In recent days, the activation of the service began in four cities of the country. The restaurants accept BTC, Dash, XPT, Ether, Litecoin, BUSD, DAI, USDT, and BNB.

On November 27^th, the Pizza Hut restaurant chain in Venezuela began to accept payments in Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies. The activation of the service began at the establishments in Caracas (Sambil, El Recreo, Líder, Caurimare, and las Mercedes), Maracaibo, Barquisimeto, and Maracay.

The chain itself and Panamanian startup Cryptobuyer confirmed the information. The latter will be in charge of processing transactions at all establishments. The customers of the restaurants can now pay for their orders with BTC, Dash, XPT, Ether, Litecoin, BUSD, DAI, USDT, and BNB.

Many people welcome that cryptocurrency payment options in Venezuela continue to grow. Pizza Hut’s alliance with Cryptobuyer now allows Venezuelan consumers to share as a family and pay with Bitcoin.

On its account and Instagram, Pizza Hut copied an image that the startup had spread. In the message, they confirmed that their customers can pay for their orders with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. “Buy the pizza of your choice and pay with cryptocurrencies”, was part of the published post.

Among the businesses and establishments that have begun to accept payments in Bitcoin in the country, Pizza Hut de Venezuela is the most recent. In this way, the restaurant chain joins Excelsior Gama supermarkets, SAAS pharmacies, Bio Mercados, Hotel Tamanaco, Traki stores, and Hotel Eurobuilding, in Caracas, in accepting cryptocurrencies as a form of payment.

Adoption of Bitcoin as a Means of Payment in Venezuela

The number of businesses that accept Bitcoin as a means of payment in Venezuela has multiplied in the last two years. However, the growth has been higher in 2020 after Mega Soft, the Venezuelan company for the processing of payments at points of sale, partnered with CryptoBuyer.

Last May, more than 20 thousand Mega Soft customers could accept cryptocurrencies after signing the agreement. Antonio Castro, partner, and director of Mega Soft, revealed that around 500 points of sale in the South American country were processing payments in Bitcoin.

“The potential is enormous, since it is possible to predict an explosive growth in this regard in the coming months. There has been a great demand in the adoption process while chains accommodate their internal reception and conciliation processes”, highlighted Castro.

The oil-producing nation has experienced a complicated economic and political situation for three years, which conditions the adoption of Bitcoin. In an attempt to safeguard the value of their assets, Venezuelans have turned to foreign fiat currencies such as the US dollar. However, thousands of people have also done it concerning Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Three years ago, the national government itself launched a cryptocurrency project that it called Petro. However, the population has not welcomed the adoption of this asset since its acceptance in the market is almost nil. People prefer the use of the US dollar or decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Venezuela is the third country in the world with the highest number of transactions with the pioneering cryptocurrency.

By Alexander Salazar

The Stablex platform already has ARST and BRLT stablecoins available for exchange. Users can trade both cryptocurrencies against ETH, BTC, and other stablecoins.

Cross-border exchange and payment network Settle Network partnered with the Stellar team to issue two new stablecoins pegged to the national fiat currencies of Argentina and Brazil.

Both companies confirm the information by saying that they are the first fiat-pegged cryptocurrencies that these countries issue. Argentina’s new stablecoin, identified as ARST, has a 1:1 relationship with the Argentine peso (ARS) while Brazil’s, called BRLT, is pegged to the value of the Brazilian real (BRL).

The main objective of these crypto-assets is to allow users from both countries to make international remittances and cross-border payments faster and easier, according to the two companies.

People already have both stablecoins at their disposal on the Stablex platform. Settle Network CEO Pablo Orlando noted that users can conduct operations with ARST and BRLT through the Stellar blockchain using the Vibrant wallet. He says that these new stablecoins will soon be listed on global exchanges.

To trade with the new altcoins, users must comply with know-your-customer (KYC) verification and anti-money laundering (AML) control. In addition to cross-border exchange between Argentine pesos and reals, it is possible to use the two pegged currencies for trading against Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and other as yet unspecified stablecoins.

Users Question Stellar’s Plan Regarding Stablecoin Pegged to the Argentine Peso

Settle Network’s director of business development and partnerships Jack Saracco talks about the prospects for stablecoins in Latin America. He believes that a mass adoption process in the region is underway.

“Stellar partnered with us to provide closer integrations in Latin America. This association opens a huge, scalable, and compatible framework of action for local fiat currencies throughout the region,” said Saracco.

The companies chose the markets of Argentina and Brazil as they are among the largest in South America, in addition to the fact that people “use and need cross-border remittances and payments” to a greater extent. This happens even though the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their economies in recent months.

On their Twitter accounts, some Stellar followers considered it absurd to peg a cryptocurrency to a continuously devalued national fiat currency. They observe that these are currencies that constantly lose value against the US dollar.

They refer in particular to the Argentine peso. In recent months, it has lost between 30% and 45% of its value against the US dollar, trading at different prices according to the official or black market rate. For this reason, a Twitter user identified as @GonzaloLabin ironically says that “a currency linked to the Argentine peso cannot be a stable coin.”

In this regard, Orlando noted that the new stablecoins will allow users to move their funds between exchanges, fiat-to-crypto currency transactions to place their money on a blockchain and enter the cryptocurrency market. These are also aimed at the broad unbanked sectors of the population of both countries.

The executive mentions that one of the most popular cases regarding the adoption of cryptocurrencies is their use as a store of value against inflationary economies.

The opinion of Settle Network and Stellar on the Latin American case coincides with that of analysts. Many citizens in the region flee their fiat currencies in search of stores of value such as cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, or foreign fiat currencies.

Eduardo Arenas, director of Bitso Alpha, has said on many occasions that pegged cryptocurrencies help users avoid the risks of market volatility. However, he adds that they also allow them to be able to leave with a profit and directly access US dollars to protect themselves from the devaluation of local fiat currencies.

By Alexander Salazar

The Liquid exchange and the NiceHash mining service are among those. The web hosting company said that several of its employees fell for a scam.

After several GoDaddy employees were stripped of their passwords due to identity theft techniques, hackers also targeted cryptocurrency platforms that the company hosted. Liquid and NiceHash services reported recent threats, although there are suspicions that other platforms could be among the victims.

Cryptocurrency exchange Liquid reported security issues in mid-November. In an official publication, Mike Kayamori, CEO of the company pointed out that GoDaddy had mistakenly handed over control of its web domain to a malicious actor.

Kayamori said that cybercriminals breached a relevant part of the site’s infrastructure, changed DNS records, took possession of several internal email accounts, and accessed vital documents.

The company suggested to its users to change passwords and take additional security measures to prevent leakage of their fragile data. He added that he neutralized the attack before hackers gained access to his clients’ accounts and assets.

Four days later, the cryptocurrency mining service NiceHash, also reported that it was the victim of an attack. The company said that after detecting unauthorized changes to the configuration of its web domain registered with GoDaddy, it decided to freeze its clients’ funds for 24 hours. In this way, it prevented attackers from transferring cryptocurrencies.

Matjaz Skorjanc, Founder of NiceHash, detailed some curious facts such as that the attackers had redirected the email of the company to a site called private email, a service provider managed by Namecheap, which is another domain name registrar. He also said that in the middle of the attack he was unable to contact his web host because at the time GoDaddy was experiencing a widespread outage of its systems.

A report by security specialist Brian Krebs assumes that other cryptocurrency platforms were also targets. Their guesses are based on the sum of various elements. For example, the mapping of the web domains registered with GoDaddy with recent alterations in their emails.

Then it analyzed the domains that were directed to private email, as happened with NiceHash. His search results included exchange Bibox, crypto-asset custody service Celsius, and digital asset payments platform Wirex. However, none of these companies responded to requests for comment, as read in the Krebs publication.

GoDaddy talks about its deceived employees

In response to Krebs ‘questions, GoDaddy acknowledged that “a small number” of its clients’ domain names were changed without authorization after a “limited” number of employees fell for phishing or phishing scams. The web hosting service provider said that on November 17, it also suffered a blackout for three hours, although it ruled out that it was related to the security incident. He said it was a technical problem that materialized during the planned maintenance of the network.

A GoDaddy spokesperson identified as Dan Race said that when the company identified the unauthorized changes to its customer’s domains, it immediately blocked the accounts involved and reversed the changes.

Race dodged related questions about how employees made unauthorized changes. In this regard, he only said that the matter was still under investigation.

GoDaddy did not show any detail about the attacks that hit multiple sites in March, including the financial services platform Escrow, which was redirected to a fake site called servicenow-godaddy.com.

In his report, Krebs suggests that the attackers behind the incidents at the beginning of the year and the ones that committed the current attack share some kind of relationship as well as the consequence of the same spoofing technique to steal the passwords.

In May, GoDaddy reported a security breach that ended up denying access to accounts with SSH, Secure Shell, or server management protocol remotely on the hosting infrastructure of the company. The company said it had found no evidence of tampering that affected customers. However, it then said it would provide free security tools for a year to all affected.

By: Jenson Nuñez.

Stablecoins like Libra are the riskiest for the Bank for International Settlements. The body views the European Union’s draft to regulate stablecoins.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) proposes the use of dynamic regulation tools that facilitate the constant supervision of anchored cryptocurrencies or stablecoins.

Ending November, in a report titled “Stablecoins: Risks, Potential and Regulation,” the BIS notes that the novelty of Facebook’s Libra project, and other global stablecoins, requires regulators to reinvent the possibilities of monitoring and overseeing the issuance and circulation of this type of cryptocurrency.

Therefore, there is a proposal mentioning that the starting point for regulating stablecoins should start with a registration or a licensing regime that allows information on projects to continuosly monitor companies.

“Information is a central function of regulation, both from the point of view of improving the functioning and efficiency of the market and from the point of view of supervision”, the study concludes.

This monitoring process should make the provision of direct and automated data a registration requirement for all potential stablecoin issuers.

Here they would highlight projects that use blockchain technology by generating secure information, supporting automated monitoring, and enabling verification of compliance. According to the BIS, this would launch the concept of “integrated supervision”.

In the opinion of the agency, as data collection is only useful in the jurisdiction where the establishment of the project is, it is also essential to combine this action with cross-border exchange agreements. For analysts, this is an indispensable procedure, taking into account that “the risks that stablecoins represent for financial stability” can develop without observation.

“There is the potential that a limited-purpose pegged currency could rapidly evolve into a stablecoin”, the report notes. Consequently, the most appropriate regulatory approach would set its concept on a different treatment, depending on the structure or scale of the project.

The BIS refers to the draft stablecoin regulation that the European Union (EU) proposed last September, which it considers to be the most complete to date.

The EU document raises the requirement of different requirements for utility tokens (non-stable currencies), financial instruments (including bitcoin), asset-backed stablecoins, and significant or global stablecoins. In this way, the most ambitious projects, which exceed certain thresholds, would have a higher level of demand. Citing the work of the EU, the report refers to other efforts around the world to address the regulation of anchored cryptocurrencies.

The international body’s position differs about central bank digital currencies (CBDC), which “would not represent the same conflicts of interest as stablecoins.” These conflicts are linked to the stabilization mechanisms of the price of the currency and the assets that serve as support.

By Jenson Nunez

Bitrefill allows the customers to purchase, with bitcoin, gift cards accepted in many stores. They can get discounts of up to 80% on electronic products, clothing, and toys, among others.

This November 27, 2020, Black Friday is coming, although each store can take licenses as to the date. This can be a good opportunity to take advantage of the gains that the increase in the price of bitcoin brought to its holders in recent months. Although not all stores accept bitcoin, there are alternative ways to use it to purchase products without first converting them into fiat money (dollars, euros, or pesos).

One of these ways is through Bitrefill. This company allows, through bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, to acquire gift cards that can be used in numerous stores. Although the platform asks for an email address, it is not necessary to provide any other personal information, so the user’s privacy is maintained throughout the process.

Bitrefill card availability varies from country to country. Here is a selection of products with special discounts for Black Friday in Argentina, Colombia, Spain, Mexico, and Venezuela.

Argentina: electronics, clothes, and toys with bitcoin

The Argentine appliance store Frávega joined Black Friday. These days it offers the possibility of paying more than 400 products in 18 installments without interest, with up to a 30% discount, and with free shipping in the metropolitan area of ​​Buenos Aires.

Besides, if a client uses the usual payment methods, their products can be purchased with bitcoin through Bitrefill. Available gift cards range from ARS 100 to ARS 35,000.

The catalog of products with special discounts for Black Friday includes, among other items, cell phones, laptops and desktops, printers, furniture, toys, and bicycles.

Also, the Dexter clothing store offers discounts of up to 50% on its products until November 29. Those who want to pay with cryptocurrencies must first access the Bitrefill page and choose the corresponding gift card.

The World of Toys was not far behind and has all its products with discounts that reach up to 50%. Bitrefill offers valid gift cards for this toy store, so it is possible to make purchases without needing pesos.

Those responsible for Bitrefill are looking for ways that their cards can be useful in more stores in Argentina. If this happens, on future black Fridays, the number of places where you can buy bitcoin in that country will be way larger.

Colombia: The country now can buy with bitcoins.

Bitrefill’s chief marketing officer, Mauro Peretti, explained that “gift cards are not common in Latin America,” but there are exceptions, and Colombia is one of them. On the Bitrefill website, there they have gift cards for more than 60 stores.

Those who want to take advantage of discounts for Black Friday on televisions, computers, appliances, and even hygiene and food products can pay with cryptocurrencies in Jumbo. There the discounts go up to 60%.

Metro stores, which like Jumbo belong to the Cencosud business group, have a wide variety of discounted products this week. Toys, televisions, appliances, pet products, computers, and telephones are some of the items that can be purchased at a discount and paid for with bitcoin.

To take advantage of discounts on clothing and footwear, Spring Step, Dafiti, and Tennis stores accept gift cards through Bitrefill. All of them have special promotions due to Black Friday.

Also, the clothing and toy store Pepe Ganga and the Lafam optician have discounted these days and, thanks to Bitrefill, they are accessible through bitcoin.

Finally, the Linio store has more than 16,000 products in its catalog that are part of the offers for the “Black Days”. There are varied categories: technology, beauty, barbershop, appliances, fashion, perfumes, sports, skincare, and health. Bitrefill is a good chance for those who wish to pay with bitcoin.

By: Jenson Nuñez.