Ian Allison

U.S. banking powerhouse Goldman Sachs has issued a request for information (RFI) to explore digital asset custody, according to a source inside the bank. When asked about timing, the Goldman source said the bank’s custody plans would be “evident soon.” Goldman’s digital asset custody RFI was circulated to at least one well-known crypto custody player toward the end 2020. “Like JPMorgan, we have issued an RFI […]

Nexus Mutual, a startup that provides a decentralized alternative to insurance, is extending its community-based offering to cover users of well-established cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase, Binance, Kraken and Gemini. Until now Nexus, which uses digital tokens to revamp the traditional idea of mutual cover, was only focused on the world of decentralized exchange (DEXs), specifically catering to the explosion of decentralized finance (DeFi), which is […]

European users of eToro are claiming they were given the bum’s rush regarding leveraged crypto positions, which have been abruptly closed in the face of what the trading platform called “extreme market volatility.” Retail investors in the U.K. and U.S. are barred from buying into crypto derivatives, including financial contracts that allow margin trading where investors need only put up a small amount of the contract’s […]

Hong Kong Stock Exchange-listed BC Technology Group, the parent company of regulated crypto platform OSL, has raised HKD697 million (approximately $90 million) in the form of a top-up share placement. 2020 was a busy year for OSL, an institution-focused digital asset platform based in Hong Kong, providing prime brokerage, custody, exchange and software-as-a-service (SaaS). The company attained regulatory approval to offer crypto services from Hong Kong […]

Argentina’s Ripio has acquired BitcoinTrade, the second-largest crypto exchange in Brazil, in a bid to increase its footprint across the frothy Latin American crypto market.  Ripio (formerly called BitPagos) ended 2020 on a high, crossing the 1 million user milestone. Earlier last year, the firm began looking in earnest for a good fit in Brazil and decided on BitcoinTrade, said Ripio CEO and co-founder Sebastian Serrano. […]

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for Switzerland’s digital asset exchange, SDX. In chronological order (and pardoning the unavoidable alphabet soup): Last week SDX’s parent company, SIX, announced test results around the “feasibility” of wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), involving the Swiss National Bank (SNB) and Bank of International Settlements (BIS).  This week, SDX took a stake in crypto custody solution Custodigit with a […]

A euro stablecoin is being issued by one of the oldest banks in the world and it’s being done on the Stellar blockchain network. Announced Wednesday, Germany’s Bankhaus von der Heydt (BVDH), established in 1754, is working with tokenization and digital asset custody technology provider Bitbond for the first direct issuance of a stablecoin by a banking institution on Stellar, the companies said. Bitbond has already […]

Another big bank edging closer to a crypto custody offering, Netherlands-based ING, spoke publicly for the first time this week about about its preliminary trials with digital assets. Speaking at the Singapore Fintech Festival, Tuesday, ING blockchain lead Herve Francois discussed the work done so far with Pyctor, a custody and post-trade infrastructure for crypto assets that was included in this year’s cohort of the Financial […]

Vincent, a sort of search engine for alternative investing, is fielding a massive demand for crypto as the platform launches out of beta with $2 million in funding. “Between October and November alone, investors looking for digital assets have grown 80%,” said Slava Rubin, Vincent co-founder and executive chairman. “Considering digital assets today represent less than 10% of the total available deal volume on Vincent, there […]

BBVA, the second-largest bank in Spain, with about $840 billion in assets, is poised to enter the cryptocurrency trading and custody space, according to two people familiar with the plans. The Spanish bank will begin its crypto offering out of Switzerland, said a source. Switzerland has relatively comprehensive rules around digital assets, set out by the country’s Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). One source with knowledge […]

U.K.-based cryptocurrency app Ziglu has raised over $8 million in a crowdfunding campaign, the largest equity raise on the Seedrs platform this year. The support from some 1,250 investors brings Ziglu’s total fundraising to $14.8 million.  As for why the offering seemed to command attention on Seedrs: It’s good timing for the crypto app, which former Starling Bank co-founder Mark Hipperson launched in June of this […]

Upstart crypto exchange LVL wants to take on U.S. giants Coinbase and Gemini by removing trading fees. Announced today, LVL (pronounced “level,” as in playing field) is making its entire service free to use. LVL, which is backed by Morgan Creek Digital’s Anthony Pompliano and Bitcoin advocates Jimmy Song and Willy Woo, previously had no trading fees but only for subscription users. LVL is also partnering […]

Recent rumors about U.S. regulation of private, self-hosted crypto wallets have some compelling context. For example, the proposal submitted last month by U.S. authorities to lower the anti-money laundering (AML) threshold for cross-border transactions (its consultation ends today, Friday), seems to support the hypothesis that outgoing Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is rapidly making more rules around crypto. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the Federal […]

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) needs an entirely new approach when it comes to policing crypto, according to Sian Jones, the driving force behind much of the sector’s anti-money laundering (AML) standards work to date. Speaking at the close of the second annual V20 Virtual Asset Service Providers Summit, Jones said FATF only needs to look at the fast-evolving world of decentralized finance (DeFi) to […]

U.S. regulators are discussing the “why” of a new proposal that has crypto fans concerned. Speaking Monday at the V20 Virtual Asset Service Providers Summit, Carole House, cyber and emerging tech policy specialist at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), said criminals are conducting cross-border payments using smaller amounts of cryptocurrency – hence FinCEN’s proposed lowering of the “Travel Rule” threshold. According to the rule change […]

The latest face-saving communique from Seychelles-domiciled crypto exchange KuCoin – hacked almost two months ago for over $280 million – is that 84% of the affected assets have been recovered. Some victims will be glad the situation seems to be moving towards resolution. Others, not so much. Leaving aside the conspiracy theories, death threats and alleged lack of communication on the part of the exchange, the KuCoin […]

Stealth-mode crypto custody specialist Shard X has claimed a breakthrough, being the first company to successfully run math-heavy, multi-party computation (MPC) on hardware security modules (HSMs). So why does this alphabet soup of security tech matter?  In summary, HSMs are a battle-tested way to store private keys, particularly popular in consumer products like Ledger and Trezor. MPC, which breaks up cryptographic keys into shards and distributes […]

Binance.US, the American affiliate that shares a name with the world’s largest crypto exchange, has joined the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN), a 24/7 instant settlement network used by some of the largest trading entities in the space. SEN, which replaces clunky wire transactions by allowing corporates to instantly move U.S. dollars between crypto exchanges including on nights and weekends, saw its volume increase $7.8 billion to […]

Crypto market maker Amber Group will service its clientele of institutional traders with the help of BitGo Trust, the custodial arm of the Palo Alto-based security firm. BitGo’s status as a qualified custodian should draw more high-net-worth investors to Amber from places like Hong Kong, Taiwan and Seoul, the companies said. The Hong Kong-based market maker, which has an average daily trading volume between $100 million […]

Big payments players may be dipping their toes into crypto for the first time, but it’s been part of Visa’s Fast Track program since at least 2019. Announced Tuesday, Visa has invited digital asset wallet provider ZenGo into its Fast Track program. The startup hopes to use the program, which has famously championed Bitcoin’s Lightning Network and rewards app Fold, to help launch a crypto-integrated payment […]

“Think of it as the foundation of an enterprise mainnet.”  That’s how Christine Moy, head of JPMorgan’s newly rebranded Liink banking network, described its aspirations towards decentralization in the realm of big business. The revamped Liink, which is based on a fork of Ethereum, is more of a “decentralized network,” said Moy, and less like a “central command product.” As such, Liink now invites its 400-plus […]

A third and all-encompassing version of Ocean Protocol has been released, fleshing out its vision for “datatokens” and decentralized data marketplaces. Announced Tuesday, Ocean v3 brings the Ocean data market proposal to life with Ethereum-based datatokens, as well as a range of other features like initial data offerings (IDOs), staking, automated market making (AMM) functionality and the potential to share and monetize data smarts. The goal […]

News this week that R3 and IBM are working together raised eyebrows, because each entity has been on different and competing sides since the early days of enterprise blockchain. From next month, the commercial version of Corda (the version big banks and the like are paying R3 for) will be made available via IBM’s LinuxOne servers, delivering a hybrid of on-premise and cloud offerings. R3 announced […]

Call it Crypto Lite – for now. Fintech giant PayPal confirmed its long-awaited move into digital assets Wednesday, offering its 346 million users the chance to buy, hold and sell bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether and litecoin, with the blessing of New York state regulators.  While the cryptosphere acknowledges the bullishness of a firm the size of PayPal making a move into the space, there was also […]

A group of former bankers building on R3’s public Corda Network are touting the first digital currency for that ecosystem, dubbed XDC.  Announced Tuesday, the Cordite Society, a co-operative registered in the U.K., released the XDC crypto token on public Corda, the open-source version of R3’s network. The new regulation-friendly cryptocoin will open the door, say its creators at Cordite, to various decentralized finance (DeFi) applications […]