This week, a leading mobile payments firm reported a net profit of roughly $1.69 million in revenue from bitcoin sales in 2018. According to the firm's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosures, the firm made a net profit of $3.3. billion in 2018, with 5 percent of sales coming from its cryptocurrency payment processing service. Meanwhile, a global electronics company recently announced its latest flagship phone will offer a secure storage function specifically for housing private keys for blockchain-enabled mobile services. Also this week, a global technology firm announced a new blockchain web-based platform, Stratis. The platform allows investors to purchase initial coin offering tokens with either bitcoin or Strat tokens in a secure and user-friendly environment. Stratis integrates a popular multicurrency exchange service to facilitate the process of converting fiat money or cryptocurrency into Strat.
An investment firm made a major announcement this week related to tokenizing roughly $260 million in four private real estate and debt transactions involving an office building in Miami, Florida, valued at $65.5 million; a student housing facility in North Dakota valued at $90 million; a North Dakota water pipeline worth $50 million; and a multifamily housing facility in Southwest Florida worth $75 million. According to reports, these transactions will be the largest pieces of real estate financed by a tokenized security. Once all four deals are finalized, the investment firm plans to auction off the tokenized shares of the buildings/assets, represented by ERC20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. The sale will adhere to the SEC's private placement rules.
Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has launched a beta version of its decentralized trading service. The cryptocurrency exchange's core service is centralized – the core service handles roughly $1 billion in daily trading volumes, sets the price of assets, picks the selection of assets on offer, and makes money from managing its customers' fiat or cryptocurrency balances. The new decentralized platform will allow users to trade directly from their wallets, as opposed to requiring them to transfer tokens into an exchange to trade and then withdraw them afterward. The decentralized platform reportedly offers a near-instant transaction speed.
Finally, a major financial institution and a social media giant made news this week by supporting the Bitcoin Lightning Network through participation in a transaction on what has become known as the Lightning Torch. The Lightning Torch markets the Bitcoin Lightning Network by sending a bitcoin payment to a prominent member of the crypto community and enabling the recipient to pass the payment on after adding a nominal amount of bitcoin to the total. To date, the payment, 3,700,000 Satoshis (a small division of a bitcoin, valued at about $143), has passed through at least 137 countries and 224 different individuals.
For more information, please check out the following links:
- Square Brought in Over $166 Million Through Bitcoin Sales Last Year
- Samsung Confirms Galaxy S10 Will Include Private Crypto Key Storage
- Microsoft Wants to Help Make Your ICO a Success
- $66 Million Building to Be Tokenized on Ethereum Blockchain in Record Deal
- Binance releases a first version of its decentralized crypto exchange
- LinkedIn Founder, Fidelity Latest to Carry Bitcoin's 'Lightning Torch'
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