Weekly Roundup of Cryptocurrency News 17/09/2021

Institutes in the banking and trading sector are gradually offering their customers cryptocurrency services. Here are the top headlines for this week

MoneyLion customers benefit from crypto trading services

US-based banking and investment firm MoneyLion announced Monday that it had added an option for crypto services to its finance app. The company also confirmed it is on schedule to go public later in the month. Users will only be able to trade in Bitcoin and Ethereum, but the company intends to take on other crypto coins in the long term.

According to a joint press release, MoneyLion’s Dee Choubey stated that the new offering would help customers better manage their finances. Choubey argued that these digital assets were in line with the company’s goal of providing relevant training and tools to guide customer decisions. Defining it as part of the early steps to enter the decentralized financial market (DeFi), Choubey added that the company would first create more awareness among its consumers.

He also stressed that the organization could investigate more crypto products, including non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and income products. The fintech company also announced that it would be sponsoring a $ 1 million crypto prize pool, with early members of MoneyLion Crypto themselves bagging a portion of the Bitcoin reward.

MicroStrategy now holds more than 114,000 bitcoins

Via a tweet on Monday, Michael Saylor, one of the most vocal Bitcoin proponents, announced to the crypto community that his company MicroStrategy had bought a new supply of 5,050 Bitcoins for $ 242.9 million. The addition means the company now owns a total of 114,042 bitcoins, which were purchased at an average price of $ 27,713 per bitcoin.

Additionally, the company’s SEC filings stated that MicroStrategy purchased 8,957 bitcoins for a total of approximately $ 419.9 million in the third quarter of 2021. Saylor, the company’s CEO, prioritized introducing MicroStrategy into the Bitcoin business in 2020 as a security strategy. Jack Dorsey’s Square and Elon Musk’s Tesla were among the big companies that followed suit and switched part of their reserves into Bitcoin.

Not all executives seemed impressed by the addition of another significant piece of crypto to the company’s portfolio. Some reportedly sold their MicroStrategy stock shortly thereafter, which did little to instill confidence in the Bitcoin decision. Last week, Saylor made remarks suggesting jumping into crypto instead of gold to save his company from “a multi-billion dollar mistake.”

AMC Theaters accepts crypto payments

Cryptocurrencies have continued to find their way into mainstream adoption. AMC CEO and Chairman Adam Aron announced on Wednesday that the entertainment company will enable ticket purchases via Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash by the end of the year.

This announcement followed a first one in August, although the previous one only mentioned Bitcoin as the only acceptable digital asset. In addition, the first announcement revealed that AMC would enable Apple Pay and Google Pay services in theaters. It’s worth noting that these two services recently partnered with the publicly traded exchange Coinbase for Coinbase card offerings.

Not everyone was happy with the announcement, and the DOGE community especially stood out when they asked why the coin wasn’t in the payment options. The community claimed that Dogecoin is being used significantly – even more than some of the cryptocurrencies listed. It might well be fair to claim that the coin has grown in popularity as a means of payment, given that Mark Cuban recently announced that his Dallas Mavericks team received 95% of DOGE’s merchandise sales.

Interactive Brokers introduces crypto services in the US

Financial services company Interactive Brokers announced earlier this week that it will partner with Paxos to enable its customers to trade cryptocurrencies. The company announced that users can trade and hold Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash through the Paxos Trust Company.

The announcement also revealed that the service would initially be limited to US residents, with the company planning to roll it out to international markets in the future. Interactive Brokers is only the second major broker after Robinhood to invest directly in crypto.

In order to make the market entry even more attractive, the online broker announced that it would charge users low fees. In particular, the platform charges between 0.12% and 0.18% of the trade value depending on the monthly volumes, and users would need to expand to at least $ 1.75 per order.

Coinbase sells $ 2 billion worth of bonds

Growing market interest has led Coinbase, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, to increase its junk bond offering from originally announced $ 1.5 billion to around $ 2 billion. The sale is made possible by the investment banking institute Goldman Sachs.

Citing an anonymous source, Bloomberg reported Tuesday that investors were offering lower interest rates than Coinbase originally wanted. This showed that investors believed in Coinbase’s creditworthiness much more than the company predicted. It has also been reported that bids totaling up to $ 7 billion have been seen.

The sale ultimately took place in equal amounts of seven- and ten-year bonds, which were supposed to earn interest at around 3.375% and 3.265%, respectively. Although these rates have been cut, they are still above the average 2.86% yield seen on similarly rated bonds. Coinbase intends to use the funds generated from the development to increase its investments in product development and the likely acquisitions of other technologies, companies and products in the future.

source https://www.bisayanews.com/2021/09/17/weekly-roundup-of-cryptocurrency-news-17-09-2021/