As the cryptocurrency economy continues to grow and evolve, traditional institutional investors and companies are realizing that there is business there.
One of the companies that led the way is MicroStrategywhich acquired bitcoin and is heavily exposed to price fluctuations in the major cryptocurrency.
Another is Teslawhich, hand in hand with Elon Musk, has made investments linked to the crypto ecosystem.
Another of the traditional firms is Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street giant. While he hasn’t fully entered that market segment, he said he is “looking at it.”
Beyond that, as early as 2017, Goldman Sachs bought a stake in the cryptocurrency trading firm. Circle Internet Financial. This move was seen as an important step in the institutional acceptance of the crypto ecosystem.
Other large companies have followed suit: Fidelity Investments launched a new division dedicated to cryptocurrencies and the Intercontinental Exchange firm discussed plans to launch a cryptocurrency trading platform.
In 2021, the big credit card brands talked about launching products related to the crypto world.
All of them, in one way or another, have been approaching a trend that seems to be impossible to stop.
Do Visa and MasterCard change course?
However, the scenario seems to have changed: the financial services companies MasterCard and Visa would be analyzing pause the launch of some cryptocurrency-related products and services “until market conditions and the regulatory framework of the sector improve,” they say Reuters and Dow Jones Newswires.
Reuters, in particular, cites statements by a Visa spokesperson who said that “the latest failures in the cryptocurrency sector remind us that there are still many ways to go prior to their being part of the mainstream of payments and financial services”.
Likewise, the same person said –according to Reuters– that this does not mean that the company’s strategy or approach to cryptocurrencies has changed.
In parallel, a MasterCard institutional relations official acknowledged to Reuters that “efforts continue to focus on the underlying blockchain technologies and how they can be applied to help solve problems.”
Beyond that, Visa denied to Reuters that it has stopped its projects, calling the information “inaccurate.”
The credit card company officially said that it “continues to collaborate with cryptocurrency companies to improve routes for fiat in and out, as well as advancing projects to create new products that make payments with stablecoins safe and simple.”
It must be remembered that Visa suspended all its worldwide agreements with FTX in November 2022, after its debacle.
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