Daily Archives: May 19, 2022

PRESS RELEASE. Binance is a curious company. the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, it also has no official headquarters and operates outside regulatory control. But that may not stop its step. Binance.US raised funding at a $4.5bn valuation this month, providing a new case for Binance enthusiasts. Today, they can share the exciting news that Freedom Protocol has set a new record on IDO volume.

Freedom Protocol is a new financial protocol that makes pledging easier and more efficient. It makes the largest amount of IDO with over $4M, and it is another big DeFi project issued on the Binance Smart Chain.

Freedom Protocol is wise to raise funds while it can. Revenue depends on trading volumes in its crypto, which are notoriously volatile. It is sensible to put aside capital when it can while building relations with external investors. It is worth mentioning that Freedom Protocol raises $4 from normal users instead of professional agencies.

Freedom Protocol fans like to claim their purpose is always challenging the traditional financial world. No matter how difficult his actions appear, they believe the Freedom Protocol boss has secret plans. Parsing its $4M IDO size to take DeFi platform come true requires a similar level of faith.

Freedom Protocol announced that they aim to make simplicity and directness of financial investment for all crypto enthusiasts. They were warmly welcomed on Binance Smart Chain(BSC) which is the public chain launched by Binance, it helps them achieve a record on IDO volume within a few days.

The first to welcome them are the opinion leaders. A few KOLs on Twitter post passionate tweets for this project, followed by publishing outdoor advertising in Australia and starting a lot of campaigns of various types.

Freedom Protocol is a typical case who is concentrating on private investment, stakes in private companies and individuals, all areas where institutional clients have been increasing allocations in recent years. Now Freedom Protocol launches its business around the world, including the ads for airport taxis in Germany, which indicate the determination of Freedom Protocol to intend to help more customers in other countries.

With nothing to prove, Freedom Protoco is also confident enough to voice the view that a model dominated by traditional finance is due an overhaul. And this time it is companies and management that need to adapt to DeFi’s needs, rather than vice versa.

Binance chief executive Changpeng Zhao described DeFi as infrastructure for the new digital world, and encourage many investors and entrepreneurs to get involved in DeFi story.

But mainstream acceptance will be slow as they know. Regulators continue to worry that crypto is being used for money laundering and other crimes. US SEC chair Gary Gensler has called crypto markets a “Wild West”. The noise is off-putting for both prospective investors and employees. So Freedom Protocol this week tweeted that they were trying to apply for cryptoasset licenses from both Dubai and Japan, it moves away from portraying itself as a decentralized organization with no fixed headquarters.

The Dubai permissions will allow it to extend limited services to pre-qualified investors and professional financial service providers. “The firm will also locate a “blockchain technology hub” in the Dubai World Trade Centre.” Oscar, Founder of Freedom Protocol said.

The success of Freedom Protocol is a tiny reflection of a startling larger truth: the huge audience crypto has so far left on the financial system and innovation of the internet. And as the size of financial work directly affects the daily life of every employed human on the planet, that matters.

The global crypto market is estimated to have a market worth more than $2tn. Binance’s own digital token is up more than 1,000 percent since the start of 2021. Freedom Protocol becomes a unique perspective on why Binance is so successful in recent years.

Perhaps Freedom Protocol has a plan to transform the financial model entirely. Maybe it will one day be a crypto payments company. Or an NFT trading platform. Or perhaps all the platform’s users just want to own it.

Website: www.freedomprot.com

Contact: Oscar

Email: marketing@freedomprot.com

This is a press release. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the promoted company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in the press release.

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El Salvador has been on the radar of leading financial and economic institutions since it made Bitcoin a legal tender. It has mainly become a spectacle as cryptocurrency supporters and non-supporters alike watch on to see how this plays out. El Salvador which had made good on its bitcoin promise had made multiple BTC purchases at close to the height of the market last year and some this year.

The country now holds at least 2,300 BTC since it made its first purchase in September of 2021. Now that the price of Bitcoin is down significantly since the country had begun buying, how is this playing out for the North American country?

El Salvador And Its Bitcoin

El Salvador had bought another 500 BTC in May after the market had declined to $1.68 trillion. These bitcoins which were purchased at an average price of $30,774 had brought the country’s holdings to 2,301 BTC so far. It would be the lowest price that the country had been able to purchase the digital asset and given that this purchase was only a small part of its larger holdings, the country still remains in loss from its multiple purchases.

Related Reading | Funding Rates Fall To Yearly Lows Following Bitcoin’s Fall Below $29,000

The first time El Salvador had bought some BTC in September, it had been trading above $44,000. What this means is that the digital asset is down about 45% since then. Its entire stash is now worth about $70 million at present prices. So even with the dollar cost averaging method that has seen the country buy BTC at different prices, it is still down 28% from its total purchase value.

BTC falls to $28,000 | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

The move to accept BTC has not only proved controversial on just the bitcoin price side, but it has also affected the country’s ability to receive international aid in the form of loans.

Last year, it was made public that the country had been looking to secure $1.3 billion from the IMF. However, this does not seem likely to happen given that the IMF has expressed its disdain for the adoption of bitcoin as a legal tender. 

It has advised the country to remove the digital asset as an official national currency, citing that this could cause problems for the economy in the long-term, revealing that the current account deficit for El Salvador’s remittance and the external financing-reliant economy is estimated to drift around $2 billion for the next three years. But President Nayib Bukele has turned a deaf ear to this.

Related Reading | Crypto Carnage Causes Flight To Bitcoin Safe Haven, Dominance Demonstrates

El Salvador is a country that is heavily reliant on remittances from citizens abroad who send money home to loved ones. For this reason, the president has said that BTC will greatly help make these remittances easier and cheaper for its residents.

On the price side, the president is not much bothered by the recent decline either. He has said in the past that he expects the price of the digital asset to reach $100,000 sometime in 2022. If this happens, then the country will be in significant profit from its BTC holdings.

Featured image from Coingape, chart from TradingView.com

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The president of Panama, Laurentino Cortizo, has declared he will not sign the recently approved cryptocurrency bill passed by the National Assembly of the country in its current form. Cortizo stated that one of his main concerns about the bill is the stance it takes regarding money laundering activities and crypto. Cortizo may approve some parts of the bill while vetoing others.

Panama’s President Considers Crypto Bill Veto

Laurentino Cortizo, the president of Panama, has announced his opinion regarding the recently approved cryptocurrency bill, and how it might be too lax when it comes to dealing with unlawful activities like money laundering in the sector. While speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Gateway Latin America conference in Panama City, Cortizo stated:

If I’m going to answer you right now with the information that I have, which is not enough, I will not sign that law.

Furthermore, Cortizo explained that he and his government would have to be “very careful” if the crypto bill presented has clauses dealing with money laundering activities, remarking that these are very important to Panama.

Panama allows the president to have veto power over the bills presented by the National Assembly, and Cortizo could use this attribution to repel the bill in its current form. However, Cortizo declared he and his lawyers are still reviewing the law to make a decision.

Panama’s Crypto Law

Panama started its cryptocurrency regulation journey last year, when Gabriel Silva, a national representative, introduced a crypto bill with a proposal that aimed to modernize the country and bring it up to par with other countries in the area. The bill, which faced some changes during its discussion, establishes pivotal concepts about crypto, blockchain, and virtual asset service providers.

In addition to this, the approved version of the bill introduces blockchain as a tool to improve the transparency of state spending, like other projects introduced already in Latam. This would include the progressive migration of public records to the blockchain.

Another important proposal of the bill is the digitalization of the identification process, with issued IDs being published on a public blockchain. Cortizo might take some of the articles passed and make them law, and veto other parts of the bill. To conclude, Cortizo stated:

It is an innovative law from what I have heard, it’s a good law. However, we do have a solid financial system here in Panama and one of the things I’m waiting on is when you have a global regulation of crypto-assets.

What do you think about the opinion of the president of Panama regarding the passed crypto bill? Tell us in the comments section below.

Sergio Goschenko

Sergio is a cryptocurrency journalist based in Venezuela. He describes himself as late to the game, entering the cryptosphere when the price rise happened during December 2017. Having a computer engineering background, living in Venezuela, and being impacted by the cryptocurrency boom at a social level, he offers a different point of view about crypto success and how it helps the unbanked and underserved.

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While non-fungible token (NFT) collectibles have become a hot commodity over the last 12 months, a number of NFT owners are taking loans out against their NFTs. This month, a project called Nftfi has facilitated $25.6 million in NFT loans so far, and last month the lending marketplace recorded nearly $50 million in NFT loans.

NFT Lending and Borrowing Continues to Grow

NFTs have become a billion-dollar industry during the last year and a popular blockchain technology use case. Even though sales have slid in recent times amid the crypto market downturn, NFTs are still selling for hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars per digital collectible. In addition to the NFT sales and auctions, NFT owners are also loaning their digital collectibles for access to liquidity. For instance, a decentralized finance (defi) platform called Nftfi has seen $185.4 million in cumulative loan volume since the market’s inception.

In the last week, the peer-to-peer marketplace for NFT collateralized loans recorded four loans for more than $100K or more each. On May 16, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) 7,813 was used for a $100K loan, and Autoglyph 231 was leveraged for a $200K loan on May 12. BAYC 6,276 was used for a $150K loan on May 10, and the BAYC 371 owner was able to obtain a $115K loan for the NFT the day before. So far this month, Nftfi has facilitated $25.6 million in NFT loans, according to statistics from Dune Analytics. Nftfi is also partners with the blockchain firms Flow and Animoca Brands.

NFT Lending Competition

Nftfi is not the only NFT lending platform on the block, as there are others like Arcade, Nexo.io, and Drops. Statistics show the Drops loan market has facilitated $6,746,515 in lending. Arcade has raised $17.8 million from investors like Pantera Capital, Franklin Templeton Investments, Castle Island Ventures, and Protofund. Another competitor is the peer-to-peer NFT lending marketplace Flowty, which is built on the Flow blockchain network. Flowty raised $4.5 million in the company’s first investment round from two lead investors and 23 total.

Nftfi has a wide selection of NFTs and an assortment from a number of blue-chip digital collectible collections as well. For instance, there are ENS names, Unstoppable Domains, Axies, Doodles, Sanbox land, Otherdeeds, Hashmasks, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC). Just recently the platform phased out its old smart contract (Nftfi V1) on April 4, 2022, and launched a new smart contract called Nftfi V2. According to the web portal, Chainsecurity and Halborn audited the platform’s V2 smart contract.

What do you think about people lending out their NFTs for collateral to acquire a loan? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 5,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.