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Ripple Escrow Reporting: Creative Accounting or Much Ado About Nothing?
Coin Metrics has released a report detailing discrepancies in Ripple’s escrow reporting system. The Blockchain analysis firm described these discrepancies as contradictions that required some explanation.
tags: CryptoAssets AltCoins Fintech Ripple
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Coinbase Now Lets Merchants Accept Payments in USDC Stablecoin
Coinbase Commerce, the crypto exchange’s zero transaction fee merchants payments offering, has added support USD Coin. Merchants can accept It without geographical limitations or the need for a traditional bank account.
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Blockchain Credit Union Consortium to Use R3’s Corda for Cross-Border Payments Product
CULedger, a blockchain consortium and credit union service organization, has chosen enterprise software firm R3’s Corda blockchain to underpin its forthcoming cross-border payments product.
tags: Fintech Blockchain R3 Corda CrossBorder
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Outstanding Stablecoins, Spot Trading Volumes Hit Record
Stablecoins have hit an all-time high with over $4B USD-pegged tokens now on the blockchain. While Tether dominance remains, new stablecoins that came to market recently have made leapfrogs of progress.
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Crypto Lending Startup BlockFi Slashing Interest Rates on Ether Deposits
Cryptocurrency lending startup BlockFi is almost halving the interest rates it offers on ether (ETH) deposits, while some bitcoin (BTC) rates will increase slightly.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Collateral
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The Bitstamp ‘flash crash’ – why robust indices matter
Around 11PM EST on May 16th, a sell order for around 5,000 BTC appeared on the Bitstamp order book. Over the next 15 minutes, the BTC price on Bitstamp continuously fell – skewing the entire market and triggering hundreds of millions in long liquidations.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Bitcoin Liquidity
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Study: Bitcoin Derivatives Exchanges Register Record Trading Volumes
Cryptocurrency research firm Diar has indicated that institutional traders recently registered record high volumes on bitcoin (BTC) derivatives exchanges.
tags: Bitcoin CryptoAssets Futures Fintech
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Tencent-Backed Waterdrop Seeks Valuation of More Than $1 Billion
Beijing startup Waterdrop, backed by social media giant Tencent, is seeking new financing at a valuation of more than $1B to fend off its better-capitalized rival, Ant Financial, in the emerging field of health care crowdfunding.
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Binance Research Report on the Evolution of Stablecoins
How are fiat-backed stablecoins adapting their strategies to remain competitive?
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Crypto Startup Circle Lays Off 30 Employees Citing Market, Regulatory Conditions
Crypto startup Circle has laid off roughly 30 people, or about 10% of its staff. The company – which owns the USDC stablecoin in partnership with Coinbase – is looking to cut costs.
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Tether admits in court to investing some of its reserves in bitcoin
In a court transcript Tether admits that it invested some of its reserves in bitcoin. David Miller, an attorney for Bitfinex said: “Tether actually did invest in instruments beyond cash and cash equivalents, including bitcoin.”
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets AltCoins Bitcoin Tether Stablecoins
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Japanese Parliament Moves New Crypto Regulations to the Upper House
The Japanese House of Representatives has passed new crypto regulation in the upper house of the National Diet. The amendments to two of Japan’s financial laws include adding crypto-asset margin trading.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Regulation
Month: May 2019
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 05/21/2019
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South Africa is looking at creating its very own cryptocurrency, backed on the rand, with talks underway by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB).
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South Korea’s finance ministry plans to revise an ordinance to allow non-financial firms, such as financial technology firms, to provide mobile payment services overseas.
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One of the PBOC’s fintech research institutes has posted three new job openings for blockchain talent on the Chinese recruitment website Lagou.com.
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The Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Abu Dhabi Global Market enhanced its Guidance for the Regulation of Crypto Asset Activities, including updates on stablecoins, crypto-asset custody, technology governance, and AML/CFT standards compliance.
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The US IRS is working on guidance for “acceptable methods for calculating cost basis, acceptable methods of cost basis assignment, and the tax treatment of forks”.
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More and more people are ditching cash in favor of cards and digital payments, but that doesn’t mean cash it out of the picture, according to a new report from financial tech company Square.
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Consumers routinely supply personal data to technology companies in exchange for services. Yet, the relationship between the utility consumers gain and the data they supply — “return on data” — remains largely unexplored.
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 05/20/2019
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The U.S. SEC has again delayed a decision on the VanEck SolidX bitcoin exchange-traded fund proposal.
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New Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards for regulating crypto firms are expected to be finalized in June. They will likely subject crypto exchanges, wallet providers and others to the “travel rule” followed by correspondent banks.
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As ABN AMRO drops its exploration of a cryptocurrency wallet product, the Dutch bank says it’s seeking to launch a blockchain platform for trade inventory.
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More than half of the full nodes in the bitcoin network are still running client software vulnerable to an inflation bug that could allow miners to inflate the total bitcoin supply beyond the 21 million BTC.
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Insured cryptocurrency custody services hold digital assets on behalf of investors in secure storage locations may be the key to institutional investment growth. Other storage options put too much secure storage responsibility on the investors themselves.
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This paper examines the difficulties the rapidly shifting, contested vocabulary poses for regulators seeking to understand, govern, and potentially use blockchain technology.tags: Fintech Blockchain
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This paper addresses the myth of decentralized governance of public blockchains, arguing that certain people who create, operate, or reshape them function much like fiduciaries of those who rely on these powerful data structures.tags: Fintech Blockchain
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 05/19/2019
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How Are Crypto Traders Distributed Across the Globe?
Datalight analyzed website traffic data from 100 top crypto exchanges to determine where traders are located. With 22M traders, the US ranks first, with 6.2M Japan ranks second, South Korea ranks third with 5.7M, followed by the UK, Russia, Brazil, Germany, Vietnam, Turkey and Canada.
tags: CryptoAssets Liquidity Fintech
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Circle Releases Another Attestation Report on Stablecoin USDC’s USD Reserves
Circle has published the latest third-party (Grant Thornton) audit of its USD-pegged stablecoin, USD Coin. It states that as of end-April there were 293,184,174 USDC issued and $293,351,374 in the firm’s reserves.
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Number go down — the single trade that crashed Bitcoin
The Bitcoin price goes up and down with weird jumps in the graph — nicknamed “Barts,” after the shape of Bart Simpson’s haircut — the telltale signs of market manipulation.
tags: CryptoAssets Fintech Bitcoin
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 05/18/2019
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Banks, wary of the drug dealers and scammers attracted to the anonymity of cryptocurrency, shun many of the firms behind the electronic money, leaving them to turn to shadowy middlemen for payment processing and other financial services.
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This ECB paper summarises the outcomes of the analysis of the ECB Crypto-Assets Task Force. It concludes, in the current market, crypto-assets’ risks or potential implications are limited and/or manageable on the basis of the existing regulatory and oversight frameworks.
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Bitfinex has reportedly raised $1B worth of US dollars, Bitcoin and Tether with its UNUS SED LEO exchange utility token offering. LEO lies “at the heart of the [Bitfinex parent] iFinex ecosystem” and will be useable for a variety of exchange-based activities.
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This study back-tests a marginal cost of production Bitcoin valuation model. The model, which JP Morgan uses for its valuation analysis, seems robust and challenges allegations that bitcoins are essentially worthless.
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The process of AML/CFT regulatory compliance involves KYC (know your customer) throughout transaction lifecycles. This post runs through the typical KYC process and compares different crypto exchange approaches.
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 05/17/2019
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Bitcoin Tumbles After $35 Million Trade Triggers Wave of Selling
The price of Bitcoin tumbled by 11% to about $7,000 after a $35 million sell order on London-based exchange Bitstamp triggered a rash of liquidations by other investors. Other digital currencies like Ethereum, Litecoin, XRP and Bitcoin Cash fell in sync.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Bitcoin AltCoins
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Facebook forms Swiss fintech firm with payments focus
Facebook has set up a new Fintech company, Libra Holdings, in Switzerland focusing on blockchain and payments as well as data analytics and investing, Geneva’s commercial register shows.
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Coin Metrics Report Highlights Discrepancies in Ripple’s Escrow System Reporting
Blockchain analysis company Coin Metrics has found discrepancies in blockchain payments network Ripple’s escrow system reporting.
tags: CryptoAssets Fintech Ripple AltCoins
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Bahamas Securities Regulator Proposes Rules for Token Sales
On April 2 the Securities Commission of the Bahamas has filed a draft of the new bill regulating token offerings not deemed securities. The bill lays out a procedure for registering such offerings and informing authorities and investors on the details of a token sale.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Regulation
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Fintech Collaboration between the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Bank of Thailand
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Bank of Thailand have entered into an MOU to foster collaboration between the two regulatory authorities in promoting financial innovation.
tags: Fintech Regulation
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Banks to invest around $50 million in digital cash settlement project
Several of the world’s largest banks are investing around $50M in Fnality to create a blockchain-based digital cash system to settle financial transactions. It may be an offshoot of the UBS and Clearmatics “utility settlement coin” project.
tags: Fintech Blockchain Stablecoins
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Digital Renminbi: A Fiat Coin to Make M0 Great Again
Contrary to what many think, China does not oppose blockchain technology. Rather, it takes issue with bitcoin and other privately issued cryptocurrencies, which it fears may facilitate financial fraud and capital flight. The PBOC has in fact had an initiative for issuing a blockchain-based digital renminbi since 2014. The project has already generated 71 patents and has initiated a trial operation for an interbank digital check and billing platform.
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Aries and ION: Two Different Perspectives of Decentralized Identity in Blockchain Applications
IBM and Microsoft have released new technologies focus on tackling the challenge of identity on permissioned and public blockchains respectively. The approaches are different but they give us a glimpse of how innovation is evolving in this space.
tags: Blockchain Fintech Identity
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Another Gold Backed Token Launches
A new digital token backed by $300 million worth of gold guaranteed by the Chinese Gold and Silver Exchange has just been released in Hong Kong.
tags: Tokenization Stablecoins CryptoAssets AltCoins Fintech
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Six hackers charged over SIM swapping attacks
Six individuals from ‘The Community’ hacking group have been charged with stealing over $2.4 million in cryptocurrency using the SIM swapping method.
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily 05/16/2019: IMF on Central Bank Digital Currency
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E-money adoption may be extremely rapid, but that it may raise significant risks. Policies to counter these risks yield a synthetic version of central bank digital currency with various advantages relative to the full-service version.
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For this article, we asked two questions. One question was about the benefits for a central bank from issuing a stablecoin and another was about the benefits for users and the economy from a stablecoin issued by a central bank.
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World Bank and Commonwealth Bank have enabled secondary market trading recorded on blockchain for bond-i making this the first bond whose issuance and trading are recorded using distributed ledger technologies.tags: Blockchain Fintech
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Stellar, whose lumens token is currently the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, went down entirely for around 110 minutes on May 15.
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Just 376 people hold a third of all Ether according to new research by Chainalysis Inc. However these whales have little effect on price because they don’t move their Ether often.
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Coinbase launched its custody service 12 months ago, and the AUM has now crossed $1 billion with 70 institutions signed up.
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For the first time in five months, MakerDAO token holders have voted to decrease fees on all DAI loans. DAI is a dollar-pegged stablecoin operating on the ethereum blockchain backed by nearly 2 million ether tokens.
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Neutral Dollar is a metastable basket of stablecoins. The result is a digital dollar designed to have lower volatility than individual stablecoins by combining fragmented pools of liquidity.
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Crypto industry veterans say Chinese investors are behind the recent bitcoin spike, as they try to exchange out of the falling weak yuan, as Trump raises tariffs.
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Lost among the current bout of cryptocurrency euphoria is the fact that capital outflows are exceeding inflows on some of the biggest digital-asset exchanges
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Perhaps the chaos in Venezuela will be remembered for fusing—if only in theory—the technological and financial ideas that could someday allow us to link volatile resource prices with risky development to promote the economy’s general welfare.
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Self-sovereign identity promises to return personal data to the people providing it rather than letting it sit precariously in the hands of businesses that have repeatedly failed to secure it.
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Finastra has signed three global banks on its Corda Enterprise-based Fusion LenderComm platform as part of a coordinated campaign.
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 05/15/2019
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Bakkt Could Actually Launch Its Bitcoin Futures Trading In 10 Days Barring Any CFTC Objections
Bakkt may finally receive the approval for its BTC futures in the next 10 days. It all depends on whether the U. S. CFTC decides to not to disapprove the futures.
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Fintech Firm Billion Seals $2.1 Mln European Commission Grant for Blockchain System
Polish-British fintech firm Billon has sealed an almost €2 million grant from the European Commission’s SME Instrument program to develop a blockchain document management system.
tags: Fintech Blockchain
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Wild Crypto Market’s Traders Get Something New: FDIC Protection
Crypto market prime dealer and trading system SFOX is partnering with NY-based MY Safra Bank to offer its traders deposit accounts backed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
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What is a Hedge or Safe Haven Asset for Bitcoin Investors?
Our empirical results show that traditional assets such as global equities and global bonds are weak hedges for Bitcoin. Furthermore, we observe that gold acts as a strong hedge against Bitcoin during an extreme bearish Bitcoin market, although the impact is marginal.
tags: Bitcoin Fintech CryptoAssets
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A Model Crypto-Asset Regulatory Framework by Leon Perlman
The overall goal of any regulation should be to fasten the activities of the most proximate regulators to particular asset classes or value transfer/exchange mechanisms so as to avoid regulatory arbitrage. Where there are no proximate regulations to do so, regulatory sandboxes by the most proximate regulators could be employed.
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 05/14/2019
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SEC Again Delays Decision on Bitwise Bitcoin ETF Approval
The US SEC said it would hold off on making a decision on the Bitwise ETF proposal filed with NYSE Arca.
tags: Regulation CryptoAssets Fintech ETFs
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Crypto Trading Gets FDIC Protection
The Wild West of cryptocurrency trading is getting something typically associated with the safest of savings accounts: FDIC protection.
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Bitcoin Tops $8,000 as Resurgence of Cryptocurrencies Goes On
Bitcoin strengthened past $8,000 for the first time in about 10 months on Tuesday, crossing another milestone as cryptocurrencies continued their scorching rally.
tags: CryptoAssets Fintech Bitcoin
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Proposal’s Merger Paves Way for New Bitcoin Lightning Features
A new routing proposal is expected to be merged today into the official “specifications” of lightning, the technology many advocates trumpet as the fix to bitcoin’s long-standing payment problems.
tags: Fintech Lightning CryptoAssets
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Facebook’s top-secret blockchain project is moving forward. What is Project Libra?
Facebook is working on a blockchain-based payment solution code-named Project Libra. What are the implications for FacebookCoin, the Facebook ecosystem, and the wider blockchain space?
tags: Facebook CryptoAssets AltCoins Stablecoins Fintech Blockchain
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SEC’s Crypto Czar Says Exchanges That List IEOs May Face Legal Risks
Certain exchanges that facilitate initial exchange offerings may be breaking U.S. securities laws, a top SEC official said.
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Token Taxonomy Act Includes De Minimis Tax Exemption for Crypto
The recently reintroduced US Token Taxonomy Act will create a de minimis tax exemption for crypto transactions under $600.
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Hedge Fund Bitcoin Buying Spree Accelerated 2400% in Q1: Grayscale
Grayscale experienced a 42% uptick in product inflows from $30.1M in 4Q18 to $42.7M in 1Q19, with hedge funds ramping up their investments, from less than $1M in 4Q18 to approximately $24M in 1Q19.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets
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Microsoft Builds Decentralized Identity Network Atop Bitcoin Blockchain
Microsoft is building a decentralized identity network atop of the bitcoin blockchain. The Identity Overlay Network is based on an evolving set of open standards developed in conjunction with the Decentralized Identity Foundation.
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Whole Foods and Major Retailers Now Accept Cryptocurrency via the Spedn App
Major retailers including Whole Foods, Lowes, Petco, Regal Cinemas, and Gamestop will now accept payments in crypto processed by Flexa using its Spedn custodial wallet.
tags: CryptoAssets Fintech
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 05/13/2019
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The Winklevoss twins want to take cryptocurrency mainstream
Gemini is joining forces with Flexa, a platform that enables shoppers to spend bitcoin, ether, Bitcoin Cash, and Gemini dollars at major retailers across the U.S.
tags: Fintech Stablecoins CryptoAssets
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Crypto Hedge Fund Survivors Lost 46% in 2018, PwC Analysis Shows
The cryptocurrency hedge funds that survived the 2018 market collapse lost almost half their assets, according to the most comprehensive accounting of its impact on the industr
tags: CryptoAssets Fintech HedgeFunds
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Paxos Now Allows for Instantaneously Redeeming Unlimited Amounts of PAX for USD
The company behind the Paxos Standard (PAX) stablecoin announced that its users can now instantaneously redeem unlimited amounts of its tokens for United States dollars.
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Germany’s Second-Top Exchange Börse Stuttgart Lists Ripple and Litecoin-Based ETNs
Börse Stuttgart has listed two crypto exchange-traded notes based on XRP and litecoin and traded against the Swedish krona and euro.
tags: ETFs Liquidity CryptoAssets Fintech Ripple
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Bitcoin’s Bulls Are Revving Up the Lamborghinis Again
A one-standard-deviation increase in the current day’s Bitcoin return predicts a 0.33% increase in the next day’s. A one-standard-deviation increase in the Twitter post count for the word “Bitcoin” yields a 2.5% increase in week-ahead Bitcoin returns.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Bitcoin
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Microsoft Launches Decentralized Identity Tool on Bitcoin Blockchain
Microsoft is launching the first decentralized infrastructure implementation by a major tech company that is built directly on the bitcoin blockchain.
tags: Fintech Blockchain Bitcoin CryptoAssets
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Bitfinex’s Private Token Sale Raised $1 Billion in 10 Days, Exec Says
“Bitfinex was able to raise $1B in 10 days, in a private sale. Private companies made investments for > $100M each, and a legion of inside and outside users made investments for > $1M each.”
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Santander, LeasePlan Testing Nivaura’s Blockchain-Based Floating Rate Bond
Nivaura has developed “the first commercially viable floating rate bond using blockchain technology,” and the new instrument is now being tested by Santander and LeasePlan, the vehicle leasing company.
tags: Blockchain Fintech
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ICE Pushes for Bakkt Bitcoin Custody License — CFTC Approval Imminent?
DACC offers native support for 13 blockchains, as well as more than 100 assets. The DACC CEO and other team members will be assimilated into the Bakkt operational structure.
tags: CryptoAssets Fintech Custody