The crypto market continues to face the major brunt of global economic uncertainties. Treasury yields skyrocketed as the Federal Reserve continues to remain hawkish. The stock market also plummeted over the uncertainty surrounding China. The S&P 500 has fallen by 0.8% while the NASDAQ 100 has fallen by 0.5%. The crypto market remains strongly correlated with the stock market and especially the tech-oriented NASDAQ.

As a result, most cryptocurrencies were trading lower as the global crypto market cap decreased by 0.76% and stood at $913.28 billion.

The $19,100 mark has acted as a solid support level for the Bitcoin price for most of the last two months. At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price was sitting at $19,053, noting a mere 0.59% daily loss and a 3.5% weekly loss. Similarly, Ethereum’s price fell below the crucial $1,300 mark, noting a 0.50% drop in the past 24 hours.

Stablecoin issuer Tether has announced it will make tether (USDT) available at 24,000 ATMs in Brazil starting Nov. 3.

Tether will enable the conversion of USDT to Brazilian reals through an agreement with Brazilian crypto services provider SmartPay, which is integrated with TecBan, a local company that owns 24,000 ATMs under the brand name of Banco24Horas. Users will be able to send USDT from any wallet including exchanges to an ATM. Beginning in February, the company will also allow users to deposit Brazilian reals at ATMs and receive USDT in their wallets.

“Adding tether tokens to ATMs across Brazil provides the opportunity to include more people in the financial system,” said Tether Chief Technology Officer Paolo Ardoino. “This will bring major changes not only to the payments industry but to the entire Brazilian financial ecosystem.”

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Mastercard has introduced a new program called Crypto Source that will bring “crypto trading capabilities to banks.”

In partnership with regulated and licensed crypto custody providers, Crypto Source will “enable financial institutions to bring secure crypto trading capabilities and services to their customers,” the announcement details, elaborating: “Mastercard’s financial institution partners will gain access to a comprehensive suite of buy, hold and sell services for select crypto assets, augmented with proven identity, cyber, security and advisory services”

“This Crypto Source offering is complemented by Mastercard Crypto Secure to bring additional security to the crypto ecosystem,” the company emphasized, noting that Crypto Source is currently being prepared for pilot programs.

Mastercard further explained that to support this program, it is “expanding its partnership and work with Paxos Trust Company, a leading regulated blockchain infrastructure platform.

In other news,

• Israel moves to avail government bonds via blockchain. Read More
• $9 Billion European Digital Bank N26 Enables Bitcoin Trading. Read More
• Island nation of Madeira hopes to copy El Salvador’s Bitcoin success. Read More

Crypto exchange Coinbase is looking to expand USDC access outside the United States in a bid to “increase economic freedom in the world.” The exchange wants to reduce barriers to using the stablecoin by establishing global parity for all users — meaning that Coinbase will remove commission fees when customers buy or sell USDC via any non-USD fiat currency on Coinbase.

This will help expand the presence of UDSC, which is already a strong stablecoin in the market. Coinbase notes that three times as much as USDC is bought with the dollar as opposed to other fiat currencies. The fees involved were usually what was stopping it from being used more often.

In other news,

• Binance Wins Registration as Crypto Asset Service Provider in Cyprus. Read More
• PancakeSwap wants to deploy mainnet on Aptos. Read More
• FTX to filter assets it thinks are securities from US listings until registration in place. Read More
• Kraken Joins List of Crypto Firms to Comply With EU Sanctions Against Russia. Read More
  

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) could begin to tax non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as it has classified them as digital assets alongside virtual currencies in its updated draft instructions for the 2022 tax year.

According to the IRS, digital assets are “digital representations of value that are recorded on a cryptographically secured distributed ledger or any similar technology. For example, digital assets include non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and virtual currencies, such as cryptocurrencies and stablecoins.”

The tax regulator stated that any asset that shows the characteristics of a digital asset would be treated as such for tax purposes — meaning NFT investors must report all taxable NFT income for the tax year.

With this development, the U.S. joins countries like Singapore, Israel, and India, which also tax NFTs.

In other news,

• South Africa Imposes Regulation on Crypto Assets. Read More
• Turkish police confiscate $40M worth of crypto. Read More
• Japan to Relax Cryptocurrency Listing Rules. Read More
• Ripple Edges Closer to a Win as SEC Forced to Give up Hinman Documents. Read More
• US regulator touts to ‘aggressively police’ crypto in new report. Read More