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Luxury Fashion Firm Farfetch Begins Accepting Crypto Payments

by Blockchain NewsJune 11, 2022

British-Portuguese online luxury fashion retail platform, Farfetch has announced it will begin accepting cryptocurrency payments for its goods and services in the next couple of months.

The company, currently trading publicly on the New York Stock Exchange said the crypto payments feature will first be introduced to its private clients in the next couple of months.

Expansion of the crypto payments flexibility will be expanded to all customers before the end of this year with immediate access to customers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe. Other countries will follow shortly afterward.

The London-headquartered company said initial payments will be in seven major digital currencies including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Binance Coin (BNB) amongst others.

The crypto payments capabilities will be made possible with the active partnership with Lunu, a global crypto payments platform that will provide POS terminals at all of Farfetch’s locations as well as the payment gateway for those shopping online.

“FARFETCH launched cryptocurrency payments in two very distinct environments – the mono-brand boutique, with Off-White, and the multi-brand boutique, with Browns. This was a crucial step to test and learn, and we are excited to share our technical and service know-how with our community,” José Neves, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, FARFETCH. “As a platform company, we are continually innovating to serve as the bridge for the luxury industry to new technologies and environments where the luxury customer is today, and where they’ll be tomorrow. With this move, we look forward to empowering our incredible boutique and brand partners to embrace cryptocurrency.”

Farfetch will not be the first, nor will be the only luxury fashion brand to embrace crypto payments. Gucci made the plunge back in May when the company confirmed it has started accepting crypto payments beginning with customers in its North American stores. Gucci had a slightly more expanded range of crypto it accepts including Shiba Inu and Dogecoin.

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Huobi Exchange Floats Investment Arm Ivy Blocks

by Blockchain NewsJune 11, 2022

Huobi Exchange, one of the largest trading platforms in the world has launched its investment arm, dubbed Ivy Blocks as it seeks to deepen its foothold in the growing Web3.0 ecosystem.

Ivy Blocks is launched with the primary goal of “identifying and investing in promising blockchain projects to help unlock their growth potential, serving to boost innovation and development in the DeFi and web 3.0 world.”

The investment arm made its debut with three distinct arms including Liquidity Investment Department, its asset management offshoot, Ivy Labs, the outfit’s blockchain incubator, and Ivy Research which focuses on extensive blockchain and cryptocurrency research. Ivy Blocks is currently bootstrapped with $1 billion in Assets Under Management, and with this deep pocket, all three departments can operate in a coherent way to support innovative projects it identifies.

“Many promising projects tend to encounter liquidity constraints and a lack of go-to-market support, which present significant barriers to growth,” said Huobi CFO Lily Zhang. “Our focus on providing such projects with liquidity investments and incubation services will no doubt contribute towards creating a better, more inclusive DeFi and web 3.0 blockchain ecosystem.”

As announced by Huobi, Ivy Blocks has named Capricorn Finance, an AMM-based decentralized exchange as the very first project it will be backing. Capricorn Finance is built on Cube, a high-performance, scalable layer 1 public chain with a modular architecture, which supports both multi-chain and cross-chain.

The design structure of the investment arm will help Capricorn Finance as well as other projects to attain their biggest growth potential in the web3.0 space.

Huobi Exchange’s Ivy Blocks may be coming a bit late to the party, seeing that other exchanges particularly Binance have launched a series of their own ecosystem funds months before. However, the massive liquidity at its disposal is a notable game-changer, one that can not only let it back projects in their infancy but also outfits that are looking to scale up on their growth.

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Tagged : CAPRICORN FINANCE / Exchanges / Huobi Global / IVY BLOCKS

European Union Close in Agreeing on Crypto Regulations – Bloomberg

by Blockchain NewsJune 11, 2022

As the clamor for crypto regulations has continued to intensify, the European Union (EU) is close to agreeing on a comprehensive regulation that will govern the nascent digital currency ecosystem.

The news was broken by Bloomberg claiming to draw inference from sources familiar with the discussions between the 27 member states.

Per the Bloomberg report, the EU member states, currently chaired by France, are currently disagreeing on how to approach certain aspects of the Market In Crypto Assets (MiCA) bill. Some of the aspects that are highly contentious include how to incorporate Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) into MiCA, avenues to regulate stablecoins, and how to supervise crypto assets service providers operating within the region.

The sources affirmed that EU negotiators are considering placing a ceiling on stablecoin transactions, a move that will largely prevent the excessive use of these asset types as legal tender within the bloc. The capped transactions will particularly be applied to stablecoins that are not backed by the Euro.

As the sources confirmed, the member states are currently close to agreeing on these gray areas, and something meaningful may come up in the next meetings scheduled for June 14 and June 30.

Further complications that may impact the ongoing negotiations borders significantly on the subject of crypto mining and the impact of the supposedly excessive energy consumption. The EU at a time wanted to restrict Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining, the consensus that is being used by Bitcoin miners to validate transactions.

The push for this ban was rejected by the EU Parliament Committee back in March, a move that showed the entire regulatory proposal in MiCA is not primarily centered on cutting back the current status quo in the industry. With the broader industry anticipating the MiCA bill this year, the current reports are an indication that there is a green light at the end of the tunnel.

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Tagged : Bloomberg / Cryptocurrency / Eu / MICA / Regulation