Bitcoin and How Crypto will Transform the Financial World
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On January 13, 2021, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced that it had given conditional approval to Anchorage Trust Company, a chartered trust firm, to become Anchorage Digital Bank. This has made Anchorage the first cryptocurrency services provider to have received the national bank charter in the United States. The company was quick to announce that it intended to launch innovative digital currency-based financial products in the near future.
Such recognition for the use cases of cryptocurrency in the financial sector has been pouring in over the past couple of years. In 2019, Visa, in partnership with Coinbase, released a debit card backed by cryptocurrency, which lets users convert digital currency into fiat currency to make payments. In 2020, JPMorgan and PayPal joined in, to permit crypto-based payments on their platforms.
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BitPay Says Fintechs Square and PayPal will Drive Bitcoin and other Cryptos to Become Globally Accepted Payment Method
The team at
BitPay, a blockchain payment technology firm that allows users to accept and send Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, notes that even though 2020 was a “rollercoaster of a year for the world,” digital currency remains at the “forefront” of the future of finance.
BitPay pointed out that on January 1, 2020, Bitcoin (BTC), the flagship cryptocurrency, opened trading at $7,194.89. And a year later, that value almost quadrupled to $29,001.72, which was by December 31, 2020.
BitPay thinks that 2021 will be the year that crypto becomes more widely adopted for payments and other practical use cases. The digital currency payment firm believes that better or improved regulations and enterprises such as Square (NYSE:SQ) and PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) will “drive crypto to become an accepted form of payments globally.”
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This video was recorded on Jan. 8, 2021.
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Anchorage Obtains Federal License to Operate as Crypto Bank
The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has granted conditional approval to crypto custodian Anchorage to launch the first federally chartered digital asset bank in the country.
In a statement on Jan. 13, 2021, the OCC said the company received the national trust banking charter, which allows it to create Anchorage Digital Bank, following a thorough review of its operations.
With the approval, Anchorage will now be expected to comply with the capital and liquidity requirements of the OCC and certain risk management procedures. The firm signed an agreement with the banking regulator to this effect.
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