According to a recent press release, a well-known U.S. payments and financial technology company announced that it will allow its United States merchants to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrency directly from their business accounts with the company. As noted in the release, this move follows the prior successful launch of this service to the company's retail customers and is in response to business owners' desire to have the same cryptocurrency capabilities as consumer clients. The company's business account clients reportedly also will be able to send and receive supported cryptocurrency tokens to and from external blockchain addresses.
In other news, a global payments technology company reportedly has launched its Tokenized Asset Platform to assist banks with the process of issuing fiat-backed tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. According to a report, the company's new platform provides the tools and infrastructure required to tokenize fiat currencies and may also enable tokenization and trading of real-world assets like commodities and bonds.
Finally, a recent report by Chainalysis notes that the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) had an estimated $338.7 billion in on-chain value received during the one-year period from July 2023 to July 2024, ranking it the seventh-largest cryptocurrency market in the world in 2024. Among many findings in the report, it further notes that while centralized exchanges are the primary source of inflows across MENA, decentralized platforms and DeFi applications are gaining steady traction. Other analyses in the report indicate, among other things, that across MENA, stablecoins and altcoins are gaining market share from other more traditionally favored assets, such as bitcoin and ether.
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