Welcome to Issue 2 of Popular Crypto, a newsletter about the products and services taking crypto mainstream.
In a week that Binance.US launched (with the surprise addition of support for BNB, no less), you better believe that exchanges led the way for Popular Crypto news this week.
At the same time, we also saw mainstreaming moves with a crypto ATM network raising money and a partnership that will allow people in the Philippines to sell crypto for cash at 7-11. Oh, and because why not, a blockchain satellite gets some interesting new backing.
Clay Collins
Nomics Co-Founder
Table Of Contents
From Nomics
- The Nomics Crypto Zapier App is now live. We’re excited about launching the very first crypto app on the platform. Want to get a text alert when large price movements happen? No problem. Want to periodically update GSheets with new data. You can do that. Want a notification on significant market cap rank changes, that’s easy.
- Although Nomics’ high-end custom crypto market data API products have always offered sub-second order book data, we’re now able to offer 1-minute order book data to customers via many of our standard cryptocurrency market data API plans.
- LGO and Polyx have both been added to our crypto exchanges listing with A+ Transparency Ratings (note, if you’re an exchange and would like to participate in our A+ Verified Cryptocurrency Exchange Program then see here).
Wallets
- In a major upgrade to the UI of Lightning, the popular Zap wallet has created an easier on-ramp and will now support bitcoin buying via fiat in-app.
- Every time a crypto wallet connects to the internet, it creates a new attack vector. A new Israeli startup thinks it has (part of) the answer with a new offline wallet that allows unidirectional communication (ie the ability to send crypto) without allowing any information to come in.
Payments
- JPMorgan’s blockchain payment platform Interbank Information Network (IIN) has on-boarded a number of new partners, including Singapore-based OCBC (the second-largest bank in the region) and global giant Deutsche Bank.
- Square Crypto continues its hiring spree, this time scooping Lightning devs and even an ex-Facebook Libra developer.
- The discussion of whether Ethereum is money is heating up on Crypto Twitter, and a new move by BitPay to allow merchants to accept Ethereum certainly puts some points in the “Yup” column.
Hardware
- Blockchain phones continue to be an interesting and slightly weird space, as they try to iterate to find product-market fit. In the latest, HTC has announced a partnership with Bitcoin.com to support BCH.
- One of the world’s biggest bitcoin and crypto ATM networks, Coinme, has raised a new $1.5m round from funders including Ripple.
- Putting a whole new take on “wen moon?” the European Space Agency has given a grant to Blockchain satellite startup SpaceChain. The amount (60,000 euro) isn’t huge, but the signal is interesting.
Mainstreaming
- Crypto is too hard to use. But what if you could easily switch your crypto to fiat when you needed it? Abra announced this week that customers will now be able to sell their crypto at 6,000 7-Eleven stores across the Philippines.
Exchanges
- Certainly the biggest news in exchanges this week is the opening of Binance.US, and the biggest part of the announcement was the surprise inclusion of BNB.
- Perhaps feeling the pressure of their new competition from Binance.US, Coinbase indicated a new list of 17 assets it was considering listing.
- Continuing the trend of the integration between messengers and crypto, Japan’s LINE has launched a crypto exchange for its 80m users.
- As Argentina struggles against capital flight from the Peso, Huobi has launched Huobi Argentina to provide more crypto services in the country.
- At their Baltic Honeybadger event last week, Hodl Hodl made the very cool announcement that they are open sourcing their code to allow anyone to spin up their own p2p bitcoin exchange.
