South Korean fintech unicorn Toss plans to launch a finance superapp in Australia this year and issue a Korean won stablecoin once regulations allow. South Korean fintech unicorn Toss plans to launch a finance superapp in Australia this year, its first overseas expansion, while also preparing to issue a Korean won-based stablecoin once regulations allow. According to a Tuesday Reuters report, Toss CEO Lee Seung-gun said that the firm plans to launch its superapp in Australia this year and expand to other markets too. “We proved in Korea that a startup can compete head-on with entrenched players,” he told the outlet. “A similar model can work globally, especially in countries where users juggle multiple bank accounts or fintech apps. We want to bring them into one seamless experience.” The CEO said that Toss has attracted more than 30 million users in South Korea since it launched in 2015. Australia is just the first overseas push for the company, where the firm hopes to leverage a fragmented banking system an...
Apex Alliance Hotel Management appoints Tadas Evaltas as general manager of The Marmorosch Bucharest, Autograph Collection Hotel, replacing Ausra Lucinskaite, who served in this position for four years and continues her career at a luxury hotel in Budapest.
The true future of decentralized computing lies not in raw speed, but in abundant block space, where Web3 runs the world’s indispensable decentralized supercomputer. Opinion by: Shawn Tabrizi, engineering lead at Parity In pursuit of adoption, many Web3 builders are hyperfocused on a simple, seductive metric: transactions per second (TPS). Protocols have trumpeted numbers rivaling traditional payment rails, convinced that sheer speed is the holy grail to convert billions of users and major enterprises. While this is intuitively appealing, it is insufficient. Adoption, and its prerequisite utility, is ultimately about capacity, not speed. While TPS is undeniably important, the real arms race is not about the fastest race car but about robust, efficient, flexible and infinitely scalable mass transit systems. Financial applications often need speed, but compute-based applications require abundant, usable block space. This is the vision of Web3 as the world’s indispensable decentralized supercomputer. Read more
Can tokenized stocks from centralized issuers like Robinhood or Kraken ever be truly decentralized? Experts are divided. Crypto is supposed to be about freedom permissionless networks, immutable ownership, assets that no government or intermediary can arbitrarily revoke. At least, that was Satoshis dream a vision that has admittedly faded over time as reality butted in. Amid all the other dying idealism, along came stock tokens, shiny digital wrappers for traditional equities such as Tesla, Apple and Amazon. Suddenly, the crypto space found itself dressed up in Wall Streets regulatory straitjacket. Stock tokens, as currently structured, such as Kraken’s, Robinhood’s and in the future, Coinbase’s are about as decentralized as a Goldman Sachs board meeting. Theyre digital and tokenized, but users must pass KYC to acquire them; they can only move between whitelisted addresses, and issuers can freeze or revoke them at will. In short, they arent really crypto at all. Theyre securities in a digital costume, playing...
Can tokenized stocks from centralized issuers like Robinhood or Kraken ever be truly decentralized? Experts are divided. Crypto is supposed to be about freedom permissionless networks, immutable ownership, assets that no government or intermediary can arbitrarily revoke. At least, that was Satoshis dream a vision that has admittedly faded over time as reality butted in. Amid all the other dying idealism, along came stock tokens, shiny digital wrappers for traditional equities such as Tesla, Apple and Amazon. Suddenly, the crypto space found itself dressed up in Wall Streets regulatory straitjacket. Stock tokens, as currently structured, such as Kraken’s, Robinhood’s and in the future, Coinbase’s are about as decentralized as a Goldman Sachs board meeting. Theyre digital and tokenized, but users must pass KYC to acquire them; they can only move between whitelisted addresses, and issuers can freeze or revoke them at will. In short, they arent really crypto at all. Theyre securities in a digital costume, playing...
Spot Ether ETFs saw over $1 billion in outflows over six days as investors retreated on macro concerns and fading rate-cut optimism. Spot Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded over $1.04 billion in net outflows across six consecutive trading days, as investors pulled back in response to growing macro uncertainty and fading confidence in rate-cut tailwinds. On Monday, Ether (ETH) ETFs saw a net outflow of $96.7 million, led by BlackRock’s ETHA, which recorded $192.7 million in withdrawals. This was partially offset by $75 million inflows into Fidelity’s FETH, $9.5 million into Grayscale’s ETHE and $11 million into its mini fund. Total trading volume reached $1.52 billion, with overall net assets falling to $27.39 billion, representing 5.28% of Ether's market cap, according to data from SoSoValue. Read more