Crypto Flipsider News – Coinbase BlackRock Deal; Instagram Expands NFT Feature; Circle Investments; Binance-MasterCard Partnership; Lido Treasury Bid

Crypto Flipsider News – Coinbase BlackRock Deal; Instagram Expands NFT Feature; Circle Investments; Binance-MasterCard Partnership; Lido Treasury Bid

Read in the Digest:

• Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) partners with BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) for institutional client crypto services – COIN spikes.

• Instagram adds Flow NFTs and expands support for 100 countries – FLOW spikes.

• Circle invests in Nomad and Slope – USDC could play a major role in hard forks: Buterin.

• Binance and MasterCard partner to launch prepaid card in Argentina.

• Dragonfly capital wins bid to buy 1% of LDO tokens from Lido treasury.

Coinbase Partners with BlackRock for Institutional Clients’ Crypto Services, COIN Spikes

Coinbase,America’s biggest crypto exchange, is partnering with BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager. The deal will provide institutional clients of BlackRock’s investment management platform Alladin with access to digital currencies.

The Aladdin investment management platform will be integrated with ‘Coinbase Prime’, enabling institutional clients to access its crypto trading, custody, prime brokerage, and reporting capabilities.

Coinbase announced that bitcoin would be the first digital asset offered to clients on Aladdin–a platform that has over 200 institutional users, including insurers, pensions, corporations, asset managers, banks, and official institutions.

Following the announcement, the share price of the publicly traded Coinbase Global (COIN) jumped more than 31% on Thursday, August 4th, reaching as high as $108.9. However, COIN has since retraced, and now trades at $88.9 per share at the time of writing, but still maintains an increase of +10.01%.

Flipsider:

• The prolonged downtrend in its shares price downtrend paired with Coinbase’s regulatory woes in 2022 saw its third largest investor, Ark Invest, sell off over 1.41 million COIN shares.

Why You Should Care

Despite the prolonged crypto winter of 2022, the Coinbase-BlackRock partnership demonstrates the increasing willingness of traditional investors to adopt crypto.

Instagram Adds Flow NFTs and Expands Support for 100 Countries – FLOW Spikes

Three months after launching the pilot test for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Instagram, its parent company Meta, has announced the program’s international expansion into 100 countries in Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and the Americas.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that a select number of users in these regions would now be able to share their NFTs on Instagram. Meta also announced that Coinbase Wallet and Dapper Wallet would now accepted as compatible third-party wallets.

Having previously supported only Ethereum-based NFTs, Meta has unveiled the integration of NFTs created on the Flow blockchain to Instagram. The FLOW token has been undergoing a pump in light of the news, gaining more than 50% in value since the announcement was made. Flow is trading at $2.80, at the time of writing, after opening Thursday at $1.84.

The 24 hour price chart for Flow (FLOW). Source: CoinMarketCap

Flipsider:

• Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin opines that Meta’s attempt at a Metaverse will “misfire” because “it’s far too early to know what people actually want.”

Why You Should Care

The increasing levels of corporate interest in the metaverse and Web 3.0 is a signal of the wave of change coming to the world’s most powerful social media platforms.

Circle Invests in Nomad and Slope – USDC Could Play a Major Role in Hard Forks: Buterin

Circle Internet Financial, the venture-capital arm of the USDC stablecoin-issuer, was revealed to have invested in Nomad and Slope⁠—both projects to have fallen victim to respective exploits of $190 million and $8 million this week.

Circle has built a reputation for investing in early-stage blockchain projects and companies. Circle backed the $8 million Series A funding of Slope Finance in February, and participated in the $22.4 million seed round for Nomad in April.

Despite its recent struggles, Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s Co-Founder, said at the ‘BUIDL Asia’ conference in Seoul that he believes stablecoins like USDC and USDT could become “a significant decider in future contentious hard forks”.

Buterin estimates that, in the future, when these stablecoins hold over $100 billion, blockchain protocols they favor could hold more “respect” in the industry. However, Buterin doesn’t see that happening with Ethereum’s ‘Merge’.

Flipsider:

• According to a Circle spokesperson, the venture-capital arm’s relationship with Slope and Nomad did not have an adverse effect on the company, which plans to go public later this year.

Why You Should Care

Stablecoins like USDC have remained in the spotlight due to their rapid growth and importance to the broader crypto market.

Binance and Masterard Partner To Launch Prepaid Card in Argentina

The world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, is teaming up with multinational financial services company Mastercard (NYSE:MA) to launch a prepaid cryptocurrency card in Argentina as a means of increasing the use of crypto in everyday purchases.

In an announcement made on Thursday, August 4th, Binance revealed that customers with valid national IDs would be able to access the new card, which enabled them to make purchases with BTC, BNB, and other cryptos. The service will also allow customers to make ATM withdrawals in fiat at over 90 million Mastercard merchants, both in-store and online.

Using the card, crypto will be converted to fiat currency in real-time at the point of purchase, while also being able to provide up up to 8% in crypto cashback for eligible purchases. No fees will be imposed on cash withdrawals from ATMs.

Binance cardholders can manage their cards through the Binance App and website card dashboard. The app aslo enables users to access other features like transaction history and customer support.

Flipsider:

• Binance Investigations Officer Tigran Gambaryan alleges that it cost the exchange billions in revenue to meet anti-money-laundering (AML) measures and remove sanctioned accounts.

Why You Should Care

The Binance Card is part of the company’s ongoing efforts to tangibly improve global cryptocurrency adoption.

Dragonfly Capital Wins Bid to Buy 1% of LDO Tokens from Lido Treasury

The Lido decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), the governance body behind Lido Finance, has voted almost unanimously in favor of approving the sale of 10 million LDO tokens, roughly $25 million worth of its treasury tokens, to venture capital firm Dragonfly Capital.

Snapshots from the voting page show that 99.09% of community members staked a collective 60 million LDO to vote in support of the proposal, while just 0.91% of the community used 553,000 LDO to oppose the proposal.

Dragonfly has committed to a 5% premium, plus a purchase price based on a time-weighted average(TWAP). The adjusted proposal also includes a one-year lock-up period before the tokens turn liquid.

Voting took place between July 28th and August 4th. in the next stage of proceedings, there will be an on-chain vote on DAO platform Aragon. Tom Schmidt of Dragonfly confirmed that the deal will continue, stating that the firm is “excited to proceed with the proposal.”

Flipsider:

• The vote follows in the footsteps of other high-profile decisions, such as Lido’s consideration to grant voting rights to staked ETH (stETH) and LDO holders.

Why You Should Care

Despite the proposal including an option for Dragonfly Capital to exit the deal if the token price exceeds $2.25 at a time when LDO is trading above $2.6, Dragonfly remains committed to the deal.

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