Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has partnered with Mastercard to allow a “broader group of consumers to purchase NFTs” by allowing users to pay with Mastercard cards on the platform’s upcoming NFT marketplace.

Popular cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com halted withdrawals for a short period earlier in the week over an alleged security breach that saw a hacker steal $15 million worth of Ethereum (ETH) from its hot wallets.

The Centre Consortium’s USDC stablecoin has surpassed Tether’s USDT in total supply on the Ethereum network. USDC’s current supply is over 40.06 billion tokens, above USDT’s 39.82 billion.

CryptoCompare's Outlook Report explores the key digital asset trends that we expect to see in 2022; covering Institutional adoption, exchange trends, DeFi, NFTs, Web3 and more. It also examines the current macroeconomic environment to distinguish if rising inflation could prove beneficial for digital assets such as Bitcoin.

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Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Coinbase and Mastercard Partner for NFT Marketplace Purchases
• Crypto.com Halted Withdrawals Over Alleged Security Breach
• USDC Surpasses Tether’s USDT on the Ethereum Network
• 2022 Outlook: Market Dynamics and Evolving Trends
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Coinbase and Mastercard Partner for NFT Marketplace Purchases

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has partnered with Mastercard to allow a “broader group of consumers to purchase NFTs” by allowing users to pay with Mastercard cards on the platform’s upcoming NFT marketplace.

Under the partnership, NFTs are to be considered “digital goods” buyable with debit and credit cards. Mastercard executive vice president of digital asset and blockchain products, Raj Dhamodharan, has said that to crypto enthusiasts creating wallets and buying ETH or other tokens has become a natural process, but to most people “it’s not intuitive.”

Dhamodharan added:

We think it should be much easier. That will ensure NFTs can be for everyone [...] Getting more people involved safely and securely is perhaps the best way to help the NFT market thrive.

Coinbase’s NFT Marketplace, Coinbase NFT, was first announced in October and now has over 1 million people signed up on its waiting list. The platform is set to become available to U.S. users before rolling out to other countries.

Crypto.com Halted Withdrawals Over Alleged Security Breach

Popular cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com has halted withdrawals for a short period earlier in the week over an alleged security breach that saw a hacker steal $15 million worth of Ethereum (ETH) from its hot wallets.

While blockchain security firm PeckShield says Crypto.com was hacked for 4,830 ETH that were later on sent to a coin mixer used to obfuscate the on-chain link between the source and destination of transactions, the team at Crypto.com has said no user funds were lost.

Earlier this week Crypto.com tweeted out that a small number of users reported “suspicious activity” and halted withdrawals. After withdrawals were resumed, Crypto.com users had to reset their two-factor authentication and the company introduced a new level of security.

Whether funds were stolen or not is currently unclear. Some Crypto.com users complained on social media their accounts were drained, although some did add later on the funds had been returned.

Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek has revealed the platform will share a full post mortem report after completing an internal investigation.

USDC Surpasses Tether’s USDT on the Ethereum Network

The Centre Consortium’s USDC stablecoin has surpassed Tether’s USDT in total supply on the Ethereum network. USDC’s current supply on it is over 40.06 billion tokens, above USDT’s 39.82 billion.

Tether has been the leading stablecoin in the cryptocurrency space since at least 2016, after originally sharing the space with rival stablecoins BitUSD and NuBits. As these latter two fell into obscurity due to losing their dollar peg, USDT led the market until the launch of USDC in 2018.

USDC was launched as a more transparent and regulated competitor to Tether’s USDT, which by then was hit with criticism and doubts over its backing. USDT is notably still the leading stablecoin across other blockchains with a total supply of 78.5 billion tokens.

USDT is also circulating on other networks including TRON, BSC, Huobi ECO Chain, Avalanche, Polygon, and 13 other networks or layer-two scaling solutions. USDC’s total supply is 45.7 billion tokens across 21 networks.

2022 Outlook: Market Dynamics and Evolving Trends

CryptoCompare's Outlook Report explores the key digital asset trends that we expect to see in 2022; covering Institutional adoption, exchange trends, DeFi, NFTs, Web3 and more. It also examines the current macroeconomic environment to distinguish if rising inflation could prove beneficial for digital assets such as Bitcoin.

One of the largest opportunities for cryptocurrencies in the coming years remains the continued entrance of institutional investors, with each regulatory triumph crypto achieves moving the industry closer to this largely untapped market.

The dominance of Bitcoin-based products has fallen notably this year – from 74.9% in January 2021, to 67.8% of total AUM by year-end. Institutional investors are shifting their attention towards other cryptocurrencies, while VCs and other allocators of capital are flooding into the industry in search of promising projects.

In 2021, the DeFi landscape changed dramatically – TVL grew over 10x to $244bn, and while Ethereum remains the leader in the sector, its dominance has faded to 62.8% of the market.

Read CryptoCompare’s report to find out more.

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