Italy’s State-Owned Bank Trials Digital Bonds on Polygon Blockchain
The European Central Bank initiated the trial to explore how blockchains can enhance central bank settlement.
In response to a number of attacks and an increasingly turbulent lack of safety, one of the United States’ leading cryptocurrency exchange will be closing its San Fransisco-based headquarters. The CEO of Kraken Jesse Powell announced the news as a retweet noting that the 548 Market Street global headquarters will be closed as a result of “numerous employees [that] were attacked, harassed and robbed”. Richie Greenberg, San Francisco politician and political commentator copied the original statement from Powell, noting:
BREAKING: KRAKEN CEO Jesse Powell @jespow today issued a statement regarding rampant crime in San Francisco and the failures of DA @chesaboudin . pic.twitter.com/7gx7PldQM0
— Richie Greenberg (@richieSF2016) April 7, 2022
According to news in California’s financial hub, a statement has been circling that offers that San Francisco is not a safe place in terms of crime and that the state of crime is high and “dramatically underreported.”
San Francisco loses another cryptocurrency exchange
Another United States-based cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, has also noted that it will be closing it headquartered offices in San Fransisco. However, unlike Kraken, the decision has not been explicitly made based on crime, but rather to make the workforce fully remote. In an announcement, Coinbase noted:
“We’ve committed to having no HQ, and it’s important to show our decentralized workforce that no one location is [more] important than the another. Instead, we will offer a network of smaller offices for our employees to work from if they choose to.”
Will San Fransisco remain a crypto hub?
Despite the loss of two major exchanges in the city, San Fransisco is one of the leading regions in terms of cryptocurrency investment. As of 2020, San Fransisco has been reported as one of the regions with the highest concentrations of investors interested in cryptocurrencies and other digital currencies. However, Kraken’s and Coinbase’s move from the city might rock this, if investors lose faith in the region’s financial digital currency-centric future.
Source: Cointracker.io
At the time, San Francisco made up double the numbers that the next third most crypto-focused city (Los Angeles) did. As per Cointracker:
“San Francisco, the epicenter of the latest technology boom, is also the center of the cryptocurrency boom. San Francisco has the most crypto users followed closely by New York and then Los Angeles. It’s worth noting, however, that there are twice as many crypto users in San Francisco as in Los Angeles, the third place city.”
Now, other cities in the United States are picking up in both cryptocurrency investment and operations. For example, Texas has become one of the leading regions in mining with a strong cryptocurrency-focused advocacy in the Senate with Ted Criz spear-heading adoption. New York has been one of the leading cryptocurrency regions in the United States and remains as such with major exchanges like Gemini headquartered in the city.