Today in Crypto: Twitter Invests in Bitcoin Payments Provider OpenNode; Japan’s Line App Tests Merchant Crypto Payments

Bitcoin’s supply cap of 21 million might make it the best way to hold as an inflation hedge — but recently, Bank of America thinks it’s a risk asset, CoinDesk reported Wednesday (Feb. 9).

The correlations between bitcoin and the S&P 500 stock index, alongside the correlation between bitcoin and the Nasdaq, were at all-time highs. However, the correlation between bitcoin and gold — which is often treated as an inflation hedge or store of value — has been close to zero.

While the volatility has fallen from its highest rates in 2013, it’s still high relative to the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100 and gold.

In other news, the European Union might be looking to ban crypto mining due to its energy concerns.

Per a Wednesday CoinDesk report, a number of regulators in Sweden have called for a ban, as they are concerned about renewable energy being used to mine the coins rather than used for public use.

On Feb. 3, EU Parliament member Stefan Berger called the potential crypto mining ban a “death sentence” for bitcoin in the EU. Berger has also been behind a forthcoming regulatory package for controlling crypto assets in the union.

Meanwhile, bitcoin payment provider OpenNode announced Wednesday that it has closed a $20 million Series A round, with investments coming from Twitter, Tim Draper and Avon Ventures.

OpenNode processes and settles bitcoin payments instantly via the Lightning Network, the leading system for improving bitcoin scalability. The company says its systems for businesses come with “payment buttons, hosted checkouts, eCommerce plug-ins and optimized application programming interfaces (APIs).”

Finally, a subsidiary of Japanese messaging titan LINE Corporation plans to trial its native LINK token as a payment method for select merchants through its messaging app, Blockworks reported Wednesday.

LINE Pay, which operates the company’s digital wallet and FinTech services, will work on connecting LINE’s service with its payment service.

LINE plans to expand users’ “payment options, increase convenience and grow the real-life usages” for LINK, and the report says this is the first time since 2020 that the company has pushed ahead this strong for crypto.