Bitcoin Daily: Coinbase Scoops Up Blockspring; BitPay Claims $1B+ In 2018 Transactions

Bitpay, a processor of digital currency payments, claims that it has handled more than $1 billion in transactions in 2018, Coindesk reported. In addition, the firm noted that last year marked the second time that it reached the milestone. BitPay Co-Founder and CEO Stephen Pair said, according to the outlet, “To process over a $1 billion for a second year in a row despite bitcoin’s large price drop shows that bitcoin is being used to solve real pain points around the world.” The company said that new clients over the past year ranged from IT vendors to law firms.

In other news, the daily price volatility of bitcoin has plunged over the past year amid the cryptocurrency’s bear market, Coindesk reported. On Wednesday (Jan. 16), daily volatility was only $61 compared to $3,468 on Jan. 16 of last year per data from CoinMarketCap. The outlet noted that volatility and price tend to go hand-in-hand: “Generally, with a sharp drop in price, volatility in dollar terms tends to fall in parallel,” the outlet reported. The price of bitcoin as of 7:08 p.m. on Thursday (Jan. 17) was $3,631.06, according to Coindesk.

On another note, Clearmatics and Barclays are teaming up to have computer programmers create different methods for blockchains to Ethereum, Coindesk reported. The challenge will use a template that includes Ion, an interoperability protocol that is open source from Clearmatics, and will take place in London at the beginning of February. Lee Braine, a Barclays’ executive, told the outlet that the event “will permit the industry to experiment with the Ion protocol and also provide feedback to the open source project.”

And Coinbase has scooped up a California startup called Blockspring, which helps companies make use of data from application programming interfaces (APIs), according to reports. With the deal, the startup’s team will reportedly join Coinbase. Blockspring CEO Paul Katsen wrote in a post, “Joining Coinbase was a no-brainer for a number reasons including its commitment to establishing an open financial system and the strength of its engineering team.” Blockspring had reportedly notched $3.5 million in funding per Crunchbase and is a Y Combinator graduate.