Zip’s Potential Crypto Trading, Rothschild ETH Investment + 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.

Adoption news

• Major Australian fintech, ‘buy-now-pay-later’ company Zip Co. is looking at expanding into crypto and stock trading, reported the Wall Street Journal, citing co-founder Peter Gray. Zip may offer the services through its existing app as they try to further engage the younger consumers who make up the majority of their customer base. They would likely roll out the services to their US QuadPay unit, which added 674,000 customers in the third quarter for a total of 3.8m customers. No timeline was given, and it’s unclear whether stock or crypto trading would launch first.
• Digital banking and payments group Novatti has begun using RippleNet’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service, provided by Ripple, the blockchain company behind the XRP coin – leveraging XRP for cross-border payments. Live now, Novatti expects to process several thousand transactions a month through RippleNet and is planning to quickly scale the service to more fintech customers and other countries in Southeast Asia, said the announcement. The partnership between the companies was first announced last December, and it initially focuses on remittances between Australia and the Philippines through the country’s major non-bank, Filipino-owned remittance service provider, iRemit.
• A British billionaire has put his massive property, which overlooks Hyde Park in the exclusive Knightsbridge district of central London, up for sale and said he will accept payment for it in bitcoin (BTC) or ethereum (ETH). Per the Daily Mail, “a source with knowledge of the matter” confirmed that the property tycoon Nick Candy has put the two-story apartment, which houses a private cinema and library, on the market for a cool USD 241.8m. A Candy spokesperson also confirmed the news to Bloomberg. The property also features a 21m swimming pool, sprawls over a whopping 1,672sqm.

Investments news

• Chicago-based asset manager Rothschild Investment Corporation recently bought 265,302 shares of the Grayscale Ethereum Trust, its first investment in the vehicle. Per the filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), they also increased their position in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust to 38,346 shares. On March 31, the shares in the ETH trust were worth USD 4.75m, and those in the BTC trust were worth USD 1.92m.
  Celebrity stockpicker Cathie Woods’ ARK funds bought more shares of Coinbase worth USD 110m a day after the crypto exchange’s Nasdaq debut, Reuters reported, citing the firm’s daily trade summary on Thursday.

CBDC news

• In an interview with Bloomberg TV, a senior Bank of Japan official, Kazushige Kamiyama, “downplayed the threat of China’s digital currency to the established order as it’s unlikely to be the dominant player in global financial settlements even if China leads the way.”

Career news

• Digital asset-focused financial services firm Galaxy Digital appointed Michael Daffey as a Senior Advisor and Chair of the Board of Directors, effective September 1. Daffey is a former Partner, Chairman of the Global Markets Division, and member of the Management Committee at Goldman Sachs, among other notable positions. Per the press release, he said he looks forward to working closely with the CEO Mike Novogratz and the team “as they build on their early-mover advantages.” The news comes ahead of a planned US stock offering later this year.
• The Celo Foundation, the governing body of the blockchain-powered payments company Celo, said it has appointed the former head of Citigroup and CEO of Time Warner Richard Parsons as a board member. The group claims that it has 130 global member organizations and, in a blog post, the foundation quoted Parsons – who also served as the interim CEO of the NBA franchise the Los Angeles Clippers and briefly served as the chairman of CBS – as stating that Celo has “demonstrated how cryptocurrency can be an equalizing factor in the distribution of wealth and put financial access in the hands of people who need it most.”

Community news

• Less than 24 hours after the Wallstreetbets subreddit moderators had announced that they would allow crypto discussion (and only about BTC, ETH, and dogecoin (DOGE)), they reinstated the ban “indefinitely”. They cited the Bloomberg article titled ‘WallStreetBets Bows to Crypto, Allows Bitcoin Discussion’ as the reason behind it. “I’ve read a lot of dumb articles written about wsb. This one takes the cake,” said the announcement.

Crime news

• Police and financial regulators in South Korea have promised to “crackdown” on crypto crime, reported Fn News. The authorities say that they intend to launch a “full-scale” assault on instances of crypto fraud and group meetings – so-called “investors’ briefing sessions” – held by ostensible crypto projects. These meetings are often organized by multi-level marketing scammers who pose as bona fide crypto operators. As well as causing financial damage to scores of investors, the government claims that many of the groups may be violating coronavirus-related social distancing measures, which forbids groups of over five people to meet in an indoor space.