Today in Crypto: The Luna Crypto Was Revived, Crashes Again; 12% of Argentinians Invest in Crypto

Merge, the London crypto payments firm, has raised $9.5 million in a seed round, according to reports.

Merge will use the capital to make sure crypto companies can make payments as well as work with traditional financial services.

Merge plans to focus on both holding and transferring fiat funds for crypto and Web3 companies, though it will manage compliance through its API.

The company said it has numerous clients lined up and that there will be an announcement this quarter.

The release says Octopus Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Alameda Research and Hashed led the round, along with numerous others involved.

Meanwhile, residents of Buenos Aires have seen a surge in cryptocurrency usage, Reuters writes.

The report describes young residents ordering food and drinks using cryptocurrency prices when the ability to pay in digital currency is available.

The report says users have been drawn to the digital coins to offset “years of painful inflation,” the rate of which is now hitting around 60%. Users are also responding to a market crash along with El Salvador’s experiment with virtual money.

According to an April report from Americas Market Intelligence, crypto penetration in Argentina is at 12%, or double the level of Mexico and Brazil.

Related: Streaming Platforms Use Digital Payments to Gain Foothold in LatAm

Finally, a new variant of the luna cryptocurrency, which famously collapsed a few weeks ago, is now live — but things aren’t going well, CNBC writes.

Last week supporters of the project voted to revive luna, though not the terraUSD stablecoin, which, when it lost its one-to-one peg with the U.S. dollar, began to cause catastrophic issues for crypto.

The new version of luna, after hitting a peak of $19.53 on Saturday (May 28), hit a low of $4.39 after just a few hours.

Since then it has hit $5.90 or so, the report says.

This comes as prospects for the coin have been mixed, with the coin having to compete with various “Layer 1” networks, which underpin other coins like ethereum, solana and cardano, the report says.