The most important crypto news of the week

Ripple builds payment bridge between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, IOTA integrates Shimmer network, Mt.Gox victims get their money (maybe); Barbados as the first country officially in the Metaverse and Crypto.com is sporting.

Another exciting week in the crypto space is drawing to a close. The most important events around BTC and Co. in a compact overview.

Ripple is building a payment bridge between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan

Ripple’s cloud service now makes it possible to create a bridge between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan for payment transactions. One of the largest private banks in Pakistan is cooperating for this purpose, Alfalah, now with the payment service provider based in Abu Dhabi LuLu Exchange.

Pakistan is one of the top 3 countries in terms of crypto adoption, and that worldwide. The payments made using the Ripple Net Cloud service should be faster and more transparent with the help of the new payment corridor.

IOTA gives the go-ahead for staking rewards

On the way to complete decentralization, IOTA launched the Shimmer network last week. This is used as a kind of playground for the development and testing of decentralized applications. The network acts as an intermediate step before the built dApps land on the mainnet.

At the same time, IOTA introduced a staking feature. This is intended to provide an incentive for network participants to validate important upgrades and create functions.

Mt.Gox victims are paid out

In the Mt.Gox-Affair there was some news in the last week. Accordingly, there is now new hope for the injured party to be compensated for their crypto losses.

The once largest BTC exchange had lost 850,000 BTC to an (alleged) hacker attack and then filed for bankruptcy in 2014. All withdrawals have stopped – and customers have been left in the lurch. A new official document now classifies the restructuring plan proposed at the beginning of the year as binding. However, it is still unclear when exactly the payouts will take place and in what amount.

Barbados has official embassy in the Metaverse

As the first country ever, Barbados can now claim to have an embassy in the Metaverse. The Barbadian Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade cooperates with this Decentraland.

It is not yet entirely clear how the representation of the country should work in the virtual universe. The goal of the Barbadian embassy in the Metaverse, however, is “the growth of stronger bilateral relationships with governments around the world support financially”.

Crypto.com is sporty

Although the euphoria has now flattened out, the in-house token from Crypto.com (CRO) have seen tremendous growth over the past week. Last but not least, this is probably due to the growing list of sports sponsorship partnerships.

On November 17th, the crypto exchange announced that the LA-based arena Staples Center now the name Crypto.com Arena will wear. Behind this is a contract with Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG). The agreement also includes regulations on CO₂ compensation and a partnership with the basketball players of LA Lakers and the ice hockey team of LA Kings.