Visa’s Chief Executive Officer, Al Kelly, recently disclosed that in order to make Bitcoin and other crypto-assets safer, useful, and applicable, Visa might add them to the company’s payments network.
During Visa’s fiscal first-quarter 2021 earnings call, the CEO of Visa described crypto assets like bitcoin as “digital gold” which are “not used as a form of payment in a significant way at this point.”
“Our strategy here is to work with wallets and exchanges to enable users to purchase these currencies using their Visa credentials or to cash out onto our Visa credential to make a fiat purchase at any of the 70 million merchants where Visa is accepted globally,” Kelly said.
The payments executive also said stablecoins could be used for “global commerce” and that “digital currencies running on public blockchains as additional networks just like RTP or ACH networks.”
Al Kelly added:
“Today, 35 of the leading digital currency platforms and wallets have already chosen to issue Visa, including coin-based Crypto.com, BlockFi, Fold, and BitPanda. These wallet relationships represent the potential for more than 50 million Visa credentials.
“The next leading network has a fraction of that. And it goes without saying, to the extent a specific digital currency becomes a recognized means of exchange, there’s no reason why we cannot add it to our network, which already supports over 160 currencies today.”
Recall many months ago, Visa disclosed that it had been working closely with licensed and regulated digital currency platforms like Coinbase to provide a bridge between digital currencies and its existing global network of 61 million merchants.
- In addition, Visa applied for a patent for a digital currency on a blockchain using possibly the ETH protocol, with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
- The multinational payment juggernaut could have just sealed its position as the major global partner in the shift to monetary digitalization that is bound to happen very soon.
Around the world, more than 25 digital currency wallets have already been linked to Visa, giving users an easy way to spend from their crypto balance using a Visa debit card.
The recent high buying pressure in the world’s most popular crypto asset by some leading financial brands and many retail investors has given some traders and investors incentives to start hoarding Bitcoins.
Taking a critical look at the number of bitcoins at crypto exchanges via Glassnode analytics, Nairametrics found out that the balance of bitcoin on exchanges just reached a 2 year low, despite Bitcoin’s recent prices relatively gaining significant value since the third halving, meaning a growing number of investors are unwilling to sell their ‘digital gold’ assets.
- Bitcoin Balance on Exchanges just reached a 2-year low of 2,348,226.622 BTC
- The previous 2-year low of 2,349,268.661 BTC was observed on 02 January 2021
Metric Description: The total amount of coins held on exchange addresses. Note that exchange metrics are based on our labeled data of exchange addresses that we constantly keep updating, as well as data science techniques and statistical information that changes over time.
Therefore these metrics are mutable – the data is stable, but especially most recent data points are subject to slight fluctuations as time progresses.
What this means: The world’s most intelligent investors are buying into Bitcoins at record levels for wealth preservation amid an era of significant quantitative easing by global central banks.
Tyler Winklevoss had earlier expressed why the inflationary properties of fiat currencies had led a mass exodus of investors from fiat currencies into the crypto market;
“That’s why so many investors have fled to bitcoin … because it’s unclear how the greenback gets off this track of unprecedented quantitative easing programs from the U.S Federal Reserve and what it’s actually going to be worth in the future if anything at all,” Winklevoss said.
XRP gained over 120% in two days, as the fourth-most valuable crypto by market value became the new coin of focus from a new brand of retail traders known as WallStreetBets.
- XRP traded at $0.483947 with a daily trading volume of $23,175,166,863. It is up 13.23% for the day.
- Recall that XRP is facing a serious legal tussle with America’s leading financial regulator, and this has caused many crypto exchanges including Coinbase to delist XRP.
- Such has led to its market value subsequently plummeting by 63%, in a crash that proved disastrous for many investors.
Meanwhile, leading crypto-payment based company, Ripple, creator of the fourth most valuable cryptocurrency by market capitalization, recently unlocked 1 billion XRP, worth $477.7 million, from an escrow account in two tranches.
“500,000,000 XRP (238,886,002 USD) unlocked from escrow at Ripple Escrow wallet.”
“500,000,000 XRP (238,886,002 USD) unlocked from escrow at Ripple Escrow wallet.”
Ripple owns more than half of the total supply of XRP. In late 2017, the company vowed not to sell all of its tokens (XRP) at once, keeping up to 55 billion XRP in protected escrow accounts.
It then set up a plan to release about 1,000,000,000 XRP monthly for sale to be used as funding for its operations, and to invest in startups of interest, with the rest kept back in the escrow accounts.
What this means: In simple terms, the implication of this is more liquidity in the Ripple network, as more investors will now have access to XRP.
Ripple (XRP) plays a dual role as a payment platform and a currency. It is an open-source platform that is created to allow quick and cheap transactions.
