Up for adoption. August 31, 2018.

Yahoo brings crypto to its trading platform

Is adoption drawing near? It might be. Yahoo Finance—the news, business, and trading platform run by Yahoo—has listed four cryptocurrencies on its exchange. The chosen are Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and, er, Dogecoin. Is this a sign of the adoption everybody’s clamoring for? Let’s be honest, probably not. Yahoo, remember, is the brains behind the search engine so bad its own employees don’t even use it,

Square brings crypto to its mobile payments platform

Might Square fare better? The mobile payment platform has acquired a patent for traders to exchange almost any cryptocurrency of their choosing. Square has a sizeable user-base and an annual net revenue of $2.2bn, over double that of BitPay, the current crown-bearer in the mobile payments game. But Square’s plan wouldn’t be real adoption—crypto-transactions will be instead stored on a private third-party blockchain, “off-chain,” wrenching coin ownership from the hands of the people. Oh well.

Cboe brings ether futures to its exchange platform

Third time lucky? Global futures exchange Cboe is nearing completion on a futures trading platform for ether - allowing investors to speculate on the future price of the currency to their heart's content. The new exchange will be rolling out at the end of this year. This could mean widespread adoption is just around the corner, or not. The last time a futures market opened for a cryptocurrency—bitcoin in December 2017—there was a brief hike in price, followed by an immediate crash. Be careful what you wish for.

Turks switch to crypto in droves

Adoption’s best chance may instead be in Turkey, according to a new report from Paris-based statistics firm Ipsos. Some 18 percent of the country’s population holds crypto, double the rate of the average European. It’s not difficult to see why. The Turkish lira, Bloomberg points out, has taken a beating under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s mismanagement and in the wake of a feud with the United States, leaving newly out-of-pocket Turks scrabbling for spare change. Cryptocurrency, at least partly, was designed to undercut such economic cock-ups. Turkey, almost by accident, has presented a golden opportunity for crypto to prove its worth.

Read Next: Daily Debrief, August 30, 2018