SUMMARY
RBI says no prohibition on banks in providing accounts to crypto traders
Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethirum (ETH) prices are at $8,933 and $204, respectively
Binance-backed travel tech startups TravelByBit and Travala.com merge to provide crypto booking services
India's Crypto Economy
India's Crypto Economy is a brand-new weekly newsletter (delivered every Thursday) from Inc42 to help you decode the rapidly growing crypto economy and its implications on business, work and life. We launched this newsletter on the 4th anniversary of our weekly series “Crypto This Week” which completed 190 editions in May, 2021.
The Indian crypto exchangers finally breathe a sigh of relief as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on Friday (May 22), said that there is no prohibition on banks in providing accounts to traders dealing with cryptocurrencies. This comes as a response to the Right to Information (RTI) filed by Unocoin cofounder BV Harish, who raised concerns by traders seeking for clarity as banks continued to impose restrictions on crypto trade despite the ruling by the Supreme Court.
In another update, Mumbai-based cryptocurrency exchange aggregator CoinDCX raised $2.5 Mn in funding led by existing investor Polychain Capital, alongside San Francisco-based Coinbase Ventures. The company will be using the fund to scale up its tech, business operations and increase crypto adoption in the country.
Also, CoinDCX recently launched #TryCrypto campaign and is committing $1.3 Mn towards this initiative to promote the adoption of cryptocurrency in the country.
The price of Bitcoin (BTC) at the time of writing this article was $8,933, with a market cap of $164 Bn, compared to last week (May 19) which stood at $7,228, with a market cap of $132 Bn.
Ethereum (ETH), on the other hand, was priced at $204, with a market cap of $22 Bn at the time of writing, compared to last week (May 19), where the price of the cryptocurrency was $181, with a market cap of $20 Bn.
Cryptocurrency News Of The Week:
Binance’s TravelByBat and Travella Merges To Provide Crypto Booking Services
Binance-backed (TravelByBit) hotel booking and flight booking platform (Travala.com) recently announced a merger of their platforms. With this, the company will become allowing users to book from over 2 Mn hotels and 600 airlines. Binance’s CEO believes that they are able to provide state-of-the-art travel booking services for the crypto community. Currently, Travala.com supports payments in fiat and over 25 population cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Etherium, Litecoin and Binance Coin among others.
Goldman Sachs Re-evaluates Bitcoin, Calls For A Meeting
Global investment bank giant Goldman Sachs recently announced that they are re-evaluating their views about bitcoin. In an attempt to understand the implications of current policies for bitcoin, gold and inflation, Goldman Sachs is hosting a call for its clients on Wednesday (May 27). The call is hosted by Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, head of investment strategy group at Goldman Sachs, alongside two economists, Jason Furman and Jan Hatzius.
PornVisory To Pay Users in Cryptocurrency For Watching Porn
Italian cryptocurrency project called PornVisory plans to reward its users with tokens for watching porn on its platform. In a media report, the company said that there is a need for anonymous financial systems in the porn industry and cryptocurrency can bridge the gap.
Citing Paypal banning Pornhub acceptance of Tether, the founder of PornVisory Veronica Noschese said that there are a lot of issues in the porn industry in terms of privacy and reputation. Further, she said that the company’s platform is inspired by the Basic Attention Token (BAT), where users viewing the content will view ads and be compensated in PVY tokens.
