Mooners and Shakers: PayPal unveils crypto ‘hub’; Trump holds $500k in ETH; FedNow news pumps HBAR

In case you missed it… PayPal launched its own stablecoin PYUSD recently. Now it’s gone a step further with a crypto payments hub. Meanwhile, Donald Trump holds up to US$500k in Ethereum.

We’ll start with the former before the former president.

PayPal keeps on rolling into crypto

Digital payments giant PayPal has made another move in the space with the rollout of its ‘Cryptocurrencies Hub’, which allows users to hold and interact with Bitcoin and other cryptos through their PayPal accounts.

Per newly updated terms and conditions, the new feature allows users to buy, hold, and sell crypto assets, pay for purchases, convert between the firm’s new US-dollar-backed stablecoin PYUSD and other crypto assets, send and receive crypto assets, and view market info and other crypto content.

Notes the firm:

“If you establish and access the Cryptocurrencies Hub, you will be able to hold a Crypto Asset balance, and buy, sell, receive, and send Crypto Assets, including in transactions where the proceeds from a sale of Crypto Assets will be used to pay for purchases through PayPal, and to convert between PYUSD and another Crypto Asset. Any balance in your Cryptocurrencies Hub represents your ownership of the amount of each Crypto Asset shown.”

Note, the crypto users hold through the PayPal service is custodied by the firm or by its stablecoin issuer Paxos, and not directly held by the users themselves in the way they would if they were instead using a hardware wallet, for example.

Still, despite any perceived limitations of centralisation here, the cryptoverse seems to be generally loving this positive adoption news.

Crypto sceptic Donald Trump has an Ethereum bag

Is the former president, turned potential felon, turned hot-ticket Republican presidential candidate (again) a total hypocrite?

You probs have a ready-made answer for that, but when it comes to crypto – we say yes, probably. Unless he really has changed his tune and has become a believer.

The reality is, Trump did unreasonably well from his two recent (the first batch came out last December) self-aggrandising NFT projects and now very likely has no idea how to off-ramp the bulk ETH that was used to purchase the Trump superhero/sports star/rock star NFTs.

NFTs that sold out in hours and carry the “utility” of a sweepstakes entry to win prizes such as dinner or a game of golf with the Donald. (Second prize: two dinners, two games of golf etc. Thanks, Gregor.)

It’s been revealed that Trump holds up to US$500,000 in an Ethereum wallet, according to a filing with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.

Trump made somewhere between half a million USD and a million (in a combo of crypto and USD sales) from his NFTs.

But when he held the top job in the US, Trump made it very clear about his disdain for Bitcoin and crypto, calling it “fake” money, pointing to its supposed threat to the US dollar and its ability to facilitate “unlawful behaviour” such as drug trade and such and such.

Of course, the US dollar has never facilitated such things.

In any case, we’ll see where Trump stands on it all once he gets some help sending his ETH to an exchange offramp, and once he makes a mint from his next inevitable lot of NFTs. Come on Donald. Make Crypto Great Again, would ya?

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.22 trillion, up a fraction of a fraction since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

Bitcoin is ranging, ranging, crabbing along… something’s gotta give soon, right?

Uppers and downers

Some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

PUMPERS (11-100 market cap position)

• Hedera (HBAR), (market cap: US$2.16 billion) +15%

• Conflux (CFX), (market cap: US$405 million) +8%

• THORChain (RUNE), (market cap: US$442 million) +6%

• Rollbit Coin (RLB), (market cap: US$605 million) +4%

• Render (RNDR), (market cap: US$636 million) +4%

What’s with the Hedera (HBAR) pump? We can tell you the following:

It’s been revealed that the unique layer 1 project’s “Dropp” micropayments system is being used as a service provider for the US Federal Reserve’s instant payments platform FedNow.

SLUMPERS (11-100 market cap position)

• Kaspa (KAS), (market cap: US$836 million) -5%

• XDC Network (XDC), (market cap: US$854 million) -4%

• Algorand (ALGO), (market cap: US$898 million) -2%

• Injective (INJ), (market cap: US$634 million) -2%

• Stellar (XLM), (market cap: US$3.72 billion) -1%

Around the blocks

Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse.