Crypto is here for consumers!

What is Scratching the Surface with Soosh? Its a new mini project of mine to provide some context to the world of crypto, finance etc in bite sized written format. As the name suggests, everything here is at surface level (i.e. no deep dives or extremely details/heavy datasets), just enough to get your curiosity to tingle~ so you can learn!

Today's topic: Crypto for Consumers is here!

This week has been focused on bringing crypto to the consumers. Lets chat about what was announced:

Stripe <> Privy Acquisition

Privy makes crypto easy. The easiest way to describe what they have done; they have enabled emails to be your wallets so a user no longer needs to worry about setting up a new wallet, dealing with private seed and risk of losing all assets.

Emails = Wallets = Self Hosted Banks for Users

Stripe's acquisition of Privy marks a new beginning to onboard brand new users onto crypto by allowing users to transact with crypto by simply using their emails! Excited to see how this acquisition grows the total number of users interacting with crypto!

Stripe <> Bridge Acquisition

Earlier this year, Stripe also acquired Bridge. Bridge allows users to 'bridge' dollars into crypto on the blockchain in a few easy steps, and similarly allows users to 'bridge' their crypto in dollars.

A cool experience via Bridge I recently have explored: Users can direct a portion of their paycheck to a virtual bank account with a real ACH and Routing Number provided via Bridge. Then once money is deposited into this bank account, crypto apps can auto convert to dollars into crypto and help you earn yield via USDC or or similar tokens available on DeFi. All without ever directly dealing with blockchain. This is something that the 0xSplits' Team Wallet product allows you to do!

Shopify <> Coinbase <> Stripe <> USDC Payments

Shopify announced that they will be allowing checkouts using USDC on Coinbase's Base Network via Stripe.

This integration will allow customers to pay in USDC, making global e-Comm smoother for both vendors and customers. USDC will allow payments to be settled in a matter of seconds to minutes rather than multiple days.

Coinbase <> AMEX

Coinbase announced their Coinbase One credit card which is an American Express credit card. The rewards are very competitive when compared across other credit cards and provide rewards in a form of cash back in BTC, up to 4% reward tier.

Until next time on the next scratching the surface with soosh!

*this article is for curiosity only and nothing stated within should be taken as tax and financial advice. DYOR!