Shopify Inks Deal with Strike, Enabling Bitcoin Lightning Payments

Merchants on Shopify, a global e-commerce giant, will have the option of receiving Bitcoin (BTC) off-chain payments through the Bitcoin Lightning Network after sealing a deal with Strike.

As a leading digital payments platform built on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, Strike will enable Shopify merchants to receive off-chain transactions, which are readily confirmed, faster, and cheaper than those processed on-chain or Bitcoin mainnet.

Jack Mallers, the founder and CEO of Strike, noted that the strategic partnership would easily enable Shopify merchants to accept Bitcoin payments as dollars. 

He added:

“The Lightning Network is a global payments network that lowers costs, enhances speed, drives innovation, improves financial inclusion, and brings the power of choice to consumers and merchants.”

Through Strike’s integration, Shopify merchants will be able to expand their existing payment options. As a result, they will utilise the potential purchasing power among global markets. 

Per the announcement:

“Strike’s integration also allows Shopify merchants to generate savings through low-cost payment processing.”

The partnership is also seen as a stepping stone towards reducing various complexities merchants face when holding BTC, given that their Bitcoin payments will be instantly converted to dollars.

With the Lightning Network (LN) being a layer two scaling solution on the BTC network, micropayment channels are used to enhance the blockchain’s capacity to undertake transactions more efficiently. 

A previous study by Arcane Research noted that the Lightning Network could radically change the business model of content providers in gaming, video, audio, and many more categories by providing a structure where continuous micropayments are made.

Therefore, Arcane Research foresaw a situation where the Lightning Network would transit from online services to everyday use. 

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E-commerce Shopify’s Founder to Join Board of Coinbase

Tobias “Tobi” Lütke, founder and CEO of e-commerce company Shopify Inc., will join the board of directors of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States.

Lütke will serve as the eighth board member, along with Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam and prominent venture capitalist Marc Andreessen

Lütke’s appointment is expected to be confirmed by Coinbase’s board later this week.

Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong said in a press release:

“Shopify sits at the nexus of three important areas that cryptocurrencies are trying to revolutionize: finance and payments, web applications, and the internet itself.”

The appointment comes as Coinbase strives to expand its e-commerce capabilities and create a marketplace for digital art, a non-fungible token

Coinbase Global Inc will start allowing users to buy non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with credit cards and debit cards following its new partnership with Mastercard.

The appointment may be considering the possibility of new retail or shopping initiatives,

Coinbase is actively looking for ways to make cryptocurrencies more widely applicable in real life.

The appointment hints that Coinbase is considering new retail or shopping initiatives and expanding into e-commerce, an intuitive and easy way for consumers to use cryptocurrencies.

CoinPayments, Cayman Islands-based crypto payment solution provider, has announced a partnership with the Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify. The partnership aims to offer an alternative payment option for Shopify merchants as well as expand the adoption of cryptocurrencies in May last year

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Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke Will Join Coinbase’s Board of Directors

Key Takeaways

  • Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke will join Coinbase’s board of directors, according to an announcement from Coinbase.
  • Shopify previously adopted BitPay and Coinbase Commerce as payment gateways beginning in 2013 and 2014 respectively.
  • The company has begun to test NFT features in recent months and explored other cryptocurrency projects in the past.




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Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke will join Coinbase’s board of directors, according to an announcement from the crypto exchange.

Coinbase and Shopify Will Focus on DeFi

Lütke will help Coinbase offer its crypto services to more users and businesses around the world.

Lütke said that Shopify and Coinbase have a “like-minded vision,” noting that “[DeFi] and entrepreneurship exemplify the promise of Web3 where opportunity exists for the many, not the few.” Coinbase expressed its plans to work with DeFi last summer, while Lütke explored DeFi possibilities on Twitter in April 2021.

Lütke will serve on the board alongside Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong and co-founder Fred Armstrong.



Other members of Coinbase’s board of directors include Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) members Katie Haun and Marc Andreessen, Union Square Ventures co-founder Fred Wilson, DoorDash executive Gokul Rajaram, and former Cisco CFO Kelly Kramer.

Coinbase is currently the third-largest crypto exchange, with $3.5 billion in volume handled over the past 24 hours.

Shopify Is Highly Interested In Crypto

Coinbase noted that Shopify was an “early adopter of crypto through [its] integration with Coinbase Commerce.” In fact, the company began to support Bitcoin payments via BitPay in 2013, several months before it adopted Coinbase Commerce in 2014.

Those various integrations mean that merchants on Shopify can accept cryptocurrency payments via their storefront.


Shopify also joined Facebook’s Diem project in 2020 and is still listed as a member on Diem’s official website. However, its role is unclear now that Diem appears to be failing.

The company more recently announced support for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) last summer and launched beta access in December.

Incidentally, both Coinbase and Lütke are using Twitter’s NFT feature to display their profile picture, with Coinbase using a tokenized version of its logo and Lütke using a CryptoPunks token.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and other cryptocurrencies.



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Shopify Will Let Its Users Sell NFTs in Storefronts



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Shopify has given some users the ability to sell NFTs in their storefronts, according to the president of the company.

Shopify President Introduces NFTs

Shopify is an e-commerce platform that allows users to create online storefronts. Traditionally, it has handled physical merchandise, but now it is moving into digital goods with cryptocollectibles or NFTs.

Shopify president Harley Finkelsten tweeted on July 26: “If you’ve spent one minute on the internet this year, you’ve seen a lot about NFTs [non-fungible tokens]. We are making it easier for our merchants to sell NFTs directly through their store.”


He added that before this feature was added, merchants had to sell NFTs through third-party marketplaces. The new feature, however, will give merchants more control over their relationship with customers in terms of “how and where they want to buy.”

Finkelstein noted that one of the first sellers to use the feature is the NBA team the Chicago Bulls. The team is issuing a series of collectibles; the next batch will be up for sale on July 28.

The feature is only available to select customers right now.

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The Growth of Crypto e-Commerce

Earlier this year, eBay announced its own intentions of adding cryptocollectibles to its online retail platform. Chinese payments company Alipay is also selling NFTs, according to recent reports.

It remains to be seen whether these services will be able to overtake high-profile NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea and Rarible.

In addition to its decision to handle NFT sales, Shopify has historically supported cryptocurrencies. It accepts Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum, among other payment methods. Shopify is also a member of Facebook’s Diem Association.

Disclaimer: At the time of writing, this author held less than $75 of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and altcoins.

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Chicago Bulls team up with Shopify to launch NFT series

The NBA’s Chicago Bulls have launched NFTs depicting six championship wins from the 1990s via leading e-commerce platform Shopify.

Shopify is a multinational firm that provides website-based storefronts and payments infrastructure. Shopify president, Harley Finklestein, announced the NFT drop on Twitter earlier today.

According to Finklestein, the Chicago Bulls franchise is one Shopify’s first partners to launch an NFT storefront on the platform, with Shopify’s president noting the service will only be available to a “select few” in its formative stages.

Shopify integrated Sweet’s NFT marketplace in May, allowing its customers to issue and sell nonfungible tokens directly through the popular e-commerce interface. Sweet supports NFTs issued via Ethereum’s ERC-721 standard, Simple Ledger Protocol’s SLP token standard, and Dapper Labs’ Flow blockchain.

The Chicago Bulls’ NFTs were minted on Flow, which also hosts the officially licensed NBA Topshot tokenized highlight collectibles.

The “Bulls Legacy Collection” will be released over six drops, with each token celebrating the team’s six iconic championship wins between 1991 and 1998. The first NFT was launched on July 26 and has already sold out, with the second token slated for launch later today. The remaining four NFTs scheduled for launch over the next four days.

The Bulls Legacy Collection, Drop 1: nft.bulls.com

Related: The future of art? World-famous artists delve into NFTs

Despite the NFT sector recently cooling off, NFT sales surpassed $2.5 billion for the first half of 2021.

On July 21, Cointelegraph reported that popular NFT marketplace, OpenSea, had closed a $100 million Series B funding round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz at a valuation of $1.5 billion — indicating VC investors remain bullish on the nonfungible sector.

Retail investors still appear eager to get their hands on prized NFTs too, with Tyson Fury’s first NFT launch seeing a single token fetch almost $1 million in a July 16 auction, while more than 32,000 people signed up to participate in contemporary artist Damien Hirst’s latest NFT drop last week.