Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced on social media that the electric car maker has “suspended vehicle purchases using bitcoin” over concerns surrounding the “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining.”

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has donated $1.2 billion worth of meme coins to several non-profit organizations after receiving over trillions of Shiba Inu (SHIB) tokens from the founders of the project.

MoneyGram has revealed it will let its customers buy and sell bitcoin at its 12,000 retail locations throughout the U.S. thanks to a new partnership with cryptocurrency exchange and ATM operator Coinme.

Sponsored: Crypto exchange Bybit announced the launch of BalanceX, the first of its series of Balance Booster events, which allows traders to generate risk-free annualized yield on their trading account’s wallet balance. 

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Tesla to Stop Accepting Bitcoin Over Environmental Concerns
• Ethereum co-founder Donates $1.2 Billion of Meme Coins to India’s COVID Relief Fund
• MoneyGram to Allow Bitcoin Buying at Retail Locations
• Daily Movers – AAVE, CRV, KSM
• Sponsored: Bybit Releases “Balance Booster” Yield-generating Vouchers

Tesla to Stop Accepting Bitcoin Over Environmental Concerns

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced on social media that the electric car maker has “suspended vehicle purchases using bitcoin” over concerns surrounding the “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining.”

Shortly after the announcement, the price of bitcoin dropped to $47,000 before recovering. At the time of writing, the cryptocurrency was trading at $51,000. Musk’s announcement added:

“Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment. Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy.”

The company, it reads, will also be looking at cryptocurrencies that use less than 1% of bitcoin’s energy per transaction. Tesla revealed it bought $1.5 billion of bitcoin in an SEC filing in February, and started accepting bitcoin payments at about the same time.

During the first quarter, Tesla sold $272 million worth of its bitcoin. Tesla is dropping bitcoin payments shortly after Musk tweeted a poll asking his followers if they would like the company to accept DOGE payments.

Reacting to the announcement, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said the team would still accept BTC, ETH, and DOGE “because we know that replacing gold as a store of value will help the environment.” On social media, some crypto advocates revealed they were canceling their orders with Tesla.

Ethereum Co-Founder Donates $1.2 Billion of Meme Coins to India’s COVID Relief Fund

Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin has donated $1.2 billion worth of meme coins to several non-profit organizations after receiving over trillions of Shiba Inu (SHIB) tokens from the founders of the project.

Buterin transferred over 50 trillion SHIB to the India COVID-Crypto Relief Fund. The transaction sparked panic among investors betting on SHIB, to the point the cryptocurrency’s price plunged shortly after it was spotted.

The meme coin’s price drop could result in less liquid money for the relief fund. Buterin offloaded the dog-themed meme coins at a time in which India has been grappling with a surge in COVID-19 infections and the Ethereum network has been dealing with large transaction fees over increasing demand associated with the decentralized finance space and meme coins.

Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, who put together the Indian relief fund, revealed on social media the organization won’t do anything to hurt “any community, especially the retail community involved with SHIB.” It plans to “convert the donation slowly over a period of time” to avoid crashing SHIB’s price.

Buterin has also sent Dogelon Mars (ELON) worth $336 million to the Methuselah Foundation, a nonprofit that supports efforts in tissue engineering. He also donated to the Gitcoin Community, MIRI, the Charter Cities Institute, and Givewell.

MoneyGram to Allow Bitcoin Buying at Retail Locations

MoneyGram has revealed it will let its customers buy and sell bitcoin at its 12,000 retail locations throughout the U.S. thanks to a new partnership with cryptocurrency exchange and ATM operator Coinme.

New and existing Coinme users will soon be able to buy crypto with cash and withdraw it at MoneyGram’s brick-and-mortar locations. Both companies plan to expand their offering to MoneyGram’s locations outside the U.S. in the second half of the year.

Alex Holmers, MoneyGram’s Chairman and CEO, said in a statement:

“This innovative partnership opens our business to an entirely new customer segment as we are the first to pioneer a crypto-to-cash model by building a bridge with Coinme to connect bitcoin to local fiat currency.”

The announcement expands retail U.S. investors’ access to physical locations where they can buy and sell bitcoin. It was made as financial services firms increasingly make moves in the space. PayPal seemingly started the trend late last year, when it started letting users in the U.S. buy, sell, and hold crypto on its platform.

Daily Movers – AAVE, CRV, KSM

Several tokens are leading the charge in the last 24-hour period. Some of these are well-known cryptocurrencies with more liquid trading pairs, so we’ll be focusing on these over low-cap cryptos that may have higher percentage changes.

Aave (AAVE) - Aave is a decentralized non-custodial money market protocol where users can participate as depositors or borrowers. Depositors provide liquidity to the market to earn a passive income, while borrowers can borrow in an overcollateralized (perpetually) or undercollateralized (one-block liquidity) fashion.

Curve (CRV) - Curve is an exchange liquidity pool on Ethereum (like Uniswap) designed for  efficient stablecoin trading at relatively low risk, providing supplemental fee income for liquidity providers, without an opportunity cost.

Kusama (KSM) – Kusama is an experimental blockchain platform designed to provide an interoperable and scalable framework for developers. It has almost the same codebase as Polkadot, and is often described as an unrefined release of DOT.

Bybit Releases “Balance Booster” Yield-generating Vouchers

Crypto exchange Bybit announced the launch of BalanceX, the first of its series of Balance Booster events, which allows traders to generate risk-free annualized yield on their trading account’s wallet balance. 

Bybit will release yield vouchers of 7-, 14- and 28-day options in six different phases from 8:00AM UTC on April 15, 2021 to 8:00AM UTC on June 17, 2021. Traders can subscribe to vouchers on a first come, first served basis up to 24 hours prior to the beginning of each phrase, and hold up to one active yield voucher at a time. The subscription amount is capped at 0.25 for BTC vouchers and 10,000 for USDT vouchers.    

The wallet balance used to claim yield vouchers will not be locked away and can still be used as margin. Traders can continue their regular activities — such as trading and withdrawals — on Bybit. If a trader’s daily average wallet balance falls below his subscription amount, however, the voucher will be forfeited. 

Established in March 2018, Bybit provides online trading services to retail and professional clients around the world. The exchange has registered explosive growth over the past six months. It recently surpassed the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) to become the world’s second-largest bitcoin futures trading platform by open interest. Its 24-hour BTC trading volume reached as high as $27 billion this year. 

Newly joined traders can receive up to $600 in bonuses by hitting simple milestones on Bybit. More information can be found on the exchange’s Rewards Hub.

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