Bitcoin Daily: Nike Offers Crypto Rewards For Online Purchases; BlockFi Teams With Bitcoin Mining Pool On Lending, Financial Services

Plutus, a British FinTech startup, is providing rewards via its credit card to customers who buy from the eCommerce store of Nike, Cointelegraph reported.

The rewards are made with Pluton, the native digital currency of the company. Users can receive additional rewards by staking their digital tokens through the company’s app.

Users have to utilize the Plutus Visa card as they shop through the web to get the benefit. The company, for its part, runs in the European Economic Area and in Britain. Plutus debuted a similar function on Skyscanner as well as Airbnb, but Founder and CEO Danial Daychopan said per the report that “all programs in the travel category have been temporarily paused by the company due to travel restrictions caused by COVID-19.”

The news comes as Nike patented what are known as “CryptoKicks” footwear, which is tokenized on the Ethereum blockchain as a non-fungible coin.

In other news, Poolin, a bitcoin mining pool, is growing its financial services and digital currency lending verticals, CoinDesk reported.

The pool said it has begun working with BlockFi, a digital currency lender based in the United States.

The head of Poolin’s financial services, Yang Jianguo, said per the report that a “mining pool is a traffic business and it is getting more and more competitive.” He also noted that the pool “has its unique advantage but we also want multiple business lines — not just lending but also financial services — that are parallel to our pool business.”

Miners that link up with the pool have roughly 18.3 exahashes per second of overall computing power, which comprises for approximately one-fifth of the overall bitcoin network. Poolin, for its part, is said to be the second-biggest bitcoin mining pool.

The reported tie-up occurs as BlockFi works to provide miners with credit, and Poolin is said to be the newest major bitcoin pool to have grown into digital currency lending offerings.