Category: Payments

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Cryptocurrencies Investing Payments

Startup Pays Contractor In Crypto, Then Requests It To Be Returned After It Mooned

A freelancer who was paid in cryptocurrency in August 2020 was recently left stumped by the CEO of a startup he had worked for, who requested he return the crypto and invoice the company in USD at the original rate.

Return Sevenfold Gains

According to the freelancer – who went by the name Crypto Confused when writing to The Moneyist, a column dedicated to financial advice – his advertising and market research activities for the company were billed in an unspecified cryptocurrency that has since grown by 700%.

He has since been contacted by the CEO of the small company who contracted his services, stating that since his services had not brought the company any direct revenue, he should return the cryptocurrency and rebill the company in USD.

According to Crypto Confused, the company was still struggling to find clients despite the services he and others provided.

“Please note that there have been several other people trying to sell the company’s solutions. It is a startup and so far, they are still trying to generate their first dollar in sales. The purpose of the contract was to generate sales and it included a commission component, but the understanding was that I would bill hourly for cold calling and emailing people, generating proposals, setting up meetings, participating in and leading pitches, etc., with the goal of generating revenue.”

In the letter to The Moneyist, he stated that he has known the CEO in question professionally for years, and this wasn’t the first time he had tried to change the terms of a job.

Crypto Confused asked for advice on how to respond to the situation – and was advised to not send back a single satoshi.

“No. Alas, no. No, thank you. Absolutely not. Ask me again in 2121.”

Leaving aside the possible legal ramifications of the CEO’s laughable request, it’s worth asking: would he have written the same email if crypto had tanked instead?

Although the contract with the unnamed company did state that payments could be made either in USD or in cryptocurrency, at the end of the day payment was made in crypto – and there’s no reason to take a net loss due to terms that the employer probably regrets now. A contract is a contract is a contract.

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Bitcoin Cryptocurrencies Investing Payments

Bitcoin Price Surging In Argentina As Inflation Reaches 42.6 Percent

Bitcoin prices are surging in Argentina and latin-america, as inflation continues to rise in Agentina since 2014.

The Argentine Peso hasn’t been doing well as the currency has been going through inflationary spikes with brief returns back and forth for years. Now the latin-amricans are turning to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to combat the loss of purchasing power.

Argentina Government Laws Limiting Savings In USD

It’s common practice in Argentina to keep savings in USD – but the government limits purchases of USD to $200 a month, which is sending many looking for alternative ways of storing value – and for many in South America, the answer is crypto.

According to Marcos Zocaro – an Argentinian expert in digital assets said that “older clients who used to be afraid of making a fixed deposit with a bank but are buying cryptocurrency without fear of risk”.

And according to Maximiliano Hinz – the director of Binance South America “The number of user accounts for investing in ‘cryptos’ has multiplied by ten in Argentina since 2020”.

The cryptocurrencies of choice are not limited to BTC and ETH either – many Argentines are also buying up stablecoins such as USDT and DAI.

Latin American Companies Buying Bitcoin

We have also recently seen the Biggest Latin American E-commerce Firm MercadoLibre Bought $7.8 Million Bitcoin in Q1 as more companies add Bitcoin to thier balance sheets.

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Crypto News Payments

eBay is Considering Accepting Cryptocurrency as Payment Option

eBay is Considering Accepting Cryptocurrencies as a Payment Option

One of the world’s leading e-commerce giants eBay is now considering accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a payment option. Reuters reported the new development on Monday, citing the Chief Executive Officer, Jamie Lannone.

eBay is Open to Accepting Crypto Payments

While speaking with CNBC, the CEO of the online shopping platform disclosed that the company was considering adding new payment options for its millions of customers. Among other payment options, the company enlisted digital currencies as a potential payment method.

This is an important development for the cryptocurrency space, given eBay’s popularity and user base. As of mid-2019, the e-commerce platforms recorded over 182 million users worldwide. Supporting cryptocurrency as a payment method creates more room for mainstream adoption of digital currencies. This will also add to the list of major e-commerce platforms where users can pay for items using their cryptocurrencies.

In addition to supporting cryptos, Lannone also disclosed in the interview that the e-commerce company is also considering “ways to get into the business of non-fungible tokens (NFTs)”.

More Platforms to Pay With Cryptocurrency

eBay news today comes some days after the online payment giant, PayPal, announced that its users can now check out from supported shops with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. In a separate development, Dan Schulman, the CEO of PayPal, admitted to a rapidly-growing demand for cryptocurrencies. He said the “demand on the crypto side has been multiple-fold to what we initially expected”.

In Australia, more companies are increasingly supporting cryptocurrencies as a payment method for their customers. Some of the Aussie companies accepting crypto payment include the NBN Internet RSP Launtel, Queensland Solar and Lighting, Dream PC Australia, Pet Parlour Australian Online Pet Shop, and so on.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Payments

Bitcoin’s First Major Coding Upgrade in 4 Years “Taproot” Explained

The proposed Bitcoin protocol upgrade is the biggest in years and will include updates to Bitcoin smart contracts, scalability and privacy.

Why Is The Taproot Update Important?

Taproot is a Bitcoin softfork that will:

  • Upgrade Bitcoins core cryptography
  • Improve privacy and transaction fees
  • Reform Bitcoin’s scripting language

In order to complete a Bitcoin transaction, you need to prove that you know the private key connected to a public key. A digital signature is used to prove that you know the private key without revealing it. Some transactions could have multiple parties with specific conditions to pay out the Bitcoin.

A new signature system is going to be added, and simply put the introduction of Schnorr signatures allows for multiple signatures to be merged into a new one.

This makes the process more efficient and cheaper for transactions that require multiple signatures it. When the transaction processing capacity per second increases, it reduces the fees for each transaction. Another benefit is added privacy since you can’t see how many participants there were in the transaction.

In order to implement these new transactions, the update adds new commands in the underlying programming language. These new scripts are used to verify Taproot spends and Schnorr signatures, and they are collectively known as Tapscript. This implementation adds smart contract flexibility which can lead to the development of smart contracts on the Bitcoin protocol.

Upgrades Are A Community Process

The Bitcoin community is hoping to activate Taproot in the near future, although its activation path is still unclear.

If 90% of the blocks mined during this period include the Taproot signal bit (or any of the other roughly two week difficulty periods that occur between now and the August 11 timeout), then the upgrade is “locked in” for activation in November of this year.

This version is compatible with Bitcoin Core up to a point. If all miners signal, Taproot activates network-wide with no problems, but if they don’t, then there is a “flag day” for mandatory activation set in October of 2022. You can see the nodes that have signaled that they are running the Taproot softfork on taproot.watch.

For a more detailed explanation here is a video of Pieter Wuille, Bitcoin Core developer and Blockstream co-founder, speaking about Taproot, Schnorr, and SIGHASH_NOINPUT.

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Australia Bitcoin Payments

Coinbase Offers Buying Bitcoin with PayPal Option

Not long after their listing on the NASDAQ exchange, Coinbase has announced that going forward, PayPal payments for cryptocurrencies will be added to their services.

In a press release on their blog the company succinctly laid out the reasons behind their decision to add PayPal as a payment method, and the main thing setting the new payment method apart from usual card purchases.

No Need To Add Extra Banking Info On Coinbase

Eddie Lo – Product Manager at Coinbase – stated in the blog post that although buying crypto should be quick and easy, long bank transfer times, 2 Factor Authentication and other issues can make the experience quite a hassle.

“Buying crypto should be simple and easy. However, moving money in the traditional world of finance can be anything but. We know you are expecting faster and more seamless ways to make crypto purchases.”

When buying Bitcoin off of Coinbase using PayPal, customers will no longer need to go through the motions of adding extra bank account information to their account and waiting for it to be verified.

You Can Buy Up To $25,000 of Crypto Daily

Provided the e-mail address associated with the user’s PayPal account matches the one used to sign up to Coinbase with, a user can simply log in to their PayPal account from within the app – and voila, up to $25,000 worth of crypto can be purchased daily.

As world leaders and pioneers in the world of payments, PayPal also reassured Coinbase customers that their data was perfectly safe with them – and that PayPal looks forward to helping the world of crypto grow.

“Funding crypto purchases through PayPal offers a familiar and trusted experience as you explore the world of crypto. Working with the payments ecosystem, PayPal has built up the knowledge and implemented the proper tools in order to assure transparency, performance and security in all services.”

Paypal

For now, the service is only available in the USA – but PayPal is planning to expand its crypto network within the coming months after the Paypal CEO admitted that the demand was overwhelming.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Payments

PayPal CEO Admits Crypto Demand Much Higher Than Expected

Paypal Bitcoin
Paypal Bitcoin

In an interview with Time Magazine, Dan Schulman – the CEO of PayPal – talked about his experience running the company, as well as the demand for crypto on his payment platform.

Exponential Demand

With over 15.4 billion transactions carried out, it’s safe to say PayPal had a good run last year. Their move into crypto also seems to have supported the bull run Bitcoin has been on since late autumn of 2020.

When PayPal announced its plans for cryptocurrency adoption, a small shortage of Bitcoin supply occurred due to the unexpected demand.

Although the supply of Bitcoin didn’t dry up (and everything returned to normal within a few days) it seems PayPal still didn’t expect as many new crypto customers as they should have. In the interview, despite not giving out specific figures, Mr Schulman stated that the demand for digital assets exceeded their expectations “multiple-fold”, and that the enthusiasm surrounding the decision was also a welcome surprise.

Crypto user experience on Paypal mobile app

Schulman also spoke about the decline of paper money and predicted that not only would it be slowly phased out – but the role of banks in the payment landscape will also probably decline. According to Schulman, in the future the majority of transactions will be carried out through “super-apps”.

When all of those things start to happen, then central banks need to rethink monetary policy as well because you can’t just issue more paper money into the system because people aren’t using paper money. In the next 5 to 10 years, you’re going to see more change in the financial system than you have over the past 10 to 20 years.

Dan Schulman, CEO of PayPal

Of course, this isn’t to say fiat will disappear overnight – plenty of people prefer to use cash. However, Schulman may be right: in countries like the Netherlands, there are already shops that don’t accept cash anymore.

In any case, Schulman’s interview seems to indicate that PayPal believe they made a good decision moving into the crypto world, and it looks like they plan to be staying in it for a while.

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Australia Cryptocurrencies Payments

Zip Considering Implementation Of “Buy Crypto Now, Pay Later” Offer

Zip is an Australia-based company offering customers the ability to buy a product or service at full-price on the spot, without paying the full price right away – instead, Zip pays the full price, and the end customer pays Zip the rest later on.

Companies offering these services are not new, with counterparts like Swedish firm Klarna and others providing the same service in Europe – but they may very well be the first to offer this service for cryptocurrencies, instead of clothing and the like.

Youth Targeted For “Buy now, pay later”

The company stated that they are looking at the possibility of expanding their offers to cryptocurrency as a way to liaise with their predominantly young customer base.

If the plan comes to fruition, the service would probably first be offered in the United States via QuadPay, the US branch of Zip. QuadPay seems to be bringing in a significant percentage of Zip’s revenue – more precisely, “674,000 customers in Zip’s fiscal third quarter for a total of 3.8 million customers”, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“We’re very keen [to] move on this feature and the U.S., in particular, might be further advanced than Australia. It’s probably going to be slightly different for each of the products and services we roll out.”

According to Peter Gray – the co-founder of Zip, Co – the offer would most likely first be tested on the US market due to a more advanced interest in trading. Traditional stock trading was also briefly touched upon – although Zip is allegedly less keen on offering more traditional banking services like stock trading, compared to crypto trading.

Dangerous Game

The ability to buy stocks or crypto even if slightly out of pocket might be a dangerous game for inexperienced traders who might take on too much risk than they are comfortable with. With the current instability of crypto markets, this could pay off – but it could easily go wrong if the market turns, leaving people with more debt.

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Blockchain Payments Ripple

Ripple Buys 40% Of Leading APAC Payment Firm Tranglo

Ripple – already known for their (reportedly recently rocky) partnership with Moneygram – has announced that they will be buying a 40% stake in Tranglo, the leading payment solution in Southeast Asia.

Meeting Increased Demand

From this purchase, Ripple will be gaining a larger number of users to market their On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) XRP-based solution to. The purchase may also help Tranglo meet the needs of an ever-increasing market for quick money transfers.

 If Western Union, Moneygram and other companies whose business model relies on getting money around faster than banks have lost customers in Europe and elsewhere due to SEPA and companies like Revolut, this market does not show any signs of decreasing in the APAC region. In a highly-fragmented payment ecosystem without much international cooperation, banks have fallen far behind less traditional money transfer solutions.

Not only will Tranglo customers be able to use the ODL network in order to get their money faster – simultaneously increasing the XRP market cap – ODL users will also get access to Ripple’s Line of Credit service.

According to Ashhesh Birla – General Manager of RippleNet – Tranglo’s advanced customer service and well-developed payment infrastructure are what drew the firm’s attention.

Tranglo’s robust payments infrastructure coupled with their unparalleled customer service and quality makes them an ideal partner to support our expansion of On-Demand Liquidity starting with the Southeast Asia region. We are excited to continue and carry out our shared mission to transform cross-border transactions to be faster, cheaper and more secure with blockchain technology and digital assets.

Asheesh Birla, General Manager of RippleNet at Ripple

Coupled with the recent news that seems to indicate Ripple may be gaining the upper hand in their ongoing legal battle with the SEC, the future of Ripple appears to be looking brighter and brighter – and this may directly influence the future value of XRP tokens.

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Bitcoin Industries Payments

Tesla Enables Bitcoin Payments

Earlier this year, Elon Musk announced that Bitcoin would be accepted as payment for Tesla cars – and now, the option has been made available to customers in the US.

In a follow-up tweet, Musk added that the futuristic hybrid cars would be made available for purchase in Bitcoin sometime by the end of this year.

Bitcoin Will Not Be Converted To Fiat

Elon Musk has also stated that the Bitcoin received in exchange for Tesla cars will not be converted to fiat.

“Tesla is using only internal & open source software & operates Bitcoin nodes directly. Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency.”

Following the company’s $1.5 billion investment into Bitcoin earlier this year, it seems the top brass has decided to continue investing in Bitcoin, undeterred by prior twitter spats which resulted in tongue-in-cheek emojis directed at notorious bears.

The company has also added a FAQ for Bitcoin payments to their website. Most of the advice offered is common sense advice, such as to only send BTC to Tesla’s BTC address.

The car’s price will remain unchanged and tied to the US Dollar. As a result, the amount of BTC needed to purchase a Tesla may vary wildly from one day to another – and if a refund is requested, the amount refunded may also be substantially less than requested.

Elon’s tweet has gone viral, and the comments are full of good-hearted quips about Tesla cars being the new Lambo and the like.

Following this announcement, we may start seeing even more high-profile companies enabling cryptocurrency platforms.

Unfortunately, Dogecoin payments have not been enabled yet, and there have been no reports of Tesla plans to enable the endearing cryptocurrency.

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Bitcoin Cryptocurrencies Payments

PayPal Seals The Deal With Curv

Sources have previously reported that PayPal was in talks with crypto firm Curv – but the deal had not been confirmed at the time. The previous deal bandied about with BitGo also ultimately fell through.

Now, however, TechCrunch and others have reported that an agreement has been reached.

Great Technical Expertise

According to Jose Fernandez da Ponte – the VP and general manager, of blockchain, crypto and digital currencies at PayPal,  a huge factor that contributed towards the decision to buy the firm was the great level of technical expertise shown by its representatives.

“During our conversations with Curv’s team, we’ve been impressed by their technical talent, entrepreneurial spirit, and the thinking behind the technology they’ve built in the last few years. We’re excited to welcome the Curv team to PayPal.”

Curv’s big selling point is that it is addressed more towards enterprises than to crypto end users – their software is offered mostly to exchanges and financial institutions and focuses on running cryptography server-side.

In turn, Itay Malinger – the CEO of Curv since its’ foundation in 2018 – stated that they see no better place to continue their research and development than with PayPal.

“As a pioneer in security infrastructure for digital assets, Curv is proud to be recognized as an innovator and trusted partner to leading financial institutions around the world. Now, as the adoption of digital assets accelerates, we feel there’s no better home than PayPal to continue our journey of innovation. We’re excited to join PayPal in expanding the role these assets play in the global economy.

The acquisition is due to take place somewhere in the first half of 2021, once all administrative details have been worked out.

In addition, despite anonymous sources giving out figures on the price of the transaction between just under $200 million and $500 million, neither firm has let any details regarding the exact transaction price slip.