VISA Financial News

The ethereum price has risen by 2% in the past 24 hours, reaching $1,657 as the cryptocurrency market gains by the same percentage. Its current price means that it's static in the past week and has increased by 6% in the last 14 days, with the coin just about recovering its $200 billion market cap today.

Bitcoin (BTC), the world's largest cryptocurrency, was able to recover some of its recent losses and attract modest bids above the $23,500 level as the crypto market started the month on a positive note. This was attributed to Abu Dhabi's plan to create a free zone for the crypto industry, which will offer zero taxes and 100 percent foreign ownership to digital and virtual asset firms.

Visa and Mastercard, the two largest payment card network processors in the world, have decided to push back the launch of their crypto-related products and services due to uncertain market conditions. 

Visa and Mastercard – leading payment processing firms – have decided to pull back on their crypto push amid the collapse of several notable crypto firms. According to a report by Reuters, the payment platforms will pause the launch of crypto-related products and services until the market condition improves. The firms are also reportedly looking for an improvement in the crypto regulatory environment, as per people familiar with the matter.

According to a a Reuters report published on Feb. 28, American payment processors Visa and Mastercard has delayed the launch of new partnerships with crypto firms due to a series of high-profile bankruptcies in the industry that have led to increased regulatory scrutiny. The move follows a period of warming relations between payment giants and crypto firms as the popularity of cryptocurrencies exploded, with Mastercard exploring payments via USD Coin and Visa targeting stablecoin settlements mere weeks before today's development. 

The Ethereum price has dipped by 2.5% in the past 24 hours, reaching $1,641 amid a 2.5% fall for the market as a whole today. Despite this drop, its current price means that it has gained by 5% in a week, while being up by 37% since the start of the year.

Since the beginning of the year, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) has increased by 48%, which has caused its market valuation to once again surpass that of the payment processing behemoth Visa.

A 48% Bitcoin (BTC) price surge since the start of the year has pushed BTC's market cap past that of payment processing giant Visa once again.

The ethereum price has gained by 9% in the past 24 hours, rising to $1,689 as part of a marketwide rally caused in part by a short squeeze. Its current level means it has risen by 2% in a week and by 7% in a month, with today's return largely compensating for losses witnessed last week.

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.__________

The ethereum price has dropped to $1,552 today, representing a 5% fall in the past 24 hours and a 6% loss in a week. The decline comes amid a marketwide selloff, caused by Kraken paying a $30 million settlement to the SEC and agreeing to end all staking services for US-based clients.

The ethereum price has risen by 0.5% in the past 24 hours, reaching $1,642 as the cryptocurrency market claws back some of its losses from the past couple of days. Its current price equals a 4.5% gain in the past week and a 30% surge in the last 30 days, with the altcoin almost keeping pace with bitcoin's increases in the past month.

Payment company Visa is seeking to build a "muscle memory" to settlements, aiming to allow customers to convert digital assets to fiat currencies on its platform, according to the company's head of crypto division Cuy Sheffield at the StarkWare Sessions 2023.

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The chief executive of credit card giant Visa remains confident that blockchain-powered solutions can be integrated into its services and offerings to power the next generation of payments.

Since joining Dawn Capital from JPMorgan in 2018, Chaplin has led some of the firm's biggest investments including into open banking fintech Tink, which was acquired by Visa for $2 billion in 2021.Deploying nearly £300 million in capital, Chaplin's portfolio history includes a host of early-stage software companies across the continent, including Cover Genius, Copper, Elwood, Billie, Acces Fintech and OpenGamma.Josh Bell says of Chaplin: “He has sourced some of our most exciting fintech investments, been a real thought partner to his founders, and delivered strong returns to our investors.

As the crypto space continues to expand into the mainstream, bridging the gap between digital currencies and fiat currency is a priority for many legacy financial institutions.

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.__________

In a new technical paper, the researchers investigate how to bring the commonplace automatic recurring payment option to the world of crypto and blockchain.This, the paper says, "is not a trivial task on a blockchain like Ethereum", adding: "For self-custodial wallets where the user has sole control over the wallet and private keys, automated programmable payments that can pull payments automatically from a user’s account at recurring intervals requires engineering work."Visa's answer is a smart contract application that allows a user to set up a programmable payment instruction that can push funds automatically from one self-custodial wallet account to another at recurring intervals, without requiring the user's active participation each time. It relies on a concept known as “Account Abstraction” (AA) which makes user accounts on Ethereum function more like smart contracts by allowing a user to have programmable features embedded into their wallets.

Never underestimate how quickly things can deteriorate in a sector as volatile as crypto, especially in a bear market. Prices can always go lower in the depts of crypto winter and casualties can multiply overnight. 2022 has been a year of never-ending contagion; with everyone focused on Binance, high-profile Bitcoin (BTC) miners were going bust. 

Stablecoins play a very critical role in the crypto economy today and despite the recent run-down in the broader market, stablecoin volumes continue to dominate most exchanges.