• Shopify Customers Can Now Pay In USDC Via Solana Pay
Solana Pay, the payment protocol built on the Solana blockchain, is now plugged into e-commerce giant Shopify, allowing users to pay in USD Coin (USDC), the companies announced Wednesday.
With the integration, users will be able to connect Solana-centric crypto wallets, like Phantom, and settle payments on-chain with merchants using USDC.
While USDC, one of the most popular dollar-linked stablecoins, is the first payment option to be enabled via the integration, other crypto assets will follow in the future, a representative of the Solana Foundation told CoinDesk.
• Bitcoin difficulty jumps 6% to new peak as miners ignore BTC price dip
Despite BTC/USD dropping 10% last week, Bitcoin miners appear to be taking the price downturn in their stride. This was cemented in network activity on Aug. 22, as difficulty increased by 6.17% at its latest biweekly automated readjustment.
Not only was this enough to take difficulty to new record highs, but it also marked Bitcoin’s sixth-largest difficulty uptick of 2023, figures from monitoring resource BTC.com show.
• UK considers blanket ban on crypto investment cold calls
As the United Kingdom prepares for a ban on finance-related cold calls, His Majesty’s Treasury has issued a consultation paper, and it is calling for evidence to gauge the full impact on businesses and the costs associated with introducing and implementing the ban.
The Treasury highlighted numerous instances where cold calls were responsible for investors’ losses, out of which one involved cryptocurrencies. While the U.K. government previously implemented various prohibitions and restrictions on cold calling, scammers often find loopholes in the system to bypass the law.
• Binance.US taps MoonPay as banking alternative to regain USD ramps
Two months after becoming a crypto-only platform, Binance.US has announced a new partnership with crypto payments firm MoonPay to allow users to buy the United States dollar-pegged stablecoin Tether to use on its platform.
The crypto exchange annoucned on Aug. 22 that USDT was being adopted as the new “base asset” for all transactions, and its partnership with MoonPay allows a path for users to transact in U.S. dollars.
The new partnership comes in the wake of Binance.US suffering a breakdown with its banking partners, which saw fiat deposits on the exchange halted as of June 9.
• PEPE plunges 15% as strange token movements spark fears of rug pull
The price of the frog-themed memecoin Pepe has plunged nearly 15% after recent changes to a multisig wallet and new token transfers ignited fears of a “rug pull” by its developers.
The allegations — as well as the negative price action — came as $16 million worth of Pepe tokens were sent from the developers’ multisig wallet to various crypto exchanges on Aug. 24.
• Tether maintains $3.3B in liquidity cushion: USDT transparency report
Stablecoin issuer Tether maintains a liquidity cushion of nearly $3.3 billion to provide stability to the Tether ecosystem and garner trust among shareholders.
Tether’s reserves report as of Aug. 24 reveals a combined surplus in shareholder capital cushion of $3.29 billion — spread over 15 blockchain ecosystems. Apart from Algorand and Polygon, Tether has reserved authority to issue USDT tokens in the millions.
Out of the lot, the Solana ecosystem leads in terms of the value pre-authorized for issuance, currently standing at $1.57 billion, with Ethereum and Tron taking up the next two slots with pre-authorization of $617 million and $353 million respectively.
Concluding Notes:
- Shopify Customers Can Now Pay In USDC
- Bitcoin difficulty jumps 6% to new peak
- UK considers blanket ban on crypto investment cold calls
- Binance.US has announced a new partnership with crypto payments firm MoonPay
- PEPE plunges 15%
- Tether maintains $3.3B in liquidity cushion
