Crypto’s Last Week
This edition of “Crypto’s Last Week” accounts for some of the most notable, and crypto-related — institutional, investment, or regulatory — news published between Saturday, November 28, 2020, and Friday, December 04, 2020
Circle, a peer-to-peer payment services company and main developer of the USD Coin has recently been selected by credit card and payment solution giant Visa as the digital stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the US dollar for its over 60 million merchants around the world.
Circle has been working closely with Visa, through the latter’s Fintech Fast Track Program aiming to integrate with VisaNet, a global payment network used on large scale and throughout industries, that would enable the virtual asset service provider to take advantage of the scalability provided while inserting the efficiency and security benefits of digital currencies to a network that sees approximately 1,700 transactions per second, or 150 million per day.
Initially, the use of USDC through the Visa network will be a Business-to-Business (B2B) endeavor through the use of a corporate credit card that would allow any business around the world send payments to a Visa supported business.
Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto at Visa commented on Forbes, “This will be the first corporate card that will allow businesses to be able to spend a balance of USDC […] And so we think that this will significantly increase the utility that USDC can have for Circle’s business clients.”
Visa estimates that $120 trillion paid in annual wire transfers or checks, and a $50 fee per transaction without taking into consideration the amount of said transaction, USDC could become the preferred alternative due tu its rapid settlement on the Ethereum network and its close to $0 fees, reducing the cost burden on businesses and clients all the same.
With this latest announcement, Visa continues its latest string of digital assets and cryptocurrency-friendly movements, which include, co-leading a series B funding round for security infrastructure provider Anchorage, a series of patents related to blockchain and digital currencies, and closely working with central banks in the development stages of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC). We believe this could position Visa as a top contender within the legacy financial services providers when it comes to blockchain and digital currency integration into day to day usage.
During the Polkadot Decoded event, the Polkadot DeFi Alliance was announced, as a way to create a more streamlined conversation around the network’s capabilities and future building objectives. This announcement comes at a time when DeFi has been the hottest topic around blockchain and cryptocurrencies, due to its inherent benefits derived from decentralization and efficiencies.
Founding members of this alliance include Chainlink, Tidal Finance, Reef Finance, Interlay, Moonbeam Network, Kylin Network, Equilibrium, Polkaswap, Plasm Network, and StaFi, however, it is expected for more Polkadot ecosystem members to be directly involved with this new alliance in favor of a healthy communication avenue for all Polkadot constituents aiming to have exponential growth for the community as a whole without the issues seen in alternative protocols with the boom of DeFi.
Dan Kochis, Head of Global Business Development at Chainlink expressed: “As a founding member of the Polkadot DeFi Alliance, Chainlink is excited to help steer the direction of Polkadot’s growing ecosystem of decentralized financial applications. By promoting developer best practices for DeFi protocols, the Polkadot ecosystem can become stronger than ever.”
Liam Young, StaFi protocol Co-founder also stated: “In addition to Ethereum, the DeFi project based on Substrate will be a new direction in the future. We have seen many projects with development potential, and we look forward to the growth of a Polkadot DeFi ecosystem that is as prosperous as Ethereum in the near future.”
We can expect this Alliance to be an important union of actors that will facilitate the application of the founding ethos that brought this network to the public.
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