For a country of 25 million people, Australia punches well above its weight both economically and in the world of blockchain. Australians have long been enthusiastic adopters of new technology, from cellphones to smart homes, so it’s little surprise they’ve embraced crypto too. Chainalysis ranks Australia 20th out of 154 countries surveyed this year for its "The 2020 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report," citing favorable regulation that legitimizes the technology as driving "steady growth in adoption." Australian crypto educator Alex Saunders, founder of Nuggets News, said the Australian crypto community encompasses everyone from hardcore Bitcoin (BTC) maximalists to well-known Ethereans and …
OmiseGo, a finance-oriented scaling network for Ethereum (ETH), has become a member of Universal Protocol Alliance, a coalition of blockchain and cryptocurrency-focused firms. Targeting financial services and tax collection In a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Oct. 8, the startup revealed that it will incorporate the Universal Protocol Platform UPT utility token into its payment processing technology. By doing so, OmiseGo intends to let stakeholders to use UP stablecoins for financial services and tax collection, as well as collect transaction fees. Dan Schatt, co-founder of the Universal Protocol Alliance, said that OmiseGo’s technology “will help support the mass adoption …
The state of Arizona has accepted a blockchain-based, cannabis industry-oriented payments solution into its fintech sandbox. According to a recent press release from the Office of the Attorney General, the company — called Alta — is a cash management solution for licensed medical marijuana providers and vendors. The Arizona-based financial services startup intends to offer a stablecoin that is pegged 1:1 with the United States dollar. During its sandbox testing phase, Alta will trial its member onboarding and remittances platform. The end goal of the platform is to let users pay for goods and services using the stablecoin instead of …
Government-issued electronic currency seems to be an idea whose time has come. “More than half of the world’s central banks are now developing digital currencies or running concrete experiments on them,” reported the Bank for International Settlements, or BIS, in early May — something that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. The BIS also found that nine out of ten central banks were exploring central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, in some form or other, according to its survey of 81 central banks conducted last autumn but just published. Many were taken aback by the progress. “It …
When programmer Jonathan Silverblood flew to Townsville, Australia from his Finland home for a two-and-a-half-month holiday in August, he had one main task — pay for everything he could using Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The coastal city of Townsville is known as the “Bitcoin Cash City,” a name derived from a conference of the same name that first launched in 2019. It is understood to have a strong number of merchants that accept the Bitcoin-forked token. Silverblood said while attending the conference in 2019, he was intrigued by the number of merchants and vendors offering BCH as a payment option in …