Polygon Network achieves carbon neutrality 🌳, Coinbase continues Brazilian expansion 🌎

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EmergingCrypto.io Weekly Update June 12 – June 25

Asia

Polygon Network achieves carbon neutrality (3 minute read)

Ethereum scaling platform, Polygon, has announced that it has achieved carbon neutrality and will eventually become carbon negative. The platform has offset 90,000 tonnes of greenhouse gasses since the inception of the blockchain with $400K worth of carbon credits. Polygon has partnered with KlimaDao, a decentralized, open, and on-chain carbon credit market, to purchase the tokenized credit and permanently retire the carbon using the KlimaDao offset aggregator tool within the app.

An update on Israel’s CBDC (3 minute read)

Israel’s central bank released details of its first technical trials for their CBDC, the digital shekel. Two tests were conducted, one tested the use of smart contracts and the second focused on privacy. For the smart contracts test the Bank of Israel (BOI) used Consensys’ Quorum blockchain to simulate a sale of a car, the transfer of ownership, and delivery of payment to demonstrate atomicity and eliminate counterparty risk. For the privacy test the BOI used the VMware blockchain, combining zero knowledge proofs (ZKPs) (click here for an explanation of what ZKPs are) and eCash to demonstrate that consumers’ money can’t be linked to the identity of the consumer. The BOI will continue to test their CBDC and remain undecided as to whether they will issue a digital shekel.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Image Credit: Brian Wangenheim via Unsplash

Consumers driving Latin America’s crypto adoption, reveals Mastercard survey (3 minute read)

Mastercard’s New Payments Index 2022 has revealed that Latin America is one of the most enthusiastic regions for crypto adoption. Over half of consumers in Latin America have made at least one transaction with crypto and more than a third have used stablecoins to pay daily expenses. Walter Pimenta, Executive Vice President of Products and Engineering at Mastercard for Latin America and the Caribbean, comments that “More and more Latin Americans are turning to different technological solutions to carry out their financial transactions and this trend is expected to continue to increase, since an overwhelming 95% plan to use a digital payment method in the next year and 29% admit to using less cash in the last year.”

Despite layoffs, Coinbase forges ahead with expanding in Brazil (7 minute read)

With the recent market downturn and Coinbase laying off 18% of its staff, the company’s expansion into Brazil appeared to be in the crosshairs. However, “Brazil remains a priority market for [Coinbase],” said Nana Murugesan, vice president of business development at Coinbase and responsible for international expansion. Coinbase plans to continue to hire 130 people in Brazil

Africa

Image Credit: Frederick Brownell & Ituxiaoyao via Wikimedia Commons

KuCoin’s take on South Africa’s crypto market (3 minute read)

South Africa has one of the most developed regulatory environments across the African continent and KuCoin has released an analysis on South Africa’s cryptocurrency market. The report was broken down in six themes:

Theme	Summary
Adoption	22% of South African adults, 7.6 million people, have invested in cryptocurrencies in the last six months.
Investment Profile	The demographic of South African crypto investors reflects polarized income levels and investment experience.
Investment Sentiment	65% of crypto investors consider crypto to be the future of finance.
Investment Goals	42% of crypto investors mention that they would like to improve their families’ living conditions with the profit they make.
Information Sources	72% of crypto investors rely on social media for crypto information.
Trading Behaviors	53% of South Africa crypto investors earn passive income from their crypto savings account.

The top 5 African countries with the highest cryptocurrency holders (1 minute read)

Crypto payments company, Triple-A, has compiled a list of global crypto ownership. The top five countries in Africa have at least 24.5 million cryptocurrency holders.

Nigeria: 13 million
Kenya: 4.5 million
South Africa: 4.2 million, this differed from KuCoin’s report that estimated over 7.2 million owners
Tanzania: 2.3 million
Egypt: 1.7 million

According to Chainalysis’ 2021 global crypto adoption, the African continent demonstrates strong potential for crypto adoption, with 30% of the top 20 countries from Africa.

Eastern Europe

Turkish fintech, Colendi, acquires enterprise blockchain firm, SETL (2 minute read)

Turkish fintech, Colendi, has acquired enterprise blockchain platform, SETL. One of SETL’s most important projects is the Regulated Liability Network (RLN). It’s a single network to record tokens, which represent a promise or the liability, and balances of commercial banks, e-money providers, and central banks. The terms of the transactions were not disclosed.

Ukrainian government raises 90 ETH from CryptoPunk NFT donation (2 minute read)

Rounding off this week’s newspaper, in late April the CryptoPunk #5364 NFT was donated to the Ukrainian government to support their fundraising efforts amidst the ongoing war with Russia. Last week, the Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, Alex Bornyakov, tweeted that the Ukrainian government was able to raise 90 ETH, over USD $100K at the time. People worldwide have been demonstrating the borderless nature of cryptocurrencies by donating to the Ukrainian government. Since the war began Ukraine has been able to raise at least between USD $60–$100+ million in crypto-based donations.

Thanks for reading! Have a great week ahead!

Written by Jon Lira. Connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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