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Binance Card is coming to Brazil in the coming weeks

  • Binance partners with Mastercard Inc to launch a prepaid card in Brazil.
  • Binance Card offers a BNB cashback of up to 8.0% on eligible transactions.
  • Binance currently identifies Brazil as one of the largest markets it serves.

Mastercard Inc, on Monday, partnered with Binance to introduce a prepaid card in Brazil – the largest economy in Latin America. Its shares are still trading down in extended hours.

Binance Card to encourage wider crypto use

Binance expects its crypto card to help further bridge the gap between conventional banking and digital assets. According to Guilherme Nazar – General Manager at Binance for Brazil:

Payments is one of the first and most obvious use cases for crypto, yet adoption has a lot of room to grow. We believe Binance Card is a significant step in encouraging wider crypto use and global adoption.

Just months ago, Binance and Mastercard had partnered to launch the said offering in Argentina as Coin Journal reported HERE. Following beta testing, it will now be available broadly in Brazil in the coming weeks.

Mastercard has over 90 million merchants worldwide.

Binance Card offers lucrative cashbacks

Using the crypto card to make purchases will earn users a BNB cashback of up to 8.0% that will go directly to their Binance Funding Wallet. Nazar also said:

Brazil is an extremely relevant market for Binance and we’ll continue to invest in new services for local users, as well as contributing to the development of the blockchain and crypt ecosystem in the country.

Binance currently identifies Brazil as one of the largest markets it serves.

Users will be able to get their first card for free but re-issuance will cost them $25. The Binance Card will reportedly support multiple cryptocurrencies as well.

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Investors put $116 into Bitcoin investment products as crypto pumped

  • Digital asset investment products saw inflows of about $117 million last week, the biggest since July 2022.
  • Bitcoin saw almost all of last week’s digital asset investment products inflows, with $116 of the total.
  • Total assets under management (AUM) rose $28 billion, roughly 43% from inflow lows recorded in November.

Bitcoin saw the most fund inflows this past week, with the benchmark cryptocurrency accounting for nearly all of the weekly inflows.

According to a weekly report digital asset manager CoinShares shared on Monday, crypto asset investment products recorded inflows of $117 million. It was the biggest week for inflows across digital asset investment products since July 2022.

Bitcoin products saw inflows of $116 million

Bitcoin accounted for nearly $116 million of the total digital assets products inflows. And as Bitcoin price rose above $23,000, inflows into Short Bitcoin products represented $4.4 million of weekly totals. 

In other cryptocurrencies, inflows into Ethereum were $2.3 million and $1.1 million for Solana. 

However, multi-asset investment products saw a ninth consecutive week of outflows with $6.4 million. Binance and XRP also saw outflows of around $400,000 and $200,000 respectively.

The spike in inflows pushed total assets under management (AUM) to over $2.8 billion, with the metric up by 43% from its November low. Investment products also saw an improvement in terms of weekly volumes.

Per the CoinShares report, $1.3 billion was traded, up 17% compared to the year-to-date average. The volume was also higher compared to the average of 11% for the broader crypto market.

In terms of various regions, Germany saw about 40% of the inflows for approximately $46 million, while Canada, the United States and Switzerland saw the next three largest inflow batches with $30 million, $26 million and $23 million respectively.

The post Investors put $116 into Bitcoin investment products as crypto pumped appeared first on CoinJournal.

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Coinbase Wallet enhances Web3 user safety with new features

  • Coinbse Wallet has introduced transaction previews and token approval alerts to help users protect against scams.
  • The wallet is also enhancing token approval alerts and has added Ledger hardware wallet compatibility.
  • The goal is to protect Web3 users against NFT scams and help users protect their crypto assets.

Coinbase Wallet, the non-custodial, standalone wallet provided by major crypto exchange Coinbase, has announced a series of new safety features aimed at making Web3 safer for users.

On Monday, the wallet announced that its suite of security features will offer users more clarity and better guardrails as they explore the exciting new world of Web3.

Coinbase Wallet introduces transaction previews

Part of Coinbase Wallet’s quest is to bring more clarity to users in relation to dApps and smart contracts use.  Now the wallet supports transaction previews, which work by showing a user an estimate of their wallet balances before they “confirm” transactions.

This will happen every time customers handle swaps, mint NFTs, and generally transact in Web3, the wallet wrote.

There is also token approval alerts, ability to revoke connections to dApps directly from within the wallet app and multi-chain addresses. The multiple address feature allows users to easily separate assets and NFTs, with each address customizable for labels and different security settings.

Apart from that, Coinbase Wallet now supports expanded compatibility for hardware wallets. Specifically, Coinbase now offers compatibity with Ledger hardware wallets (e.g Nano S), bringing more security to users.

The move comes a few days after Moonbirds founder Kevin Rose lost $1.1 million worth of NFTs in a phishing scam. As we reported over the weeked, the Twitter account of NFT collection Azuki was also compromised, with hackers tricking users to click on a malicious link that saw several wallets drained.

While 2023 has not recorded any major losses resulting from security breaches so far, NFT scams and crypto hacks remain one of the big problems of the cryptocurrency industry. Protecting against these as they explore Web3 is critical for users.

The post Coinbase Wallet enhances Web3 user safety with new features appeared first on CoinJournal.

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Ripple price prediction ahead of the Fed meeting

  • Ripple gained over 16% YTD
  • While the momentum is positive, it has yet to overcome resistance
  • $0.3 – $0.5 are pivotal levels for XRP/USD

This is the first important trading week of the year as three central banks (Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, and Bank of England) prepare to release their monetary policy decisions. Out of the three, the Fed’s decision is critical, as it affects the US economy and has indirect effects worldwide.

The consensus is that the Fed will increase the funds rate by 25bp this time. The risk is that it will be more aggressive – either by hiking 50bp or by delivering a hawkish message. Because markets are forward-looking, the impact of what the Fed does/says will be on the spot.

For the cryptocurrency market, the US dollar’s direction has mattered a lot lately. As the greenback weakened at the start of the trading year against its peers, it also lost ground against leading cryptocurrencies.

Take Ripple, for example. It gained +16.21% YTD, much of it on behalf of the dollar’s weakness.

What does technical analysis say about where the price might go next?

XRPUSD chart by TradingView

Ripple remains bearish while below resistance

Ripple followed Bitcoin in January and bounced from the lows. However, the bias remains bearish unless it can climb above resistance.

Three things support the bearish case.

First, the price action for the past several months is bearish, in the sense that it remained below resistance, despite the recent recovery in cryptocurrency assets.

Second, the horizontal support around $0.3 looms large. A break there puts a descending triangle in focus, and technical traders will hunt the measured move pointing to much lower levels.

Finally, since its inception, Ripple has only made a series of lower highs. No matter what the fundamentals showed, Ripple wasn’t able to climb above the previous lower high. This is bearish from a technical standpoint and deserves more attention from crypto bulls as it may signal more downside down the road.

Both for Ripple and the other leading cryptocurrencies.

The post Ripple price prediction ahead of the Fed meeting appeared first on CoinJournal.

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Fantom to release version 2 of fUSD stablecoin

  • fUSD v2 will allow for an on-chain fee system and help unlock Fantom to further institutional adoption.
  • The migration to fUSD v2 will allow for a predictable, budget-friendly on-chain fee system.
  • Liquidations of FTM positions will occur, although users will have ample time to sort such scenarios.

Layer-1 blockchain platform Fantom plans to migrate from fUSD version 1 to fUSD version.

The Fantom Foundation said in a blog announcement on 29 January that the stablecoin migration is a key goal as the developer team seeks to make the scalable next-gen blockchain more predictable and cost-effective for builders, partners and users.

 fUSD V2 will see Fantom users allocate fees in the native FTM or fUSD, with this making it easier to predict future costs based on the network usage. 

According to Fantom Foundation’s Andre Cronje, moving toV2 and allowing for an on-chain fee system will not only introduce consistency when it comes to planning, but also help unlock more institutional products.

FTM liquidations ahead of v2 launch

Fantom supports the use of FTM and fUSD in decentralised finance (DeFi), with users able to access services such as lending and borrowing. It’s for this reason that the Fantom Foundation has highlighted potential liquidations as migration from fUSD v1 begins.

The liquidations, Cronje pointed out, will occur in scenarios where the fUSD debt is either equal to or greater than the FTM or staked FTM (sFTM) backing it. In case of sFTM, Fantom says the stake will be unstaked immediately, with all rewards thereof claimed. 

The same cause of action will be taken against validators with less than the minimum stake, with this group unable to produce blocks or claim block rewards.

The timeline for v2 going live hasn’t been provided, but Fantom will help users as they look to close out positions ahead of the launch. This includes the ability to swap DAI for the Fantom stablecoin using a newly created swap tool. 

Users will get enough time to sort out themselves and benefit from advance notifications before any liquidation.

The post Fantom to release version 2 of fUSD stablecoin appeared first on CoinJournal.