Ezra Reguerra
Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of crypto trading platform Binance, shared plans to acquire two licenses that are critical for the firm's operations within the Philippines.
In a press briefing in Manila, the Binance CEO mentioned that the exchange is looking to obtain the virtual assets service provider (VASP) license, which allows the platform to legally facilitate the exchange of digital assets and the conversion of crypto to the Philippine peso.
Apart from the VASP, Zhao also noted that the trading platform is working to acquire an e-money issuer license from Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the country's central bank. This license will allow Binance to issue electronic money.
The Binance CEO talked about plans to expand the country’s operations within the country. According to Zhao, the firm is looking into forming partnerships and investing in banks that operate in the Philippines. He said:
"We are interested in investing in traditional financial service centers including payment service providers, banks [...] we want to help bring those businesses into the blockchain world."
Zhao highlighted that the exchange's decision to broaden its presence within the country is due to local developments in terms of payment services and the country’s advanced "understanding of crypto."
Zhao also noted his frustrations with Reuters’ recent report on the exchange. He said that the media outlet “just reported rumors and they didn't provide any supporting evidence.” He also urged the audience to not believe the rumors and assured them that the firm is not involved in illicit activities.
Two days ago, the exchange published a blog post to address the allegations made by Reuters. Within the post, the exchange fired back at the news platform, saying that the article was created to spread disinformation.
_____
Joseph Hall
There’s cause for celebration from the world’s largest cryptocurrency. The Lightning Network hit the 4,000 Bitcoin (BTC) public capacity milestone, meaning $120 million in value is ready for peer-to-peer payments.
The Lightning Network first broke the 1,000 BTC barrier in August 2020 and the 2,000 BTC barrier in July 2021. The capacity has doubled in the space of 18 months.
CoinCorner CEO Daniel Scott told Cointelegraph that “we had slow and steady growth with Lightning capacity to begin, but since Jan[uary] 2021, the uptick has been strong.”
Danny Brewster, CEO of United Kingdom-based Bitcoin exchange Fast Bitcoins told Cointelegraph that Lightning Network capacity “likely passed 4K a long time ago with private channel metrics not being publicly available.”
“With that being said, the constant growth has been a great start for the Lightning Network and I foresee it continuing into the future, as long as all stakeholders, from developers to entrepreneurs building businesses continue to push forward.”
Lead on-chain analyst for Glassnode, James Check, told Cointelegraph, “The expansion of Bitcoin's Lightning Network appears to be transitioning out of the "reckless" phase, and into proper experimentation by early adopters.”
“As wallet designs and user experience improve, more kinks can be worked out, and the network will mature. The persistent growth of public Lightning capacity and channel count is a reflection of this vote of growing confidence and growing utilization,” he said.
Scott agreed, sharing that the positive trend is likely to continue “as more companies adopt Lightning and we see more use cases come to fruition.”
“The influence of El Salvador adopting Bitcoin seems to have been an inflection point for Lightning, giving it confidence and proving a real-world use case.”
According to data from 1ML, the average and median transaction cost for sending Satoshis (the smallest denomination of a Bitcoin) over the Lightning is well under $0.01, proving it packs a punch as payment technology.
Brewster concludes, it’s an “awesome start but a long way to go. It really is still early!”
_____
Prashant Jha
International payment processing giant Mastercard is expanding its payment network for nonfungible token (NFT) markets and Web3.
The financial service provider announced that it has been working on expanding their payment networks to NFTs over the past year. The firm has partnered with a number of leading NFT marketplaces to allow 2.9 billion cardholders to directly make NFT purchases without buying crypto first.
Currently, users need to buy crypto to bid on and buy NFTs. However, with the latest Mastercard partnership, billions of cardholders can now bypass the process of buying a transferring crypto to NFT marketplaces. The firm said:
“These integrations are designed to make crypto more accessible and help the NFT ecosystem keep growing, innovating and bringing in more fans.”
Mastercard stated that it has partnered with multiple NFT marketplaces namely Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox (SAND), Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway and Web3 infrastructure provider MoonPay.
The NFT card-purchase service was first launched in January this year in a partnership with Coinbase, allowing users to usbuy NFTs directly by using credit cards.
The decision to expand its payment network to the rapidly growing NFT ecosystem was also based on the company’s latest survey of 35,000 respondents from 40 countries, which showed that 45% of the consumers have either bought an NFT or are considering doing so. Fifty percent of the surveyed consumers also showed interest in getting more flexible options to make purchases.
The firm claimed they are also working on offering world-class security to customers with its latest payment option, similar to “when making transactions in a store or online with a Mastercard card.”
The payment processing giant has shown keen interest in the crypto and NFT markets over the past couple of years. Earlier in April this year, Mastercard filed for 15 metaverse and NFT-related trademarks.
The top two mainstream payment processing companies, Visa and Mastercard, have come a long way from their early days of blocking crypto transactions on their network, and are currently competing to become leading financial services providers in the decentralized space. Visa launched an immersion program back in March to allow creators to build their business with NFTs
_____
This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.
