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Mastercard has formed partnerships with digital asset service companies Amber Group, Bitkub and CoinJar in order to allow consumers and businesses across Asia Pacific to obtain crypto-linked Mastercard credit, debit and prepaid cards, the company said in a statement Monday.

• Cardholders can now instantly convert their cryptocurrencies into a traditional fiat currency that can be spent everywhere that Mastercard is accepted.
• Mastercard’s partners for this initiative are the first Asia Pacific-based cryptocurrency platforms to join Mastecard’s global Crypto Card Program, according to the statement.
• Some 45% of those surveyed in Asia Pacific said they are likely to consider using cryptocurrency in the next year, and 12% said they used crypto in the last year, according to the latest Mastercard New Payments Index.
• Mastercard said in late October it was working with digital asset platform Bakkt to allow merchants and banks in the U.S. to build cryptocurrency into their offerings.

Bitcoin (BTC) broke above a short-term downtrend and looks poised to retest its all-time price high of about $66,900. The cryptocurrency was trading at around $66,000 at press time and is up about 5% over the past 24 hours.

Upside momentum is improving after a two-week consolidation phase of between $60,000 and $64,000. A confirmed breakout from that consolidation would require at least two consecutive daily closes above $66,900.

If a new all-time high is confirmed, indicators suggest further upside for BTC’s price, initially toward the $86,000 resistance level. Seasonal strength in the fourth quarter could support continued bullish activity over the next two months.

For now, intraday charts appear to be overbought into Asian trading hours, although pullbacks should remain limited given strong support at around $60,000.

Quick Take

• October saw a lot of NFT and blockchain gaming startups raising funds — Nearly half of the $3.4 billion worth of VC deals were in this category.
• The crypto trading category was also very popular, followed by DeFi and other categories.

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The cryptocurrency industry thrives on constant, ever-evolving innovation. But when it comes to stablecoin development, “that is not what you want,” according to Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu.

In an interview with CoinDesk TV Monday, Hsu, who is the administrator of the U.S. federal banking system and CEO of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), argued that when dealing with people’s money, having too many innovators in the field poses risks.

“You want your money to be stable and reliable, you want it to be there in good times and bad times and not have to think about it,” Hsu said. “If you innovate too much in that space, you’re going to get a wide range of outcomes that some of which are not going to be good.”

Hsu spoke in the wake of a recent report released by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets that recommended stablecoin issuers should be regulated like banks. Many in the crypto industry argue such a move would unfairly single them out.

But Hsu said vulnerable populations could be at risk without stronger safeguards.

“We want to be really careful about who is in this space and why, and what the risks for them are,” he said.

Hsu cited a July-August poll by Morning Consult in which 37% of respondents who were underbanked said they own cryptocurrency compared to only 10% of banked consumers.

“There is some risk that folks who are least able to bear it lose their money,” he said. “And I think we want to be really careful.”

Another reason for caution is the risk of too many investors trying to redeem their stablecoins for cash at once, leaving the issuer unable to honor its obligations, a risk that necessitates ever-more transparency from stablecoin issuers.

“I have personally been in situations with either banks, non-banks, money funds and others where there’s the question of what’s there, and the inability to answer that question confidently is what leads to the run,” Hsu said.

Mastercard has partnered with three leading cryptocurrency companies in Asia Pacific (APAC) as part of plans to launch crypto-backed payment cards in the region.

According to an announcement by Mastercard today, the trio of partners are Hong Kong-based crypto trading startup Amber Group, Australian cryptocurrency exchange CoinJar, and Siam Commercial bank-owned exchange platform Bitkub.

These three companies are the first APAC-based virtual currency firms to join Mastercard’s Crypto Card Program.

“In collaboration with these partners that adhere to the same core principles that Mastercard does — that any digital currency must offer stability, regulatory compliance and consumer protection — Mastercard is expanding what’s possible with cryptocurrencies to give people even greater choice and flexibility in how they pay,” Rama Sridhar, Mastercard’s executive vice president of digital and emerging partnerships and new payment flows for the APAC region said in the statement.

Mastercard accelerating crypto adoption

Following the partnership, consumers and merchants in the APAC region will soon be able to obtain crypto-backed Mastercard debit, credit, and prepaid cards. This access could simplify the use of cryptocurrencies for users in the region.

In a recent survey by Mastercard, 45% of respondents in the APAC region stated that they would consider adopting crypto for payments in 2022.

Mastercard first announced plans to begin supporting some cryptocurrencies directly on its network back in February. Since then, the company has shown an increasing interest in digital assets.

In September, Mastercard acquired blockchain forensics outfit CipherTrace — an acquisition CEO Michael Miebach called a “massive services opportunity” amid the company’s wider plans to adopt central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and stablecoins.

In October, the company inked a deal with crypto exchange Bakkt to widen the scope of its cryptocurrency service delivery to banks and fintech clients.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Today, the Department of Treasury, alongside the Department of Justice, announced new sanctions on a cryptocurrency exchange linked to ransomware payouts. 

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) has added Chatex, alongside affiliated entities IZIBITS OU, Chatextech SIA and Hightrade Finance Ltd to its sanctions list. Chatex is a crypto exchange that the Treasury found to have facilitated ransomware payouts: 

“Chatex, which claims to have a presence in multiple countries, has facilitated transactions for multiple ransomware variants. Analysis of Chatex’s known transactions indicate that over half are directly traced to illicit or high-risk activities such as darknet markets, high-risk exchanges, and ransomware. “

Chatex was known for its links to Suex, another Russia-based OTC desk that OFAC sanctioned at the end of September, the first time it had taken action against a crypto exchange directly. Egor Petukhovsky is the founder of both exchanges, but he announced his departure from Chatex on the heels of the Suex designation.

In addition to the firms, the Treasury has also targeted two individuals associated with ransomware-based organized crime groups, Yaroslav Vasinskyi and Yevgeniy Polyanin. 

A representative for blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis told The Block, “Chatex has received at least $77.5M in Bitcoin since it began operating in September 2018, including more than $17M in illicit funds, including from darknet markets (primarily Hydra), scams (primarily TheFiniko and QubitTech.ai), and various ransomware strains.”

The Department of State also announced a $10 million reward for information leading to leaders of the Sodinokibi/REvil ransomware-as-a-service gangs.

In a note that seems to reach out to the crypto industry, the Treasury’s announcement explains: 

“While most virtual currency activity is licit, virtual currency remains the primary mechanism for ransomware payments, and certain unscrupulous virtual currency exchanges are an important piece of the ransomware ecosystem. The United States urges the international community to effectively implement international standards on anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) in the virtual currency area, particularly regarding virtual currency exchanges.”

Since the Suex designation, the Treasury has been busy engaging with the crypto industry, putting out new user-friendly guidance on basic expectations to avoid sanctions violations. 

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried thinks that applying blockchain technology to social media could be a big opportunity. 

Speaking at Breakpoint, in Lisbon, the crypto billionaire said, “I think social media on the blockchain — I continue to think this could be absolutely huge. I think it solves a lot of existing pain points, which are really coming to the forefront of society right now.”

Bankman-Fried added that this would require a way to exchange messages in a secure and private way — one that could be accessible to multiple user-interfaces. He said this protocol would need to be composable and cross-platform.

As a big Solana-backer, it’s no surprise that he pointed to Solana to tackle this objective. He claimed that Solana would be able to handle such a task, since it can process a significant amount of transactions (currently handling around 2,300 transactions per second). 

Bankman-Fried also discussed how DeFi could scale more rapidly, namely by integrating with pre-existing platforms — such as social media platforms.

“One potential way to absolutely supercharge DeFi adoption is to first build a great product but then combine it with an already existing massive userbase. And many of these userbases are order of magnitude bigger than all of DeFi so far and you talk about the adoption so far that we’ve seen in the industry but that might just pale in comparison to what a single gigantic platform can bring forward,” he said.

He added that he was excited to see whether it’s maps, existing social media platforms, fintech platforms or natural growth that will do this and help scale DeFi to hundreds of millions of users, “because that’s where all the upside is.”

How blockchain can reinvent social media

Blockchain technology could be used within social media in many ways. It could be used to ensure that all content on the network is uncensorable through storage on a blockchain. Or it could be used to tokenize various elements, such as rewarding users for creating good content.

There are already some projects trying to achieve this goal. Hive is one blockchain platform that supports multiple social media blogging platforms. DeFi lending platform Aave is working on a protocol for decentralized social media. Social network Gab also has plans to adopt blockchain technology. Plus, Twitter is exploring how it could build its own protocol, which Twitter would then adopt — a project known as BlueSky.

Prolific crypto project founder Dan Larimer — who built BitShares, Steemit (which later effectively became Hive) and EOS — is also building a new protocol for social media, called Clarion. Although unlike his previous projects, it seemingly won’t have a blockchain or a token.

Reddit is also experimenting with blockchain technology. It has a couple of tokens for two of its subReddits — r/Cryptocurrency and r/Fortnite — although they are still running on testnets for now. According to a Reddit engineer called Rahul, the social network plans to keep experimenting with this technology so that when it’s scalable, it can replace karma with tokens. This could bring tokenization to all of Reddit’s 500 million monthly users.

For more breaking stories like this, make sure to follow The Block on Twitter.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The stocks of crypto mining companies, which are heavily exposed to the prices of the crypto currencies they mine, surged on Monday after the price of bitcoin approached record highs and ether, the native token for Ethereum, hit an all-time-high.

• Among the crypto miners, Marathon Digital led the surge on Monday, with the stock soaring almost 20%, while peer Riot Blockchain climbed 17%.
• Other miners such as Bit Digital, Bitfarms, Hive Blockchain, Hut 8, Cleanspark, Sphere 3D and Greenidge Generation each rose more than 10%. Meanwhile, Stronghold, Argo and Cipher’s shares were each up more than 5% each.
• The share price of miners are most leveraged to the price of cryptocurrencies, since their main source of revenue comes from mining the coins and holding them on their balance sheets.
• With bitcoin prices climbing above $60,000, miners big and small continue to make profits, leading to a surge in capital flowing into the sector and more companies delving into mining.
• “With current BTC mining margins north of 90%, capital is aggressively flowing into the sector, which we expect to make BTC mining more institutionalized,” said BTIG analyst Gregory Lewis in a research note.
• Moreover, Lewis highlighted that the breakeven cost, in terms of electricity, for miners can range from anywhere between $5,000 to $14,000 per bitcoin, implying a heightened profit margin level for miners minting coins at current bitcoin prices.
• To put the profitability margin in context, one of the largest bitcoin miners, Marathon Digital, said in a September presentation that their mining cost is about $5,612 per bitcoin, with margin of about 85%, when all of their mining rigs get deployed.
• Another crypto-linked stock, MicroStrategy Inc., which is often seen as a proxy for bitcoin, climbed about 9%, while crypto exchange Coinbase Global gained 7% and Robinhood Markets, where many users trade crypto, was mostly flat on Monday.

This episode is sponsored by Kava, Nexo.io and Market Intel by Chainalysis.

Today’s Stories:

European stocks steady after hitting record highs

Stock Futures Pause; Tesla Shares Fall Premarket

Shiba Inu Sees Record Speculative Frenzy, Snaps 5-Week Winning Trend

Wall St Week Ahead: Some investors look to diversify amid big tech rally

Wall St banks make push into Europe’s private capital markets

Analysis: Flatlining participation, rising wages leave Fed employment puzzle unresolved

Crypto is Creating Newfound Wealth – and Job Freedom – for Many Americans

Crypto Exchange Huobi Global is set to Move Spot Trading Services to Gibraltar

Bank of China Reveals a Machine That Converts Foreign Currency to Digital Yuan.

House Sends Infrastructure Bill With Crypto Tax Provision to US President

Banking Industry is Likely to Capitalize on Stablecoin Deposit Demand, Says Morgan Stanley

NYC’s New Mayor-Elect Eric Adams says He’ll Take First 3 Paychecks in Bitcoin

Chia Network announced plans to Develop a Prototype for the World Bank’s Climate Warehouse

Calling all NFT Haters: Put Your Money Where Your Tweet is and Short That CryptoPunk

Featured Story: Why Stablecoin Regulation Isn’t ‘Urgent’

This episode was edited & produced by Adrian Blust.

Crypto exchange operator Coinbase announced Monday that its wallet is now available as a standalone browser extension.

Coinbase first introduced a downloadable browser extension of its wallet in May of this year. But that version allowed users to only link their wallet account to the extension, meaning transactions could be initiated directly via desktop but required user confirmation via their wallet mobile apps.

The new version, a standalone browser extension, allows users to directly access services, such as crypto trading, decentralized apps (dapps), and NFTs, all from their browser without confirming transactions on their smartphones.

“The previous downloadable Coinbase Wallet browser extension, while a step in the right direction, still required the user to have the Wallet mobile app installed, whereas the new version does not,” a Coinbase spokesperson told The Block.

The news essentially means that Coinbase Wallet will now directly compete with wallets like MetaMask.

Coinbase’s group product manager Sid Coelho-Prabhu said the company will continue working “to empower everyone to use dapps and web3 by building the easiest-to-use and most accessible self-custody wallet in the ecosystem.”

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.