Popular cryptocurrency exchange Binance is among a dozen outside investors backing Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter takeover, joining the likes of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, Fidelity, Brookfield, and Sequoia Capital.

Argentina’s central bank has prohibited financial institutions in the country from offering clients any operations involving cryptocurrencies, just days after two of the country’s largest banks announced they would let clients buy Bitcoin and other digital assets.

Fintech and digital payments giant Block, formerly known as Square, has reported $173 billion in Bitcoin transactions during the first quarter of the year through its Cash App, a peer-to-peer payments service.

Sponsored: On May 5, Justin Sun, Founder of TRON, announced on Twitter that the TRON DAO Reserve rolled out a decentralized stablecoin named USDD, which has so far been listed on Sunswap, Sun.io, Curve, Uniswap, Ellipsis, Pancakeswap, Kyberswap, etc., with an initial total supply of one hundred million. 

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Binance Backs Elon Musk’s Twitter Buyout Bid
• Argentina Bars Banks From Offering Crypto Services
• Block Reports $1.73 Billion in Bitcoin Transactions During Q1 2022
• Crypto Market Movers – APE, TRX, TORN
• Sponsored: TRON DAO and Other Blockchain Leaders Jointly Roll out USDD

Binance Backs Elon Musk’s Twitter Buyout Bid

Popular cryptocurrency exchange Binance is among a dozen outside investors backing Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter takeover, joining the likes of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, Fidelity, Brookfield, and Sequoia Capital.

In total, Elon Musk has secured $7.14 billion in funding according to an amended 13-D filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It details that Binance committed $500 million, while Sequoia pledged $800 million and Fidelity offered $316 million.

The financing commitments allow Musk to cut the margin loan he has taken with a group of lenders by half to $6.25 billion, and increase the equity portion to $27.25 billion. The remainder of the purchase price is to be paid with debt raised from global banks.

The Financial Times reports that Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said the exchange would offer Musk almost unconditional support for the takeover of Twitter. Zhao detailed “it’s more of a blank cheque” as the deal left little time for the parties to discuss details.

Zhao was quoted saying that Binance’s investment came together in a week after it heard from friends Musk was “looking for third party investors.” Per Binance’s CEO Musk “didn’t have a plan for Twitter.”

Argentina Bars Banks From Offering Crypto Services

Argentina’s central bank has prohibited financial institutions in the country from offering clients any operations involving cryptocurrencies, just days after two of the country’s largest banks announced they would let clients buy Bitcoin and other digital assets.

The ban also includes assets whose returns are determined by cryptocurrency price fluctuations. Argentines have been embracing digital assets at a quick pace as recurring currency crises and inflation above 50% erode the value of people’s savings.

The country is among the top 10 with the highest crypto adoption rate, according to  Chainalysis’ Crypto Adoption Index. Earlier this week, Banco Galicia and Brubank revealed they were letting customers buy and sell crypto on their platforms.

In March, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a debt package of $45 billion that included a provision discouraging the use of cryptocurrencies.

Block Reports $1.73 Billion in Bitcoin Transactions During Q1 2022

Fintech and digital payments giant Block, formerly known as Square, has reported $173 billion in Bitcoin transactions during the first quarter of the year through its Cash App, a peer-to-peer payments service.

In the fourth quarter of 2021, Block generated $1.96 billion in BTC transactions and $46 million of gross profit. Gross profit for the first quarter of this year was $43 million. The firm’s total revenue in Q1 was $3.96 billion, below the $4.1 billion analysts were expecting.

Excluding Bitcoin, Block’s total revenue was $2.23 billion, up 44% from the same period a year ago. Adjusted earnings per share were 18 cents, compared with analysts average estimate of 20 cents.

The company did not recognize any impairment losses in the quarter on Bitcoin and said the fair value of its investment in the cryptocurrency as of March 31 was $366 million.

Crypto Market Movers – APE, TRX, TORN

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.

ApeCoin (APE) - ApeCoin is an ERC-20 governance and utility token used within the APE ecosystem to empower decentralized community building at the forefront of web3. The APE Foundation is the steward of ApeCoin. It is the base layer on which ApeCoin holders in the ApeCoin DAO can build.

TRON (TRX) - TRON is a cryptocurrency payment platform. It allows the users to perform cryptocurrency transactions between them on a global scale within a decentralized ecosystem.

Tornado Cash (TORN) - Tornado Cash is completely decentralized, controlled and governed by its community. By acquiring TORN tokens, users can participate by voting on governance proposals and weighing in on the evolution of the protocol.

TRON DAO and Other Blockchain Leaders Jointly Roll out USDD

On May 5, Justin Sun, Founder of TRON, announced on Twitter that the TRON DAO Reserve rolled out a decentralized stablecoin named USDD, which has so far been listed on Sunswap, Sun.io, Curve, Uniswap, Ellipsis, Pancakeswap, Kyberswap, etc., with an initial total supply of one hundred million.  Through the cross-chain protocol BTTC, both  of the circulating supply on Ethereum and BSC are near twenty million.

USDD is a decentralized algorithmic stablecoin launched collaboratively by the TRON DAO Reserve and top-tier mainstream blockchain institutions. The USDD protocol runs on the TRON network, is connected to Ethereum and BNBChain through the BTTC cross-chain protocol, and will be accessible across more blockchains in the future. USDD is pegged to the US Dollar (USD) through TRX and maintains its price stability to ensure users have access to a stable and decentralized digital dollar system that guarantees financial freedom. The website of USDD is now online (http://usdd.io). The contract address shall be subject to the announcement on the official website. The addresses of Tron, Ethereum and BSC are:

https://tronscan.org/#/token20/TPYmHEhy5n8TCEfYGqW2rPxsghSfzghPDn

https://etherscan.io/token/0x0C10bF8FcB7Bf5412187A595ab97a3609160b5c6

https://bscscan.com/token/0xd17479997f34dd9156deef8f95a52d81d265be9c

USDD is a cryptocurrency issued by the TRON DAO Reserve with a highly stable price and diverse use cases. It is based on TRON and pegged to the U.S. dollar at a ratio of 1:1, which means regardless of market volatility, the USDD protocol will keep USDD stable at 1: 1 against the US dollar via proper algorithms in a decentralized manner.

Like other TRC-20 tokens, USDD can be traded with no brokers; it depends solely on the smart contracts on the TRON network. Being free from the control of any individual or organization makes USDD more capable of playing its role as a stablecoin. As a fast, low-fee crypto asset with a large supply and competent for cross-border transactions, USDD brings its holders tremendous benefits of the blockchain technology without the risk of volatility.

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