Global payments giant Stripe has started offering a fiat payments API for cryptocurrency businesses to process crypto-to-fiat currency payments. The firm’s support for crypto businesses includes exchanges, wallet providers, non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces, and more.

Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis has launched two new tools meant to make crypto sanctions compliance easier. The tools include an oracle and an API meant to help anyone verify if a cryptocurrency wallet has “been included in a sanctions designation.”

The market capitalization of gold-backed cryptocurrencies has risen 60% so far this year and is now above $1 billion for the first time in history. Investors have been allocating funds to the precious metal and gold-backed cryptoassets in a flight to safety.

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Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Stripe Launches Payments Support for Crypto Businesses
• Chainalysis Launches Crypto Sanctions Monitoring Tools
• Gold-Backed Cryptocurrencies’ Market Cap Surpasses $1 Billion
• Crypto Market Movers – LUNA, KNC, ZEC
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Stripe Launches Payments Support for Crypto Businesses

Global payments giant Stripe has started offering a fiat payments API for cryptocurrency businesses to process crypto-to-fiat currency payments. The firm’s support for crypto businesses includes exchanges, wallet providers, non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces, and more.

According to an announcement the firm published, as part of its toolkit for cryptocurrency businesses, it’s also offering flexible on-ramps for exchanges. These on-ramps will enable both fiat deposits and withdrawals for exchanges.

Stripe is also offering protocols for user identification and fraud prevention. It partnered with cryptocurrency trading platform FTX and its US affiliate, FTX.US, to improve its know-your-customer (KYC) protocols.

The partnership will also see Stripe provide payments services for FTX, allowing FTX users to buy crypto using debit cards and direct bank transfers via Automated Clearing House (ACH) transactions.

Chainalysis Launches Crypto Sanctions Monitoring Tools

Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis has launched two new tools meant to make crypto sanctions compliance easier. The tools include an oracle and an API meant to help anyone verify if a cryptocurrency wallet has “been included in a sanctions designation.”

The tools are available to the cryptocurrency industry for free and are being launched at a time in which several countries around the world are leveraging economic sanctions against Russia in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

 Through Chainalysis’ tools, users can “easily validate if they are interacting with cryptocurrency wallets associated with sanctioned entities.” In a press release, the firm added that given the transparency of blockchains it would be hard for the Russian government or financial elite to “systematically evade sanctions at scale through cryptocurrency without detection.”

The Chainalysis oracle, a smart contract that can be called from other smart contracts to validate addresses, is already available. The API is set to be available in April.

Gold-Backed Cryptocurrencies’ Market Cap Surpasses $1 Billion

The market capitalization of gold-backed cryptocurrencies has risen 60% so far this year and is now above $1 billion for the first time in history. Investors have been allocating funds to the precious metal and gold-backed cryptoassets in a flight to safety.

Cryptocurrencies like PAX Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUT) have outperformed the flagship cryptocurrency Bitcoin so far this year as gold itself rose almost 14% year-to-date. The precious metal is being used as a safe haven at a time in which inflation is soaring and amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

PAXG contributed almost $500 million to the swelling of gold cryptos’ market capitalization to over $1 billion, outperforming rivals like XAUT. According to Arcane Research crypto investors are using these assets to “diversify inflation bets.”

PAXG’s issuer Paxos is a New York State-chartered trust company regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Each PAXG is backed by physical gold.

Crypto Market Movers – LUNA, KNC, ZEC

Several tokens are leading the charge in the last 7-day 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.

Terra (LUNA) - Terra was developed by South Korean blockchain company Terraform Labs. It’s a Proof-of-Stake blockchain with LUNA being used in the “issuance of stablecoins (TerraSDRs), as a price stability mechanism, as well as for staking and network governance.”

 Kyber Network (KNC) - KyberNetwork is an on-chain protocol that allows instant exchange and conversion of digital assets (e.g. crypto tokens) and cryptocurrencies (e.g. Ether, Bitcoin, ZCash) with high liquidity.

Zcash (ZEC) - ZCash is a privacy-driven cryptocurrency. It uses the Equihash as an algorithm, which is an asymmetric memory-hard Proof of Work algorithm based on the generalized birthday problem. It relies on high RAM requirements to bottleneck the generation of proofs and making ASIC development unfeasible.

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