Daily Digest 4/22
Insight on the biggest stories of the day. Neither this post nor any other on cryptofal.com should be taken as financial advice. It is not.
Stripe to Offer Crypto Payments With Twitter
Stripe is dipping its feet into the crypto space again, testing Ethereum for payments. In 2018 Stripe had support for Bitcoin payments but had to discontinue after a short period of time. Stripe will be making this possible by using layer-2 solution Polygon to make sure that fees are low. Twitter will be the first one to help pilot the testing phase.
A short video clip posted by the official Stripe Twitter account shows various wallets, including Rainbow, WalletConnect, Coinbase Wallet, and Metamask, are compatible with the new crypto payments feature. All of these transactions will be routed through Stripe Connect which will also handle the KYC requirements.
Using Polygon is a great move as well to keep transaction fees low so it will make more sense to actually use it. Since ETH moved back the merge once again this will set the stage for layer-2 solutions to gain more popularity. This also leaves the door open for Solana and Cardano to take more market share away.
This move is surprising since we all know Jack Dorsey was not the biggest fan of Ethereum. Dorsey is no longer in control of what happens on Twitter but it is still a funny coincidence. You can currently tip influencers with BTC thanks to Mr. Dorsey. Soon we may even see crypto enthusiast Elon Musk buy his way into being the new owner of Twitter. Both Musk and Dorsey are also working together on a solar-powered BTC mining facility in Texas.
Seized Silk Road Bitcoin to Clear Ross Ulbricht's $183M Debt
Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht is probably one of the biggest reasons that Bitcoin has a bad reputation. It was the most popular method of payment on his black market website. This was mostly because originally people really thought that Bitcoin was completely anonymous. While it does not have your actual name and stuff on it, you can be tracked down in other ways but is a little tougher.
Sentenced to life in prison back in 2015 and was ordered to pay $183 million in restitution. That number was calculated based on the total number of sales on the silk road at the time. Since most of it was BTC that actual worth is now significantly more. Court documents in 2020 reveal that the Justice Department seized 69,370 bitcoins from a hacker who moved the trove to a private wallet in April 2013.
The government has decided to give him a slight break since those funds have greatly matured. Ulbricht will be able to pay what he owes using that confiscated BTC. "The parties agree that the net proceeds realized from the sale of the [bitcoin] forfeited pursuant to this agreement shall be credited toward any unpaid balance of the Money Judgment," the court filing reads. The rest of the Bitcoin is set to go up for auction but there has been no date announced for that yet.
The past month has shown a big boost in positive sentiment after a tough month of March. In the past week, there were a lot of companies releasing their earnings reports and they actually had come in favorably considering all factors of the first quarter of the year. We also got to see the highest inflation numbers since 1981 just a couple of weeks ago. The announcement of this was favorable for both the stock market and crypto markets.
Both took a nice jump because with the dollar depreciating you want something to hedge that. This is exactly what people have been saying about Bitcoin for years. Having a hedge against inflation is key at a time like this. The Fed has plans to raise interest rates a lot over the coming year. This may seem like bad news on the surface; however, encouraging Americans not to spend will bring down the demand for goods and subsequently the price as well. This will help mitigate some of that inflation issue and is another reason to remain positive with the market going forward.