Binance Expects Up to USD 1B In Profits This Year + More News
Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
Exchanges news
- Binance expects to have profits of USD 800m to USD 1bn this year, up from about USD 570m last year, Bloomberg reported, citing Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, CEO of the major crypto exchange. He has been named as one of the Bloomberg 50 – a list of 50 people “in business, entertainment, finance, politics, and science and technology whose accomplishments merit recognition.” The crypto exchange chief was named along with heavy-hitting figures from the world of politics, business and culture including the American President-elect Joe Biden, Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho, Morgan Stanley’s CEO James Gorman and record producer Timbaland.
- Coinbase has joined payments company Square as a founding board member of the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (COPA). COPA also announced the board appointments of Square Crypto Lead Steve Lee and Paradigm Research Partner Dan Robinson, said the press release. In September, Square announced the launch of the Alliance, inviting others in the crypto community to join and address concerns that “patent lockup” of foundational cryptocurrency technologies by a select few will stifle innovation and deter mass-adoption. Since the announcement, 18 companies have joined COPA and taken the pledge.
Blockchain news
- Shanghai citizens have been shown how to use blockchain-powered notary services, reported China’s Legal Daily. The Xuhui Notary Office, in the affluent Xuhui District of Shanghai, held an “open day” event, with representatives from the National People’s Congress and members of the policy-making Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference joining ordinary members of the public and media representatives to experience blockchain-powered notarization. Citizens will soon be able to use a platform – either at the office via special terminals or online via apps – to conduct a range of notary-related processes without the need for in-person meetings or paper-based processes.
- The Russian software giant Kaspersky Lab is creating a blockchain-powered voting platform for states. The new offering will be called Polys.GOST and the firm, per CNews.ru, said that it fully complies with Russian legislation on digital voting platforms. Equipped with sophisticated cryptographic protection, Kaspersky stated that its platform would “ensure the security” of confidential data, including personal data from the voting register and information related to the voting process.
Tokenization news
- The creators of stablecoin platform Terra announced the launch of the Mirror Protocol, which enables minting of crypto assets that mimic the value of shares in publicly traded companies like Apple or Tesla, which the press release described as “the first synthetic assets protocol that tracks the price of stocks, futures, exchange-traded funds, and other traditional financial assets, bridging crypto with traditional markets.” Mirror synthetics are intended to be used as key building blocks in smart contracts, and to bring the world’s assets to the blockchain, added the website.
- Swiss advisory firm Finka will leverage blockchain infrastructure provider CoreLedger to create a revenue-sharing token supported by the value of cattle held at Bolivian cattle ranch, La Pradera, said the press release. “The tokenization of the Finka Token is unique in that it has a built-in link to a secondary market within the CoreLedger platform, where holders can convert the token into other tradable assets – literally anything from gold to oil or corn,” said Johannes Schweifer, CEO of CoreLedger.
Payments news
- Global banking payments network SWIFT has enabled instant 24/7 cross-border payments. According to the announcement, they activated the first live SWIFT gpi Instant connection, a new service that enables consumers and businesses to send payments in seconds across borders, any time of the day/night, through their financial institutions. Lloyds Banking Group is the first to go live with the service, and the UK is the first market where it is available, said SWIFT.
Identity management news
- Identity protection and management startup Civic announced their new Identity Verification product, expanded to include a flexible, pay-as-you-go option to make installing and managing identification easy for businesses. Per the announcement, to accomplish this, Civic “completely revamped” their identity technology on the front end for businesses. The product comes with identity verification support for more than 195 countries, and it is powered by patented technology, while the company also invested in the biometric and liveness verification. Identity Verification for customers is available through Civic Wallet on iOS and Android, and it offers the ability to add cryptocurrency and health status information.
Career news
- One of the largest streaming audio providers, Spotify, is looking for an outstanding associate director to join its payments strategy and innovation department, said a job post – a role which “will play a key part in defining and implementing Spotify’s payments strategy as well as leading Spotify’s activity within the Libra stablecoin project and wider digital asset & cryptocurrency space.” This person will lead the audio provider’s day-to-day engagement with Diem, and will “drive further consideration of new opportunities and innovation in the emerging ecosystem of distributed ledger technology, blockchains, cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and other digital assets.” Spotify is one of the original Diem Association members.
DeFi news
- Wrapped Filecoin (WFIL) has launched its Mainnet, in order to bridge decentralized storage network Filecoin (FIL) and Ethereum (ETH), said the emailed press release. This will help bootstrap WFIL’s adoption and development by providing access to liquidity on decentralized finance (DeFi) to storage miners and FIL holders and enabling new services on Ethereum.
- Polkadot has launched a decentralized finance (DeFi) alliance to organize and promote discussions around crucial topics for DeFi on Polkadot. Per the press release, the alliance’s founding members include Chainlink, Moonbeam, Plasm Network, Tidal Finance, Equilibrium, Polkaswap, Reef Finance, and Interlay. Polkadot also announced it would launch a “Thousand Validators” program in December, which will offer support and incentives to individuals seeking to run a Polkadot node.
