David Attlee
Multinational fast food chain McDonald’s started to accept Bitcoin (BTC) as a payment method in the 63,000-populated city of Lugano in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland, which is becoming a hotspot for crypto adoption in Western Europe.
A one-minute video of ordering food on McDonald’s digital kiosk and then paying for it at the regular register with the help of a mobile app was uploaded on Twitter by Bitcoin Magazine on Oct. 3. The Tether (USDT) logo could be spotted next to the Bitcoin symbol on the credit cash machine, which is not surprising, as in March 2022 the city of Lugano announced it would accept Bitcoin, Tether and the LVGA token as a legal tender.
On March 3, 2022, the city signed a memorandum of understanding with Tether Operations Limited, launching the so-called “Plan B.” According to this plan, Tether has created two funds — the first one is a $106 million, or 100 million Swiss francs, investment pool for crypto startups, and the second is around $3 million, or 3 million Swiss francs, attempt to encourage the adoption of crypto for shops and businesses across the city.
In addition to allowing Lugano residents to pay their taxes using crypto, the project will extend payments to parking tickets, public services and tuition fees for students. More than 200 shops and businesses in the area are also expected to accept crypto payments for goods and services.
Speaking to Cointelegraph in June, Paolo Ardoino, chief technology officer of Tether and Bitfinex, claimed that Plan B “is going great,” announcing a two-week educational activity on blockchain and cryptocurrencies in the city.
In September 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to allow using Bitcoin as a legal tender. Since that time, McDonald’s has been accepting Bitcoin at all its 19 outlets in the country.
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Savannah Fortis
This year’s 64th Latin Grammy Awards will have its first-ever nonfungible token (NFT) collection after the Latin Recording Academy signed a three-year contract for award show-related NFTs.
The aforementioned partnership is between the Latin Recording Academy, which is behind the Latin Grammys, and OneOf, a Web3 music platform. Each collection, which will lead up to that year’s award show, will include drops highlighting Latin music.
According to Manuel Abud, the CEO of the Latin Recording Academy, this is a new form of musical innovation and a way for fans to “own a piece of the Latin GRAMMYs:”
“The Latin Recording Academy is committed to exploring innovative, new ways to celebrate excellence in Latin music and to connect music to other art forms in our culture, including visual and digital arts.”
The Latin Grammy Awards NFTs will drop throughout October in the lead-up to the award show on Nov. 18.
This comes after OneOf’s partnership with the Grammy Awards, in which it also planned a three-year NFT release plan. The first collection was released coinciding with the 64th Grammys, for which Binance was the official crypto exchange partner.
The Grammys are not the first major award show with Web3 integrations. Earlier this year the MTV Video Music Awards announced its newest award category of “Best Metaverse Performance.”
Additionally, music industry giants have been rapidly adopting Web3 technologies to upgrade their businesses. Sony Music filed a trademark application for NFT-authenticated music on Aug. 30 of this year.
Musicians have been utilizing the technology to release NFT singles or to improve music rights and licensing. Moreover, NFTs officially became recognized as a chart-eligible format, with musicians such as Muse taking advantage of the development.
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Savannah Fortis
The financial service provider Mastercard launched a new crypto service related to risk management on Oct. 3. Mastercard’s new service, Crypto Secure, is aimed to help banks find and prevent fraud on crypto merchant platforms.
Crypto Secure combines the usage of artificial intelligence, blockchain data and public records of crypto transactions, along with other sources, to determine crime-related risks of crypto exchanges within the Mastercard network.
Mastercard already has a similar service with fiat currency transactions available to banks.
The president of cyber and intelligence business for Mastercard, Ajay Bhalla, said this development helps its partners stay compliant with local regulations when fighting fraud in the crypto space:
“The idea is that the kind of trust we provide for digital commerce transactions, we want to be able to provide the same kind of trust to digital asset transactions for consumers, banks and merchants.”
Banks and other Mastercard card issuers that use Crypto Secure will see color-coded risk ratings of crypto merchants, which represent the risk of suspicious or fraudulent activity connected to said merchant.
Crypto Secure is run by CipherTrace, a California-based startup for blockchain security that was acquired by Mastercard the previous year.
While the tool doesn’t make judgements for banks it provides another level of advisory on crypto transactions. Mastercard currently has around 2,400 crypto exchanges within its network.
Crypto payments are becoming more mainstream thanks to centralized payment processors like Visa and Mastercard. Last year Visa reported over $1 billion in crypto spending, while Mastercard has recently created new crypto payment options in countries such as Argentina and Indonesia.
However, as crypto continues to enter the public eye so does any fraud and crime related to the industry. According to Chainalysis data, 2021 marked a new all-time high in crypto crime with fraudulent wallet addresses receiving $14 billion.
In Australia, in 2022, investors lost $242 million to investment and crypto-related scams. While some executives have recently related crypto to a Ponzi scheme, others are calling on social media giants to be aware of crypto scams linked to their platforms.
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This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.
