The payments industry is expected to embrace the entry of cryptocurrencies into the market in 2022. Evolution is apparent across practically every pocket of the payments industry. Disruptive forces like cryptocurrencies and buy now, pay later, or BNPL, are now mainstream topics in payments, and in 2022 all eyes are on the incumbents as they formulate their responses to these trends. The payments industry began to get serious about cryptocurrency in 2021. Throughout the year, we saw M&A activity — including PayPal Holdings Inc. acquiring Curv Inc. and Nuvei acquiring SimplexCC Ltd. — as well as new partnerships, cryptocurrency feature launches, significant funding rounds and dedicated cryptocurrency teams built out within incumbents. A meaningful trend is taking hold, and payments companies do not want to be left in the dark. A report from S&P Global Market Intelligence said that: “In 2022, we anticipate cryptocurrency will be an unmistakable theme across the payments industry. We expect to see payments companies with venture arms injecting more capital into the cryptocurrency ecosystem and incumbents padding their head count with cryptocurrency talent. Any payments company that has not begun to take this market seriously by the end of the year is likely to be at a significant disadvantage.”
Active companies with recent developments in the industry include: Hello Pal International Inc. (OTCQB: HLLPF) (CSE: HP), Tokens.com Corp. (OTCQB US: SMURF) (NEO: COIN), Marathon Digital Holdings, Inc (NASDAQ: MARA), HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: HIVE) (TSXV: HIVE), Hut 8 Mining Corp. (NASDAQ: HUT) (TSX: HUT),
S&P Global Market added: “Several areas in the market where we envision activity in the year ahead include: Merchant acceptance. While accepting cryptocurrency at checkout is not a new phenomenon — Microsoft Corp., for instance, has accepted bitcoin for digital goods since 2014 — acceptance remains severely limited. We believe growing consumer hype is sparking renewed merchant interest. Airbnb Inc. CEO Brian Chesky, for example, said offering cryptocurrency payments was its No. 1 customer suggestion in a recent poll. In 2022, we expect more merchants to test the waters with cryptocurrency — if nothing else, for marketing and PR purposes. Payments providers helping to streamline acceptance, such as ACI Worldwide, Inc.’s new partnership with RocketFuel Blockchain Inc., could help to drive this trend further. Also noted was Financial apps. Cryptocurrency trading is becoming a must-have feature in financial apps. Block Inc., formerly known as Square, sold $1.82 billion in bitcoin to Cash App users in the third quarter of 2021, turning a $42 million gross profit in the process. PayPal and Venmo LLC turned cryptocurrency trading on last year, and we would not be surprised to see more payment apps follow suit. We also expect to see at least one major financial institution or brokerage launch the capability in 2022.”
Hello Pal International Inc. (CSE: HP) (OTCQB: HLLPF) BREAKING NEWS: Hello Pal Announces Plans to Launch New Video Chat Apps – DogeChat App Will Use DOGE and Other Cryptocurrencies For Payment – Hello Pal International Inc., a provider of rapidly growing international live-streaming, language learning and social-crypto platform, announced its plan to launch two 1-on-1 video chatting apps: DogeChat and DoggeChat.
The two apps are 1-on-1 video chatting apps that will be focused on English-speaking markets, especially North America, and will allow users to match with and video chat with other individual users from across the globe, with calls charged on a per-minute basis and paid by the call initiator to the call receiver. The key difference between DogeChat and DoggeChat is that payments in the former will be made in Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies, whereas payments in the latter will be in fiat currencies made through the Apple Appstore and Google Play Store.
The plan is that DoggeChat will launch first, followed by DogeChat at a later date. Both apps will share in the same user pool, and upon the launch of DogeChat, regular users of DoggeChat will be incentivized in various ways to switch to DogeChat.
The launch of DoggeChat and DogeChat represents the Company’s market expansion into the burgeoning 1-on-1 video chatting space, as well as its foray into the North American market. More significantly, it also represents the Company’s plan to start incorporating cryptocurrency payments into its social and livestreaming businesses.
“We expect these apps to be very synergistic to our current livestreaming and crypto-mining operations,” said KL Wong, Founder and Chairman of the Company. “They will not only bring into our existing ecosystem new users from different markets, but also allow us to start implementing our goal to make the use of cryptocurrency more widespread in the world, starting with our users.” CONTINUED… Read this entire press release and more news for Hello Pal at: https://www.financialnewsmedia.com/news-hp
Other industry developments from around the markets include:
Tokens.com Corp. (OTCQB US: SMURF) (NEO: COIN) recently shared that its subsidiary, Metaverse Group, has purchased the Music District in Decentraland, as a joint venture with 13th Floor Ventures, an institutionally-backed investment fund focused on virtual real estate opportunities in the Metaverse.
The Music District is comprised of 34 parcels, equivalent to 91,936 sq ft of flat land in physical terms. The district is positioned in a strategic location as the land borders Festival Land, Decentraland’s live music district that has featured live performances from many prominent artists and Genesis Plaza, the heart of Decentraland where all users enter the virtual world and retains high foot traffic volumes.
HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: HIVE) (TSXV: HIVE) recently announced the production figures from the Company’s global Bitcoin and Ethereum mining operations for the month of March 2022, with a BTC HODL balance of 2,568 Bitcoin and 16,196 Ethereum as of April 3, 2022. In addition to this the Company is pleased to announce two milestone accomplishments of reaching 2 Exahash of Bitcoin mining and 6 Terahash of Ethereum mining this month.
*The Company’s production of ETH from GPU mining (including selective optimizations of GPU hashrate) has yielded a total ETH production of 2,549 ETH.
Frank Holmes, Executive Chairman of HIVE stated “We are very pleased to report HIVE has continued its extremely strong momentum in expanding our hashing power, notably our Ethereum mining hash power grew by 33% this month. In March we produced an average of 9.0 BTC per day, and we are pleased to note that as of today, we are producing approximately 9.0 BTC a day even after the recent difficulty increase of 4%. Our Bitcoin hashing power increased in March and at the calendar month-end our hashrate was 2.0 Exahash, which translated into a 6% increase in BTC mining on a month over month basis, while BTC prices corrected.”
Marathon Digital Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: MARA), one of the largest enterprise Bitcoin self-mining companies in North America, recently announced the Company’s intent to transition its bitcoin miners from the facility in Hardin, MT to new locations with more sustainable and non-carbon emitting sources of power.
In 2021, Marathon announced that the Company’s mining operations would be 100% carbon neutral by year-end 2022. To achieve that goal and to build upon its current strategy, Marathon intends to transition its bitcoin miners from the facility in Montana, which currently derives its power from a coal-fired power plant, to new locations with more sustainable sources of power. The transition is planned to occur in stages to minimize downtime and is currently expected to be completed during the third quarter of 2022.
Hut 8 Mining Corp. (NASDAQ: HUT) (TSX: HUT), one of North America’s largest, innovation-focused digital asset mining pioneers, supporting open and decentralized systems since 2018, recently announced that it has entered into an agreement with TAAL to conclude its hosting relationship and purchase 960 MicroBT Whatsminer M31S+ effective May 1, 2022. The ASIC miners are currently installed and running at the company’s mining facility in Medicine Hat on behalf of TAAL.
The machines are expected to provide an immediate incremental hashrate of 81 PH/s, bringing Hut 8’s total hashrate to 2.62 EH/s.
“The incremental capacity will deliver an immediate hashrate benefit as ASIC miners are already on-site, installed and hashing,” said Jaime Leverton, Chief Executive Officer of Hut 8. “Over the past 18 months, we have pursued a strategy that is unique among our peer group: in addition to digital asset mining, we support clients with high performance computing, cloud hosting, and collocation services at our five Canadian data centres so they can succeed in the burgeoning Blockchain and Web 3.0 industries.”
Once the acquisition is complete, Hut 8’s operations at all mining sites will be 100% allocated to self-mining.
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