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Ex-Apple Engineer Unveils Privacy-Focused Crypto Visa Card

Three years in the making, the Payy Visa card hides stablecoin transactions using clever cryptographic proofs and a custom-built ledger, avoiding the situation where non-custodial card spending can be looked up and traced on public blockchains.
Former Apple iOS engineer Sid Gandhi, co-founder of the team that built the Payy card, thinks it’s irresponsible, unethical, even borderline illegal – taking General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) into consideration – to offer users on-chain financial services where every single transaction and balance is publicly visible on the blockchain forever.
“Either I’m crazy or everyone else is crazy, because you just can’t build a financial system without the core pillar of confidentiality,” Polybase Labs CEO Gandhi said in an interview.
“We spent two years building a layer two payments network from scratch. We didn’t use EVM [Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible blockchain] or anything like that, because they’re not usable for private payments,” he added.
In the same way that people’s online activity is tracked and exploited, a “scary future” lies ahead where it’s possible to start relating IP addresses to blockchain wallets, meaning on-chain activity can be matched to emails, Instagram or Facebook profiles, according to Gandhi.
Under the hood, Payy uses zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to allow an authorization when tapping the card; a Payy Network blockchain transaction then debits the amount from the user’s wallet to quickly settle with Visa.
The Payy team took inspiration from privacy networks like Zcash, Monero and Aztec, Gandhi said. But unlike these earlier privacy blockchains, Payy was focused from the beginning doing private stablecoin transactions in a regulatory compliant manner, avoiding obstacles that would hamper acceptance and user uptake.
“All the other existing privacy technologies don’t have this idea of compliance baked in,» Gandhi said. «We’ve been thinking about compliance and privacy for a very long time, and realized that you have to continue doing the existing AML [anti-money laundering] and compliance operations, even if you have a privacy network.”
As well as solving for privacy, Gandhi claims his card has the easiest onboarding and user experience of any wallet and crypto payment offering on the market.
“I have tried everything. Even my sophisticated non-crypto friends will never be able to use any of these solutions. I can say that confidently. Our philosophy is that the product should be usable by anyone and everyone. Every single iteration of an on-chain bank for the last 10 years that we have seen is not usable.» he said.
To date, Payy builder Polybase Labs has raised funds from Robot Ventures, DBA Crypto, 6th Man Ventures, Orange DAO, Protocol Labs and others.
“Payy finally built a real alternative to consumer banking,” said Robot Ventures partner Robert Leshner, in a statement. “You can now save and spend self-custodied stablecoins privately without ever knowing they’re on a blockchain. And it just works.”
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CoinDesk 20 Performance Update: Index Drops 2.5% as Nearly All Constituents Decline

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.
The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 4248.74, down 2.5% (-109.09) since 4 p.m. ET on Monday.
One of 20 assets is trading higher.
Leaders: AVAX (+0.6%) and BCH (-0.8%).
Laggards: UNI (-9.9%) and LINK (-7.0%).
The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.
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Pantera-Backed Solana Treasury Firm Helius Raises $500M, Stock Soars Over 200%

Helius Medical Technologies (HSDT) announced on Monday it’s raising more than $500 million in a private financing round to create a Solana-focused treasury company.
The vehicle will hold SOL, the native token of the Solana blockchain, as its reserve asset and aims to expand to more than $1.25 billion via stock warrants tied to the deal, the press release said.
The financing was led by Pantera Capital and Summer Capital, with participation from investors including Animoca Brands, FalconX and HashKey Capital.
Shares of the firm rallied over 200% above $24 in pre-market trading following the announcement. Solana was down 4% over the past 24 hours.
The firm is joining the latest wave of new digital asset treasuries, or DATs, with public companies pivoting to raise funds and buy cryptocurrencies like bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) or SOL.
Helius is set to rival with the recently launched Forward Industries (FORD) with a $1.65 billion war chest backed by Galaxy Digital and others. That firm confirmed on Monday that has already purchased 6.8 million tokens for roughly $1.58 billion last week.
Helius’ plan is to use Solana’s yield-bearing design to generate income on the holdings, earning staking rewards of around 7% as well as deploying tokens in decentralized finance (DeFi) and lending opportunities. Incoming executive chairman Joseph Chee, founder of Summer Capital and a former UBS banker, will lead the firm’s digital asset strategy alongside Pantera’s Cosmo Jiang and Dan Morehead.
«As a pioneer in the digital asset treasury space, having participated in the formation of the strategy at Twenty One Capital (CEP) with Tether, Softbank and Cantor, Bitmine (BMNR) with Tom Lee and Mozayyx as well as EightCo (OCTO) with Dan Ives and Sam Altman, we have built the expertise to set up the pre-eminent Solana treasury vehicle,» Cosmo Jiang, general partner at Pantera Capital, said in a statement.
«There is a real opportunity to drive the flywheel of creating shareholder value that Michael Saylor has pioneered with Strategy by accelerating Solana adoption,» he added.
Read more: Solana Surges as Galaxy Scoops Up Over $700M Tokens From Exchanges
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American Express Introduces Blockchain-Based ‘Travel Stamps’

American Express has introduced Ethereum-based ‘travel stamps’ to create a commemorative record of travel experiences, as part of the firm’s revamped travel app.
The travel experience tokens, which are technically NFTs (ERC 721 tokens), are minted and stored on Coinbase’s Base network, said Colin Marlowe , VP, Emerging Partnerships at Amex Digital Labs.
The travel stamps, which can be collected anytime a traveler uses their card, are not tradable NTF tokens, Marlowe explained, and neither do they function like blockchain-based loyalty points – at least for the time being.
“It’s a valueless ERC-721, so technically an NFT, but we just didn’t brand it as such. We wanted to speak to it in a way that was natural for the travel experience itself, and so we talk about these things as stamps, and they’re represented as tokens,” Marlowe said in an interview.
“As an identifier and representation of history the stamps could create interesting partnership angles over time. We weren’t trying to sell these or sort of generate any like short term revenue. The angle is to make a travel experience with Amex feel really rich, really different, and kind of set it apart,” he said.
The Amex travel app also includes a range of tools for travels and Centurion Lounge upgrades, the company said.
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