Poorer Americans Are More Likely to Use Crypto, GameStop's Ethereum Wallet, eBay's NFTs + 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.
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Adoption news
Per a US Federal Reserve report, in 2021, most surveyed US adults using cryptos did so for investment purposes – 12% held or used cryptos in the prior year, 11% held crypto as an investment, 2% said that they used crypto to buy something / make a payment, and 1% used it to send money to friends or family. Among these transactional users of cryptocurrencies, 13% did not have a bank account. Also, 27% of transactional crypto users did not have a credit card, compared with 17% of non-users without a credit card. Nearly 6 in 10 adults who used crypto for transactions had an income of less than USD 50,000. Those who held crypto for investment purposes only were disproportionately high-income, almost always had a traditional banking relationship, and typically had other retirement savings.
Gaming retail chain GameStop announced the launch of their self-custodial Ethereum (ETH) Wallet, which has direct Ethereum Layer 2 integration, for what they say are quicker and cheaper transactions. The launch is still in beta.
A subsidiary of the multinational bank Standard Chartered and a cryptoasset custodian for institutional investors, Zodia Custody, announced it has integrated with crypto technology provider Fireblocks. This will enable Zodia’s customers to access the Fireblocks Network with liquidity partners, trading venues, lending desks, and counterparties.
The Filecoin Foundation, the group behind the decentralized storage network Filecoin (FIL), and aerospace company Lockheed Martin announced a partnership to develop a program for deploying the decentralized protocol Interplanetary File System (IPFS) in space. The IPFS decentralized storage model is meant to enable more efficient data transfer and communication in space, as well as alleviate burdens for the amount of onboard storage capacity for spacecraft, they said.
Swiss luxury watchmaker TAG Heuer announced their partnership with crypto payments provider BitPay, adding that they now accept 12 different cryptoassets as payment options.
NFTs news
E-commerce giant eBay announced a partnership with NFT platform OneOf and the launch of a series of NFTs. The series includes 13 limited-edition digital collectibles as green, gold, platinum, and diamond tier NFTs, with up to 299 editions each in the green tier, to 15 editions in the diamond tier. Throughout 2022, additional drops of OneOf's sports legends NFT series will take place in partnership with eBay, they added.
Economics news
The European Central Bank might start raising interest rates in July and is "likely to be in a position to exit negative interest rates by the end of the third quarter," President Christine Lagarde said.
Investments news
Finance company Sumitomo Mitsui Trust will set up a company this year to provide digital asset custody services, including crypto and NFTs, for institutional investors, per Nikkei. It will have initial capital of JPY 300m (USD 2.35m) and expects to receive enough capital from other investors to expand its capital base to JPY 10bn (USD 78.4m).
Mining news
Bitcoin (BTC) mining company Bit Digital announced last week that their substation at the Niagara Falls, New York, USA facility was damaged by an explosion and subsequent fire, believed to be caused by faulty equipment, and power was cut off to around 2,515 Bitcoin miners and around 710 Ethereum miners that had been operating at the site. Additionally, their hosting partner Digihost told them that a cut in power to its North Tonawanda, NY, USA site had resulted in approximately 1,580 of their miners going offline, citing the need for additional approvals from the power authorities.
Security news
Digital artist and popular non-fungible token (NFT) creator Mike Winkelmann, also known as Beeple, saw his Twitter account hacked as part of a phishing scam, per Harry Denley, security analyst of crypto wallet MetaMask. Beeple later tweeted that he had regained control of his account and reminded his followers that “anything too good to be true IS A F*CKING SCAM.”
