provided the perfect kick-off to what appears to be a rather eventful week on the cryptocurrency markets. Even if we leave Bitcoin’s interesting price action aside, there are still plenty cryptocurrency projects deploying new features and upgrades and trying to make the most off this bull market. Three such projects are featured in our this week’s selection of top 3 coins to watch.
1. Ethereum (ETH)
Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain platform and its native asset Ether (ETH) is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Ethereum features the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can execute Turing-complete scripts. This gives Ethereum immense flexibility and allows users to deploy a wide variety of smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) on the blockchain. The contracts and dApps operate in a fast, immutable and trustless manner. The speeds and capabilities of the Ethereum blockchain are going to further increase when Ethereum 2.0 is fully launched.
Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency project has been attracting a lot of attention recently as the price of ETH climbed towards new all-time highs of above $1,700. At the same time ETH gas fees have skyrocketed, granting significant revenues to the miners, and causing a lot of grey hair to users that perform many on-chain transactions. As if that were not enough, the CME launched Ethereum Futures on February 8.
The launch of futures contracts trading could affect both ETH’s short-term performance as well as the long-term performance. However, it was not quite clear whether the CME futures launch would cause ETH to appreciate or depreciate in the short-term as speculators are also able to short the asset using this instrument. The assumption that ETH would lose value because of futures trading has ground in the historical events that followed the launch of CME Bitcoin Futures in December 2017. Back than BTC crashed soon after futures trading went live on CME. Nevertheless, the CME BTC futures market, which currently records an average daily volume of around 60,000 BTC has helped lead to the long-term appreciation in the price of BTC. The roll-out of ETH Futures means that also the ETH market is maturing and expanding, and futures are an instrument that could boost the asset’s trading volumes and interest among investors. Crypto YouTuber Kevin Svenson, who correctly predicted that ETH would not tumble under the wight of futures trading in the short-term commented on the ETH CME futures launch on Twitter:
The #Ethereum🔹 CME listing did not have a negative impact on $ETH's price contrary to what everyone expected
The reason #Bitcoin's price dumped in 2018 after the CME launch was because it was CLEARLY overbought at the time.$ETH is undervalued! ITS TIME TO MOON!!!🌙 📈
Launched in September 2018, following an initial coin offering that raised $232 million in 2017, Tezos is a decentralized smart contract and application network that utilizes a proof-of-stake consensus model. The Tezos protocol has three main layers: the network layer, the transaction layer, and the consensus layer. Tezos also features an on-chain governance system allowing holders to take part in the decision-making process. What makes Tezos blockchain stand out among other similar blockchains is its efficient network upgrade process as the protocol allows major upgrades to be implemented without having to undergo a hard fork.
Tezos Team Plans to Launch the Edo Upgrade on February 13
The number of XTZ holders participating in the voting on the proposal regarding the Edo upgrade has officially reached the necessary quorum. Subsequently, the Tezos team has announced that the new version of the software will go live on February 13 provided that the proposal’s approval rate stays above 80%. The Edo upgrade include several improvements and new features. The revamped version of the protocol will add tickets in an attempt to simplify the composition of permissions and token contracts for the developers and overall improve the security of smart contract interactions. In addition, Edo will also allow for an extended 5th voting period, intended to ensure smoother voting process for protocol upgrades. Finally, Edo will also bring Sapling and BLS-12 privacy-preserving protocols to Tezos. You can read more about the Edo upgrade here.
3. Cardano (ADA)
Cardano is a cryptocurrency project focused at creating a smart contract enabled platform, on which developers can build decentralized applications. The native asset of the Cardano blockchain is called ADA and the development of the project is overseed by three main organizations – the IOHK, Cardano Foundation and Emurgo. Cardano launched in 2017 and raised $62.2 million for its development through an ICO. What sets Cardano apart from Ethereum and other smart chains is that Cardano aims to implement advanced on-chain functionality and guarantee the scalability of the network.
The Number of Transactions and Active Cardano Addresses are at all-time high
The Cardano team has successfully deployed the Mary update fork to the Cardano public testnet on February 3. Assuming that the final testing phase goes as planned, the update, which will allow users to generate their own tokens atop the Cardano blockchain, will most likely be deployed on the mainnet by the end of February. Fuelled by the bullish crypto market, Cardano has managed to almost double the price of its ADA token over the last 7 days, which is currently trading at around $0.70. Although ADA is still more than 50% from its ATH price of $1.33 achieved on January 4, 2018 the recent developments look very promising. In fact, Cardano recently became the second largest smart contract chain, right after Ethereum, as well as the fourth largest cryptocurrency in general with its $20.7 billion capitalization. In a recent interview with Ben Armstrong, AKA Bitboy Crypto, the Cardano founder Charles Hoskins highlighted many aspects that make the Cardano superior to Ethereum. Hoskins noted that Ethereum is a rather complex system, which is causing major scaling issues. In addition, Ethereum has not yet established a decentralized governance mechanism. Cardano on the other hand has a much simpler and more robust design than Ethereum, which allows for a higher throughput and better scalability, without compromising the security. Do you think Cardano has the winning formula that would it allow it to outgrow even Ethereum one day?
