The Past Week In Crypto News: October 6th to October 13th

Welcome to the latest edition of “The Past Week in Crypto News," a weekly recap of companies, institutions, organizations and individuals who are beginning to adopt crypto as a payment/work platform. With the crypto industry becoming increasingly dynamic, this weekly report is meant to help you stay in the loop. The last few days saw cryptocurrency becoming more mainstream, implemented by some of the world’s most prominent organizations across different industries.

After El Salvador’s adoption, another country has introduced a bill to regulate Bitcoin, albeit not as legal tender. Brazil, a country with a population of 211 million people, is planning to regulate and adopt BTC. This was announced by Federal Deputy Aureo Ribeiro. This law could make it possible for residents to use the cryptocurrency to “buy houses in the market or a burger from McDonald’s,” stated Ribeiro. The law was approved by the lower-level House and has been sent for approval to the upper-level House.

With the constant crashes and bugs that tend to plague OpenSea, many NFT aficionados have been hungry for an option that will allow them to be less reliant on a single platform for NFT exchange. Earlier this week, Coinbase announced their intent to build a platform for minting and exchanging non-fungible tokens, much to the delight of many in the web3.0 community. Learn more about the plan here.

Birmingham Legion’s defender Alex Crognale has announced that he will be paid in Bitcoin from now on. He stated that—by doing so—he will “protect his purchasing power and preserve his wealth.” Crognale is the first in the United Soccer League’s history to receive this form of payment and joins a growing list of athletes who are choosing to be paid by their teams in Bitcoin or some form of cryptocurrency.  He will be accepting Bitcoin by using Bitwage. This is one more case in which Bitcoin’s theoretical use case is implemented in practice. 

Stripe, the online payment startup valued at $95 billion, has announced plans to build crypto-based products. While all of the details are not yet known, the company co-founder and CEO, Patrick Collison, recently announced the move on social media. The move was also announced by Stripe’s head of engineering Guillaume Poncin. Multiple job openings for the Staff Engineer position are posted on the company’s website. This is a significant event for the crypto space, as Stripe is the world’s third most valuable startup, and about 19% of the online transactions are processed through Stripe.

UnitedMasters, the digital music distribution startup backed by Apple and founded by music executive Steve Stoute, has announced its partnership with Coinbase. This was announced by the company on social media. UnitedMasters said that this partnership “will empower independent artists by giving them transparency, equity, and control over their earnings.” Artists will be able to choose any coin available in Coinbase. This move aligns with the company’s ethos, which is to allow independent music artists to have ownership over their music and royalties.