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Crypto exchange Binance said Tuesday that it will go live with a new Eth2-focused staking service this week.

In a blog post, the exchange said the staking offering would go live on December 2, with daily rewards distributed in the form of BETH tokens. As the post explains, “BETH tokenizes a user’s stake in the ETH 2.0 pool at a 1:1 ratio. BETH will allow users to redeem ETH at a 1:1 ratio when ETH 2.0 Phase 1 goes live.”

The announcement comes a day after Coinbase outlined its own plans for Eth2 support, including a planned staking service and an eventual trading pair between the original ETH token and the ETH2 token. 

Eth2, also known as Ethereum 2.0, began the initial phase of its multi-stage rollout on Tuesday. Tuesday saw the creation of the so-called beacon chain, which serves as a kind of data backbone for the nascent network. 

Binance also said that it would offer a double rewards program between December 2 and December 16 for KYC’d participants.

“Users who have completed KYC prior to the end of the activity period will receive an additional reward in BNB equivalent to the average BNB/ETH value of BETH earned as staking rewards by each respective user during the activity period, effectively doubling each qualifying user’s reward,” the exchange said.

© 2020 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.

Cryptocurrency derivatives platform ErisX launched cash-settled bounded futures on Tuesday.

The Centre Consortium, the governing body behind USDC, has tapped JP Morgan Chase alum David Puth as its CEO.

The Consortium announced today that it has onboarded Puth to grow Centre’s membership and adoption of USDC on additional blockchain networks.

In addition to growing membership, Puth’s other main charge will be to engage local and global regulators “to support the introduction of new fiat digital currencies built on Centre standards.”

Puth spent 19 years of his career as Head of Currencies, Commodities, and Emerging Markets at Chase. He also put in an additional three years at State Street as Head of Global Markets before building his own consulting business, The Council. Puth also garnered blockchain-specific experience as a strategic advisor to blockchain software development company R3. 

Now, he’s taking that expertise to the Coinbase and Circle-backed Centre at a “pivotal” time for digital currencies, according to Centre’s statement. 

“Now garnering the full attention of major policymakers, regulators and central banks, the rise of digital currencies on the public internet creates an enormous opportunity to establish technology, industry standards and networks for this new age of internet-based money,” said the statement.

Indeed, USDC has seen considerable growth in the past year. Supply passed one billion this June, and both the Solana and Algorand began supporting the stablecoin with Stellar to follow in 2021. Puth said that growth is setting the tone for more expansion.

“The growth of USDC over the course of 2020 is indicative of what I expect will be the path for Centre business activities and that of future Centre-supported stablecoins,” said Puth.

© 2020 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.

Institutional adoption is the buzzword du jour, probably a factor in bitcoin’s price rally close to $20,000, and not even really happening yet.  

Crypto financial services provider BlockFi is launching a Visa credit card in the U.S. early next year.

The card had been under development for at least a year, and the forthcoming launch means BlockFi users will soon be able to spend in fiat and get rewarded in bitcoin (BTC).

“It’s the first credit card in the crypto ecosystem, and the first time the bitcoin logo has been featured prominently on a physical card,” BlockFi founder and CEO Zac Prince told The Block. “We hope this card will be a valuable personal financial tool for our clients to earn bitcoin while making everyday purchases.”

BlockFi will offer a flat 1.5% reward in bitcoin for every transaction via the card. It will also provide a $250 bonus in bitcoin for spending $3,000 on the card in the first three months. The card comes at an annual fee of $200.

Accumulated rewards will automatically get deposited into users’ BlockFi accounts. They will be then able to use it for various purposes, including lending, trading, collateral for borrowing, or even withdrawing to an external wallet. 

BlockFi has today opened up a waitlist for existing clients with funded accounts, and will make the waiting list available publicly in January. The firm will then will start shipping cards “in spring of next year.” The cards will be issued by Evolve Bank & Trust and powered by Deserve.

The card will be available in “all 50 U.S. states,” Prince told The Block. “We plan to launch in other countries with this card product or something similar over time.”

While the card initially offers rewards in bitcoin, Prince said the support for other cryptocurrencies could also be added in the future.

Next year, Coinbase is also set to launch its Visa card that would offer spending rewards in bitcoin, but that’s a debit card. When asked why BlockFi opted for a credit card instead, Prince said, “credit cards enable higher reward rates to consumers and also come with other benefits, including better purchase protections, greater reward rates, and opportunities for building credit.”

As for tax implications of bitcoin rewards on the BlockFi credit card, Prince said: “The cash rewards value is treated as a merchant rebate and as a result not taxable as income. But converting the cash value into bitcoin establishes a cost basis for the bitcoin, which is subject to traditional rules around the taxation of bitcoin holdings.”

© 2020 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 Libra Association is rebranding itself as Diem to distance itself from the original multi-currency stablecoin vision as it prepares for a possible 2021 launch.

BlockFi CEO Zac Prince said it will be the first credit (not debit) card in the cryptocurrency industry.

The UPCO2 token represents a certified measure of carbon dioxide and can be traded, held or burned to offset an individual’s carbon footprint.

The long-awaited launch of Ethereum 2.0’s Phase 0 has just happened.

The event marks the roll-out of the beacon chain — a kind of backbone for the Ethereum 2.0 network, or Eth2, with the genesis block produced at 12:00 UTC on December 1.

The beacon chain has enabled ether (ETH) staking rewards for initial depositors, who had locked in more than $500 million worth of ETH in the Eth2 staking deposit contract.

“Today is the day rubber hits the road,” Justin Drake, Eth2 researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, told The Block. “It is pretty crazy we have four production-grade Eth2 clients — Lighthouse, Nimbus, Prysm, and Teku — from day one.”

A great deal of work went into Phase 0, including several testnets and audits. There’s still a lot of work left to do for the full Eth2 upgrade, as The Block reported recently.

Of the remaining Eth2 phases, Phase 1.5 is the most crucial phase, as this is the step during which Eth1 will merge with Eth2 and move from a proof-of-work model to a proof-of-stake system. 

Overall, the Eth2 upgrade, combined with Layer-2 scaling techniques, is intended to solve Ethereum’s problems for the long run. “Once there is sufficient base layer functionality, scalability, and security, ideally the protocol can largely become stable,” Danny Ryan, Eth2 researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, told The Block.

© 2020 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 revelation is a notable public relations win for Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.