Bitcoin Daily: Travala Users Can Use Crypto Again To Pay For Expedia Bookings; S. African Ex-Crypto Agency Chief Allegedly Scammed Investors Of $13.4M

Travala.com, the Binance-backed online trading agency, will be allowing travel bookings through Expedia paid for in cryptocurrency for the first time since 2018, according to CoinDesk.

The feature was shelved at that time, as Expedia’s systems weren’t set up to accept bitcoin payments. But now the agency is looking at bringing it back to help rebound from pandemic-related revenue shortages, Travala.com CEO Juan Otero said, with month-over-month revenues rebounding 170 percent in June, while room night bookings jumped 81 percent.

In other news, a subsidiary of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken in the U.K. has now been approved to operate its derivatives platform, CoinDesk reported.

Crypto Facilities, or Kraken Futures since it was acquired by Kraken last year, has been granted a Multilateral Trading Facilities (MTF) license by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). This will allow the firm to let institutional clients trade on the futures platform when they would have otherwise been prohibited from trading on unlicensed platforms.

By doing this, Crypto Facilities becomes the first and only firm licensed for derivatives, which the FCA is planning to ban for a limited time, arguing the products are not suited for retail investors.

Meanwhile, regulated crypto asset program Currency.com is now the holder of a Gibraltar distributed ledger technology (DLT) license, according to a press release.

The license allows Currency.com to use DLT to store and transmit others’ value for the provision of dealer and custody services, the release states.

Currency.com CEO Jonathan Squires said the company had a “commitment to expanding across the globe, offering a blockchain-backed, highly regulated and secure service designed to give customers the flexibility they’ve been looking for,” and looked forward to doing more business in Gibraltar.

And, alleged bitcoin scammer Willie Breedt, who worked with the defunct company VaultAge Solutions, has been declared bankrupt, according to News24.

Around 2,000 investors in VaultAge stand to lose around 227 million South African rand ($13.4 million) due to Breedt’s broken promises to pay out their investments and growth. One of the biggest investors, who had entrusted Breedt with 7.5 million South African rand ($4.4 million), filed for a sequestration order against Breedt on Friday (July 3).

Two weeks ago, Breedt went into hiding when investors reportedly led by a South African National Defense Force colonel called debt collectors to recover the money they were owed, News24 reported.

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