PayPal & Visa to enable crypto payments at 100 million merchants
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley to offer crypto plus more highlights this week
PayPal launch crypto payments, Goldman Sachs to offer bitcoin, Morgan Stanley files for bitcoin exposure, Visa to allow payment settlements using USDC, BlackRock buys bitcoin futures
The total crypto market cap is $1.9T, down 2.2% over the last 24 hours
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Quick Take:
PayPal to enable crypto payments at 29 million merchants
Goldman Sachs to offer bitcoin and other digital assets
Morgan Stanley files for Bitcoin exposure
Visa to allow payment settlements using USDC
BlackRock fund bought bitcoin futures in January
“Tether’s reserves fully backed” says assurance report
Norwegian billionaire buys Bitcoin
Bitcoin has its best Q1 performance since 2013
What can we expect in Q2 this year?
PayPal to enable crypto payments at 29 million merchants worldwide
PayPal has launched a crypto checkout service to allow customers to use crypto such as bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash and litecoin to pay at millions of its online merchants globally.
The service, which PayPal revealed it was working on late last year, will be available at all of its 29 million merchants in the coming months, the company said.
PayPal CEO Dan Schulman had this to say on the adoption of crypto:
“We think its a transitional point where crypto moves from being an asset class that you buy, hold and or sell to now becoming a legitimate funding source to make transactions in the real world at millions of [PayPal] merchants.”
Goldman Sachs to offer bitcoin and other digital assets to wealth management clients
Goldman Sachs announced this week that they are looking at offering a “full spectrum” of investments in bitcoin and digital assets, “whether that’s through the physical bitcoin, derivatives or traditional investment vehicles.”
Goldman's private wealth management business mostly targets individuals, families and endowments with at least $25 million to invest.
Mary Rich, Head of Digital Assets at Goldman Sachs said: "We're still in the very nascent stages of this ecosystem; no one knows exactly how it will evolve or what shape it will be. But I think it's fairly safe to expect it will be part of our future."
Visa moves to allow payment settlements using USD Coin on the Ethereum blockchain
Visa said on Monday it will allow the use of the stablecoin USD Coin to settle transactions on its payment network.
Visa's latest step, which will use the Ethereum blockchain, strips out the need to convert digital coin into traditional money in order for the transaction to be settled.
On Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast, CEO Al Kelly revealed last week that the payments giant is also working on ways to support Bitcoin using Visa credentials “at any of the 70 million places around the world where Visa is accepted.”
Bitcoin just had its best Q1 performance since 2013, what’s next?
Bitcoin closed the quarter on its best Q1 performance since 2013, having been in the green for 6 consecutive months and spending 30 days above $50,000.
The first quarter of 2021 has no doubt been one of the most exciting in bitcoin’s history, drawing in billionaires, institutional investors, corporations and major fintech players such as PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard.
Looking at the table above, it is evident that Q2 has historically been the best quarter for Bitcoin with an average return of 52.9%. In Q2, we could see even higher adoption levels for Bitcoin and fresh all time highs if this interest continues.
In Q2, clients of two of the world’s largest investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, will have access to the benchmark crypto through a full spectrum of bitcoin investment vehicles. Goldman’s private wealth management business mostly targets individuals, families and endowments with at least $25 million to invest.
Morgan Stanley also said in a regulatory filing today that a number of its institutional funds may gain exposure to bitcoin in the form of cash-settled futures or Grayscale's Bitcoin Trust.
The filing also discussed the level at which each fund could gain exposure, suggesting as much as 25% of their respective assets could be put towards bitcoin products.
There is certainly a lot to look forward to heading in to this next quarter.
More highlights:
“Tether’s Reserves Fully Backed” says Tether assurance report
CME Group to launch new Micro Bitcoin futures contract
Dapper Labs announce $305M funding round led by Michael Jordan
Norwegian billionaire Øystein Stray Spetalen has bought Bitcoin
FTX becomes the official sponsor of the Miami Heat arena
BlackRock fund bought bitcoin futures in January
NFT marketplace OpenSea plans to integrate Layer 2 protocol
You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin
That's it, you’re up-to-date
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