Today in Crypto: Robinhood Adds USD Coin to Offerings; MicroStrategy Makes Smallest Buy of Bitcoin in 2+ Years
Robinhood Markets has added USD Coin stablecoin to its retail-focused crypto offerings, according to a report from Seeking Alpha on Tuesday.
Users will now be able to send and receive USDC, the second-largest stablecoin by market cap, on Polygon and Ethereum networks. USDC will be the first stablecoin supported by Robinhood.
Meanwhile, Icebreaker Finance has rolled out a lending pool on Maple, which will offer secured debt financing to public and private blue-chip bitcoin mining and digital asset infrastructure companies, a post on Maple said Tuesday.
The pool will start with a $300 million capacity, and will look to deliver low-teens, risk-adjusted returns to accredited investors and capital allocators.
It will mark the first time Maple has seen real-world assets used as collateral on the platform. It will also be the first step the company has taken outside of the existing market-maker borrower set.
Elsewhere, big cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether fared a little better than the wider stock market on Tuesday, Seeking Alpha wrote.
Stock market investors are getting ready for more of the aggressive interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve. Bitcoin was down 0.4%, while ether rose 1.2%.
As multiple central banks look at rate decisions this coming week, GlobalBlock analyst Marcus Sotiriou has said it’s likely to be a “very volatile week.”
Finally, MicroStrategy has made the smallest purchase of bitcoin it’s done in over two years, Bloomberg wrote Tuesday.
The company is the largest corporate buyer of bitcoin. This time, the company bought 301 bitcoin for around $6 million, at an average price of around $19,851, per a SEC filing. Bitcoin was selling for less than $19,000 Tuesday evening.
MicroStrategy and its subsidiaries have around 130,000 bitcoin, acquired at an aggregate purchase price of around $3.98 billion, with an average purchase price of around $30,639 per token.
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