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The largest digital bank in Latin America will allocate 1% to BTC and offer cryptocurrency investment services

In addition to buying Bitcoin, Nubank will offer BTC and ETH investment services to its more than 50 million customers.

Nubank, the largest digital bank in Brazil and Latin America, announced that it has partnered with Paxos to allow the bank’s customers to buy, sell and store cryptocurrencies directly through Nubank.

Along with the launch of the new cryptocurrency transaction services, Nubank announced that it will allocate approximately 1% of its equity in Bitcoin (BTC) through the ATM of Nu Holdings, the company that controls the Nubank Group.

“This move reinforces the company’s belief in Bitcoin’s current and future potential to disrupt financial services in the region,” Nubank said, as translated by Cointelegraph.

According to a Nubank statement sent to Cointelegraph, the purchase of Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) can be made from $0.2 (or 1 BRL) and will be available in May. The cryptocurrency investment service will be fully implemented at the end of June.

“There is no doubt that cryptocurrencies are a growing trend in Latin America,” explained Nubank founder and CEO David Vélez. “We have closely followed the market and we believe that there is potential for transformation in the region.”

Nubank also reported that the integration with cryptocurrencies aims to expand and improve access to this growing market, eliminating the complexity and friction for customers to buy, hold and sell digital currencies through the app without the need to open new accounts or transfer money.

The company confirmed plans to expand beyond BTC and ETH offerings in the future, but did not detail which assets will be included.

Through a set of APIs, Paxos will allow Nubank to offer cryptocurrency-enabled services to customers, as Mercado Livre and PayPal also do in partnership with Paxos.

It is said that Nubank has more than 50 million customers in Brazil alone. According to Paxos, its partnership with the digital bank represents an important strategic move as Latin America continues to transform into a cryptocurrency hub.

Brazil is firmly committed to digital money!

Nubank and Bitcoin

While this is the first time that Nubank has offered customers the ability to buy BTC and ETH directly, the bank is not new to digital assets. Through Nulinvest, a platform that Nubank acquired in 2020 when it was called Easynvest, the bank already allows clients to buy investment funds with exposure to the digital asset market.

With the acquisition, Nubank also started offering QBTC11, an exchange-traded fund allocated 100% in Bitcoin, managed by QR Asset Management and belonging to the QR Capital group.

Meanwhile, a securities filing earlier this year revealed that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway bought $1 billion worth of Nubank stock in the fourth quarter of 2021. The move is said to have given Oracle of Omaha indirect exposure. to the digital asset market.

Related: Coinbase Will Supposedly Buy $2.2 Billion Brazilian Unicorn Behind Bitcoin Market

Nubank is not the only local financial institution looking to offer cryptocurrency investment services. Another Brazilian bank that will also offer Bitcoin investment services to its clients is BTG Practual. The bank’s president, Roberto Sallouti, recently announced that the bank will launch its own cryptocurrency exchange in about two months.

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OK Coin Is Leasing a Large Office in San Jose, CA

OK Coin – a popular and large digital currency trading platform – has agreed to take up office space in downtown San Jose, part of the Silicon Valley in northern California. The region is known for hosting a wide array of many of the world’s leading tech companies including Apple, Facebook, and Google.
OK Coin Leases Large San Jose Office Space

The office address is 160 W. Santa Clara St. and consists of 35,000 square feet. In other words, it’s pretty darn big. OK Coin appears to be one of several crypto companies now looking to stage a physical comeback of sorts.

The coronavirus pandemic hit industries all over the world, and crypto was no exception. Many of the world’s leading digital currency platforms – including Coinbase, Kraken, and others – called regions such as San Francisco home, but were ultimately made to close their physical offices after the pandemic began. From there, several have worked to maintain physical presences, but this has been rather difficult. A lot of them now only employ remote workers.

This has caused several problems for these companies in that they no longer have valid customer service departments, and if they do, they are hard to get a hold of given the displacement situations surrounding those departments.

Coinbase, for example, is now being hit with a class-action lawsuit after a customer’s account was hacked. The client claims he tried very hard to get in touch with Coinbase, but its lack of customer service abilities made it nearly impossible to do so. He’s now filing suit against the crypto giant, claiming little was done to assist in the recovery of his stolen assets.

Mark Ritchie – president of Ritchie Commercial, a real estate leasing company – says that he’s excited by the presence of OK Coin in the downtown area. He says the whole region has looked like something of a ghost town given how many businesses have had to close their doors in the wake of COVID, and he’s hoping the area starts bouncing again soon. He said:

It’s good to get a fresh office tenant to move into downtown San Jose. This is a significant office lease for downtown San Jose. Hopefully it’s the first of many.

It’s estimated that OK coin will be able to employ close to 200 people with a lease this size. Bob Staedler – principal executive with Silicon Valley Synergy – explained in an interview:

The downtown San Jose office market is poised for a comeback. The improvement in the market is real and it is sustainable.

Is Crypto Making a Physical Comeback?

Already, OK Coin is moving into the office. Scott Knies – executive director of the San Jose Downtown Association – said:

This is great to see. What downtown San Jose needs more than anything is people, especially people back in the offices.

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More than 100,000 Cubans turn to cryptocurrencies to avoid sanctions

Strict US sanctions restricting Cuba’s ability to conduct international trade have led more than 100,000 Cubans to turn to cryptocurrencies as an alternative path to financial freedom.

Companies chose cryptocurrency

US sanctions imposed on the communist country of Cuba prevent the use of internationally accepted credit and debit cards. Online payment channels like Paypal, Revolut and Zelle are also banned in the country. Therefore, a significant part of the population, feeling the restrictions imposed by sanctions, chose cryptocurrency as an alternative means of transaction. These Cubans, who include many small business owners, have benefited from the advent of mobile Internet that arrived in the country just three years ago. The spread of smartphones and mobile internet in this island nation was quite expansive as it opened other payment channels and financial freedom to a largely unbanked population. Local entrepreneurs believe that thanks to digital currencies, their operations are no longer dependent on payment service providers, which ends up rendering all bans inconsequential.

Dr. Emily Morris, an economist at University College London, believes that the fact that Cuban citizens are turning to cryptocurrencies is not surprising. she said,

“If you can transact directly between two parties that don’t have to go through a bank, that would be interesting.”

Cryptographic Regulations in Cuba

The previous lack of regulation in the country has resulted in an increase in cryptocurrency activity, especially during the initial months of the pandemic. Local cryptocurrency exchanges have seen an influx of customers, nearly doubling on a monthly basis. In 2021 there was talk of the Cuban government investing in cryptocurrencies. Shortly after, it was announced that the central bank of Cuba would fulfill the mission of exploring the regulation of cryptocurrencies. The bank would also establish an action plan to register and license crypto service providers in the country. It was also revealed that cryptocurrency payment authorizations would only be granted in matters of “socio-economic interest” in order to monitor all cryptocurrency operations and prevent illegal and fraudulent activities.

Earlier this month, the Cuban central bank announced its intentions to implement a regulatory framework for digital assets, starting with a compulsory license for virtual asset service providers. The country’s central bank has already issued a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has also expressed his favorable views on the sector and is reportedly studying the legalization of cryptocurrency payments. This has led to speculation that Cuba could be following in the footsteps of El Salvador, the Latin American country that adopted Bitcoin as legal tender.

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Tron DAO Reserve buys $38 million of TRX to protect USDD stablecoin

On May 5, Tron’s USDD algorithmic stablecoin was launched, and so far, the fiat token has been listed on various decentralized finance (defi) protocols. Two days later, Tron DAO Reserve announced that it has purchased 504.6 million tron ​​(TRX) to support the algorithmic stablecoin as the project aims to leverage a decentralized currency reserve similar to Earth’s UST reserves.

Tron DAO Reserve and Justin Sun reveal $38 million TRX purchase

Terra’s UST reserve system is becoming a popular scheme, and Tron’s USDD stablecoin project is following suit. Bitcoin.com News reported on the algorithmic stablecoin project Tron on April 21, and the fiat crypto asset has been officially launched since then. The project has several partners now and USDD is listed on Pancakeswap, Kyberswap, Sunswap, Sun.io, Curve Finance, Uniswap and Ellipsis.

According to tronscan.org, there is approximately $211,245,005.49 at the time of writing. Statistics show that as of Saturday, May 7, 2022, Uniswap version three (v3) is the most active exchange for buying and selling USDD. While the $211 million market cap is a small thing for Earth’s UST ($18.7 billion), it has only been around for two days. While terrausd (UST) recorded US$990.3 million in 24-hour transactions, USDD recorded US$2.31 million in the last day. The USDD market valuation is higher than Gemini’s (GUSD) market capitalization of $199.5 million.

On Saturday, Tron DAO and Tron founder Justin Sun announced that the team had purchased 504,600,250 TRX at an average price of 0.07727 per unit. The purchase will be used as a reserve asset to “safeguard the blockchain industry and cryptocurrency market,” reserve account Tron DAO said Saturday afternoon.

“[Tron DAO Reserve] has done its job,” tweeted Tron founder Justin Sun this weekend.

Decentralized, Algorithmic and Centralized: The Quest to Perfect Stablecoin Continues

While decentralized and algorithmic stablecoins sound good in theory, there are concerns and doubts about whether or not they can maintain a stable peg as long as they exist. Of course, some centralized stablecoin projects in the past have failed, and Makerdao’s decentralized stablecoin DAI was tested during the ‘Black Thursday’ event on March 12, 2020. Prior to the March 12 event, Bennett Tomlin’s blog post predicted the Ethereum (ETH) price stress that could affect the DAI USD parity.

In November 2020, the issuer of stablecoin OUSD, Origin Protocol, suffered an instant lending attack and the coin temporarily lost its peg. During the first week of April, the Waves-based neutrino stablecoin usd (USDN) temporarily dropped from the dollar. A year ago in April, the fiat value of the stablecoin fei usd (FEI) dropped below one dollar for a short period of time. So far, several of the projects mentioned above have recovered shortly after the parity loss, and stablecoin projects have maintained a stable parity ever since.

The Tron DAO Reserve purchase of 504,600,250 TRX was worth $38.99 million at the time of liquidation. The TRX purchase also follows the recent acquisition of $1.4 billion worth of bitcoin (BTC) by Luna Foundation Guard (LFG). The non-profit LFG now holds 80,394 BTC and $100 million worth of AVAX to protect UST. In addition, Tron DAO has partnered with three crypto institutions that are now whitelisted Tron DAO Reserve members. Tron DAO Reserve’s institutional partners include Poloniex, Alameda Research and Amber Group, while Tron DAO Reserve acts as the “initial custodian” of USDD.

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Trading App Giant Robinhood Lists Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) Stocks in Grayscale

US trading giant Robinhood is adding two crypto-related products to its lineup for retail investors.

Investment asset manager Greyscale has announced that the company’s traditional investment vehicles for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are launching on the Robinhood trading app.

There are two new ways to access crypto on @RobinhoodApp. You can start trading $GBTC and $ETHE today. https://t.co/n09aiEVhqEhttps://t.co/6tFrYCsmzx pic.twitter.com/AxKH7xZ0nS

— Shades of Gray (@Grayscale) May 6, 2022

The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) digital currency investment product was originally called the Bitcoin Investment Trust, created in September 2013, and offers institutional investors exposure to Bitcoin without the need to purchase or store it in person. Grayscale BTC Trust currently has $23.2 billion in assets under management (AUM).

Meanwhile, the Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) was founded in December 2017 and now has $8.4 billion in AUM.

Last October, Grayscale announced its intention to convert its Bitcoin fund into an exchange-traded fund (ETF), with the company’s global head of ETFs Dave LaValle saying:

“GBTC demonstrates that there is strong investor demand for physically backed Bitcoin investment vehicles.”

In November, filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed that banking giant Morgan Stanley significantly increased its holdings in GBTC.

In January, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev mentioned the platform’s goal of adding crypto-related products to its platform.

At the time of writing, Robinhood quotes GBTC price down 1.08% and trading at $24.75, while ETHE is in the red down 1.6% with a value of 19.76 $.

Bitcoin itself continues the sell-off that began earlier Thursday when it was priced above $39,000, down 2.22% on the day and changing hands at $36,189 at the time of writing.

Ethereum is also struggling, falling sharply from Thursday’s high of $2,937 and currently priced at $2,711.