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Coinbase will allow remittance recipients in Mexico to withdraw cash in local currency

Coinbase, a major US-based exchange, has announced that it will now allow remittance recipients in Mexico to withdraw funds received through its local currency service. This marks the company’s first foray into the remittance business in Mexico, allowing customers to withdraw cash at more than 37,000 convenience stores and other locations across the country.

Coinbase Allows Mexicans to Withdraw Cryptocurrency Remittances in Pesos

Popular cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced this week that it was making its first foray into remittances in Mexico. While the exchange previously allowed customers to send cryptocurrency to any other Coinbase user in the world, it will now offer remittance recipients the option to withdraw funds in local fiat currency, in this case, the Mexican peso.

Coinbase announced that it organized the exchange of these remittances at more than 37,000 convenience stores and other locations across the country. Remittance recipients will be able to carry out transactions by generating a unique redemption code in the app. The move is a result of Coinbase’s quest to remove friction from trading cryptocurrencies for fiat currencies.

Coinbase hopes that this use of cryptocurrency will allow the company to be competitive compared to traditional remittance alternatives already on the market. The use of this tool will be free until March 31, 2022.

Remittances and Fees

However, after the mentioned date, Coinbase will start charging fees for these services. The exchange announced that it will charge “a nominal fee that is still 25% to 50% cheaper than traditional cross-border payment solutions.”

The exchange says it recognizes that remittances are a global problem, suggesting a possible future expansion of this service to other countries. In this regard, the exchange stated:

While we started in Mexico, over time we will see other regions where customers face similar challenges.

The US/Mexico corridor remittance business is a multi-million dollar enterprise. According to data from the World Bank and Banco de Mexico, Mexican households received $42.17 billion in remittances during the first ten months of 2021, most of which came from US money orders and wire transfers.

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Fidelity Investments Launched a Physical Bitcoin ETP in Europe

Fidelity Investments has launched a physical bitcoin exchange-traded (ETP) product in what it says is the growing demand for digital assets among European investors. The fund is listed on Xetra in Frankfurt and will begin trading on Six in Zurich in a few weeks.

The Fidelity ETP comes three months after Invesco launched its bitcoin ETP following increased interest in cryptocurrency investments among asset managers.

The ETP comes after the UK Financial Conduct Authority granted Fidelity Digital Assets an official registration for its digital trading and asset custody business in late 2021.

Previously, Fidelity Digital Assets was listed as a temporary member on the FCA registry, but has now been moved to the FCA permanent registry.

In December 2021, Fidelity Investments launched a Canadian-based physical bitcoin ETF, which currently has around $30 million in assets.

Bitcoin ETP physical loyalty

Fidelity’s physical Bitcoin ETP will be available to institutional and professional investors in Europe and will be domiciled in Germany. However, Fidelity Digital Assets, which is the US-based digital assets arm of Fidelity Investments, will be the custodian of the ETP.

Fidelity Investments head Nick King said the ETP launch was an important step in the company’s ETP offering and the first to offer digital asset products.

The ETP launched with approximately $6 million in assets and will have an ongoing charge of 0.75%.

Fidelity’s managing director for Europe, Christian Staub, said:

“The underlying distributed ledger technology has the potential to revolutionize the financial system over time and disrupt many parts of the financial world with profound implications for investors.”

Fidelity Digital Assets recently conducted a survey that showed that 70% of institutional investors expected to invest in digital assets soon. Additionally, over 90% of those surveyed said they want digital assets that have an allocation within the next five years.

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Brent and Matt, two men from Texas, made millions mining BTC

Brent Whitehead and Matt Lohstroh are two young men from Texas who have already made millions mining bitcoin and other forms of cryptography. The two worked hard to establish a new company called Giga Energy Solutions, which mints bitcoins from natural gas.

Brent and Matt Chose to Follow Bitcoin

Both Brent and Matt come from oil families and were met with skepticism when they first announced three years ago that they wanted to enter the mining industry. However, his bitcoin obsessions became too big to handle. Therefore, they ignored the advice they received and decided to follow their hearts. Today, the money they have earned through their company proves that they made the right move.

The company works not only to mine cryptocurrencies, but also to address all the environmental concerns that people seem to have with them. Giga places a container containing crypto mining computers in an oil well. From there, the natural gas is diverted to generators. This gas is then converted into electricity which is used to mine cryptocurrency drives. This reduces carbon emissions by more than 60%.

Brent grew up in the oil fields and saw his family in action. He saw a lot of environmental debris and wanted to address concerns around the health of the planet. In an interview he explained:

I've always seen flares, just being in the oil and gas industry. He knew how wasteful it was. It is a new way not only to reduce emissions, but also to make gas profitable.

At this time, the duo has signed contracts with approximately 20 separate oil and gas companies, four of which are publicly traded. They’re also talking to equity funds, which means the company is growing faster than anyone could have predicted. The company currently employs 11 people, but the duo plans to add six more staff before the end of February.

Lee Bratcher, president of the Texas Blockchain Council, says he is very impressed with the work they both have done. He commented:

They are generating revenue for their customers by mining idle energy bitcoins and solving the environmental challenge with flared gas at the same time.

Both men are also natural believers in bitcoin. They love the fact that it is an autonomous currency that no government can control. Matt explained:

Nobody controls it and you don't have to ask permission to use it. That's really what attracted me to Bitcoin... Bitcoin mining is innately linked to power, and the purpose of energy is to create power, so I think you'll see a lot of semantics and how they are interrelated.

Giving people monetary freedom

Brent couldn’t agree more. He trusts that Bitcoin has the power to give people the financial independence they’ve always wanted. He mentioned:

It wasn't as focused on price as it was on adoption. I thought this was a great thing for humanity.
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Ripple Partners with Central Bank Digital Currency Think Tank

Ripple has partnered with the Digital Euro Association (DEA) to work together on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).

DEA, based in Frankfurt, Germany, is a think tank focused on CBDCs, stablecoins, cryptocurrencies and other forms of digital money.

The organization aims to influence policy related to CBDC and cryptocurrencies through research and providing a platform for policymakers, technologists and economists to discuss digital assets.

In a new announcement, it describes Ripple as a leader in its field, but does not provide exact details on what the partnership will entail.

“Ripple, a leading provider of enterprise blockchain and cryptographic solutions for cross-border payments, has recently developed a blockchain-based infrastructure to support CBDCs and is engaged with the central bank of Bhutan, among others, to help run its program pilot . of CBDC.

Ripple is also a member of the Digital Pound Foundation and continues to expand its efforts around CBDCs around the world. The DEA partnership with Ripple includes, but is not limited to, joint educational efforts around digital currencies and knowledge sharing.”

DEA President Jonas Gross said:

“We are delighted that, thanks to our partnership with Ripple, we are able to extend the technology experience of the DEA community. As more and more CBDC projects around the world reach advanced stages, the technological design of a CBDC will play a key role for policymakers in the near future, while previous years have mainly focused on research.”

Ripple also addressed the association in a tweet to his followers, saying that it was part of their overall goal to provide CBDC-related solutions on a global scale.

“We are excited to join the Digital Euro Association as a supporting partner to further develop our work with the CBDC!

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Switzerland’s biggest bank, UBS, expects US crypto legislation to delay

Switzerland’s largest bank, UBS, expects the US Congress to take a long time to pass cryptocurrency legislation despite growing interest in cryptocurrency investments and regulators are asking Congress to review cryptocurrency legislation.

Congress could take a long time on cryptocurrency legislation

The biggest bank in Switzerland, UBS, published its point of view on EE crypto legislation. UU. last week after the Committee of the Chamber of Financial Services held a large audience on the regulation of cryptocurrencies and stable currencies.

The Swiss bank’s U.S. Office of Public Policy explained that at the hearing, a senior Treasury official discussed recommendations made in a stablecoin report issued by the Treasury Department and other regulators.

“To fill regulatory gaps and address financial stability concerns, regulators would like Congress to develop legislation that would regulate issuers of stablecoins such as banks,” the UBS team detailed, noting that this proposal has received approval from some lawmakers.

The Federal Reserve also made it clear in its recent report on central bank digital currency (CBDC) that it would welcome guidance from Congress before proceeding with a digital dollar.

However, Switzerland’s largest bank believes:

It will take time for policymakers to digest the complexities of these issues and reconcile potentially divergent approaches to how digital assets should be regulated.

The UBS team further detailed: “Regulators can wait a long time for Congressional action, and in the meantime, they will have to deal with these issues using the limited and imperfect authorities they already have.”

However, the bank noted that interest in cryptocurrencies “is growing in Congress and among the general public.”

Additionally, there are reports that the Biden government may assess cryptocurrency legislation with an executive order in the near future.

In August of last year, US Senator Ted Cruz criticized his colleagues in Congress for trying to regulate cryptocurrency without understanding what it is.

The Texas senator said, “We shouldn’t regulate something we don’t understand yet. In fact, we should take the time to try to understand this. We must have some audiences, we must consider the consequences… We must not destroy people’s lives and livelihoods out of sheer ignorance”.

Meanwhile, two federal agencies, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), are collaborating to ensure investor protection in the crypto space.