CrownYou

2024 年 7 月 22 日上午 9:12（美国中部夏令时间）
肯塔基州鲍灵格林 (WBKO) – 州长安迪·贝希尔下令周一所有州政府大楼降半旗，以纪念一位阵亡的肯塔基州空军中士。

据州长办公室的新闻稿称，肯塔基州人技术中士安德鲁·赫姆萨斯于 7 月 5 日在阿拉斯加艾尔森空军基地服役期间去世。
赫姆萨斯被分配到第 355 战斗机中队。
赫姆萨斯的家人将于周一举行私人追悼会和葬礼，以纪念他的一生。
州政府大楼的旗帜将一直降半旗，直到日落。
贝希尔州长鼓励所有个人、企业、组织和政府机构参加此次致敬活动。

New York
CNN
—
Customers of the crypto platform Gemini can expect to recover more than three times the value of their digital assets that were ensnared in the fallout of FTX — a rare outcome for creditors involved in a bankruptcy.

Gemini, the exchange founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, said Wednesday that it has secured a 232% recovery for customers who participated in its lending program, Earn, a partnership with a third party that halted withdrawals as turmoil gripped crypto markets in November 2022.

More than 230,000 Gemini customers lost access to approximately $940 million worth of digital assets. In the year and a half since then, crypto has staged a comeback, bringing the value of the frozen funds to $2.18 billion.

“We are thrilled that we have been able to achieve this recovery for our customers. We recognize the hardship caused by this lengthy process and appreciate our customers’ continued support and patience throughout,” Cameron Winklevoss, Gemini’s president, said in a statement.

Gemini agreed in February to return at least $1.1 billion to customers of the lending program and pay a $37 million fine for unsafe and unsound practices as part of a settlement with the New York Department of Financial Services.

Wednesday’s announcement accounts for the appreciation of value in crypto, adding more than $1 billion to the total.

If, for example, a customer had lent one bitcoin in the Earn program, they can now expect to receive one bitcoin back.

At the time FTX imploded, causing chaos in crypto markets, bitcoin sank precipitously to around $17,500. A year and a half later, one bitcoin fetches just under $70,000.

Earn customers can expect to receive their remaining asset balance within the next 12 months, Gemini said.

Customers of FTX, once the second-largest crypto exchange on the planet, are also expected to be made whole, with interest, thanks in part to the rising value of FTX’s crypto holdings and smart bets on artificial intelligence that it was able to liquidate.

PayPal says its stablecoin — PayPal USD (PYUSD) — is now available on the Solana blockchain.
The move is designed to make the stablecoin faster and cheaper to use, giving users the choice of multiple blockchains for more flexibility and control, according to a Wednesday (May 29) news release.
“The Solana blockchain is known for processing massive amounts of transactions at high speeds with extremely low costs, providing significant benefits for commerce use cases,” PayPal said in the release.
It’s also the most used blockchain for stablecoin transfers, according to data from blockchain analytics platform Artemis, making it ideal for PYUSD’s use in payments, per the release.
“PayPal USD was created with the intent to revolutionize commerce again by providing a fast, easy, and inexpensive payment method for the next evolution of the digital economy,” PayPal Senior Vice President of Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and Digital Currency Jose Fernandez da Ponte said in the announcement. “Making PYUSD available on the Solana blockchain furthers our goal of enabling a digital currency with a stable value designed for commerce and payments.”
PayPal introduced PYUSD last August and began offering it to users of its Venmo payments platform weeks later. And last month, the company teamed with cross-border money transfer service Xoom partnered to let users make international transactions using PYUSD.
Meanwhile, PYMNTS spoke recently with Sheraz Shere, head of payments at Solana Foundation, about the company’s push to make crypto payments more mainstream.
“It’s important to know that crypto is not just bitcoin and Doge and NFTs,” Shere said “Blockchains are really alternative rails for payments and financial assets.”
Still, he added, there is an ongoing obstacle to accelerating cryptocurrency adoption — a lack of awareness especially among the upper reaches of financial services.
“If you think about the mainstream, we are very early, even on the awareness side of things,” Shere said.
That’s because although crypto advocates have deep insights into the technology, executives still need more education for them to truly embrace exploring the practical applications and potential of cryptocurrency within payments.
“As an example, people are super excited about all these new [real-time payments] systems,” Shere said. “Imagine a global [real-time payments] system that just runs with no central authority. Well, we have that with stablecoins running on a network like Solana — fully permissionless, decentralized instant settlement.”
“Don’t get distracted by the noise,” he added. “There is a lot of noise, but there are some interesting underlying technologies that are important for financial services leaders to understand.”