Bitcoin Daily: Stellar Invests $15M In Mexico’s Digital Wallet Airtm; Coinbase Debuts Crypto Service For Institutional, Business Investors

The Stellar Development Foundation has announced a $15 million investment in Airtm, a Mexican blockchain and bank-connected digital wallet and peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange platform, according to a press release.

Airtm provides globally connected dollar accounts to consumers and businesses across Latin America and other emerging markets, the release stated.

Airtm will use the money to develop its platform through an integration with Stellar over the next year, according to the release. The Stellar network will bolster Airtm by making its payment services more seamless, cost-effective and safe.

Latin America is a largely cash-based economy, with 91 percent of all transactions in Mexico in 2020 done in cash, the release stated. But Latin America is digitizing fast with 13 million cardholders in that region making their first-ever digital payments in 2020 amid the pandemic.

“Airtm exists because financial systems throughout the developing world are not aligned with their people’s needs and global aspirations,” said Airtm CEO Ruben Galindo Steckel in the release. “With this investment, and our integration with the Stellar network, we will continue to advance on our mission of helping consumers and businesses throughout the developing world access stable money that holds its value, is instant to transfer with no fees, compatible with the global economy, and can be withdrawn as local currency whenever, and wherever it’s needed.”

Meanwhile, Coinbase is rolling out Coinbase Prime, which a company blog post stated will be a fully-integrated prime brokerage solution to help provide the best services possible.

Coinbase Prime will constitute a collection of services like “best-in-class custody, advanced training, data analytics and prime services,” according to the post.

It will come with seamless transfers between the company’s segregated cold storage and trading balance, access to over 10 venues for deep liquidity, smart order routing that will automatically look for the best prices, advanced algorithms for reducing market impact and slippage, and detailed trade cost analyses, the post stated.