El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said the country’s government-supported cryptocurrency wallet will be live at the beginning of September, The Block reported.
The Chivo wallet, which will be made available Sept. 7, will be optional for use, although those who download it will reportedly receive $30 in bitcoin, according to the report.
While citizens won’t be obligated to use the wallets or digital currencies, the Chivo wallet will let people pay in bitcoin or dollars anywhere in the world. Citizens will be able to automatically convert bitcoin transactions into dollars, the report stated.
In other news, Visa’s purchase of a CryptoPunk spurred around 90 nonfungible token (NFT) sales in the collection in one hour, The Block reported.
CryptoPunks are a set of NFTs of around 10,000 pixelated faces, which feature “humans, apes, zombies and aliens,” according to the report. They were made by LarvaLabs in 2017.
Visa said it bought “CryptoPunk 7610,” which was one of 3,840 female punks, and paid around $150,000 for it, the report stated.
Read more: Visa Jumps From Payment Rails To A Ride On The Red Hot NFT Train
Meanwhile, bitcoin payment processor OpenNode has announced that online publishing platform Substack, has integrated its bitcoin application programming interface (API) to help offer bitcoin payments on the platform, according to a press release.
OpenNode and Substack will be working toward making instant, low-cost payments available for some of the crypto-focused publications, the release stated. Readers will be able to use bitcoin to pay for subscriptions to certain publications, which will retain earnings in bitcoin.
“Our partnership will allow content creators across the Substack ecosystem to accept bitcoin payments, and retain earnings in bitcoin or convert to preferred currency,” OpenNode Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer João Almeida said in the release. “Writers and podcasters have flocked to Substack to regain creative and financial freedom, and bitcoin is a natural fit.”
Lastly, bitcoin’s 24-hour high as of Monday (Aug. 23) was above $50,000 for the first time since February, CoinDesk data showed, hitting $50,495.
As of 8:15 p.m. on Monday, the most popular cryptocurrency was sitting at $49,692.42. The market cap for the coin was $933.93 billion, according to the data.
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