Weekly Crypto News For 7/5/21 to 7/11/21 — Curated By BearTax

1/ Visa Partners With 50 Crypto Platforms To Enable Crypto Payments at 70 Million Merchants:

Visa partnered with 50 Crypto Platforms to launch card programs that will make it easy to convert and spend cryptocurrency at 70 million merchants worldwide. In the 1st half of the year, more than $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency was spent by consumers via crypto-linked Visa cards.

2/ Kazakhstan To Introduce New Tax On Bitcoin Mining:

As of April 2020, the country accounts for 6.17% of Bitcoin’s global hash rate. It is also becoming a hotspot for crypto mining due to the recent mining crackdown in China. Authorities want to capitalize on this growing trend.
So, an amendment was proposed to introduce a new tax for mining farms, that is calculated at the rate of 1KZT per 1kWh of electrical energy consumed in crypto mining. This bill will come into effect on January 1, 2022.

3/ Los Angeles Dodgers is auctioning a physical World Series ring as part of an NFT!

The auction includes an opportunity to throw out a first pitch at a game at Dodgers Stadium + tickets to that game. All proceeds will go to Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation — the team’s social justice-centric charity.

4/ $181 Million to fund Australia’s 10 year research program on:

- Potential use of blockchain technology & DeFi to facilitate digital asset trading in a broader regulatory context
- Development of Central Bank Digital Currencies

5/ Circle — the company behind USDC (US Dollar Stablecoin) is set to go public through a deal with Special Purpose Acquisition corporation (SPAC)

The deal will value Circle at $4.5 billion. The company raised a whopping $440 million in funding last month.