The price of Bitcoin (BTC) surpassed $25,000 on Dec. 25, reaching a new all-time high of $25,020 on Bitstamp and surpassing the market cap of Visa in a historic milestone. Visa, the financial services giant, is valued at $460.06 billion according to Yahoo Finance. As of Dec. 26, Bitcoin is comfortably hovering above $462 billion. But isn’t Visa and Bitcoin not an apt comparison? Bitcoin is essentially a peer-to-peer software protocol while Visa is a for-profit corporation. Some may argue that a direct comparison between the two is not apt as they are fundamentally different. But Bitcoin surpassing the valuation …

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has started shipping its physical Binance Visa cards in the European Economic Area. According to a Dec. 14 announcement, users in the EEA region will soon receive their physical Binance Visa cards. Customers that have already ordered the card can now complete the delivery process in their card wallet. In conjunction with debuting its physical cards in the EEA region, Binance also added Ether (ETH) support to its crypto debit card, so customers can now pay with the altcoin. “Simply transfer Ethereum to your Card wallet and drag it above the other coins to …

Verge (XVG), the cryptocurrency now infamous for its links to the porn industry, is on the up again — thanks to a classic fiat money scandal. As adult entertainment giant Pornhub confirmed this week, payment providers Visa and MasterCard are no longer servicing its payments, leaving only cryptocurrency for its roughly 120 million daily visitors. "Crushing news" for Pornhub The reason, the companies say, is questions which remain over Pornhub’s handling of illegal content. For MasterCard, the block is permanent, while Visa will continue to monitor its decision. Responding, Pornhub told the Associated Press that the allegations were “irresponsible and …

Visa has teamed up with blockchain services company Circle to make USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin transactions compatible with certain credit cards. “After Circle itself graduates from Visa’s Fast Track program, likely sometime next year, Visa will issue a credit card that lets businesses send and receive USDC payments directly from any business using the card,” said a Forbes article on Wednesday. Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto, told Forbes: “This will be the first, corporate card that will allow businesses to be able to spend a balance of USDC.” Down the road, the collaboration will facilitate USDC transactions between cross-border …

Visa and BlockFi are teaming up to launch a new credit card that rewards users with Bitcoin (BTC), setting the stage for wider mainstream adoption of digital currency. BlockFi, a New York-based startup specializing in crypto-backed loans and savings accounts, announced the partnership on Tuesday. As Bloomberg reported, the new credit card will reward purchases with Bitcoin rather than airline miles or other cashback rewards. Cardholders will be eligible to receive 1.5% of their purchases back in BTC The card, which carries a $200 annual fee, will be issued by Evolve Bank & Trust. Although the credit card will be …

Cash use has lost a ton of ground to digital payments as the pandemic has changed the way people transact worldwide. Some experts have recently argued that central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, could solve the problem of leaving that payments data in the hands of major tech platforms. In a blog post published Monday morning, Federal Reserve of New York researcher Michael Lee and University of California Santa Barbara economics professor Rod Garratt expounded on a paper they released earlier this month. The authors point to tech firms' troubling use of consumer data, which has landed everyone from Visa …

In early September of this year, the market capitalization of Bitcoin (BTC) was hovering at around $190 billion when the BTC price was hovering around $10,000. In the past two months, however, the price of Bitcoin rose from to over $15,000. With it, the market cap of Bitcoin surged from $190 billion to around $280 billion. This now makes Bitcoin more valuable than most major U.S. companies. Bitcoin is equivalent to the 18th largest commercial company in the U.S. If Bitcoin’s valuation is compared to publicly-listed firms in the U.S., it would match the 18th biggest firm. The 17th largest …

Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law. Editor's note Are you over the election? I’m over the election. But you can bet that as soon as I finish writing this week’s Law Decoded, I will compulsively check up on what’s happening in Georgia and Pennsylvania. And it seems that I’m not alone. Despite the election highjacking the entire news cycle, crypto has not been completely left in the corner. Likely most notable, Bitcoin is hitting highs it hasn’t seen since January 2018. Given that BTC price typically reacts …

The United States Department of Justice is filing suit against Visa for its acquisition of Plaid, which the DoJ is arguing is an illegal play to achieve monopoly. According a complaint filed by the DoJ on Thursday: "Visa seeks to buy Plaid — as its CEO said — as an 'insurance policy' to neutralize a 'threat to our important US debit business.' By acquiring Plaid, Visa would eliminate a nascent competitive threat that would likely result in substantial savings and more innovative online debit services for merchants and consumers." Modern life involves a bevy of different accounts, profiles, data, etc. …

Cuba is apparently seeing an influx of Bitcoin (BTC)-related activity as Bitcoin interest is on the rise in the country. According to data from Google Trends, Cuba now ranks second in terms of Bitcoin interest over the past 30 days. The island nation follows Nigeria, which has remained as the top country searching for Bitcoin on Google since April 2020. The rest of Google’s top five regions searching for Bitcoin comprise the African countries of South Africa, Cameroon and Ghana. Cuba’s rise in Bitcoin-related searches comes amid reports of Cubans increasingly turning to Bitcoin to circumvent sanctions imposed by the …

It’s been another strong week for Bitcoin. The dollar price is up about 2.5 percent over the week, although that’s still something of a decline from its recent high above $13,400. At one point, Bitcoin fell 4 percent in 24 hours. But bulls remain optimistic and see the price advancing towards $20,000, possibly as early as March. That future price movement will depend on a number of factors, including whether banks follow Paypal into cryptocurrency acceptance; the size of the stimulus expected to counter the new coronavirus outbreak; and the pattern of the hash rate, among other factors. One point …

The United States is girding its loins for an election that has cast a pall over a far longer timeframe than we ever should have let it. But then again, what did you expect when so many people spent so much of the past year cut off from their normal lives and circles, growing increasingly dependent on social media as a way of connecting with the outside world? That's not a recipe for sanity, even if it was a race between sane people. The phenomenon of modern information flow has gotten an enormous amount of attention since the last, similarly …