Bitcoin in Brief Tuesday: POT Saves World, Coinbase Pumps ETC, Binance Wants EUR

The big story of the day is that a cannabis-themed cryptocurrency has been able to stage an international media coup, capturing the attention of news organizations around the world during a historic moment. Additional stories covered in today’s edition of Bitcoin in Brief include Coinbase pumping ETC and Binance’s plans to add EUR.

Also Read: Canadian Exchanges to Report Transactions Over $10k per Proposed Regulations

POT Prevents Nuclear Armageddon

There are three ways to go if you want to get your token on mainstream news these days: get spectacularly hacked, get someone killed, or help bring about peace between two nuclear-armed rivals. Yes, that latter approach is actually real. Potcoin has been sponsoring the peace missions of Dennis Rodman to North Korea for a while now and it is bearing fruit. Two of the basketball star’s friends, US President Trump and Kim Jong-un, have met in an unprecedented occurrence and POT was able to get into the limelight of this histrionic event.

As an example of how much priceless exposure this stunt has brought the altcoin, here is a 16 minutes long interview on CNN with Rodman wearing a POT shirt.

Binance Wants EUR “Soon”

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance plans to leverage its recent Malta operations, which earlier this year were welcomed by the nation’s Prime Minster no less, to allow clients to trade crypto-fiat pairs soon. The popular trading venue will enable euro transactions later this year, and plans to add other fiat currencies as well, according to CEO Zhao Changpeng. CZ further told Bloomberg that Binance will soon acquire a license from the UK’s offshore tax heaven of Jersey in the English Channel, and plans to open an office on the island with as many as a hundred employees. The exchange is also in talks with authorities and banks in Taiwan, the CEO revealed.

Coinbase Pumps ETC

Coinbase, the San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange, has announced that it intendeds to add support for Ethereum Classic (ETC) to the platform in the coming months and the altcoin’s price quickly reacted by jumping about 20%. Unlike some major ETC holders that cheered the news, most commenters online seem to deride the move. Critics complain that adding ETC is easy, as it is just an ether fork, and thus Coinbase choose a lazy approach to selecting new assets, even if they are not popular or widely used.

According to the company’s procedures for the process of adding new assets, which were set up to prevent new accusations of insider trading, they can only now begin the engineering work for supporting ETC. So, users can expect to see public-facing APIs and other signs that the asset is being added. When they reach the final testing phase of the technical integration, which is expected to occur over the next few months, Coinbase will publicly announce a launch date.

Wells Fargo Joins Credit Card Ban

Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE:WFC), the American retail banking giant, is the latest big financial institution to decide for its customers that they can no longer be trusted to use their own credit cards to invest in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. “We will continue to evaluate the issue as the market evolves,” Wells Fargo spokeswoman said in a statement. “We’re doing this in order to be consistent across the Wells Fargo enterprise due to the multiple risks associated with this volatile investment.” The bank thus closes ranks with other companies in its industry, like JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America, in a ban on buying crypto with credit.

Valve Shuts Down Opskins’ Trade on Steam

CS GO Tournament

Valve Corporation, the digital distribution company, has notified the game items marketplace Opskins that it disables its accounts associated with trade on the popular Steam platform by June 21, 2018. Opskins only launched Express Trade for CS:GO on June 6, and Valve quickly determined that it “uses Valve intellectual property and violates our Steam Subscriber Agreement, and is already being used by other businesses to avoid Valve policies.”

For its part, Opskins informed users it isn’t going anywhere and has announced the integration of items for nineteen blockchain-based games and services, as “they are smart-contract based, these items cannot ever be taken away from item owners or held to trade restrictions.”

What do you think about today’s news? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. 

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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