The burn was conducted after the conclusion of Venice’s airdrop, which began at the end of January and ended on Wednesday. Crypto AI Startup Venice Burns $100M in Tokens Bitcoin and crypto entrepreneur Erik Voorhees’s Privacy-focused AI startup Venice concluded its airdrop on Wednesday after distributing 17.4 million Venice tokens (VVV) to more than 40,000 […] …
Cryptocurrency payments company MoonPay is expanding its presence in the enterprise stablecoin market with the acquisition of Iron, an API-focused stablecoin infrastructure developer, for an undisclosed amount.
According to a March 13 announcement, the acquisition will give MoonPay’s enterprise customers the ability to accept stablecoin payments instantly and at a low cost. Iron’s integration also means companies can manage their stablecoin treasuries in real time and use the funds to acquire yield-bearing assets like US Treasury bonds.
Source: MoonPay
“With Iron’s technology, we’re putting the power of instant, programmable payments into the hands of enterprises, fintechs, and global merchants,” said Ivan Soto-Wright, MoonPay’s CEO.
The Iron deal marks MoonPay’s second high-profile acquisition this year. In January, the company acquired Helio, a Solana-based blockchain payment processor, for $175 million. Helio’s existing integrations with Shopify and Discord give MoonPay further inroads into crypto on-ramp services and payment solutions.
MoonPay isn’t the only company making inroads into stablecoin payments. As Cointelegraph recently reported, Tether-backed fintech Mansa raised $10 million to further expand its cross-border stablecoin payment infrastructure.
Related: Bitcoin may benefit from US stablecoin dominance push
At more than $230 billion in circulation, stablecoins have become one of blockchain’s most viable use cases. The industry’s success is largely owed to stablecoin integrations by major fintech payment providers, according to Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron.
In a recent interview with Cointelegraph, Boiron said, “Companies like Stripe and PayPal integrating stablecoins is likely the primary catalyst for their growth.”
From regulatory scrutiny to widespread industry adoption, the stablecoin market has grown rapidly since 2020. Source: S&P Global
Boiron said one of the industry’s most promising developments is yield-bearing stablecoins, which allow holders to earn decentralized finance yield through traditional collateralization.
Yield-bearing stablecoin alternatives are on the cusp of a major breakthrough after the US Securities and Exchange Commission approved the first yield-bearing stablecoin security in February. The approval goes hand in hand with regulatory efforts to establish clear stablecoin laws in the United States.
Magazine: Bitcoin payments are being undermined by centralized stablecoins
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Learn MoreMoonPay acquires API stablecoin infrastructure platform Iron
Bitcoin miners are adapting their business strategies as the continued trade war between the US and Canada makes energy prices and policies all the more uncertain.
US President Donald Trump threatened to double his tariffs on steel and aluminum from 25% to 50%, leading the government of the province of Ontario to walk back its own plan to increase the cost of power exports to the US.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford had promised to further increase the surcharge or even “shut off the electricity completely,” given further provocation. However, he appears to have softened his stance, at least for now.
The trade war may have reached a lull, but some crypto firms are looking ahead at possible policy changes in order to protect their growth.
Ben Ganon, the CEO of Canadian Bitcoin mining firm Bitfarms, told Bloomberg on March 11 that the recent energy price hikes, had they gone through, were unlikely to affect his firm’s business.
Bitfarms’ operations are mostly in Quebec and British Columbia, both of which boast significant hydroelectric capacity in relation to the total provincial energy mix. Ontario, by comparison, is “not as robust of an energy market. And over the last several years, they’ve really taken a big push on cutting back on baseload capacity.”
But even though Bitfarms’ energy situation may look solid for the time being, Ganon said that the tariffs “have implications for what policy and regulatory frameworks are going to look like in the future.”
He said that his firm wants to see “greater access to electricity markets” as well as fewer regulations on setting up a new business or new power applications.
Energy policy has been a contentious area of debate in Canadian politics, with critics accusing the Liberal government — now led by Prime Minister Mark Carney — of harming the Canadian economy with their strategies to lower emissions.
Related: What Canada’s new Liberal PM Mark Carney means for crypto
Ganon said: “The opportunities that are present in the United States are also present in Canada. And I think that this will all resolve itself and end up in a much more deregulated and smooth and efficient market because for years it’s been tied up in regulatory red tape.”
Tariffs on goods such as steel, aluminum, and other industrial products — intended to encourage domestic production in the US— also impact Bitcoin miners, with some effects being unexpectedly beneficial.
While Ganon noted that miners can’t control the Bitcoin price, they can control their electricity costs. “One of the ways that we can do that is we can look for pockets of energy that are underutilized, that used to power heavy industry, which has been outsourced to other countries over the last 20 or 30 years.”
According to Ganon, Bitfarms has operations in Pennsylvania — a “Rust Belt” state heavily affected by the outsourcing of American steel and metals industries. His firm’s assets could soon be in high demand if the US manufacturing industry were to come back from the dead.
Ganon said that Bitcoin miners have been investing heavily in energy infrastructure that “used to power aluminum smelters and steel refineries and all the stuff which was outsourced.”
“Now Bitcoin miners have these assets. And as the pendulum swings back to America, those assets are now in high demand.”
Canadian miners like Bitfarms may be unconcerned for now, but Trump’s tariffs on China have already begun to squeeze American crypto miners, who import hardware from China-based firms like Bitmain.
According to Bloomberg, shipments of Bitcoin mining hardware from China to the US were experiencing significant delays as of February 2025. The delays reportedly were the result of the US blacklisting Bitmain’s AI affiliate Xiamen Sophgo Technologies.
Heavy customs fees for inspections of Bitmain-affiliated hardware have cost US miners up to $500,000, according to Vishnu Mackenchery, director of global logistics and services at Compass Mining Inc. New tariffs could make new imports of next-gen miners to the US “completely cost-prohibitive,” according to Synteq Digital CEO Taras Kulyk.
China-based mining hardware producers like Bitmain could set up operations in other countries to avoid US sanctions. During Trump’s first term, when he imposed a 25% tax duty on a number of consumer electronic goods from China, many mining hardware producers moved to Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand to avoid tariffs.
Bitmain even announced it would launch a US production line in December 2024 to “provide faster response times and more efficient services to the North American customers.” Bloomberg noted that the firm did not provide the exact location of its US line.
Related: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says US should bring BTC onshore
Trump’s economic policies continue to be a mixed bag for the crypto industry. Wild fluctuations in trade policy and last-minute reversals have made the market difficult to predict. Elsewhere, the European Union has promised to impose counter-tariffs on the US, further threatening asset valuations.
Bitcoin price chart Sept. 1, 2024 to March 13, 2025. Source: TradingView
Marcin Kazmierczak, co-founder and chief operating officer of blockchain oracle solution firm RedStone, told Cointelegraph this could see Bitcoin sink to $75,000, a level not seen since November 2024.
Magazine: Mystery celeb memecoin scam factory, HK firm dumps Bitcoin: Asia Express
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Learn MoreUS-Canada tariff flip-flops have Bitcoin miners on their toes
XRP is currently trading at $2.27 to $2.32 over the past hour, with a market capitalization of $131 billion and a 24-hour trading volume of $4.82 billion, moving within an intraday range of $2.14 to $2.28, as technical indicators across multiple timeframes reveal a mixed sentiment with both bullish and bearish signals shaping the market […] …
Learn MoreXRP Price Watch: Bulls Eye $2.50, but Resistance Threatens a Potential Reversal