Investing.com - Prices of all major digital coins advanced in Asia on Monday and there were reports that Japan’s e-commerce giant Rakuten is set to update its payment application to support cryptocurrencies.
Dubbed Japan’s Amazon, Rakuten said it will launch an updated version of its mobile payment application on March 18, which will support the use of digital currencies. The firm described it as “all payment solutions embedded into one platform.”
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The e-commerce giant is known for supporting crypto. In March 2015, its American portal started to accept Bitcoin payments. Then last August, it acquired Japanese crypto exchange Everybody’s Bitcoin in a $2.4 million deal. The company was cited believing that "the role of cryptocurrency-based payments in e-commerce, offline retail and in P2P payments will grow in the future."
Supported by the news, Bitcoin traded 2.51% higher to $3,719 by 12:37 AM ET (05:37 GMT). The world’s largest digital coin broke the $3,600 level it had been holding for weeks to go higher.
Ethereum was the best performer, surging 10.48% to $137.69. XRP added 2.12% to $0.30817. Litecoin gained 1.93% to $44.517.
Down under, Indonesia’s Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency passed a regulation that recognises Bitcoin and other digital currencies as a trading commodity. The move is said to give the country’s crypto exchanges legal certainty to operate.
Indrasari Wisnu Wardhana, head of the agency, said the move aimed to “give protection to people who want to invest in crypto assets so that they aren’t cheated by fraudulent sellers.”
In other news, Israel-based crypto brokerage Coinmama reported a major data breach that affected 450,000 users. It said a list of around “450,000 email addresses and hashed passwords” was posted on the dark web.
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