Daily Cryptocurrency Bulletin For Friday, July 26, 2019

General News

Binance has launched an OTC service called “block trading.” Users can now trade larger amounts (“blocks”) of crypto – over 10BTC – without having to do it on the order book and potentially suffer from price slippage as the market feels the effect of the order.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company will spend “however long it takes” to get regulators and others on board before launching the Libra cryptocurrency project, speaking during yesterday’s quarterly earnings call. Meanwhile, Monex Group, the Japanese financial services company and owner of Coincheck, has applied to join Facebook’s Libra. Companies are being asked to fork out $10 million to join the consortium governing Libra.

Grant Thornton, the accounting, tax and advisory firm, says it has audited more than $10 billion in crypto during the first three months of 2019. The audits covered 40 different cryptocurrencies across more than 100 million addresses.

Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei claims China can compete with Facebook for market share by issuing its own digital currency. These comments come as Beijing is reportedly in the process of developing its own digital currency and as PBoC’s director, Wang Xin, said if Libra is mostly pegged to the U.S. dollar, China would be at a serious disadvantage.

Huobi’s Thailand-based subsidiary has sealed the country’s fifth official license to operate a fully-regulated digital asset exchange expected to launch in Q3 2019. 

The Croatian Post has partnered with Electrocoin to run a pilot program for a crypto-to-fiat exchange in the city of Zadar. The pilot service will enable crypto holders to convert Bitcoin, Ether, Stellar, XRP and EOS to cash at three post offices in Zadar in order to gauge market interest in the service, before spreading the service nationwide.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has been uncovered to be using a digital wallet app to turn tax revenue from domestic airports into BTC and other crypto’s that were then transferred to exchanges in Hong Kong, Hungary, Russia and China, according to Spanish newspaper ABC. These funds were converted and sent back to Venezuela.

Cryptocurrencies 

Bitcoin $9,811.70 USD (-2.80 percent) rewards shopping app Lolli has partnered with major American grocery chain Safeway to give customers 3.5% back in Bitcoin on all their purchases. Lolli CEO Alex Adelman said teaming up with “one of the most well-recognized food retailers in the United States will give people the ability to get involved in holding and owning Bitcoin — perhaps for the first time.” Meanwhile, a new political action committee (PAC) supporting presidential candidate Andrew Yang is accepting donations in Bitcoin via Lightning Network. This comes as BTC struggles to hold the $10k handle.

Brave Browser $0.236864 USD (0 percent) have announced users using the latest software release will be able to withdraw their BAT tokens after verifying their identity with crypto banking startup UpHold. After verification, users will also be able to buy additional BAT, other than what is earned by viewing Brave Ads.

Ripple’s $0.315477 USD (-1.03 percent) XRP-based cross-border payment solution xRapid posted record numbers in customer transactions in Q2 – increasing 170%. The company also had a 30% increase in the number of live xRapid partners in Q2 and “anticipates this momentum in transaction volume to continue as more partners and customers go live.”

– WN.com, Jamie Saarloos