Visa wants users of these companies to buy cryptocurrencies with their credentials. The company does not rule out the possibility of integrating a cryptocurrency into its payment network.

Visa, the world’s second-largest card payments organization, plans to work with bitcoin exchanges and wallets. Its CEO, Alfred Kelly, expressed Visa’s interest in cryptocurrencies. Kelly pointed out that the multinational will offer its payment network for the cryptocurrency market.

Kelly’s remarks came at the most recent Visa Earnings Conference via phone call. In this event, the manager described cryptocurrencies as “digital gold” and talked about them as a new type of asset that its use as a form of payment is unusual. Despite this feature, Alfred Kelly confirmed that the company is looking forward to creating financial solutions that are interoperable with this market.

“Our strategy is to work with wallets and exchanges to allow users to purchase coins using their Visa credentials,” stressed the CEO. The first time the company publicly spoke about its interest in working with the cryptocurrency ecosystem since almost three years ago, Alfred Kelly declared that the company would not process any transaction based on cryptographic assets.

According to its executive board, Visa has 35 association agreements with platforms that dedicate efforts to exchanging or handling bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. Kelly pointed out names like Crypto.com, BlockFi, Fold, and even BitPanda in the presentation; these are some of the companies with the opportunity to offer Visa services to their users soon.

 Bitcoin Could Become a More Used Form of Money Exchange

The company keeps itself open to every single possibility that shortly, any of these cryptocurrencies, whether Bitcoin or another, could become a form of money exchange ultimately. In this regard, Kelly assured that they could add such assets to their network since it would be compatible with the other 160 fiat currencies’ processing.

The Visa board also has stablecoins and digital currencies from central banks, such as the digital yuan. Based on his presentation, Kelly says that products like these have great potential to be a tool that could consolidate global trades. They also contemplate commercial strategies to unify said blockchain networks into their network and work together.

This growing interest is a turn of the wheel that could show the increasingly promising future of digital currencies and their positive impact on society. Likewise, these events describe bitcoin as a triumphant cryptocurrency that has already planted a throne in the crypto world.

Bitcoin has the potential to handle payment giants, including financial monsters like Mastercard. Bitcoin is paving the way to reign over the market. That is a milestone that gives a lot to talk about the topic.

By: Jenson Nuñez

They plan to launch Reddit’s Community Points system on the mainnet. They want to bring independence from blockchain technology to millions of redditors.

The social bookmarking and news aggregator website that works under Reddit’s control will join forces with the Ethereum Foundation to consolidate Reddit’s first blockchain partnership, targeting more than 50 million users.

This alliance’s goal is for Reddit to support the Foundation (in charge of developing the network) and then increase the Ethereum blockchain’s scalability. The idea is to deal with the potential increase in transaction volume by the different applications and resources within the ecosystem.

The Reddit-Ethereum Partnership

These two organizations’ union started long ago. Since 2020 they have been developing two joint projects, one that rewards content with ERC-20 (Community Points) tokens, and the other being a contest to create scaling systems for Ethereum.

The partnership reached a new stage in which they intend to develop the necessary technology to launch decentralized applications globally, including Community Points. They add that this relationship’s escalation technology will be open source and available for anyone to use.

Last year, the Ethereum Foundation and Reddit introduced Community Points to bring back ownership and control to users through decentralized technology. The points system, based on Ethereum, empowers the performance of every member of the community.

Admin u / jarins wrote a statement remarking how important it is that this project is the first attempt to use decentralized technology to empower people to be more responsible and upgrade a sense of ownership in the communities they create.

The community points system is currently in beta on the Rinkebey testnet and is under testing by the r / Cryptocurrency and r / FortNiteBR forums.

Scaling Bake-off between Reddit and Ethereum

The Reddit statement specifies that this collaboration with the Ethereum Foundation started with the Scaling Bake-Off, a contest for developers to submit scaling solutions to create an easier migration of Community Points Ethereum mainnet.

Scaling Bake-Off attributes tokens to users’ wallets (called vaults) derived from their contributions to the site. There are on-chain storage requirements for this program. Those requirements include minting new tokens, onboarding new users, and integrating tokens with third-party applications and smart contracts.

Until September 15, 2020, each bake-off shipment needed to show proof of concept to support the stamping of 100,000 tokens, 75,000 token burnings, 25,000 subscribers, and 100,000 token distributions over five years.

By: Jenson Nuñez

Bittrex is working to ensure retail access to trading these stocks. Only in the pairs of GME against USD and bitcoin, more than 700,000 dollars moved to safer places.

The bitcoin and other cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex are jumping into a spiral of events that have shaken the markets in the last few hours, following a coordinated action that emerged in a Reddit community called WallStreetBets. Bittrex integrates trading stocks delisted from Robinhood and other platforms after shares in video game distributor GameStop (GME) escalated.

Through a press release, Bittrex Global claimed that shares of GME, the producer AMC Entertainment (AMC), BlackBerry (BB), Nokia Corporation (NOK), and the iShares Silver Trust (SLV) fund are available trades on its platform.

Also, about the trading pairs, Bittrex “will continue to add in the list additional stocks that other firms are excluding from their platforms,” ​​the company’s text advances.

Ensuring Exposure to Retail Investors

The statement also establishes that the decision is looking forward to “ensure that retail investors have exposure to the shares they wish to trade at any time, on any day of the week.”

Referring to retailers in a market that has been a domain of large investors, Tom Albright, Bittrex CEO, said: “The current situation fuels the narrative that the financial system receives supplies against the small.”

This Bittrex announcement connects to the measure of companies such as Robinhood, Interactive Brokers, and Ameritrade, which nullified the possibility of buying some shares such as GameStop. These movements are a strike-back after the proliferation of the market movement that began in the r / WallStreetBets forum.

Only in the pairs of GME against USD and BTC, more than 20 bitcoins (about $ 740,000) were moved on the Bittrex tokenized shares platform.

A Brief Account of the GameStop and WallStreetBets Case

A coordinated effort among retail merchants from the Reddit forum led GameStop to a massive increase of over 1,700%, causing billion-dollar losses to investors with short positions or bets on the low GME.

The intention was to make a simple market move through coordination from every muscle of small investors. But there later was revealed in a letter that the plan had deeper roots and more extensive background.

The letter received the support of about 100,000 positive votes in the community. It alleged a matter of principle over economic interests. Among other things, it brings back memories from the financial crisis of 2008, during which mutual funds exited at the expense of millions of retailers who lost, in most cases, the savings of a lifetime.

Another result of the emergence of WallStreetBets has been the emergence of a larger movement, which began on Reddit, but has overwhelmed multiple instances of the digital world. Telegram and Twitter already have thousands of voices in favor of the action.

By: Jenson Nuñez

Rogozinski states that the situation is unprecedented. He added that new forces are still unknown globally, and social networks play an essential role in unleashing these forces.

Jaime Rogozinski talked about the phenomenon from his home in New Mexico, where he leads a quiet life with his wife and twin children. Rogozinski watches the event as a big clash of two massive trains that could forever change the ways of the United States stock market.

The description that the Reddit sub-forum founder, WallStreetBets gave, brought to the current conflict between the large companies of Wall Street and a group of minority investors on Reddit.

Rogozinski founded WallStreetBets nine years ago, intending to forge a community where young people can share information on investing in the stock market. In an interview with CNN, the creator pointed out that although he predicted the trajectory of the group he had created, he never thought that this forum would escalate to that point and generate such repercussions in the stock market.

Perhaps the Most Unusual Events that have Ever Happened in the New York Stock Exchange

The members of WallStreetBets are facing one of the most unusual events that had ever occurred in the New York Stock Exchange. They produced a rally for the video game store chain’s shares, GameStop, and have caused large companies – such as Melvin Capital— to lose millions of dollars.

For Rogozinski, this entire stock market phenomenon is something he had never experienced before. However, he believes that it is the “collision of a system that is not behaving in the way it commonly behaves.” Rogozinski notes that introducing new forces to the stock market, such as social media and minority investors, changes the traditional ways that rule over the Stock Market.

WallStreetBets seems to attach to the idea of ​​”democratization of the stock market.” When companies like Robinhood opted for a restriction to GameStop shares, the Reddit forum got alarmed and labeled it market manipulation.

Through a letter, these investors argued an “outstanding debt” with the citizens from the risk investment funds since the great financial crisis of 2008. A turning point that also rocketed to the skies the essence of Bitcoin, thus the new decentralized financial market shaped in recent years around cryptocurrencies.

A Chain Reaction that Will Affect the Crypto-Environment

Although Rogozinsky did not elaborate many arguments about this issue, nor about the repercussions that he believes this movement may have, he keeps standing in his position about how this chain reaction will affect everyone.

The White House, during this conflict and the statements about the GameStop case, pointed out that the whole situation of Redditors and Wall Street will get caught at the hands of regulators very soon.

Rogozinski acknowledges that some people could lose money during all this stock market movement, but he also claims that it is like this. Meanwhile, social networks mock (with memes).

Like Melvin Capital, the multimillion-dollar firms are not the American middle class losing a lot of money this time. In this regard, the movement received a massive acceptance and gained many followers.

By: Jenson Nuñez

The company still awaits a response to the application that it filed with the SEC. Research firm Messari considers that the company has a valuation of USD 28 billion.

Coinbase is an online platform that serves as a digital wallet where users can keep their cryptocurrency holdings. It also allows them to see their balance and the evolution of the value of their cryptocurrencies.

This US exchange recently confirmed that it will go to the stock market through a direct listing rather than through an Initial Public Offering (IPO). They are awaiting a response from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the application to continue with the regulatory process.

After versions of a possible IPO, the company made official the mechanism that it will use to enter the stock market. “Coinbase wants to become a public company listed on the stock exchange through a direct listing proposal of its Class A common shares. We expect this listing proposal to occur through a registration statement on SEC Form S-1,” Coinbase explained.

Those companies that want to go public and trade stocks use IPO and direct listing mechanisms. There is no creation of new shares in the mechanism that Coinbase chose, but they operate with the existing securities, without intermediaries. Promoters, investors, and employees who own shares of this type can trade them directly with the interested public.

On the contrary, in IPOs, there is the issuance of new shares, which brokers, investment banks, mutual funds, and insurance companies then manage. In December, Coinbase was considering entering the stock market through a direct listing rather than an IPO. The exchange did not explain the reasons that led it to make that decision.

Coinbase at a Crucial Moment in the Stock Market

All this information appears at a crucial moment in the stock market, which remains in turmoil. This has happened because RobinHood, Interactive Brokers, and Ameritrade restricted the purchases of securities of GameStop. The reason for this was that the Reddit group WallStreetBets caused a rally for the video game chain’s stock.

Many wonder whether what is currently happening on Wall Street will benefit or harm Coinbase. The rise in the price of Bitcoin and the growth in the acceptance of cryptocurrencies worldwide could favor the exchange.

Coinbase’s valuation was USD 8 billion in 2018, but could currently be around USD 28 billion, according to Messari. The research firm arrives at that amount given that it is one of the “most prominent exchanges”, according to analyst Mira Christanto.

According to cryptocurrency analytics platform CoinGecko, Coinbase is the second exchange that most operators use. They have a daily trading volume of USD 5.5 billion. Besides, the exchange operates with 43 cryptocurrencies and 125 trading pairs.

The exchange recently acquired Bison Trails, a fully-managed blockchain infrastructure provider. The company also purchased the Routefire platform, helping to significantly boost its operations.

Bison Trials, which builds cross-blockchain integration tools, is now developing the Coinbase product suite. Meanwhile, the Routefire platform is in charge of developing tools and services for the cryptocurrency exchange.

By Alexander Salazar