1) Coinbase acquires Routefire platform.
Routefire in its blog published on 7 January 2021 titled as ‘Our next chapter: we’re moving to Coinbase to continue the mission’ mentioned that
Its team will be discontinuing Routefire’s services and our team will be joining Coinbase to continue developing best-in-class execution services for digital assets.
This blog is written by Routefire CEO Jason Victor, he also explained how this journey began in 2018 and from now, how Routefire team will focus on building the Coinbase Prime suite of tools and services.
2) Kenya’s Digital Service Tax comes into effect.
Kenya’s Digital Service Tax (DST) has come into effect at the start of 2021. As per DST, cryptocurrency payments now attract a 1.5% tax. Reginald Alango, a Kenya country representative at non-custodial peer-to-peer crypto exchange Bitzlato expressed his thoughts about the effect of DST on crypto adoption
With regards to it having negative impact on crypto adoption in Kenya, I do not believe so as there are so many factors that are driving the rapid growth of crypto in East Africa and the youth are on the forefront pushing this. However, it’s still early to make a prediction but this is something that can monitored after the first quarter [of 2021].
3) Crypto payments network Electroneum will provide its services in four more West African countries.
Crypto payments network Electroneum which helps unbanked people with no digital payment method to pay for goods and services, both in-store and online will now offer its services in four more West African countries Benin, Togo, Côte d’Ivoire, and Sierra Leone. Nigel Pooley, head of business development at Electroneum said
We are very pleased with the hundreds of electricity top-ups that have been completed in Nigeria, where we have hundreds of Electroneum users.
4) Ethereum is now being searched on Google more than ever.
The number of people searching ‘Ethereum’ on Google is at an all-time high. Google trends show that the number of Google searches currently being performed for “Ethereum” is now more than ever, leaving behind the number of searches during the last ETH bull run. Michael Vincent tweeted
Google Trends Worldwide Search Interest for #Ethereum projected to reach an all-time high:
5) Bakkt planning to go public soon.
Bakkt, the Bitcoin futures platform is planning to go public after a merger with the Chicago-based blank-check company VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings. VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings is registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and incorporated in the Cayman Islands state. The combined entity has been evaluated to be over $2 billion.