Hello, and welcome to this week's edition of Overbit News. In our first item of the day, we discuss the rapid decline of Shibu Inu, based on an Elon Musk tweet, who also clarified that he has nothing to do with the Dogecoin Foundation and is not investing in the Shibu Inu (SHIB) token.
Musk reiterated on Sunday that he has no affiliation with the Dogecoin Foundation in response to a tweet that stated: "Jared Birchall represents Elon Musk, although he, like all advisers, has no direct voting rights. This ensures that the foundation stays self-sufficient while benefiting from the experience of shibes such as Elon."
In a series of tweets on Sunday, Elon Musk stated that he only possesses Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and the Shiba Inu token. He was asked if he has recently spoken with the Dogecoin development team regarding Dogecoin's developments. Musk claimed, "What matters to me is lowering fees, decreasing block time, and increasing block size".
Billy Markus, co-creator of Dogecoin, chimed in with a response to Musk's Doge upgrading tweet emphasising "Dogecoin being fast, scalable, and inexpensive to send around is all it needs to be," and that "it doesn't need to be yet another blockchain that hosts NFTs or other tokens or whatever." Musk replied with a "hundred points" symbol.
Musk and Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the NBA team Dallas Mavericks, agreed in August that "The community for Doge is the strongest when it comes to using it as a medium of exchange."
The saga for Doge and Elon carries on, and it's an exciting story to cover, but in our second story of the day, Mastercard claims that any bank or retailer on its massive network will soon be able to offer cryptocurrency services. CNBC stated that Mastercard is set to announce that any of the hundreds of banks and millions of merchants on its payments network will soon be able to integrate cryptocurrency into their goods.
This includes Bitcoin wallets, credit and debit cards that generate cryptocurrency rewards and allow digital assets to be spent and loyalty schemes in which airline or hotel points may be turned into Bitcoin.
To that end, the payments network is collaborating with Bakkt; according to executives, a cryptocurrency startup recently spun out by Intercontinental Exchange. "We want to offer all of our partners the ability to more easily add crypto services to whatever it is they're doing," said Sherri Haymond, Mastercard's executive vice president of digital partnerships, in an interview.
The announcement could result in a massive increase in how ordinary Americans earn and spend Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Mastercard, together with Visa, operates one of the most dominant global payment networks and has agreements with over 20,000 financial institutions worldwide. According to Haymond, this enthusiasm has prompted Mastercard clients to contact the network for assistance in delivering crypto services. She believes that by doing so, banks would be able to keep clients on their own systems rather than having dollars transfer to cryptocurrency exchanges.
Mastercard and Bakkt will unveil their cooperation at the annual Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas later on Monday. According to Bakkt CEO Gavin Michael, the collaboration means that, in addition to providing crypto wallets and credit cards for banks, shops and restaurants will be able to give Bitcoin incentives instead of standard points, and Bakkt shares, which debuted as a public business last week, soared 234 per cent as a result of the news.
He said that existing points could be exchanged into cryptocurrency at rates determined by the partnering companies, allowing users to earn a return. "We're lowering the barriers to entry, allowing people to take something like your rewards points and trade them into crypto," Michael explained in an interview. "
With all that said, it's easy to see that cryptocurrencies are here to stay and that Overbit.com is here to cover the breaking news and provide the best trading experience for our customers.
Thanks so much for reading, and we'll see you next week.