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Stripe is All Set to Explore the Possibility of a Public Offering

Posted on by Subh Rath

According to reports, Stripe, a company that processes online payments, is considering going public within the next 12 months.

According to an article published by The Wall Street Journal on January 26th, Stripe has retained the services of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase to advise on the viability and timing of a public-market launch. If Stripe doesn’t go public or enable employees to sell shares in a private deal, an insider told the Journal, the company’s executives will.

Since Stripe doesn’t require additional funding, the company’s management is reportedly not interested in a typical initial public offering. Instead, the business is likely to go the direct listing route. Assuming this were to happen, Stripe would list its current stock on a public exchange and let the market determine the price.

Stripes Journey in the Crypto World: 

Stripe is a payment processing solution provider established in 2009 by Irish businessmen John and Patric Collison. Stripe’s clients include several of the most prominent internet companies, such as Shopify and Instacart. In 2021, the business successfully raised $600 million at a valuation of $95.00 billion. Investors in the company included the National Treasury Management Agency of Ireland, Fidelity Investments, and the insurance companies Allianz and AXA.

Since at least 2014, Stripe’s relationship with digital assets has been a roller coaster ride full of ups and downs. In 2015, the business announced it would support Bitcoin, enabling customers to transfer and receive digital currency like traditional currencies. After three years of operation, the Bitcoin payment services offered by Stripe will be discontinued in 2018. The company’s founders have stated that they believe bitcoin is better suited as an asset than a method of exchange.

During the cryptocurrency boom of 2021, the company returned to the market with a fresh concentration on developing blockchain-based payment systems. The year after, Stripe announced that it would enable fiat currency payments for cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens. Thanks to new application programming interfaces, businesses can now utilize Stripe to accept payments in fiat currency for cryptocurrencies.

Previously in 2021, Stripe also launched a new payout program that would allow selecting content providers to withdraw earnings denominated in USD Coin.

Now with its consistent efforts to make a prominent place in the Web3 world by becoming the next generation of payments, as stated by Cointelegraph in a tweet, Stripe has certainly come a long way.

Australia Has Become the 3rd Country Globally to Install the Most Crypto ATMs

Posted on by Subh Rath

Did you hear? Australia has more crypto ATMs than many other countries, putting it in the top three worldwide despite the bear market and record-low dynamics of new Bitcoin ATM installations. Compared to the US and Canada, the Australians moved up to fourth place in the opening days of January; since then, 16 additional machines have been set up to propel the country to 3rd place globally.

According to the statistics provided by Coinatmradar, Australia currently has 234 crypto ATMs, which places the nation in third place internationally after the United States and Canada regarding the number of these machines. In just three weeks, it outpaced Spain, which has 222 cryptocurrency ATMs around the country.

It’s about dynamics: Australia installed 99 cryptocurrency ATMs in just the last three months of 2022, which is almost half of the country’s machines. And since the beginning of the year, Australia has added 16 new ATMs, while Spain has shed four of them, and El Salvador, which currently sits in fifth place globally, has not reported the addition of a single new ATM.

In general, the number of cryptocurrency ATMs in Australia, Spain, and El Salvador combined could not come close to matching the large number of ATMs in the United States. The United States is home to 33,387 cryptocurrency ATMs, which account for 86.9% of all machines worldwide. The United States and Canada, which have 2,556 cryptocurrency ATMs, control a staggering 94.4% of the global total.

The First Crypto ATM in Australia: 

The installation of cryptocurrency ATMs slowed dramatically in 2022 due to the bear market, geopolitical concerns, and worldwide inflation that year. Between July and December of 2022, the number of Bitcoin ATMs worldwide decreased from 4,169 to only 94.

In January, the world’s first Bitcoin ATM with Lightning Network capabilities was installed in Coolangatta, Australia. Like other crypto ATMs, this one lets you buy Bitcoin in very small increments, but with the added benefit of lightning-fast transactions and reduced wait times.

Stay tuned for more crypto-related news!

Cosmos-Based DeFi Protocol Quasar Raises $5.4M

Posted on by Subh Rath

In the wake of the multibillion-dollar FTX crypto exchange’s demise, the potential of decentralized financial systems has once again come under scrutiny. Despite efforts to solve the issue of fragmentation across different blockchains, decentralized finance (DeFi) is still in its early stages of development.

With a $70 million valuation, Shima Capital led a $5.4 million investment round for Quasar Finance, a decentralized asset management protocol that employs the Inter Blockchain Communication (IBC) technology published by the Cosmos blockchain ecosystem. To facilitate token and data transfers between chains, the protocol enables users to construct and join vaults.

Additional Investments: 

In addition to CIB and Osmosis’s co-founder Sunny Aggarwal, the round featured investments from Polychain Capital, Blockchain Capital, HASH Capital, and CIB.

According to a press statement given to CoinDesk, the funds would be used for “product development and scaling out the team.”

What’s More? 

Quasar intends to provide structured investment solutions for DeFi customers, and they will begin with an automatic rebalancing index of the Cosmos network that allows for the streaming of assets. On February 10, following several months of internal testing, Quasar will launch its public testnet.

Quasar’s innovative approach to creating an approachable DeFi experience while still adhering to industry best practices around security and usability standards set forth by leading blockchain projects like Cosmos Network itself has been validated by a recent investment from Pantera Capital, making it an attractive proposition not only for institutional investors but also for individual users who are interested in exploring the new possibilities offered by this rapidly evolving space. With this team’s dedication to developing novel solutions, the future may bring about a dramatic shift in the way people engage with digital assets.

Quasar Overview:

Quasar is a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol developed on top of the Cosmos Network, an open-source blockchain project meant to allow multiple blockchains within a single ecosystem to communicate with one another. The platform provides users with access to a variety of financial services, including lending, borrowing, asset management, and tokenization, all through a single unified interface powered by smart contracts operating on Cosmos’ Tendermint consensus engine. It also offers liquidity mining opportunities via staking rewards paid out in QSR tokens, which can then be used to access additional features such as yield farming or trading against other cryptocurrencies listed on exchanges linked via IBC cross-chain bridges with the Ethereum or Binance Smart Chain networks.

Metaverse to Reach a $5T Value by 2030

Posted on by Subh Rath

Even while the 2022 bear market dampened enthusiasm for new crypto sub-ecosystems like NFTs, the metaverse is still set up for sustainable long-term disruption. According to research by McKinsey & Company, the metaverse could create up to $5 trillion in value by 2030 due to the wide variety of consumer and business-centric use cases it serves.

According to the findings, four types of technologies are necessary for the metaverse to reach its full potential: devices (augmented reality/virtual reality, sensors, haptics, and peripherals); interoperability and open standards; facilitating platforms; and development tools. On the other side, the success of the metaverse is evaluated by how well it creates exceptional experiences for its customers, end-users, and citizens.

Metaverse programs centered on marketing, learning, and virtual meetings have seen the most widespread adoption across industries. According to a McKinsey poll of senior executives conducted in April, most efforts centered on the metaverse have received low to medium uptake.

Metaverse Overview: 

Neal Stephenson, a science-fiction writer, created the phrase “metaverse” in 1992. It is defined as “the concept of a fully immersive virtual environment where people assemble to socialize, play, and work.” It is a simulated digital environment that blends the ideas of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), blockchain, and social media to create places for rich user interaction that mimic the real world. The concept of the metaverse, recently made public by Facebook’s rebranding as Meta will transform how we interact with the universe. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, declared that “the next generation of the internet is metaverse,” and that existing social media will be included in this next wave.

Because the metaverse is based on blockchain technology, any goods you own or create are one-of-a-kind and cannot be duplicated or stolen. Blockchain technology, like art, ensures that different digital items sold in the metaverse are one-of-a-kind. Furthermore, cryptocurrencies power the metaverse; everything is bought and sold using various types of cryptocurrency. NFTs are one of the most commonly used terms in the metaverse. Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are cryptographic tokens that are one-of-a-kind and cannot be reproduced on a blockchain.

Australia Becomes the Fourth-Largest Crypto ATM Hub after Overtaking El Salvador

Posted on by Subh Rath

At the start of 2023, 219 Bitcoin (BTC) ATMs were dispersed across Australia. At the same time, there were 68 cryptocurrency ATMs in the Melbourne and Sydney metropolitan areas (61 ATMs). Hence, banks in Australia are increasingly outfitting their ATMs to accept Bitcoin (BTC).

According to CoinATMRadar, 113 new bitcoin ATMs have been installed around Australia in the previous three months. In fact, in December alone, this country built 49 ATMs.

Australia Overtaking El Salvador with More Bitcoin ATMs:

El Salvador, the first country that legalized Bitcoin, has now fallen another rank in total crypto ATM installations, with Australia reporting 216 ATMs as we approach 2023, according to Cointelegraph.

According to Cointelegraph, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has decided to install more than 200 bitcoin ATMs nationwide to make Bitcoin legal tender. El Salvador was the third-largest hub for bitcoin ATMs in September 2021, behind the United States and Canada. Still, in 2022, Spain and Australia surpassed El Salvador’s ATM density.

Other Countries Take on Crypto ATMs:

After rapidly constructing 215 cryptocurrency ATMs in October 2022, Spain jumped to third place. So now, there are 226 Bitcoin ATMs in operation around the country, and this trend seems to continue.

Moreover, according to data compiled by Cointelegraph, Spain’s 215 cryptocurrency ATMs make it the third most prolific country for this payment method globally. Despite this, Spain has maintained its installation pace and has 226 crypto ATMs available to the public as of this writing. 

Likewise, Australia’s progress in the following months meant that El Salvador’s brief reign as the fourth-largest center for crypto ATMs was short-lived.

To promote the use of its own central bank digital currency (CBDC), the eNaira, the government of Nigeria limited weekly ATM cash withdrawals to $225 (100,000 nairas).

Currently, 0.5% of all Bitcoin ATMs are located in El Salvador, with 0.6% each in Spain and Australia. Canada, however, remains the industry leader, with 2,558 ATMs accounting for 6.6% of the global Bitcoin ATM market. Contrarily, America is home to 81% of all Bitcoin ATMs.

Conclusion:

By the beginning of 2023, 38,602 ATMs were operating globally, with 6,071 installed in 2022. This increase in crypto ATMs internationally reflects the global expansion and adoption of the installation and use of BTC and Crypto ATMs – a growth approach for Crypto that was long awaited!