Bitcoin Daily: Matt Damon Now Face of Crypto.com; Penn Students Can Use Crypto to Pay for Class

Actor Matt Damon will be promoting cryptocurrency for Crypto.com as the platform looks to broaden its base, Bloomberg reported.

The marketing push will include ads featuring Damon, which will be aired in over 20 countries, according to the report.

“I’ve never done an endorsement like this,” Damon said, per the report. “We’re hoping this is the beginning of a great long-term collaboration.”

This will be Crypto.com’s first marketing push, the report stated. The company has seen its user base swell tenfold since 2020 as cryptocurrencies have become more popular.

In other news, Alibaba and Tencent are calling their nonfungible tokens (NFTs) “digital collectibles” due to the ever-present cautious eye of Beijing on the virtual asset market, Techstory.in reported.

According to Beijing, the virtual asset market could be a big bubble, the report stated.

Alibaba partially owns Ant Group. A spokesperson for AntChain, which is Ant Group’s blockchain tech platform, said in the report that there is a firm opposition to any kind of “illicit activity” regarding digital collectibles.

A search on Alibaba’s digital flea market Xianyu doesn’t have any results for “NFT” but has around a dozen for “digital collectibles,” according to the report.

Meanwhile, Thai department store chain Central Retail Corp. is doing a trial of its own cryptocurrency, CoinDesk reported.

The currency, called C-Coin, will be used by employees for now, but customers might have the ability to use it down the line, according to the report.

Central Retail Corp. is Thailand’s biggest shopping center developer, and the C-Coin will be sent to 80,000 employees on a “merit basis” for them to use rather than cash in its stores, the report stated.

In other news, blockchain-based Bistroo, which is a peer-to-peer (P2P) food ecosystem, will be letting merchants accept payments in several cryptocurrencies, Yahoo reported. The cryptos include bitcoin, Ethereum and Binance Coin.

The move will expand the number of payment options on Bistroo, which already allows fiat and its BIST token on the platform, according to the report.

Finally, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school is debuting an executive education program in blockchain, Decrypt reported.

Students will be able to pay for the program in crypto, which makes the University of Pennsylvania the second American college to accept bitcoin, according to the report. King’s College in New York became the first U.S. college to do so in 2014, per NBC Philadelphia. Ethereum and the USDC stablecoin will also be accepted.

Wharton will use Coinbase Commerce to process the payments, the report stated.