A week after Canada’s central bank confirmed that its plans for a central bank-backed digital currency (CBDC) have accelerated during the pandemic, government-backed digital currencies cleared hurdles in two other markets.

As consumers transact digitally en masse during the pandemic, Canada’s central bank is accelerating its central bank-backed digital currency (CBDC) efforts.

Tesla, whose CEO Elon Musk has been tweeting in support of bitcoin and dogecoin, confirmed on Monday, Feb. 8 that the company has invested $1.5B in bitcoin and will accept the cryptocurrency as a payment method in the future.

PayPal, which launched capabilities to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies last October, said it’s seeing strong crypto transactional activity and plans to grow a recently-launched unit dedicated to the rollout of these offerings.

Visa this week inked a partnership with First Boulevard, a challenger bank aimed at the Black community, to allow First Boulevard to pilot Visa’s new suite of crypto APIs.

Ripple, the company behind cryptocurrency XRP, has formally responded to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit filed in December that alleged that the company conducted a $1.3B unregistered securities offering.

The New York Times reports that German-born programmer Stefan Thomas is sitting on a bitcoin fortune worth $200M, but can’t access it because he can’t remember the password to his digital wallet.

With the suspension of President Trump’s Twitter account, many users are moving to other platforms. This week, Parler, a forum popular among conservative activists, went dark after Amazon Web Services severed links with it following the Capitol riot.

In a holiday season that’s seeing Bitcoin’s value rise, a New York-based community bank is allowing customers to earn Bitcoin rewards through a traditional checking account.

Standard Chartered Ventures, the innovation unit of Standard Chartered, is partnering with asset servicer Northern Trust to launch Zodia Custody, a crypto custody business.

A New York Times report about treatment of minority employees at cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has garnered attention as fintech and financial firms strive to improve their performance on diversity and equity issues.

On Tuesday, Nov. 24, bitcoin’s price rose beyond $19,000, edging closer to its all-time high of $19,783 in 2017. The rally didn’t last, however, with the value of bitcoin falling 14% by Thursday, Nov. 25. Other cryptocurrencies also experienced significant losses.

In a recent investor letter, cryptocurrency and blockchain investment firm Pantera Capital claimed PayPal’s foray into cryptocurrency may be driving the current bitcoin rally. Bitcoin prices hit a three-year high last week.

Atlanta-based bitcoin payment service provider BitPay has launched BitPay Send, which lets companies make crypto disbursements to pay employees, affiliates, customers, vendors, contractors, and others.

Tel Aviv-based ZenGo launched a crypto debit card for U.S. users, days after Coinbase announced the launch of a visa debit card for U.S. consumers next year.