NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers will accept part of $22M salary in Bitcoin

November 1, 2021 Coin Telegraph

NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers will accept part of M salary in Bitcoin

The Green Bay Packers player's total salary would be worth roughly 368.8 BTC at a price of $60,636.

Aaron Rodgers, quarterback for the Green Bay Packers football team, has said he will be taking part of his National Football League salary in Bitcoin.

In a video posted to his Twitter account on Nov. 1, Rodgers — dressed as fictional character John Wick, likely for Halloween — said he would be partnering with Cash App to take a portion of his salary in Bitcoin (BTC). The NFL reported in July that Rodgers would be earning a $1.1 million base salary on top of a $14.5 million signing bonus and a $6.8 million roster bonus from March, totaling roughly $22.3 million.

I believe in Bitcoin & the future is bright. That's why I’m teaming up with Cash App to take a portion of my salary in bitcoin today.

To make Bitcoin more accessible to my fans I’m giving out a total of $1M in btc now too. Drop your $cashtag w/ #PaidInBitcoin & follow @CashApp pic.twitter.com/mstV7eal04
— Aaron Rodgers (@AaronRodgers12) November 1, 2021

According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, Rodgers’ total salary would be worth roughly 368.84 BTC at a price of $60,636 at the time of publication. Though the crypto asset reached an all-time high price approaching $67,000 on Oct. 20, it dipped under $60,000 more than once last week and has been mainly moving between $60,000 and $63,000.

Rodgers joins other professional sports players embracing crypto as the space becomes seemingly more mainstream. Last week, Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady said he would be compensating the fan who held his 600th career touchdown football with 1 BTC along with some signed sports memorabilia.

Telsa hints it may soon resume support for crypto payments

October 26, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin Payments

Tesla believes cryptocurrencies could emerge as a “liquid alternative to cash” over the longer term.

Tesla, the majo electric vehicle manufacturer headed by Dogecoin proselytizer Elon Musk, has hinted that it may soon look to restore support for crypto payments.

In a September quarterly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC), the firm stated it “may in the future restart the practice of transacting in cryptocurrencies,” suggesting Tesla is eying resuming support purchases made using digital assets.

The company also expressed its long-term belief in crypto assets as a store of value and means of payment, stating:

“We believe in the long term potential of digital assets both as an investment and also as a liquid alternative to cash."

Tesla previously accepted Bitcoin as payment for electric vehicle purchases between January and March of this year. The move came as part of a broader Bitcoin embrace from Tesla, with the firm also investing $1.5 billion worth of its treasury into BTC during the first quarter of 2021.

However, support for Bitcoin was quickly shelved after the firm faced criticism for supporting BTC despite perceptions that proof-of-work mining has a negative impact on the environment.

In June, CEO Elon Musk indicated that Tesla would consider resuming support for Bitcoin payments once at least half of the Bitcoin’s network hash rate is powered by renewable energy.

The report comes amid news that Tesla’s market cap topped $1 trillion after securing a landmark deal with car rental company Hertz. Tesla’s share price also rallied about $1k for the first time ever.

Much to the dismay of Shiba Inu Coin holders, Elon Musk tweeted this weekend that he only holds Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin.

On Monday, Twitter user Shiba Inu Holder tweeted to Elon Musk asking how much SHIB he is holding, to which Musk replied: “none.”

“Out of curiosity, I acquired some ascii hash strings called ‘Bitcoin, Ethereum & Doge’. That’s it,” he added.

Subsidiary of Mexican airline Volaris accepts Bitcoin payments

October 20, 2021 Coin Telegraph

airlines

El Salvador's Bitcoin adoption agenda continues apace, this time extending to a local airline.

As a result of El Salvador’s mainstream Bitcoin (BTC) adoption, Volaris El Salvador, a local subsidiary of budget Mexican airline Volaris, will accept Bitcoin as payment.

The Bitcoin move comes a month after Salvadoran aviation authorities gave Volaris's local subsidiary permission to operate in the country.

Salvadoran President Niyab Bukele took to Twitter to announce that the airline would accept Bitcoin.

Ya tenemos aerolínea salvadoreña, de bajo costo y que acepta #Bitcoin

@viajaVolaris pic.twitter.com/mMqzxtOYhA
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) October 20, 2021

In a recent Volaris event hosted on Twitter, President Bukele highlighted that the ability to pay with Bitcoin and the state-run Chivo wallet “allows us to increase the offering of flights for Salvadorans.”

Bukele’s government continues to incentivize citizens to use Bitcoin for payments and has even offered fuel subsidies. The country had previously reinvested $4 million worth of unrealized Bitcoin gains to fund infrastructure development projects such as a veterinary hospital.

Following in El Salvador’s footsteps, authorities from a Venezuelan airport plan to start accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as payment for tickets and other services.

As Cointelegraph reported, Simón Bolívar International Airport, in association with the National Superintendence of Crypto Assets and Related Activities, wants to enable crypto payments as a means to comply with local industry standards.

According to the airport director Freddy Borges, the airport will accept payment in Bitcoin, Dash (DASH) and the Petro, a government-issued oil-backed token. Signaling a commitment to drive cryptocurrency adoption, Borges said “we must advance in these new economic and technological systems to be accessible.”

Smart contracts are coming to Bitcoin through Dfinity’s Internet Computer

September 21, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin Payments

Efforts to expand Bitcoin’s functionality for payments, smart contracts and Web 3.0 are well underway, opening the door to wider mainstream adoption.

Dfinity Foundation’s Internet Computer blockchain is bringing smart-contract capabilities to the Bitcoin (BTC) network, potentially opening the door to new use cases for the premier cryptocurrency.

Internet Computer will utilize its so-called chain key cryptography to integrate with Bitcoin, paving the way for smart contracts with native BTC addresses that are hosted directly on Internet Computer, Dfinity Foundation announced Tuesday.

“Internet Computer smart contracts will gain access to bitcoin liquidity, and Bitcoin will gain powerful new smart contract functionality, without the need for insecure and cumbersome trusted bridging services,” explained Dominic Williams, the founder and chief scientist of Dfinity Foundation.

Smart contracts on Internet Computer will feature associated BTC addresses, giving them direct access to transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. Transaction finality on Internet Computer takes 2 seconds, compared with 40 minutes on Bitcoin. To get around this, so-called “Bitcoin banks” can be utilized directly on Internet Computer, enabling swift 2-second transactions.

Earlier this year, Dfinity Foundation launched a $223 million Developer Ecosystem Program to support further smart contract and blockchain development. The project, which launched in 2014, has received financial backing from some of crypto’s biggest venture firms, including Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital.

Dfinity’s latest efforts are part of a wider industry initiative to make Bitcoin more accessible for transactions, decentralize finance and Web 3.0. In January, open-source network Stacks unveiled its vision for Bitcoin-centric smart contracts utilizing a layer-one blockchain with a native bridge.

Several other developers are in the process of delivering new applications ahead of Bitcoin’s widely anticipated Taproot upgrade later this year. The upgrade received overwhelming support from mining nodes, paving the way for soft-fork activation in November.

While Bitcoin hasn’t achieved all the tenants of Satoshi Nakamoto’s 2008 whitepaper — namely, widespread utility as an electric cash system — it has emerged as a premier alternative asset. The Bitcoin network reached a total market capitalization north of $1 trillion in May before undergoing a broad market correction. Much of that growth is owed to growing institutional support for Bitcoin-as-an-asset.

P2P exchange Paxful integrates Lightning Network

September 14, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin Payments

Lightning Network is the leading Bitcoin scalability solution, providing layer-two transaction capabilities separate from BTC’s main blockchain.

Peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchange Paxful has integrated Lightning Network into its platform, giving its 7 million users access to near-instant Bitcoin (BTC) transfers.

The new feature gives users the ability to send and receive BTC from their Paxful Wallet in a matter of seconds and with much lower fees than existing blockchain transactions, the company announced Tuesday.

Paxful co-founder and CEO Ray Youssef described Bitcoin as “the best financial option” but acknowledged that scalability issues could be hindering adoption. He said Lightning Network is Bitcoin’s greatest chance of achieving the scalability needed to make microtransactions a reality.

The global online microtransaction market was valued at roughly $34.6 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10% over the next four years, according to industry research. The video game industry and the virtual goods and services that it propagates are becoming a major catalyst for the growth of microtransactions.

Lightning Network is being developed to facilitate Bitcoin payments and allow users to quickly and reliably engage in off-chain transactions through a second layer. Lightning currently boasts over 26,500 nodes for a network capacity of 2,468.93 BTC at the time of writing.

In the absence of a viable transaction layer, Bitcoin has carved out a strong niche as an investable asset. However, creating an electronic cash system was a key component of Satoshi Nakamoto’s 2008 Bitcoin white paper. (Interestingly, and as Cointelegraph recently explained, the Bitcoin founder’s forum posts and correspondences used “cash” and “gold” synonymously.)

There’s strong reason to believe that Lightning Network will achieve wider utility on the Paxful trading platform. As of April 2021, the P2P exchange had processed over $5 billion in volume, with Africa — a region that is quickly adopting Bitcoin as a medium of exchange — emerging as one of its biggest markets.

El Salvador’s largest bank partners with Flexa for Bitcoin payments

September 9, 2021 Coin Telegraph

bank

Bancoagrícola will work with Flexa to accept Bitcoin across the bank’s network for payments like loans and credit cards.

Bancoagrícola, El Salvador’s largest financial institution, is set to boost the country’s Bitcoin adoption policy following its partnership with digital payments gateway Flexa.

According to an announcement by Flexa on Thursday, Bancoagrícola has inked a deal with the crypto payment network to enable Bitcoin (BTC) transfers for the bank’s customers including retail and merchant clients.

As part of the partnership, Bancoagrícola customers can make credit card payments denominated in United States dollars via Flexa or other Lightning Network-enabled wallets like Chivo and Éclair. According to the release, these payments will not attract any additional fees and also cover loans and merchant goods among others.

Flexa recently added support for Lightning payment with the feature reportedly aimed at merchant clients.

Bancoagrícola’s partnership with Flexa is coming on the heels of Bitcoin officially becoming legal tender in El Salvador.

Reports of retailers in El Salvador accepting Bitcoin are becoming quite commonplace on social media with Cointelegraph reporting that McDonald’s outlets in the country are accepting BTC as payment.

If El Salvador’s Bitcoin adoption policy proves successful, global money service providers like MoneyGram and Western Union may lose up to $400 million per annum, according to the country’s president.

Indeed, remittance accounts for a significant proportion of El Salvador’s gross domestic product — 23% in 2020 alone — with 70% of the population reportedly receiving money from overseas.

Back in August, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, or CABEI, stated that adopting Bitcoin as legal tender could be positively impact remittances in the region. At the time, the CABEI promised to assist the country in building a technical framework for BTC adoption as well as compliance with international anti-money laundering standards.

El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law is not without opposition as a majority of the country’s population is reportedly against the move. Global financial entities like the International Monetary Fund have also warned against adopting Bitcoin as a national currency.

McDonald’s now accepts Bitcoin, but only in El Salvador

September 7, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin Payments

Bitcoin-as-a-payment is becoming reality in El Salvador after the country formally recognized the cryptocurrency as legal tender.

El Salvador’s recognition of Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender has opened up new payment options for its citizens, with fast-food empire McDonald’s reportedly accepting payments in the cryptocurrency through Lightning Network.

Journalist Aaron van Wirdum broke the news Tuesday after he visited a McDonald’s restaurant in El Salvador, where he was presented with a printed QR code directing him to an invoice page on Lightning Network. McDonald’s has 19 locations across the Latin American country as of 2019.

Just walked into a McDonald's in San Salvador to see if I could pay for my breakfast with bitcoin, tbh fully expecting to be told no.

But low and behold, they printed a ticket with QR that took me to a webpage with Lightning invoice, and now I'm enjoying my desayuno traditional! pic.twitter.com/NYCkMNbv7U
— Aaron van Wirdum (@AaronvanW) September 7, 2021

Lightning is a layer-two payment protocol designed to make BTC transactions more scalable. Although Bitcoin has succeeded as an investable asset, its adoption as a medium of exchange has been limited. Bitcoin payments were at the core of Satoshi Nakamoto’s 2008 whitepaper describing BTC as electronic cash. (Interestingly, Nakamoto’s forum posts and correspondences used “cash” and “gold” synonymously.)

Lightning Network will likely prove invaluable if El Salvador hopes to achieve mass adoption of Bitcoin payments. Beyond immediate transactions, however, El Salvador’s Bitcoin gambit could prove successful by streamlining global remittances, increasing the wealth of its citizens and attracting crypto-focused entrepreneurs to the country.

El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law officially came into effect on Tuesday, proving to be a classic “buy the rumor, sell the fact” event for markets. Peak to trough, the BTC price crashed 19% between Monday and Tuesday, reaching a low of $42,900.

President Nayib Bukele confirmed Monday that his government had purchased its first Bitcoin. As of Tuesday, the country held 550 BTC in its reserves.

Anarchist Bar in Brussels Now Accepts Cryptocurrency

August 29, 2021 Bitcoin.com

Major hotel in Swiss Alps now allows crypto payments

August 26, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Adoption

The Chedi Andermatt has 123 rooms and suites going for as low as 1,300 francs per night in the high season, or roughly 0.03 BTC or 0.45 ETH.

After four years of debate, a five-star hotel in a luxurious area of the Swiss Alps is prepared to accept Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) as payment from guests.

According to an Aug. 26 report from Swiss news outlet Blick, guests at the Chedi Andermatt hotel are now allowed to settle bills of more than 200 Swiss francs — roughly $218 — using Bitcoin or Ether. Prices are still seemingly set in fiat to reduce any risk of volatility, with the hotel converting any cryptocurrency received immediately into francs.

“We have long known that cryptocurrencies also have a future in hotel operations,” said the hotel’s general manager Jean-Yves Blatt. “In the course of the increasing spread and acceptance of cryptocurrency payments, we are proud to be one of the first Swiss luxury hotels to be able to offer our guests cryptocurrencies as a secure means of payment.”

First opened in 2013, the Chedi Andermatt has 123 rooms and suites going for as low as 1,300 francs per night in the high season, or roughly 0.03 BTC or 0.45 ETH. According to data from Coinmap, there is also a vacation rental in the area accepting BTC.

While many businesses have begun to adopt digital assets, Switzerland has long been friendly to crypto users. The Swiss canton of Zug, often referred to as “Crypto Valley,” is home to many blockchain and crypto firms in addition to tokens being widely accepted for a variety of purposes in the area. In February, Zug announced it would allow residents to pay taxes in crypto for the first time.

Crypto Adoption: Bitcoin Now Accepted on Digital Platform Powering Popular Voices in Finance

August 24, 2021 The Daily Hodl

Bitcoin Payments

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