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Square, Twitter CEO’s company, invests $50 million in Bitcoin
50 million dollars in Bitcoin is the amount invested by the American electronic payments company Square, co-founded and directed by the famous pro-Bitcoin Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter. At the time of purchase, this represents no less than 4,709 Bitcoins. The CEO of the bluebird network justified the investment as follows: “Given the rapid evolution of cryptocurrencies and the unprecedented uncertainty in the macroeconomy and monetary regime, we believe that the time has come for us to expand our cash flow, which is mostly in dollars, and make a significant investment in Bitcoin”. Jack Dorsey is therefore setting himself up as a forerunner and even wants to inspire other business leaders to do the same. He tweeted later. “What is more significant than the investment of 50 million Square feet is to share how we made that investment so that others can do the same”. The tweet is accompanied by a link to a document explaining how Square bought its Bitcoins.
Metamask surpasses one million active users per month
MetaMask, the ETH and browser portfolio announced that it has surpassed the very symbolic milestone of one million active users per month, the figure includes both desktop and mobile applications. This is a real boom for Metamask, indeed we are talking about more than 400% compared to May 2019. It has been noticed that the growth curve accelerated in June of this year. Apart from the recent launch of MetaMask Mobile, it is above all the decentralized finance sector that seems to be responsible for such a surge in the number of users. Most of the DeFi platforms work with Ethereum and the Metamask portfolio which allows users of these platforms to withdraw or add cash. Web 3.0 games would also partly explain, according to Metamask, its strong growth.
China: we know more about the first test transactions of its digital currency
As we know, China is working hard to launch its central bank digital currency (CBDC) as soon as possible. For several months now, the People’s Bank of China has been in the test phase in several provinces of the country and we learned this week that the testers would have spent an average of 52 dollars per transaction, which represents for all the “pilot” transactions a total of 1.1 billion yuan, the national currency or 162 million dollars. In addition, according to the Vice Governor of the People’s Bank of China, 3.13 million transactions were processed with this digital currency-test and more than 122,000 portfolios were created, 93% of which were personal portfolios. The transactions were used to pay bills, transportation tickets and some government services.
South Korea will launch its central bank digital currency (CBDC) in 2021
For its part, South Korea is not lagging behind in terms of its digital currency as a central bank. The Bank of Korea has announced that it will launch a digital currency pilot project next year, in collaboration with major companies and national banks. According to several South Korean media outlets, the digital won is currently in the “second phase” of testing, the first of which concerned the design and “technical checks” which apparently went well. The Bank of Korea said the token would be distributed “through financial institutions” such as banks, “in the same way” as cash. The full schedule for the launch of the digital won is expected to be unveiled in the coming months.
Bitcoin-inspired artwork sells for over $131,000 at Christie’s
We end with a news that concerns the art world. A work on the theme of Bitcoin, called Block 21, has just been sold for $131,250 by the famous auction company Christie’s. The artwork was created by British artist Ben Gentilli and abstractly represents the portrait of Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. Concretely, it is a series of several discs on which 322,048 digits of the original Bitcoin code are engraved. In total, there will be 40 almost similar works, each containing a part of the BTC code. In addition to the work itself, which has been made using 24-carat gold leaf, the various purchasers will be given a physical key of the OpenDime type. The fact that block number 21 sold for the highest price is not surprising, since 21 refers to the limit of 21 million bitcoins.