Today in Crypto: Coinbase Suspends Crypto Purchases Through India’s UPI; CLabs to Work With eCurrency to Bring DeFi to CBDC

Only five crypto companies are on the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA’s) temporary registration list, meaning they’re able to trade while their applications are being considered, CoinDesk reported Friday (April 8).

The companies in question are CEX.I0, Copper Technologies, GlobalBlock, Revolut and Moneybrain. While the temporary registration list was set up so digital asset firms could still operate while waiting for approval from the FCA, the FCA said being on the list is not an indication that the company has been assessed as “fit and proper.”

In addition, Block, which is owned by Jack Dorsey, and crypto firm Blockstream will mine bitcoin at the Tesla solar plant in Texas, Bloomberg wrote Friday.

Tesla’s 3.8 megawatts solar PV and 12 megawatt-hour Megapack will power the mining facility. The facilities can store energy and stabilize power output from intermittent wind and solar generations.

Meanwhile, CoinDesk also reported Friday that Clabs, which is behind the Celo ecosystem, will work with eCurrency, which lets central banks issues central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

The partnership will let banks trialing or launching CBDCs use the Celo blockchain to let end users get access to DeFi products. According to the report, the Celo blockchain lets native and non-native digital assets move freely across devices, carriers and countries.

In other news, three ex-Citi executives have formed Motus Capital Management, a crypto-focused investment firm that will allow clients to bet on digital assets, CoinDesk wrote Saturday (April 9).

The execs in question are Alex Kriete, Greg Girasole, and Frank Cavallo, and both Kriete and Girasole used to be heads of Citi’s digital assets group. Per the report, Motus sees an opportunity in the growth segment of the market — bigger investment funds can’t buy smaller market cap tokens for liquidity purposes.

Finally, Coinbase has temporarily cut off the option to buy cryptocurrencies through India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Economic Times reported Sunday (April 10).

This comes after Coinbase announced its entry to India on April 7. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) said it would allow crypto purchases, but later said it wasn’t aware of any crypto exchange using UPI.

A person aware of the matter said the NPCI would most likely not allow this kind of thing unless crypto was fully legal.