Cyrptoasx Stocks Updates

01/03/2021

Crypto Exchange INX to Raise C$25M, List on TSVX for ‘Added Credibility’

INX Limited, a cryptocurrency exchange that went public through a token offering on Ethereum in 2020, is looking to raise an additional CAD $25 million (USD $19.6 million) in a new listing on the TSX Venture Exchange.

The company, which made history last year by conducting an initial public offering (IPO) on the Ethereum blockchain, said it intends to list on the TSXV for "added credibility."
INX said that the public reporting and transparency required by the TSVX listing will help it attract "Fortune 500 strategic partnerships and institutional investors."
The plans were disclosed in a supplemental filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Feb. 25.
According to the filing, INX will offer 20 million shares priced at $1.25 CAD. Proceeds will go to research and development, sales, marketing, general expenses and M&A.
The exchange company, which acquired the alternative trading system OpenFinance last year, said its has a pre-money valuation of $225 million.
The INX exchange will debut in Q2 2021, according to the filing.

SOURCE:
https://www.coindesk.com/inx-crypto-exchange-sec-filing

The exchange made history last year by conducting an initial public offering (IPO) on the Ethereum blockchain.

01/03/2021

A Better Breed of DOGE? Developers Release New Core With Faster Synch Speed

Developers for Dogecoin, the meme-based cryptocurrency that somehow has parleyed cuteness into a more than $6 billion market value, are trying to make sure that the Shiba Inu-represented coin’s tech is just as good as its hype.

The developers announced Sunday evening they've released a new version of the protocol's core that promises improved synchronization speed and reduced default mempool expiry time.
Developers say they've significantly improved the speed at which a DOGE (+1.07%) node can upload blocks, by removing expensive integrity checks that were performed each time a block is sent to another node.
In addition, the new core also cut the default time that transactions are cached in the mempool from 336 hours to 24 hours.
DOGE, which was released as a joke back in 2013, periodically grabs the the crypto-buying public's imagination, prompting surges in its price before falling back down to trade at less than a penny a coin.
Recently though the coin has become part of the crypto zeitgeist after capturing the imagination of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has made a side business of tweeting DOGE's praises at almost every turn. Rocker Gene Simmons, who describes himself as "God of Dogecoin," Snoop Dogg (or DOGE), and even a p**n star have also become DOGE lovers.
In its most recent run-up DOGE moved well into the top 10 list of most valuable cryptocurrencies with a market cap of more than $10 billion, overtaking much more "serious" coins. After while DOGE has given back a lot of those gains, it's well ahead of where it had fallen to in the past. It's still the 14th-most valuable crypto with a market cap of $6.27 billion and a per coin price of just under five cents at press time.
That increase in price has incentivized its developers to make the technology underpinning that adorable Shiba Inu more robust and not just be about a pretty face.
“People say it’s a joke coin but we’re very careful to take care of the code. When it took off there was a resurgence in attention and we want to keep the currency operational,” DOGE lead maintainer Ross Nicoll recently told CoinDesk.

SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/a-better-breed-of-doge-developers-release-new-core-with-faster-synch-speed

Developers are trying to teach an old DOGE some new tricks.

23/02/2021

Shares in Iced-Tea-Maker-Turned-Blockchain-Firm Delisted by SEC

Long Blockchain Corporation, the former beverage company whose sudden pivot to crypto captured Wall Street’s attention (and Nasdaq’s ire) during the 2017 bull run saw its shares delisted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Monday after failing to file financial documents.
In an administrative order the SEC revoked registration of Long Blockchain’s shares, eliminating the possibility of trading shares in the one-time tea makers among U.S. investors. That ability had already been severely restricted by Nasdaq’s February 2018 decision to delist the New York company for allegedly misleading investors.
The order ends a public markets saga that lives on in investors’ memory as a textbook instance of opportunistic rebranding. When the company formerly known as Long Island Iced Tea Corp. rechristened itself “Long Blockchain Corp in December 2017, investors responded by pouring into its shares, spiking the value by over 500%.’

SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/long-blockchain-corporation-shares-delisted-sec?fbclid=IwAR0LRCYs3d_L2UDZTxhw5-vh7YpFqIBmseTGNGbbnycZpodsddcQ55CNFH8

Long Blockchain Corporation's shares have been ejected from U.S. public markets.

23/02/2021

Shares in Iced-Tea-Maker-Turned-Blockchain-Firm Delisted by SEC

Long Blockchain Corporation, the former beverage company whose sudden pivot to crypto captured Wall Street’s attention (and Nasdaq’s ire) during the 2017 bull run saw its shares delisted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Monday after failing to file financial documents.

In an administrative order the SEC revoked registration of Long Blockchain’s shares, eliminating the possibility of trading shares in the one-time tea makers among U.S. investors. That ability had already been severely restricted by Nasdaq’s February 2018 decision to delist the New York company for allegedly misleading investors.

The order ends a public markets saga that lives on in investors’ memory as a textbook instance of opportunistic rebranding. When the company formerly known as Long Island Iced Tea Corp. rechristened itself “Long Blockchain Corp in December 2017, investors responded by pouring into its shares, spiking the value by over 500%.’

SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/long-blockchain-corporation-shares-delisted-sec

Long Blockchain Corporation's shares have been ejected from U.S. public markets.

23/02/2021

Bitcoin Drops, DeFi Loans Liquidated, NFTs Sell

Bitcoin tumbled below $50,000, before bouncing back this morning. This follows exuberant trading yesterday, which saw the cryptocurrency claw to a fresh high of $58,332 during early Asian hours.

How deep will it go? According to David Lifchitz, CIO for Paris-based quantitative trading firm ExoAlpha, a 15% correction isn’t out of the question. “$50,000 looks like the first stop for a mild pullback, but a second leg down could take it down to $40,000, while the $30,000 zone looks like the ultimate bottom should things turn ugly in the short term,” Lifchitz said.

It’s not just tea leaves, there are macroeconomic forces that might explain this recent price action. CoinDesk’s Omkar Godbole notes that U.S. inflation-adjusted bond yields are rising, with the real yield turning positive for the first time since June 2020. This supports a bullish case for the U.S. dollar – as investors de-risk and put money in U.S. Treasury bonds when yields rise – and a bearish case for gambles like bitcoin (BTC, -10.49%) and stocks.

Speaking of, according to a new survey, 41% of U.S. investors think stocks and crypto are equally risky. One JPMorgan analyst might disagree. In a recent investor note the banker wrote that market liquidity in hedges like bitcoin and gold is “much lower” than in stocks, meaning that “even small flows can have a large price impact.”

SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-drops-defi-loans-liquidated-nfts-sell

Bitcoin tumbled below $50,000, before bouncing back some. But not before some $25 million in DeFi loans were liquidated.

23/02/2021

MoneyGram Puts Relationship With Ripple’s XRP on Hold

The money transfer company said it "is not planning for any benefit from Ripple market development fees" in Q1. In last year's Q1, MoneyGram banked $12.1 million in such fees.

MoneyGram is stepping back from its partnership with Ripple Labs citing the legal uncertainty swirling around the blockchain startup’s XRP token.

The money transfer company said Monday it “is not planning for any benefit from Ripple market development fees in the first quarter” of 2021, a break from last year’s Q1 when MoneyGram banked $12.1 million in such fees.

Ripple has been paying MoneyGram to use the XRP (+2%) token in international settlement since 2019 and first engaging in a pilot agreement with the service in 2018. Since then, MoneyGram has netted $61.5 million in “market development fees” from Ripple.

SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/moneygram-puts-relationship-with-ripples-xrp-on-hold

The money transfer company said it "is not planning for any benefit from Ripple market development fees" in Q1. In last year's Q1, MoneyGram banked $12.1 million in such fees.

22/02/2021

Bitcoin Scales $58K for First Time; YTD Gain Over 98%

Another day, another all-time high for the leading cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin (BTC (-1.05%)) on Sunday set a new high water mark of $58,332.36, bringing the leading cryptocurrency's year-to-date gain to over 100% less than two months into the year. For all of 2020, BTC rose 305%.
At press time, the price settled back to $58,148.31, up 2.3% over the last 24 hours, and cutting the YTD gain to over 98%.
Some are attributing the eye-popping rise to tremendous demand from buyers looking to hedge against inflation as governments keep spending and central banks keep printing money in a desperate effort to keep their economies afloat during the pandemic. Yet despite all the printing and spending of fiat money, the key indicators aren’t reflecting inflation at all
“Through the insatiable buy-side pressure from exchange-traded fund (ETF) issuers, closed-end funds and large public corporations adding bitcoin to their positions, demand is massively outstripping supply,” said John Willock, chief executive at digital asset exchange Blocktane.

SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-scales-58k-for-first-time-ytd-gain-over-98

For all of 2020, bitcoin rose 305%.

22/02/2021

A Quarter of US Investors Own Crypto: Survey

A new study has found that a majority of American believe cryptocurrency is a safe investment. Further, 25% already own crypto with another 27% saying they plan to invest this year.

That’s according to a February survey of 30,000 people over the age of 18 conducted by Piplsay, a global consumer research platform. The findings fall roughly in line with other recent surveys.

In October, Grayscale found that 55% of U.S. investors were interested in buying crypto. While Bitwise found 24% of financial advisers already owned bitcoin (BTC, -1.05%) or some other crypto in a survey published in January. (Grayscale is owned by CoinDesk’s parent company Digital Currency Group.)

SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/retail-investors-own-crypto-survey

Two-fifths of U.S. investors think investing in the cryptocurrency market is no more risky than putting money into stocks.

22/02/2021

CI Global Files to Issue North America’s Third Bitcoin ETF

There could soon be a third Canadian bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). CI Global Asset Management, a subsidiary of a firm overseeing more than $230 billion in assets, filed a preliminary prospectus for the financial instrument, the company announced Friday.

The so-called CI Galaxy Bitcoin ETF (BTCX) would be managed by CI and advised by merchant bank Galaxy Digital. The two firms have previously partnered on the CI Galaxy Bitcoin Fund, a closed-end investment product.
Two bitcoin (BTC, +0.78%) ETFs went live this week, offering investors a way to gain exposure to bitcoin by buying stock, rather than the asset itself. ETF managers purchase an underlying asset on behalf of investors trading on the stock market, for a fee.
The first bitcoin ETF in North America hoovered up $421.8 million worth of assets in its first two days trading, including over 6,000 BTC. BTCX will invest directly in bitcoin, with Galaxy handling that end of the trade and Gemini acting as custodian.
Canadian firm 3iQ also filed a preliminary prospectus for a bitcoin ETF last week.

SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/ci-global-bitcoin-etf-galaxy-digital

A subsidiary of a firm overseeing more than $230 billion in assets will work with Galaxy Digital on what could be the third bitcoin ETF in Canada.

16/02/2021

UK Crypto Exchange EXMO Offline Amid DDoS Attack

Cryptocurrency exchange EXMO is down at press time, with the company saying it’s been hit by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

The U.K.-based exchange tweeted around 13:00 UTC Monday that its servers are temporarily unavailable owing to the attack and that it's "solving this issue."

Several hours later, work to get the site back online still seems to be ongoing.

A DDoS attack occurs when an online service is hit with massive volumes of traffic in order to slow or halt its operations.

The attack comes less than two months after EXMO lost nearly 6% of its crypto assets in a security breach on Dec. 21, 2020.

SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/uk-crypto-exchange-exmo-offline-amid-ddos-attack

Cryptocurrency exchange EXMO is offline at press time, with the company saying it's been hit by a distributed denial-of-service attack.

16/02/2021

Australia’s Blockchain Ecosystem Needs More Support From Regulators, Says Industry Body

Australia’s blockchain and cryptocurrency companies need more support from the federal government and regulators to boost confidence within the country’s business sector, according to Steve Vallas, CEO of advocacy body Blockchain Australia.

Speaking at the Senate Select Committee on Financial Technology and Regulatory Technology on Thursday, Vallas said Australia has a blockchain “base” from which it can accelerate development and that his organization is now “signaling” that the technology is something people “should be investing in.”

Vallas pointed to Australia’s lack of blockchain innovation in the last few years, saying it hadn’t harmed the country’s ecosystem. However, “I think we need more signals from regulators … that they’re willing to discuss this subject matter with people who are well versed in it,” he said.

SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/australia-blockchain-financial-regulators-select-committee

Australia's blockchain ecosystem needs more support from regulators, according to the CEO of the country's peak industry body.

16/02/2021

Market Wrap: Crypto Market Cap Breaks $1.5T as Buyers Show Up for the Dip

Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $48,600 as of 21:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET), slipping less than 1% over the previous 24 hours.

Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $45,926 to $49,332.
In a brief market correction Monday morning, over $1.6 billion worth of crypto futures contracts were liquidated over the past 24 hours, per Bybt.

The total cryptocurrency market cap broke $1.5 trillion for the first time late Monday, according to CoinGecko.

SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/market-wrap-crypto-dips-traders-buy-bitcoin-ether

09/02/2021

Market Wrap: The ‘Elon Effect’ Blasts Bitcoin to $44.8K While Ether Moons

Bitcoin’s price is getting closer to Mars thanks to Elon Musk while ether moons to a new record. Investors are pulling BTC out of DeFi, likely to diversify their profits.

Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $44,023 as of 21:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Climbing 14.5% over the previous 24 hours.
Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $38,051-$44,801 (CoinDesk 20)
BTC well above the 10-hour and the 50-hour moving average on the hourly chart, a bullish signal for market technicians.

SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/market-wrap-elon-effect-bitcoin-up-ether-moons

Bitcoin and ether had record-breaking days while trending more together.

09/02/2021

Investors Pump $250M Into Reddit Following Social Media Site’s Role in GameStop Mania

Reddit has raised $250 million in a Series E fundraising round, the company announced Monday night.

The social media site, which said both new and existing investors participated but did not disclose their names, plans to double its headcount with the funds, as well as build out its “video, advertising, consumer products” and international efforts, according to a blog post.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this means Reddit plans to have a total of 1,400 employees by the end of 2021 and now enjoys a $6 billion valuation.

SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/investors-pump-250m-into-reddit-following-social-media-sites-prominent-role-in-gamestop-mania

Reddit has raised $250 million from new and existing investors, and plans to double its headcount to 1,400 by the end of 2021 with the funds.

09/02/2021

Bitcoin Tops $47K After Tearing Through $45K, $46K in Tesla-Fueled Rise

In a run reminiscent of bitcoin’s stunning ascent in early January, the price of leading cryptocurrency blew past $45,000, $46,000 and $47,000 in less than an hour on Monday evening, driven by Tesla’s announcement that it had bought $1.5 billion of bitcoin.

Bitcoin hit $47,513.57, a new all-time high, before settling back to $47,053.09, up 20.6% in the last 24 hours.
$45,000 was supposed to have been a milestone of sorts but the cryptocurrency's race upwards turned it into an afterthought. The cryptocurrency has risen about 67% year-to-date.
A combination of traders in Asia just waking up to the Tesla news combined with a lack of resistance levels above $45,000 were possible causes for the sudden gap upwards.
While those might be the immediate catalysts for the sudden surge in the cryptocurrency, they're not the only reasons for bitcoin's stunning rise.
A growing number of big institutional investors including Paul Tudor Jones II and Bill Miller have pushed into bitcoin as a potential hedge against inflation, as the Federal Reserve and central banks around the world pump trillions of dollars of freshly created money into financial markets to stimulate their coronavirus-racked economies.
Tesla joins publicly traded companies including Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy that have steered corporate money into bitcoin (BTC, +21.54%). And from the price of bitcoin today, it's clear some investors think it's just getting started.
“We think this is just the start to a much wider adoption from household institutional names, finally ready to make the crossover into the crypto space,” Joel Kruger, strategist at the cryptocurrency exchange LMAX Digital, said in an email.
As more institutional investors like Tesla are buying bitcoin and "hodl" it for the long term, bitcoin’s liquid supply is continuing to decline, according to blockchain analytics firm Glassnode’s newsletter on Monday.

SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-tops-45k-for-first-time-as-market-bets-others-will-follow-teslas-lead

04/02/2021

Market Wrap: Bitcoin Cracks $37.2K as Ether Breaks Through to Record-High $1.6K

Bitcoin is back on a bull run but ether has hit a new all-time high and traders see it has room to grow.

Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $37,092 as of 21:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET).

Gaining 3.4% over the previous 24 hours.
Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $35,416-$37,245 (CoinDesk 20)

BTC above the 10-hour and 50-hour moving averages on the hourly chart, a bullish signal for market technicians.

SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/market-wrap-bitcoin-bullish-ether-record-high

Bitcoin has been trending upward for two days while ether breaks another rises to another all-time high.

04/02/2021

PayPal Q4 Transaction Revenue Rose 11.8% in 1st Quarterly Report Since Adding Crypto

In the final quarter of 2020, PayPal gained 16 million in net new active accounts and handled $277 billion in total payment volume.

The earnings are the payment giant’s first since rolling out crypto buying and selling late last year. It removed the waitlist for BTC (+5.56%), ETH (+8.14%), LTC (+9.12%) and B*H (+3.76%) to all of its 350 million users on Nov. 12, 2020.

Customers who purchased crypto through the platform have been logging into PayPal twice as much as they were before buying crypto, the company said in its investor update.

SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/paypal-2020-results-outstanding-finish-to-a-record-year

PayPal issued its first quarterly earnings report since rolling out its bitcoin and crypto service late last year.

04/02/2021

Visa Signals Further Crypto Ambitions With API Pilot for Bank Customers to Buy Bitcoin

Visa (V) is piloting a suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) that will allow banks to offer bitcoin services, the payments giant announced Wednesday.

The Visa Crypto APIs pilot program will let clients “easily connect into the infrastructure provided by Visa’s partner, Anchorage, a federally chartered digital asset bank, to allow their customers to buy and sell digital assets such as bitcoin as an investment within their existing consumer experiences,” Visa said in a press statement.

Visa envisions a product set that extends to other cryptocurrencies and stablecoins as well as other crypto services such as trading, Visa crypto lead Cuy Sheffield told CoinDesk in an interview. Digital bank First Boulevard is the first bank involved in the pilot; Visa has issued a wait list for other banks.

SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/visa-anchorage-crypto-apis-pilot-for-banks

03/02/2021

World Gold Output Declined 5.2% in 2020: GlobalData

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): UK-headquartered analytics firm GlobalData announced that overall gold output across the world is estimated to have registered 5.2% year-on-year decline in 2020 to 108 million ounces.

The global gold output was adversely affected by Covid-19 pandemic during the previous year. The drop in output was further exacerbated by halt in expansion work and contractions from mines nearing closure.

ALSO READ: Turkey Targets to Produce 100 Tonnes of Gold Per Year

The Covid-19 pandemic significantly impacted gold production during the initial six-month period in 2020. Newcrest’s gold output witnessed 15% decline during this period. The output by Barrick and Agnico Eagle were also down by 12.3% and 8.4% respectively. On the other hand, the acquisition of Detour Lake project led to 48% surge in output by Kirkland Gold. The Zijin output too was up by 5.9% over the previous year.

According to GlobalData forecast, the total gold production is expected to witness a jump by 5.5% to 113.9 million ounces in 2021. The output is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 2.9% to hit 124.1 million ounces by 2024. The key contributors to this growth will be Indonesia, Peru and the U.S., whose combined gold output is expected to surge from 20.1 million ounces in 2021 to 25.3 million ounces in 2024.

READ FULL SOURCE/ ARTICLE:
https://www.scrapmonster.com/news/-/1/78299

The Covid-19 pandemic significantly impacted gold production during the initial six-month period in 2020. United States Gold News

03/02/2021

Gold Price Analysis: Sideway trend to continue a while longer – OCBC

Gold (XAU/USD) continues to trade sideways as the yellow metal mostly moved in a very tight range in January, hovering from $1825 to $1875. Howie Lee, Economist at OCBC Bank, expects gold to go on trending sideways.

Key quotes
“Gold bears are quick to pounce once levels exceed $1850 and the bulls look unconvinced as well, relinquishing their positions quickly.”

“The rising Treasury yields continue to make a bull run in the gold market challenging. A widening spread between breakevens and nominal yields would be needed to give the bullish gold story legs to run higher. Until then, the precious metal may continue trending sideways.”

READ FULL SOURCE/ ARTICLE:
https://www.fxstreet.com/news/gold-price-analysis-sideway-trend-to-continue-a-while-longer-ocbc-202102021024

Gold (XAU/USD) continues to trade sideways as the yellow metal mostly moved in a very tight range in January, hovering from $1825 to $1875. Howie Lee,

03/02/2021

Reddit Group Fails In Effort To Squeeze The Silver Market

What worked for the Reddit group with GameStop Corp GME -60% is failing in the silver market. The problem seems to come down to a glaring ignorance of how the commodities markets work.

Monday saw the price of the iShares Silver Trust SLV exchange-traded fund jump to $27.92 up from around $25 late Friday. But by Tuesday morning the rally had completely reversed. The fund was recently trading lower than $25 a share,. In other words, it was fetching less that it was selling for late Friday.

Silver Not Squeezed by Redditters
“[T]he supposed attempt by Redditors to engineer a short squeeze in silver is not going as well,” states a recent report from New York-based bank BBH.

The idea of the short squeeze, which involves driving the price of a security higher so forcing those betting on a price drop to buy-back their positions, worked well with GameStop. The company which isn’t doing well saw its stock price jump in a spectacular manner after members of a Reddit chat group pushed up the price of the stock enough to force short sellers to exit their positions.

READ FULL SOURCE/ ARTICLE:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonconstable/2021/02/02/reddit-group-fails-in-effort-to-squeeze-the-silver-market/?sh=6706f94b3bcb

It comes down to a glaring ignorance of how the commodities markets work.

02/02/2021

IEA cuts 2021 oil demand outlook as new Covid lockdowns weigh on fuel sales

LONDON — The International Energy Agency on Tuesday cut its 2021 global oil demand forecast, citing soaring Covid-19 cases and renewed lockdown measures that will further limit mobility.

The IEA said it now expects world oil demand to recover by 5.5 million barrels per day to 96.6 million this year. That reflects a downward revision of 0.3 million barrels from last month’s assessment and follows an unprecedented collapse of 8.8 million barrels per day last year as the coronavirus pandemic battered global oil markets.

The IEA’s latest oil market report comes as countries continue to implement strict public health measures in an attempt to curb virus spread, with lockdowns imposed in Europe and parts of China.

READ FULL ARTICLE/ SOURCE: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/19/oil-iea-cuts-2021-demand-outlook-on-renewed-covid-lockdown-measures.html

02/02/2021

The U.S. remains important in the oil market, even if Biden is less vocal than Trump: UAE energy minister

The U.S. will always play an important role in global energy markets, even though President-elect Joe Biden is likely to be less vocal than President Donald Trump about oil, the UAE’s energy minister told CNBC ahead of Inauguration Day.

“The United States of America is a major player now … with its production, with the fact that this industry that has been developed through shale oil and gas has created lots of jobs and created an economy by itself,” said Suhail al-Mazrouei.

That won’t change under a new U.S. president who is expected to focus more on renewable energy and less on oil, he said.

READ FULL ARTICLE/ SOURCE: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/20/us-role-in-the-oil-market-still-important-under-biden-uae-minister.html

The U.S. will remain important in oil markets, even if President-elect Biden is less vocal than President Trump, says UAE Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei.

02/02/2021

Watch Middle East and North Africa leaders debate how to fuel economic recovery

[The stream is slated to start at 08:00 ET. Please refresh the page if you do not see a player above at that time.]

The coronavirus pandemic and declining oil prices pose severe risks to the Middle East and North African economies, which were collectively set to contract 5.2% last year.

Discussing the policies, practices and partnerships needed to put the region on course for a post-Covid recovery, CNBC’s Hadley Gamble is joined by a panel of speakers including:

Alain Bejjani, CEO of Majid Al Futtaim Holding
Rania Al-Mashat, Egypt’s minister of international cooperation
Sir Mohammad Jaafar, chairman and CEO of The Kuwaiti Danish Dairy Company
Badr Jafar, CEO of Crescent Enterprises

READ FULL ARTICLE/ SOURCE: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/28/davos-mena-leaders-debate-how-to-fuel-an-economic-recovery.html

The coronavirus pandemic and declining oil prices pose severe risks to the Middle East and North African economies.

01/02/2021

Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO

The card giant works with wallets and exchanges to enable crypto purchases, and could eventually use digital currencies over blockchain in the same way it processes traditional money.

Visa CEO Al Kelly said the payments giant is in a position to make cryptocurrencies more “safe, useful and applicable” and may add them to the company’s payments network. Speaking on the company’s fiscal first-quarter 2021 earnings call, Kelly described cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as “digital gold” which are “not used as a form of payment in a significant way at this point.”

“Our strategy here is to work with wallets and exchanges to enable users to purchase these currencies using their Visa credentials or to cash out onto our Visa credential to make a fiat purchase at any of the 70 million merchants where Visa is accepted globally,” Kelly said.

The payments executive also said stablecoins could be used for “global commerce” and that “digital currencies running on public blockchains as additional networks just like RTP or ACH networks.”

READ FULL ARTICLE/ SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/visa-may-add-cryptocurrencies-to-its-payments-network-says-ceo

Visa CEO Al Kelly said the payments giant is in a position to make cryptocurrencies more “safe, useful and applicable.”