Mastercard integrates cryptocurrencies; GameStop Builds Own NFT Marketplace; El Salvador buys 420 bitcoin; Coinbase climbs to the top of the App Store charts and Ethereum hits a new all-time high.
Another exciting week in the crypto space is drawing to a close. The most important events around Bitcoin and Co. in a compact overview.
Mastercard integrates payments with cryptocurrencies
Mastercard announced that it would now also integrate cryptocurrencies into the company’s credit card ecosystem. The credit card provider not only wants to enable payments in Bitcoin and Co., but also offer the opportunity to earn crypto rewards. As a result, over 2 billion customers could soon use cryptocurrencies in their everyday lives. The payment service provider cooperates for this Bakkt, an asset manager who is supposed to take over the custody of the digital assets.
For Mastercard, it became the ultimate railroad in terms of crypto integration. Because main competitor Visa sets an example with every step in the direction of crypto adoption. For example, the company in question announced its own NFT support program to make it easier for artists to enter the crypto world.
More on this in this article.
GameStop is looking for NFT reinforcements
A job posting this week revealed that GameStop plans its own NFT marketplace. The job advertisement from October 25th was specifically looking for crypto-savvy employees with experience in the NFT area. The tender mainly has to Reddit met with a lot of approval.
However, GameStop went quietly back in May of this year with a website called GameStop NFT live. A kind of Gameboy with the Ethereum logo can be seen on the side. Underneath, GameStop explains that it wants to build a team. Accordingly, the gaming company is primarily looking for engineers, designers, gamers, marketers and community leaders.
You can read more about this here.
El Salvador buys another 420 bitcoin
The President of El Salvador announced on October 27th on Twitter that he had bought another 420 Bitcoin. Accordingly, the country now owns 1,120 BTC – the equivalent of 67.7 million US dollars. This makes El Salvador the third richest nation in the world when it comes to Bitcoin. First place in the Bitcoin ranking is occupied by Bulgaria (213,519 BTC), followed by Ukraine (46,351 BTC).
It is not yet known how the El Salvador government will keep the new treasures. However, this question is certainly in the general interest, because the following applies: Whoever owns the private keys is also the actual owner of the coins. In order to take a closer look at the situation on site, BTC-ECHO will go to El Salvador itself in November and report from there.
Until then, you can find out more in this article.
Coinbase overtakes TikTok on the app leaderboard
The crypto exchange platform Coinbase recently rose to # 1 most popular application in the US app store. The app overtook Tiktok and Co. Although the crypto exchange announced earlier this month that at least 6,000 users of the platform had been victims of phishing attacks, the number of downloads apparently increased.
However, the top of the leaderboard in the US App Store is not new territory for Coinbase. At the end of 2017, the crypto app was also number one among the most popular apps. The crypto exchange also topped the charts around five months ago. One could assume that the download numbers reflect the volatility of the crypto market and the adoption rate among the US population.
More about it in this article.
Ethereum is recording a new all-time high
With the third hard fork of this year, Ethereum is back with all signs in the direction of proof-of-stake. After the hard forks “Berlin” in April and “London” in August, the network has now announced the latest upgrade, “Altair”. This contains some innovations for the beacon chain that runs parallel to the mainchain. For example, network nodes can now synchronize with validators and run on mobile devices with low resource requirements. A so-called “slashing” function is also intended to serve as a disciplinary measure.
With the successful update, Ethereum was able to record a new all-time high at the same time. The DeFi top dog rose to US $ 4,416.05 on October 29.
You can find out more about the Ethereum Hard Fork here.