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Digital Identity Startup Holonym Acquires Gitcoin Passport

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Crypto’s «proof of humanity» sector saw a major merger on Monday with Holonym Foundation acquiring Gitcoin Passport for an undisclosed sum of cash and tokens.

The transaction unites two close companies: Holonym was already distributing its tech through Gitcoin Passport, a logbook where 2 million internet users stash proof of personhood for services that need to verify they are flesh and blood.

AI agents aren’t people, but they may well pretend as much when money’s on the line. Holonym and Gitcoin are among a wave of crypto startups (most notably Sam Altman’s Worldcoin) building ways to sift out the bots.

Gitcoin Passport will rebrand to Human Passport and eight of its employees will continue on at Holonym, now 30 strong, said CEO Shady El Damaty. He’s planning to make the digital passport more portable so it can «follow you wherever you go on the internet,» performing the identity checks necessary to conduct business on the web.

First comes the privacy factor. Part of the appeal of flashing one’s Gitcoin Passport over, say, a government ID is that the crypto passport can attest its holder is who they claim to be without actually revealing their identity.

That’s not changing with the merger; El Damaty said it’s getting a boost. The nearly 35 million credentials being stored on Passport will be upgraded with zero-knowledge proof technology.

Perhaps the best-known use case for proof of humanity tech in crypto comes with airdrops. Projects that seek to ensure their token launches are rewarding people, not bots, have sometimes turned to tools like these. Holonym’s helped secure $225 million in such distributions, El Damaty said.

But he’s also planning to partner with more humanitarian endeavors, like digital identity checkers for refugees in need of accessing financial aid. One coming project will plug into 1 million displaced persons.

The acquisition may bolster Holonym’s ability to challenge Worldcoin, which leads the identity pack by virtue of its association with OpenAI’s Sam Altman. «We’re positioning ourselves as an alternative to Worldcoin,» said El Damaty.

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Coinbase Outpaces S&P 500 With 43% June Rise as Stablecoin Narrative Grows: CNBC

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Shares of Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN) rose 43% this month, making the firm the top performer in the S&P 500 since it joined the index at the end of last month.

June’s run is already the stock’s best since November and caps three straight monthly gains. Coinbase’s shares reached their highest level since their public debut.

COIN hit a $382 high this week before enduring a slight correction, ending the week at $353 and seeing a slight 0.7% drop in after-hours trading to $351.

The wider S&P 500 index rose roughly 5% in June as geopolitical tensions eased.

Washington’s progress on the GENIUS Act, Congress’s first rulebook for dollar-pegged stablecoins, helped shift investor focus from trading fees to stablecoin revenue.

The bill brightened the outlook for Circle, whose shares hit a record high and saw its market cap near that of Coinbase this week.

Coinbase keeps all yield on USDC balances held on its platform and nearly half of other USDC income, equal to about 99 percent of Circle’s revenue, giving shareholders indirect exposure at no added cost, CNBC reported Friday, citing analysts including Citizens’ head of financial technology research Devin Ryan.

Trading, however, remains subdued. Average daily volume on Coinbase has drifted lower since April.

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Robinhood Launches Micro Bitcoin, Solana and XRP Futures Contracts

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Robinhood (HOOD) has introduced micro futures on bitcoin (BTC), solana (SOL) and XRP in the United States., expanding its existing crypto futures offering for its nearly 26 million funded accounts.

Micro contracts need far less collateral than full-size futures, letting traders take directional positions while committing a smaller slice of capital.

The contracts offer traders more flexibility to bet on a cryptocurrency’s future price direction or hedge current positions given their smaller size.

The launch rounds out a futures suite that began with BTC and ETH in January. It also comes weeks after the firm closed its $200 million purchase of Bitstamp and finalized a $179 million deal for Canada’s WonderFi.

Robinhood’s data shows that crypto notional volumes have exploded upward over time, reaching $11.7 billion in May. The figure marks a 36% rise month-over-month, and a 65% growth year-over-year.

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Why is XRP Up Today? Trio of Catalysts Sees Token Outperform Wider Crypto Market

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XRP climbed 5.5% to $2.19 in the last 24 hours after a trio of catalysts converged to help the cryptocurrency outperform the wider cryptocurrency market.

One of the catalysts was launch of XRP micro futures on Robinhood. The contracts offer traders more flexibility to bet on the cryptocurrency’s future price direction or hedge current positions given their smaller size.

Regulatory fog also thinned. On Friday, Ripple withdrew its cross-appeal in its long-running U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit. The SEC sued Ripple back in 2020 over its XRP sales, alleging these violated securities laws. The SEC is expected to drop its own appeal, leaving last year’s ruling, ordering Ripple to pay a $125 million civil penalty to the SEC, intact. The move could lift a lid that had kept some investors on the sidelines.

On-chain data rounded out the bullish setup. The XRP Ledger logged over a 1.1 million active addresses over the past week according to crypto analyst Ali Martinez, who cited Glassnode data.

XRP’s rise saw it outperform the wider crypto market, with the broader CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index rising 1.7% in the last 24 hours.

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