Cuban Goes Dogecoin, Bitcoin’s USD 100K Signal, Ripple’s CBDC Plan + More news

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.

Crypto adoption news

• US-based major crypto payment services company BitPay announced the rollout of dogecoin (DOGE) payments for merchants and consumers. The Dallas Mavericks will be the first to accept dogecoin. “The Mavericks have decided to accept Dogecoin as payment for Mavs tickets and merchandise for one very important, earth-shattering reason, because we can! Because we can, we have chosen to do so. We have chosen to do so because sometimes in business you have to do things that are fun, engaging and hopefully generate a lot of PR,” Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban, was quoted as saying in an emailed announcement.
• In a JPMorgan survey of roughly 3,400 investors representing 1,500 institutions, 11% of investors said their firm either trades or invests in crypto, while 89% said their firm doesn’t, Business Insider reported. Out of the investors who answered “no,” 78% of them said it’s “not likely” their firm will trade or invest in crypto, while 22% answered “likely,” the report added.
• South Korea’s Woori Fund Service, the fund accounting subsidiary of the Woori Financial Group (operator of the leading commercial Woori Bank) has sealed a partnership deal with Peertec, the operator of the GDAC crypto exchange. Per E Daily, the firms will work on a cryptoasset accounting solution for domestic firms that do business in crypto. The solution, said the firms, would allow companies to manage the “entire management process” in the case of “digital assets” that are owned or operated by corporate customers. The platform will also involve tax compliance features, with crypto tax incoming as of next year. It could also potentially pave the way for companies to strategically invest in crypto – Tesla–style.
• US-based major digital asset financial services company BitGo said it has obtained a New York Trust license to operate as an independent, regulated qualified custodian under New York State Banking Law. The charter was issued by The New York State Department of Financial Services enabling BitGo to provide custodial services for New York clients.

Bitcoin news

• “Grayscale Bitcoin Trust [GBTC] discount may signal march to USD 100,000″ per bitcoin (BTC), Mike McGlone, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Commodity Strategist, said in his newest report. According to him, the steepest ever discount is a rare indication of an improving price outlook for the crypto, “if history is a guide.” “Sharp reductions in the GBTC premium have often marked bottoms in bitcoin. The increasing probability of exchange-traded funds in the US, on the back of launches in Canada are adding pressure to the trust price, but we see sustaining the upward trajectory as the more likely outcome,” he added.

CBDCs news

• Ripple said it is piloting a private version of the public, open-source XRP Ledger that provides Central Banks a solution for the issuance and management of digital currencies (CBDCs). “The CBDC Private Ledger is based on the same blockchain technology that powers the XRP Ledger (XRPL), which means that the CBDC Private Ledger is built for payments,” the company added.

DeFi news

• Binance Smart Chain-based decentralized finance (DeFi) project Meerkat Finance found itself in hot waters today. It claims that it was hacked to the tune of USD 31m, while its community members suspect that founders just run away with everyone’s money, per Wu Blockchain. The community is sharing more details on the Binance Chain website.

Investments news

• Crypto.com announced the launch of Crypto.com Capital, its USD 200m venture arm dedicated to investing in crypto startups at seed and series A stage. The fund will lead seed rounds with cheque sizes between USD 100,000 and USD 3m and Series A rounds from USD 3m to USD 10m, they added.
• Huobi said that the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong has approved Huobi Asset Management to manage portfolios that invest in virtual assets, which reportedly allows the company to launch bitcoin, ethereum and multi-strategy funds.

NFTs news

• Yield Guild Games, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for investing in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) used in virtual worlds and blockchain-based games, said it has raised a seed investment of USD 1.3m. The round was led by the ventures arm of digital asset research firm, Delphi Digital, and joined by Scalar Capital, BlockTower Capital, among others. The funding will be used to invest in NFTs, such as game assets and virtual land, and the DAO will share its profits with its investors via the YGG protocol, they added.

Blockchain and DLT news

• Token prices of the South Korean blockchain-powered logistics firm Dkargo have soared by over 200% on domestic exchanges the news that the firm will work with the internet giant and chat app operator Kakao on its KakaoTalk chat app-linked Kakao Express platform, reported Chosun. The latter is serviced by Easygo, a joint venture founded by the IT platform Deleo, Kakao’s e-pay arm KakaoPay, and Lotte Global Logistics, the distribution arm of the Lotte Group conglomerate. The Kakao-run platform allows users to arrange for delivery operators to pick up parcels from their homes or places of work, or drop them off at participating convenience stores.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced general availability of Ethereum (ETH) on Amazon Managed Blockchain, meaning that AWS customers can provision Ethereum nodes “in minutes” and connect to the public Ethereum main network and test networks such as Rinkeby and Ropsten.
• IOTA (MIOTA) announced its smart contracts protocol alpha release. “With the IOTA Smart Contracts Protocol, developers and enterprises are free to define their own, flexible environments matching their requirements (smart contract languages/virtual machines) as well as sizes of validating committees that match their required or desired level of decentralization and security,” they said.

Career news

• 100x Group, the holding structure for the BitMEX platform, has appointed Stephan Lutz, a former partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers GmbH, as Chief Financial Officer, who will take up his role in May 2021.

Mining news

• The reportedly biggest mining firm in Russia’s St. Petersburg and the surrounding area is to come under the legal spotlight again. Per RBC, Cryptouniverse, a major BTC and litecoin (LTC) miner that was founded in 2018, has been ordered by a city court to face trial in a case involving three individuals who have accused it of fraud. The firm was in court last year, when it stood accused of embezzling a miner’s equipment and his mined tokens to the tune of USD 340,000. The trio is also thought to be comprised of crypto miners involved in a dispute with the company about mining profits.