Abra Users Can Take Out Loans On Crypto Collateral

Abra has rolled out Abra Borrow, which will help the company reach its goal of becoming a complete crypto bank, a company blog post stated.

According to the post, this means the company’s users never have to sell their loans but will still have access to the short-term loans made in USD stablecoins.

The driving force behind the idea is that bitcoin and ethereum will only grow in value, so customers need an option besides selling them, instead using them as collateral to take out U.S. dollar loans, the post stated.

In other news, rather than try to negotiate new regulatory hurdles, the South Korean arm of cryptocurrency exchange OKEx will be closing, CoinDesk reported.

The arm will be shutting down by April 7, which is the last day customers will be able to withdraw digital assets and fiat currency, according to CoinDesk.

A spokesperson told CoinDesk that the cryptocurrency market is going to be too hard to navigate because of new anti-money laundering (AML) rules, including compliance inspections and verification for identities.

Along with dropping profits, it all became too much, the spokesperson said, per CoinDesk.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Gale Watson Jr., former bodyguard to John McAfee, has pleaded not guilty to being involved in two wholesale crypto scams that led to investors defrauded of around $13 million, Cointelegraph reported.

Watson was the former executive adviser for the “McAfee Team,” a website offering crypto tips endorsed by McAfee, according to Cointelegraph. He was arrested in Texas on March 4, while McAfee himself has been in prison in Spain since October when he was arrested for tax evasion.

The U.S. government is currently seeking McAfee’s extradition for numerous charges, including failing to submit tax returns while he made millions of dollars from crypto promotion, Cointelegraph reported.

Lastly, Crypto.com will be rolling out a new platform for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which will deliver content from popular artists, musicians, athletes and more, a company blog post stated.

The site at Crypto.com/NFT could be the “largest and most user-friendly” platform for NFTs, according to the post, and will come with a roster of artists like Aston Martin Cognizant Formula OneTM, Axel Mansoor (the King Of The Clubhouse), Bag Raiders, BossLogic, Boy George, Jonathan Monaghan with Nathan Evans (of No. 1 single Sea Shanty “Wellerman” fame), KCamp, Klarens Malluta with Lionel Richie, KLOUD, Mr. Brainwash, OPUS, Snoop Dogg and more, according to the post.

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About The Study: A New Approach For Modernizing Payments In Banking, a PYMNTS collaboration with Red Hat and Temenos, is a research-based report examining the trends transforming retail commerce and how these shifts are creating new challenges and opportunities for banks. The report aims to offer banks a roadmap to help them gain the technical capacity to support digital payments in all their forms.