Shopify Integrates USDC Payments, Friend.tech Activity Dries Up

Market Update After digesting Fed Chair Powell’s speech at Friday’s Jackson Hole Economic Symposium over the weekend, traditional indices are rising, with both the $SPY and $QQQ gaining approximately 0.40% at the time of writing. In a busy week for economic data, investors will be eyeing the release of JOLTS, ADP employment, the PCE index, and non-farm payrolls to form an outlook on the labor market and inflation. Crypto markets are relatively flat, with $BTC (+0.05%) remaining steady around $26k, and $ETH (-0.38%) holding at $1,650. Retail investing and trading platform Robinhood is speculated to own a $3 billion Bitcoin wallet. The wallet has accumulated most of the 118k Bitcoin balance over the last few months, making it the third largest Bitcoin holder behind Binance and Bitfinex. Robinhood has not publicly confirmed if they are the wallet’s owner, but if so, it would mark significant exposure to crypto despite the platform reporting an 18% drop in crypto trading revenues in Q2.The e-commerce giant Shopify, has integrated USDC payments on its platform, allowing millions of businesses and customers to transact with crypto. The integration utilizes Solana Pay, a payments protocol built on the Solana network. Solana Pay eliminates the need for an intermediary, remov