News linked to both this project and an event.
Odaily reports: Polygon Labs has announced the completion of its acquisition of Coinme, a US-regulated crypto payment service provider, with plans to leverage stablecoin infrastructure to enter the payments market dominated by Visa and Stripe. Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron stated that the acquisition will help Polygon Labs own customer relationships and capture revenue that previously flowed to intermediaries; Polygon Labs has now become a payments-focused company that uses blockchain to move money. In January, Polygon Labs launched Open Money Stack to support stablecoin payments and cross-border transfers, and to charge fees for currency exchange and money transfers. Marc Boiron said the regulated payments business is expected to become profitable by 2027. Data shows that Visa's payment volume exceeded $12.3 trillion in fiscal year 2025, while Stripe's payment volume reached $1.9 trillion. Through the acquisition of Coinme, Polygon Labs will control more business processes in areas such as crypto asset, stablecoin, and fiat currency conversion, rather than handing customers over to third parties. Polygon Labs' unified payments platform is currently still in technical preview and not yet fully open; early users include Tazapay, Mesh, Toku, and Kira.
India's cybercrime agency has requested GitHub to remove the code repository for Bitchat. Bitchat is an offline messaging app launched by Jack Dorsey, featuring a decentralized design and no registration requirement. Indian authorities stated that Bitchat's design hinders lawful surveillance and investigations. Delhi protesters used this app, along with similar Bluetooth mesh applications, to coordinate actions during the exam scandal protests, circumventing multiple internet outages. It remains unclear whether GitHub complied with the takedown request within the three-hour deadline. As of Friday, Bitchat is still available on major app stores, and open-source code can typically be mirrored and stored beyond a single platform. (CoinDesk)