RIYADH: Switzerland’s largest online bank, Swissquote, is preparing to launch its own cryptocurrency trading platform.
The company plans to open its crypto exchange before the end of the first half of 2022, Jan De Schepper, chief sales and marketing officer at Swissquote, was quoted as saying by Finews.asia publication.
Swissquote wants to become “the leading Swiss provider of digital assets,” he said.
“We want to enable more trading in various cryptocurrencies on the platform.”
It also plans to add stablecoins and staking services to the list of cryptocurrency offerings.
The Swiss bank currently supports 24 cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, XRP, bitcoin cash, chainlink, ethereum classic, EOS, stellar, tezos, augur, ox, cardano, uniswap, aave, cosmos, algorand, filecoin, maker, compound, year.finance, dogecoin, polkadot and solana.
Mining
Cryptocurrency advocates celebrated on Dec. 12 the fact that 90 percent of the 21 million bitcoins have been mined for circulation.
Currently, Bitcoin’s annual inflation rate is around 1.88 percent, which is below the central bank’s traditional reference target of 2 percent.
Network inflation is also expected to drop to 1.1 percent after 19.98 million bitcoins were mined, Bitcoin.com reported.
Hacked
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter account was hacked and a tweet was posted claiming that the government of India had adopted bitcoin as legal tender and had bought 500 coins to distribute to all residents of the country.
“India has officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender. The government has officially bought 500 BTC and is distributing them to all residents in the country,” the hacker had tweeted.
The tweet also contains a link to a website promoting a bitcoin granting scam.
This hack came at a critical time in India as the government is actively working to legalize the cryptocurrency.
Trading
Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, traded lower on Tuesday, falling by 1.32 percent to $47,314, at 6 p.m. Riyadh time.
Ether traded at $3,819, down by 2.55 percent, according to data from CoinDesk.