The Houston Texans – a professional American football team – have entered into an exclusive partnership with the Houston-based cryptocurrency company, BitWallet. The partnership will allow the team to begin accepting crypto as payment for single-game NFL suites. Effective immediately, BitWallet will act as an intermediary for crypto payments to the Texans. This allows digital assets to immediately be converted into U.S. dollars. The first to purchase a suite using digital currency was EWR Digital, a digital marketing agency. "We…
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Asia’s Strengthening of Cryptocurrency Regulations May Threaten Its Leading Position
People have been considering Asia as the world’s cryptocurrency hub for a long time now. There has been remarkable growth in the cryptocurrency domain in nations such as Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and China.
China is in the last stages of creating a central bank digital currency (CBDC), thereby proving that the continent has placed itself ahead of others regarding digital assets.
Recently in a podcast, Adam Traidman, the joint founder of one of the pioneering Bitcoin wallets on the app store (BRD) spoke about China’s digital Yuan and the competition from other countries. Traidman opined that CBDCs from other superpowers will not emerge anytime soon, due to the time required to deal with practical issues.
It is clear that governments will continue to work on their CBDC but they will introduce it for use in the coming five to ten years, said Traidman. He said he is unsure whether they will be based on blockchain.
That the development of CBDC is not progressing does not mean we should neglect Asia’s progress on the larger cryptocurrency front. This is such that eight out of ten Japanese are informed about the features of Bitcoin and it proves that Asia is leading the cryptocurrency space.
Although cryptocurrencies have gained traction across the continent, it appears that things have changed. Recently, it was in a news report that the government of Japan could make it difficult for cryptocurrency firms to survive in the country, from May 2020. This is such that BitMEX Japan shutdown in recent time due to strengthened cryptocurrency rules.
Japan made changes to its cryptocurrency regulations in the Japan Payment Services Act. New and current traders in Japan will be affected. South Korea and Singapore are likewise ready to pass regulations that abide by the FATF travel rule.