Daily Crypto NewsEDITION #322, 07 October 2021

Has the old world fallen? MoneyGram goes into crypto!

Hey Moni Maker

Today, in 1903, silver deposits were discovered in Ontario, Canada. Yeah, what a bore. Some metal, no memes, no mysterious Satoshi, no Twitter threads for 100 posts. Ugh.

We were fortunate to be born in the 21st century, at the dawn of cryptocurrencies, technology and flying to Mars. We are the lucky ones. And now, let's read Digest. Let's go!

Traditional cross-border payments giant MoneyGram is working with the Stellar blockchain network to create instant money transfers using Circle’s USDC stablecoin, the companies announced Wednesday.

The firms will start with a pilot in the fourth quarter of this year. Early 2022 will see a gradual rollout of the ledger-based stablecoin bridge between crypto and local currencies with a view toward connecting MoneyGram’s 150 million or so consumers.

“Working with MoneyGram allows end consumers to have on- and off-ramps everywhere that MoneyGram’s vast agent network supports this. So this is just transformational in terms of being able to exchange crypto for fiat and fiat for crypto,” Denelle Dixon, CEO and executive director of the Stellar Development Foundation, said in an interview. “We’re trying to go as big as we can.”

So what?

In the past, Western Union and Money Gram were breakthrough solutions - a bank transfer from country to country could take up to 14 business days, and sometimes it could not even reach you in a month.

WU and MG did a fabulous instant payment service, but it had its problems: if the name or surname of the recipient was written wrong, the transfer could not be given at the bank - go to hell, redo it.

It's nice to see that services accept the game's rules and adopt crypto instead of trying to sit on their nostalgia chair, in the depths of which they were innovators. Ugh, what an excellent sentence!

Let's take a look:

– Bitcoin Long Term Holders have added 2.35M $BTC to their stacks since their supply bottomed out in March;

– In that same period, only 180k $BTC were mined;

– This means LTHs have hodled 13x more coins than were produced via fresh issuance over the last 7 months.

Do you HODL BTC?

A Kaliningrad crypto-trader was kidnapped and held captive in Sovetsk until he withdrew half a million dollars from his Binance to kidnappers' wallets. The victim says that the kidnappers tried to kill him - they drugged him with sedatives, strangled him, and, thinking he was dead, took his body out into the woods and threw branches on it. The man woke up, managed to get to the nearest village and called an ambulance. The suspects were detained and sent to the detention centre, and charged. Binance agreed to help.

The victim (also a former resident of Sovetsk) is acquainted with one of the defendants, a source in law enforcement agencies told Novyi Kaliningrad. They once served time together in a penal colony. "The kidnappers had been following him since the summer - in social networks and on the street. They knew where he lived and where he went," the source explained.

AMC Theatres announced that it now accepts Dogecoin (DOGE) among other selected cryptocurrencies as a payment option for its digital gift cards.

AMC CEO Adam Aron took to Twitter to share the news, saying “you can buy [AMC Theatres] digital gift cards (up to $200 per day) with Dogecoin and other cryptocurrency using a BitPay Wallet.”

So what?

For what goods would you like to pay with DOGE?

Wow! Farming Digest is here! Let’s check?

Press: We can't ignore Fantom! BSC added some value, and Solana became an uncle. Let's throw stables to Alpaca, ORCA, and...Digest!

The International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) have said in a report that rules for traditional payments must apply to stablecoins, reports Reuters.

“This report marks significant progress in understanding the implications of stablecoin arrangements for the financial system and providing clear and practical guidance on the standards they need to maintain its integrity,” IOSCO chair Ashley Adler reportedly said in a statement. The report’s proposals are facing a stage of public consultation before being finalized by early 2022.

So what?

Long Story Short:

IOSCO and BIS regulators say stablecoins must follow the same rules as traditional payments.

This would require stablecoin providers to outline approaches to risks like cybersecurity.

SEC chief Gary Gensler said that the U.S. would not follow China's lead in banning cryptocurrencies. Gensler added that the SEC has no authority or intent to block digital assets and that it could only happen at the discretion of Congress.

Earlier, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell also said that the U.S. has no plans to ban cryptocurrencies outright.

Forbes magazine published a new version of the list of the 400 wealthiest Americans and put the head of FTX exchange on the cover. The list also included seven representatives from the crypto industry.

In first place among them was the 29-year-old head of FTX and Alameda Research Sam Bankman-Fried, with a fortune of $22.5 billion (32nd place in the ranking). Sam becomes the youngest member of the list.

Having made his fortune on the cryptocurrency fever, he is not it's typical adept and wants to earn so much to change the world and do charity work.

ERC-721 is a standard for Non-Fungible tokens in Ethereum Network and is known as NFT. The main property is that every ERC-721 token unique and can not be replaced. Its often used for collectibles, real estate, paintings and art overall. Crypto Punks, Hashmasks and "Everydays - The First 5000 Days" by @beeple are an ERC-721 NFTs.

And more you can find in our Glossary!

And you...buy Bitcoin! (it's a good time!)