July 27, 2020
- Bitcoin on the Rise in Africa
- Chinese Blockchain Projects to Push for Mainstream Adoption
- Paypal to offer Crypto Trading Services
- Mastercard offers Partnership to Crypto Firms
Bitcoin on the Rise in Africa
Chris Maurice, CEO of Yellow Card – a thriving crypto exchange in Africa states the prevalence of cryptocurrency in Africa is growing across the continent. At present, it is gaining prominence in Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana and Kenya and is expected to expand across the rest of the continent of Africa.
Although the majority of the crypto usage are not used on formal exchanges – mainly informal OTC like messengers like Whatsapp, the volume of crypto usage is said to be at least five to eight times higher than actual numbers. Maurice further states that he estimates the number of people owning Bitcoin to be 10% of South Africa’s population.
The crypto interest in Africa started around 6 years ago, and crypto usage is a logical adoption as cryptocurrency is away from government control, major currencies like Bitcoin allows for self-sovereign money storage and fast transactions.
The substantial growth of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin is expected to present itself as a problem solver to global issues.
Source | Cointelegraph
Chinese Blockchain Projects to Push Mainstream Adoption
Major decentralized blockchain platform, NEO is partnering with Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN) to push for mainstream adoption of blockchain technology.
The main goal of the partnership is to overcome barriers of strict entry requirements and fragmented developer experiences. BSN plans to provide a public repository of blockchain resources while reducing development costs such as deployment and operations. To overcome barriers preventing mass adoption, NEO will leverage BSN’s global public city nodes and portals to help developers.
To accelerate the project, BSN and NEO will join forces with industry giants Chinese State Information Center, China UnionPay and China Mobile. The adoption of blockchain has accelerated dramatically over the past few years and it is expected to grow in future.
Source | Cointelegraph
PayPal to offer Crypto Trading services?
Digital payments giant Paypal reportedly is partnering with United States stablecoin operator, Paxos to offer crypto trading services. The launch of crypto trading services will be through a new brokerage service of Paxos, though it is not confirmed which cryptocurrency Paypal will be supporting.
Paxos has earlier launched a crypto brokerage to enable crypto trading functionalities for firms – to be used through integration of a simple application programming interface along with a regulatory compliance management system. This same service will be used by Paypal to put out its crypto trading features.
Previously, Paypal has announced that the firm is still working on developing its own cryptocurrency capabilities. Although withdrawn from the governing council for Facebook’s proposed stablecoin, Libra Association, Paypal took further steps to enter into the crypto industry and that indicates a major development for the whole industry.
Source | Cointelegraph
Mastercard offers Partnership to Crypto Firms
Mastercard is driving forward the cryptocurrency market by recently expanding a cryptocurrency card program and is offering partnership to crypto firms to support their market entry, continued growth and global expansion plans. In return, these crypto firms are to assist Mastercard in integrating this new technology.
Mastercard has previously worked with Bitpay, a blockchain payments provider to launch prepaid cards to users in the United States. This time, Mastercard will offer its cybersecurity and market research expertise to crypto partners to issue their crypto cards. Although the onboarding process of new crypto partners will be streamlined, there will be strict rules resolving around consumer protection and laws & regulations, to adhere to.
The first crypto partner of Mastercard’s crypto card program is Wirex, a London based crypto payment processor and the partnership has allowed Wirex to convert crypto to fiat currency instantly.
CEO & Co-founder of Wirex, Pavel Matveev has stated that the partnership represents growing interests and recognition of the cryptocurrency, and that the partnership will help to realize the equality of all currencies – fiat or crypto.
Source | Cointelegraph
