Google and Samsung integrate BitPay
Google Pay and Samsung Pay will integrate the BitPay payment solution. This will allow any user of these two services to pay any merchant that accepts them. The user will give cryptoassets, the merchant will receive euros or dollars.
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Mastercard, soon payments in cryptos?
Mastercard, the global payment mastodon, should soon be able to offer payments in cryptoassets. But the company goes further than what Wirex or Uphold is currently doing: it will potentially be possible to pay with cryptoassets and the merchant will receive cryptoassets, using a classic credit card. And that changes everything. It remains to be seen whether the application will follow.
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Joint project between Jack Dorsey and Jay-Z
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and rapper Jay-Z launch an endowment fund called Btrust that they fund with 500 BTCs. The goal of the project is to help the development of Bitcoin starting in Africa and India.
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New version of Tezos deployed
Version 8.2 of the Tezos blockchain was deployed this week. In addition to fixing several bugs, this update focuses on improvements to smart contracts and adds the ability to make anonymous transactions with technology retrieved from the Zcash blockchain. It is not clear whether such a decision will satisfy companies who are currently interested in Tezos for its corporate-compatible look and feel.
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Attack on the Verge blockchain
The Verge blockchain was the victim of a 51% type attack. This kind of attack allows a hacker to partially rewrite the contents of a blockchain, when the mining power supplied is insufficient. As a result, more than 200 days of transactions were nearly erased before the development team reacted. All this does not bode well for the future of this project, especially since this is not the first time such an attack has taken place.
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Mastercard is interested in stablecoins
Mastercard plans to develop advanced services related to stablecoins.
The payment giant will integrate certain stablecoins, which will be easily accepted by merchants who wish to do so.
They already differentiate between cryptocurrencies, stablecoins collateralised via cash, and CBDCs (central bank digital currencies).
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A very old American bank is going to launch into cryptos
BNY Mellon, the oldest bank in the United States, will launch a service to hold bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies this year.
Its CEO, Roman Regelan, explains that cryptographic assets are being democratized. He would like them to be treated like any other type of asset.
BNY Mellon is the world’s largest custodian, with more than $40 billion in assets under administration.
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Deutsche Bank follows the lead
Deutsche Bank also plans to open a platform for holding cryptoassets in 2021. The platform will enable institutional investors to hold and manage portfolios and will connect them to brokers to buy and sell these assets.
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JP Morgan may eventually develop trading on Bitcoin
Daniel Pinto, Co-President and COO of private bank JP Morgan, announced that they would develop Bitcoin-related trading services if there was demand.
He explained that if an asset class develops and is used by asset managers then JP Morgan must be there.
According to him, the demand is not there yet but it will come at some point.
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New York City mayoral candidate fan of cryptos
Andrew Yang, candidate for mayor of New York City, announced that he would make New York City a hub for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies if elected Mayor.
New York is known for its strict regulations towards cryptoassets, which prevent startups from evolving easily.
The candidate has been known to be pro-crypto for a number of years.
Yang is currently leading the polls for the Democratic Party.
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New airdrop for 1Inch
The 1Inch protocol, which had already distributed its token to its users at the end of December 2020, decided to make a new airdrop of its token.
This time, users of DEX Mooniswap (DEX being part of the 1Inch ecosystem), or liquidity providers of the 1Inch Pools will receive tokens, but also a number of very active addresses on Uniswap.
In total, more than 8 million 1INCH tokens will be distributed.
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New exploit for Alpha Homora V2 and Cream Finance
A new exploit targeting DeFI protocols based on flash loans.
This time, the Alpha Homora V2 (Aplha Finance) and Cream Finance protocols were targeted by an attack, resulting in the loss of 37.5 million tokens.
Since then, the teams have announced that they have filled the attack vector. And if the teams announce that they know the suspect, there is still no announcement about the lost funds.
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Small problem on Avalanche
Avalanche, a competitor of Ethereum announcing that it could handle thousands of transactions per second, was greatly slowed down when a large number of users used the network.
Following the launch of the DEX Pangolin, which generated a large number of transactions, a bug in Avalanche’s code was revealed and network performance was reduced.
Since then, the problem is expected to be fixed, and the channel has returned to near-zero performance.
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The EIP 1559 makes ink flow
EIP 1559, the proposal to lower transaction costs on Ethereum, is still under debate. If the proposal is beneficial for the network, and supported by big names in the ecosystem, the miners, under the lead of Flexpool, continue to refuse it.
A movement of support for the proposal has been launched, and a new discussion between developers and miners will take place on February 26th.
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Figures of the week
New record for Uniswap
The total volume traded on Uniswap has exceeded $100 billion.
Une stat sur ETH 2
3 million ETH staked in ETH2, for an Annual Performance Rate of ~9%.
