Ian Allison

“Uniswap V3 smart contracts, for example, come with a lot of logic and mathematical rules around the upper boundary and lower boundary that’s actually embedded in the code of the smart contract and not displayed on-chain,” Cherif said in an interview. “In order to produce a proper market data feed, you need to not only capture the data of the event on-chain, but also to completely reverse-engineer the smart contract and its rules.” Source link

“There’s a huge focus on derivatives,” said Elwood CEO James Stickland in an interview. “It’s a great way for tier one banks to get involved in a synthetic nature without having to hold the underlying. Actually, there are huge margins and spreads to be made in the derivatives space, and the traders that are coming from those institutional houses are very used to that asset class, so they can deploy similar strategies.” Source link

“I think the most obvious clients here, beyond financial institutions that are already working with DeFi, are developers around gaming, social media and entertainment,” Shaulov said in an interview. “Firstly, it’s an SDK for securely managing NFTs at scale, and secondly, to be able to connect to a broad ecosystem of marketplaces, exchanges and other bridges.” Source link

Japan’s Nomura Said to Launch Crypto Unit With DeFi and NFTs on Menu: Report Source link

Koala, which isn’t backed by a large insurance broker or carrier, has so far gathered a capital pool of about $450,000 for its Koala Flex product, which allows travelers to cancel their trip at the click of a button and get their money back. Doing so requires the capacity to provide a lot of refunds if necessary, explained Koala Insurance CEO Ugo Weyl, adding that risk-averse insurance and reinsurance firms tend to shy away from this type of innovation. Source link

This left 28,205 BTC in Terra’s reserves. At 1 a.m. UTC on May 10, those remaining reserves were moved in their entirety, in a single transaction, to an account at the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Again it is not possible to identify whether these assets were sold or subsequently moved to other wallets, Robinson said. Source link

Since Terra began blowing up, DAI, a five-year-old overcollateralized stablecoin overseen by the MakerDAO community, has held its peg and carried out liquidations of collateral in an orderly fashion, which has been “a great test of the system,” said Luca Prosperi, a leader on lending oversight at MakerDAO. Source link

“We also have the capability to offer bitcoin futures and options trading, with such trades executed this week on the CME with Cumberland DRW, marking the first digital asset trades for Nomura,” Rig Karkhanis, the bank’s head of global markets for Asia ex-Japan, said in the statement. Source link

“A lot of DAOs want something like banking accounts, and USDC is really exciting in terms of creating almost banking-like solutions,” Lee said. “Uniswap has extremely powerful infrastructure for exchange and liquidity, obviously, and a lot of our investment clubs are trading tokens or buying NFTs on OpenSea, for example, so partnering up with industry leaders in those areas makes a lot of sense for us.” Source link

GainForest combines satellite imagery with data science in a bid to incentivize landowners away from cutting down trees. Source link

“We saw that NFTs could be anything, and became curious as to whether they could be more than one thing,” said Lucia Gallardo, CEO of Emerge, the project behind AEternals NFTs. “As well as being artful and collectible, could NFTs have utility? Can you gamify them and make them more interactive,” she said in an interview with CoinDesk. Source link

Rebuilding Maker on StarkNet involves four phases, starting with a simple bridge that goes live on April 28. Source link

“We don’t act like a broker but rather we put our money upfront and buy pre-IPO tech company shares from early founders, investors and employees that need to liquidate shares for whatever reason – that might be to buy a house or send a kid to college,” Linqto Director of Digital Asset Sales Nick Burrafato said in an interview. “We also retain ownership of a percentage of each and every investment we make until the company exits.” Source link

“ConsenSys Mesh and Kavita Gupta have agreed to settle their respective litigations against each other,” a ConsenSys spokesperson told CoinDesk. “The parties agree that ConsenSys Mesh has not breached any of its contractual obligations to Ms. Gupta.” Source link

When a miner wins a block reward of Bitcoin, it is issued a matching amount of sustainable Bitcoin certificates (SBCs), which, like Bitcoin, are on-chain tokens divisible by 100 million. These tokens can be held or uncoupled from the Bitcoin coinbase and sold to institutional investors and ESG-focused investors, who can then match these to their Bitcoin holdings. Next month, the protocol will carry out its first end-to-end transaction from distribution of SBCs to a miner, to those being sold on to an ESG-focused investor, van Voorhees said. Source link

Meeco looks to track carbon credits and renewable energy certificates in the form of ledger-based tokens. Source link

The funding round was co-led by Animoca Brands and Liberty City Ventures. Source link

Electronic money, or e-money, is broadly defined as an electronic store of monetary value used for making payments to entities other than the e-money issuer. As a standardized means of payment, it’s been around for over a decade, enshrined in European Union directives and regulated by central banks. Source link

Bahrain’s central bank has been forward-thinking in its creation of a regulatory framework, making it an important hub in the region. For its part, stc Bahrain has introduced financial services and insurance and is venturing into content aggregation and gaming, not to mention kicking the tires of blockchain, according to Saad Odeh, stc Bahrain’s chief wholesale officer. Source link

The leader in news and information on cryptocurrency, digital assets and the future of money, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups. As part of their compensation, certain CoinDesk employees, including editorial employees, may receive exposure to DCG equity in the form of stock appreciation rights, which vest over a multi-year period. CoinDesk journalists are not allowed to purchase stock outright in DCG. Source link

“We started working on Libra together back in 2019; Fireblocks, from a secure wallet perspective, and First in terms of payment protocols on the blockchain,” said First Digital CEO Ran Goldi. “We think that between the PSPs [payment service providers] both companies work with, we probably have over 2 million merchants that we can serve in 2022.” Source link

“Uphold has enjoyed phenomenal growth under JP’s leadership, which saw the introduction of the Anything-to-Anything trading interface,” McLoughlin said in a statement. “We’re delighted to introduce, shortly, a new revolutionary interface to cement Uphold’s position as the easiest place to invest, pay, or spend its extensive range of digital assets instantly.” Source link

The current U.S. TRUST membership includes: Anchorage, Avanti, Bitgo, bitFlyer, Bittrex, BlockFi, Circle, Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets, Gemini, Kraken, Paxos, Robinhood, Standard Custody & Trust, Symbridge, Tradestation, Zero Hash and Zodia Custody. Source link

DBS Digital Exchange saw its – albeit modest – trading volume in Q4 2021 grow to $595.5 million, more than double the preceding three quarters. Source link

Coinbase Prime clients prefer to own digital assets in their own segregated account, but also want the same quality of investment management services that they are accustomed to in traditional investments, according to Brett Tejpaul, head of Coinbase Institutional. Source link

One of the people said BlackRock will allow its clients – which include public pension schemes, endowments and sovereign wealth funds – to trade cryptocurrency through Aladdin (short for “Asset, Liability, Debt and Derivative Investment Network”), the asset manager’s integrated investment management platform. The timetable for unveiling the service is unclear. Source link

“Our approval of Evertas’ coverholder application is an example of collaboration between Lloyd’s insurer Arch and their new distribution partner on an innovative solution aimed at facilitating the growth of an industry sector previously hindered by a lack of risk transfer options,” said Hank Watkins, president of Lloyd’s in the Americas, in a statement. Source link

“Our approval of Evertas’ coverholder application is an example of collaboration between Lloyd’s insurer Arch and their new distribution partner on an innovative solution aimed at facilitating the growth of an industry sector previously hindered by a lack of risk transfer options,” said Hank Watkins, president of Lloyd’s in the Americas, in a statement. Source link

In the case of the LAB577 acquisition, it’s all about blockchain engineering chops: the startup’s leader, Richard Crook, will become BCB, chief operating officer, while his engineering lead Farzad “Fuzz” Pezeshkpour becomes the CTO of BCB Group. Source link

SatoshiLabs, the creator of the Trezor hardware wallet, has shelved plans to adopt an automated protocol for proving ownership of a self-hosted wallet when withdrawing digital assets from an exchange in Switzerland, where that’s a requirement. The U-turn from Trezor followed a Twitter storm from customers and privacy buffs. Trezor announced Thursday it would integrate the “Address Ownership Proof Protocol” (AOPP), created by 21 Analytics, a Swiss fintech firm specializing in bringing crypto firms up to speed with anti-money laundering (AML) requirements set out by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global financial watchdog. “Adopting AOPP was a small step […]

“Think of all the tier-one banks in the market, they’re probably all IBM clients, many of them strategic clients,” said Donoghue in an interview. “They can leverage the existing stack, existing run capabilities to manage Metaco vaults directly from existing infrastructure. And we have a number of other similar deals in the pipeline, leveraging our combined capabilities.” Source link

Adam White, the president of cryptocurrency firm Bakkt, is leaving the company he helped build from scratch as a founding executive. White spent the last three years at Bakkt, a company that launched in 2018 with the ambitious aim of making institutional crypto adoption a reality before pivoting to a suite of more retail-focused products. Prior to his time with Bakkt, White was vice president and general manager for five years at cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. “After a great 3+ years at Bakkt, next week will be my last,” White said in a tweet on Thursday. “I’ve loved working at [the] intersection […]

Polkadot on its own doesn’t allow contract development as it’s not an application platform but more of a kind of meta-protocol, said Gear Technologies founder Nikolay Volf, who was previously a core developer at Parity working closely with Wood over a six-year period. Source link

Parachains are able to lease a slot on Polkadot’s main Relay Chain for up to 96 weeks at a time. Ultimately, Polkadot will offer 100 parachain slots. Further slots will be allocated in batches over the coming months. Not all of these slots will be allocated via parachain slot auctions, as some will be used for governance-enabled common-good parachains, according to a press release. Source link

“As more and more institutions look to add crypto services into their offerings, we find ourselves at an inflection point,” Anchorage co-founder Diogo Mónica said in a statement, “This funding positions Anchorage Digital to meet the unprecedented institutional demand for this rapidly evolving market.” Source link

Blockchain oracle services firm Chainlink has added U.S. meteorology forecasting provider AccuWeather to further bolster its suite of real-world data feeds. Back in August of this year, Chainlink, which allows data providers to port data into the digital agreements that run on top of blockchains, announced it was incorporating weather data courtesy of  Google Cloud. Chainlink approached AccuWeather’s Matt Vitebsky, the firm’s director of flagship products, earlier this year. Vitebsky said he’s had a personal interest in blockchain technology since 2017. “One of the important use cases is parametric insurance, and crop insurance is definitely a big one,” Vitebsky said in […]

Router Protocol, a project aimed at connecting multiple blockchains, has raised a $4.1 million funding round. Router, which raised $485,000 of seed funding last year, now has the backing of Coinbase Ventures, QCP, De-Fi Capital, Polygon, Wintermute, Shima, Woodstock and Bison Ventures. As the blockchain universe matures, liquidity is at risk of being fragmented across a raft of chains such as Avalanche, Polygon, Solana, Terra and Algorand. “Rapid growth of various blockchains means the need of the hour is the ability for these to talk to each other through bridges and other forms of connectivity,” said Router CEO Ramani Ramachandran. “Our […]

“I’m not sure whether alt-right groups realized that they were allowing this activity to be monitored and identified in the blockchain, to the extent that we’re now doing,” Robinson said of the public nature of the Bitcoin blockchain. “But I do think there’s a sort of, ‘Look at me, look what I’m doing’ kind of aspect of this that they like.” Source link

Also included in the round were ParaFi Capital, Tioga Capital, White Star Capital, DeFiance Capital, True Ventures, Divergence Ventures, AngelDAO, Digital Currency Group and Genesis Trading (both in the same ownership stable as CoinDesk), plus some angel investors. Source link

Securitize, a technology provider for issuing tokenized securities, is bringing its system of identity verification to decentralized finance (DeFi) as the world of “degens” inches closer to Wall Street. The firm, regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and a holder of U.S. broker-dealer and alternative trading system (ATS) licenses, proposed its know-your-customer (KYC) solution to DeFi lending platform Aave on Friday. A community vote among stakeholders in Aave Arc, a KYC-compliant and institutional-grade version of the DeFi lending platform, will take place over the weekend (a similar process to when Fireblocks sought to become a whitelisted custodian). Following the […]

JPMorgan has taken a dive straight into non-fungible tokens (NFT). The megabank gave away NFTs to attendees of its first “Crypto Economy Forum for TradFi Investors” event, which was held at the Wall Street giant’s New York headquarters earlier this week. None have traded so far, according to OpenSea, but one of the 69 owners of the NFT collection put one up for sale for a whopping (and cheeky) 420 ETH, or $1.8 million. “Wasn’t us, but thought it was funny because now it’s the floor price for our free NFT,” said someone close to the bank. Speakers at the event […]

Selviz, who did his first NFT drop about a month ago at NYC.NFT, is also the founder of the RENDRD Foundation (not to be confused with RNDR, the token), whose main goal is to provide access to underrepresented communities, such as Black youth, within the digital animation industry. Source link

Parity Technologies co-founder and CEO Jutta Steiner has left the company. Parity is the technology firm behind the much-anticipated Polkadot blockchain network. A Parity representative confirmed to CoinDesk that Steiner stepped away earlier this year after running the company since 2015. The representative also confirmed that Gavin Wood will assume the role of CEO following Steiner’s departure. Steiner declined to comment when contacted by CoinDesk. As CEO of Parity, Steiner helped build Polkadot. Prior to that, she oversaw network security for the Ethereum Foundation between 2014 and 2016. Polkadot is on the cusp of activating the first set of projects to […]

Shalem’s name was included – along with 17 others, including Hogeg’s – in an appendix to a document bearing the letterhead of the Israel police’s national fraud investigation unit. The page, reviewed by CoinDesk, was stamped Nov. 15 by Judge Erez Melamed of the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court. It is not clear from the appendix what kind of document it was attached to. However, the date on the stamp is three days before Israeli police said they had arrested eight individuals, including Hogeg, on suspicion of money laundering, fraud and sexual assault. Source link

Soccer star Andrés Iniesta, who plays for Japan’s Vissel Kobe, received a warning from the Spanish markets regulator after he promoted trading on cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Iniesta, who spent much of his career at FC Barcelona and has over 25 million followers on Twitter, wrote that he is “learning how to get started with crypto with @binance #BinanceForAll.” Estoy aprendiendo cómo empezar con las criptomonedas con @BinanceES #BinanceForAll I’m learning how to get started with crypto with @binance #BinanceForAll pic.twitter.com/3Km58KrnPG — Andrés Iniesta (@andresiniesta8) November 24, 2021 Spain’s markets regulator, the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) replied to the tweet, pointing […]

The Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, said that exploring a central bank digital currency (CBDC) would be better for financial stability than asset-backed stablecoins, which the banking chief said he was “skeptical” about. Speaking at a House of Lords’ Economic Affairs Committee on Tuesday, Bailey said a CBDC would be a better alternative than evolving towards “some world of (asset-) backed stablecoins which has money-like features which could be regulated,” Reuters reported. Bailey told the Lords Committee the BoE would not be moving into the retail bank account business through a CBDC, adding that it was not a […]

Two Sigma, the technology-focused hedge fund based in New York, is looking to hire a Crypto Operations person to help build out the firm’s emergent cryptocurrency trading business, according to a recent job posting. The open position to Join Two Sigma Securities’ crypto trading business is based in London. “We are seeking an experienced, highly organized individual with strong attention to detail and a passion for cryptocurrencies/digital assets to help manage the daily operations of an exciting growth initiative for Two Sigma Securities,” according to the job posting. “You will be a critical member to help drive the buildout and scaling […]

Crypto exchanges Luno and Bitso, which are Notabene customers, also took part in the round alongside BlockFi, Gemini Frontier Fund, Illuminate Financial, CMT Digital, Fenbushi Capital and ComplyAdvantage CEO Charlie Delingpole. Existing investors Castle Island Ventures and Green Visor Capital also participated. Source link

BitBay, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in Poland, has renamed itself Zonda and hired a new chief executive as it kicks off an expansion beyond Europe. Zonda, which has more than a million users and holds a crypto license to operate across the European Union, is on track to snag a license in Switzerland next, to be followed by the U.K. and Canada, according to newly appointed CEO Przemysław Kral. “We are very well-known in central and eastern Europe as we have a crypto/fiat license in Estonia and we are also the first exchange to have an audited financial statement there,” said […]

Como ejemplo, el informe considera la región de la Asociación de Naciones del Sudeste Asiático (ASEAN, por sus siglas en inglés) y sus corredores, que comprenden Brunei, Camboya, Indonesia, Laos, Malasia, Myanmar, Filipinas, Singapur, Tailandia y Vietnam, que opera con un conjunto diverso de 10 monedas y aporta el 7% del comercio transfronterizo mundial. Source link

The report uses the ASEAN region and its corridors as an example, comprising Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, which operates across a diverse set of 10 currencies and contributes 7% of global cross-border trade. Source link

Pennsylvania-based Customers Bank has started onboarding its first cryptocurrency businesses, offering those firms use of a digital asset payments platform plus the bank’s own internal digital fiat token. As such, Customers Bank will compete with Silvergate in California, Signature in New York and only a handful of others openly offering crypto firms basic accounts, as well as a blockchain-based platform for clients to instantly send each other dollars 24/7. Read more: Another US Bank Joins the Small List Willing to Serve Crypto Companies The Tuesday announcement makes good on Customers’ promise to serve the crypto industry back in August of this […]

The infrastructure giant wants to hire a Financial Services Specialist to work with global financial institutions and innovative fintechs, and “transform the way they transact digital assets (ex. cryptocurrencies, CBDCs [central bank digital currencies], stable coins, security-backed tokens, asset-backed tokens and NFTs [non-fungible tokens]) from price discovery to execution, settlement and custody.” Source link

Is the XRP Army ready to storm Ethereum? Announced Friday, Wrapped XRP (wXRP), a digital asset backed 1:1 by XRP, will make the cross-chain jump into Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) starting in December, courtesy of Wrapped and Hong Kong-based crypto custodian Hex Trust. The new connectivity for XRP holders will allow access to various DeFi applications, whether that’s lending and borrowing, or for use in automated market makers (AMMs), said Mason Borda, CEO of Tokensoft, the driving force behind Wrapped. Making XRP DeFi-compatible in the form of wXRP is a first, said Borda. Wrapped has previously wrapped a range of tokens […]

“We recognize that there are a number of areas where both countries and the private sector have wanted more guidance from the FATF level about how they can implement this in practice,” said FATF Policy Analyst Ken Menz in an interview with CoinDesk. “I think this really shows just how fast the virtual asset ecosystem changes, and how quickly, new technologies, new businesses, new models appear. I think it is a challenge for anyone to just keep on top of everything new that happens in this industry. “ Source link

“What we already provide for some of the larger crypto exchanges is the behavioral side. So looking at when Entity A sends money to Entity B via Entity C,” Dickinson explained in an interview. “Elliptic then gives us the ability to say this entity, if you follow up or down the chain, is linked to a darkweb pool somewhere, or a less-than-reputable exchange elsewhere.” Source link

A growing crop of projects on Hedera will receive a shot in the arm from the addition of USDC, Higdon said in an interview with CoinDesk, namechecking Third Act, a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace for the theatre community; the MyHbarWallet, with payments in mind; and Hex Trust, the institution-focused cryptocurrency custodian. Source link

Swash, a blockchain startup that allows internet users to own their data and earn money from it, raised $4 million in a funding round led by KuCoin, Outlier Ventures and Streamr. The funding round, which was announced Monday, will drive the Swash data-monetization browser extension and help expand a “Data Union” marketplace protocol. Swash also plans to introduce a line of data science and developer tools later this year so that developers and businesses can build on top of the platform. Giant internet companies like to hoard data, which has been called the crude oil of the digital economy. Tools like […]

Ascertaining whether crypto becomes a security when it’s lent to someone is a nuanced question, the Galaxy chief said, lamenting a period of continued regulatory uncertainty. However, the crypto industry has brought some of this on itself by a lack of education, according to Novogratz. Source link

“I think what’s interesting is that this project is not just about tokenizing shares and booking them in the system,” Brahimi said. “It’s also making a private placement, i.e. capital increase, based on tokenized securities, with the objective to provide secondary market trading for those. And both the bank and Alaïa are committed to doing so.” Source link

London-based Revolut recently announced it would be paying a WeWork membership in Dallas, Texas, in bitcoin. The firm, which already holds a European Union banking license, also announced it had secured a U.S. broker-dealer license in order to compete in the retail capital markets space with firms like Robinhood. Source link

In retrospect, it was inevitable: A team of blockchain developers has forked GitHub and come up with a system for collaborating on open source software. There’s even a decentralized finance (DeFi) twist. Announced Thursday, Radicle, a fully decentralized code repository, has raised $12 million in funding, integrated its peer-to-peer network with Ethereum and launched the RAD governance token.  The funding round was led by NFX and Galaxy, with participation from Placeholder, Electric Capital and ParaFi Capital; Naval Ravikant, Balaji Srinivasan and Meltem Demirors were also involved. Notably, it’s the first crypto investment from NFX since Libra co-creator Morgan Beller left Facebook […]

Mike Hearn, the lead platform engineer at enterprise blockchain builder R3, is stepping down from his role at the company, CoinDesk has learned. Hearn will stay on at R3, but only in the capacity of a technical adviser, according to a memo sent to company staff Friday.  Hearn has long harbored ambitions to broaden his range and start new projects, the memo said. “Mike’s plans include his own projects, as well as becoming technical advisor to the R3 executive committee. To support the former, he’ll become CEO of his new firm, as well as transitioning to his ongoing R3 advisory role,” […]

Deutsche Bank has joined the growing ranks of large financial institutions exploring cryptocurrency custody, with aspirations to offer high-touch services to hedge funds that invest in the asset class. The Deutsche Bank Digital Asset Custody prototype aims to develop “a fully integrated custody platform for institutional clients and their digital assets providing seamless connectivity to the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem,” according to a little-noticed report by the World Economic Forum, host of the annual gathering of muckety-mucks in Davos, Switzerland.  In a passage buried on page 23 of the December 2020 report, Germany’s largest bank says it plans to create a trading […]

Bitso, un exchange enfocado en América Latina, ha adquirido Quedex, una plataforma de trading de criptoderivados con sede en Gibraltar, donde también es regulada.  A pesar de que los términos de la compra de Quedex no fueron dados a conocer, el CEO de Bitso, Daniel Vogel, dijo a CoinDesk que se trató de un buen acuerdo por varias razones.  Quedex fue la primera plataforma de criptoderivados en recibir una licencia mediante el marco regulador de activos digitales de Gibraltar, la misma jurisdicción y régimen que regula a Bitso, dijo Vogel. La adquisición de Quedex también permite a Bitso hacerse con una […]

Deutsche Telekom AG, Europe’s largest telecommunications company by revenue, is now one of the main data providers to Chainlink – the omnipresent oracle service on which decentralized finance (DeFi) relies.  Not only that, Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Systems Multimedia Solutions (MMS), says it has begun staking on the Flow Network, the ultra-scalable proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain from CryptoKitties creator Dapper Labs, and has plans to begin staking on several other chains in the near future. Yes, Deutsche Telekom is providing DeFi data support, and has quietly gone beyond helping with the infrastructure of PoS blockchains and actually started custodying, staking and earning crypto […]

Crypto exchange BitMEX has published a framework of principles for how best to store additional batches of transactional provenance data, a requirement exchanges face as part of new anti-money laundering (AML) rules. In order to fall in line with the rest of the financial system, virtual asset service providers (VASPs) have been asked to obtain, hold and exchange information about the originators and beneficiaries of transactions, known colloquially as the “Travel Rule.” Global anti-money laundering watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) expects the crypto industry to implement the new rule by June 2021. The response from the crypto industry has […]

Digital assets, in one form or another, are making their way into big business.  The headline-grabbing version of this is straight-up BTC on the balance sheet, a renegade charge being led by MicroStrategy (MSYTR) CEO Michael Saylor, who is known for warning corporates that capital in fiat is being debased. Saylor’s MicroStrategy event this week included a playbook, going into the nuts and bolts of things like qualified custodians, hot and cold wallets and so on. Square (SQ) provided a similar guide in October. It’s worth stepping back and remembering what unlikely bedfellows mainstream corporate treasury management and bitcoin really are […]

Long in the making, Zurich’s Crypto Broker AG announced Monday it has been granted a securities house license by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA).  Crypto Broker AG is part of a digital assets conglomerate that includes asset management and custody services. The license means broadening the scope of its business and adding a rubber-stamp when it comes to compliance, risk monitoring, liquidity reporting and so on, said Crypto Broker CEO Rupertus Rothenhaeuser. “Some of our client banks have strict orders only to trade with regulated partners,” Rothenhaeuser said in an interview. “Now it’s just a case of calling them […]

London-based Wintermute, an algorithmic liquidity provider for digital assets, closed a $20 million Series B led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Pantera Capital.  Other investors joining the round include Sino Global Capital, Kenetic Capital, Rockaway Blockchain Fund, Hack VC, DeFi Alliance and Avon Ventures, a venture capital fund affiliated with FMR LLC, the parent company of Fidelity Investments.  Announced Wednesday, Wintermute plans to use the funding to open its first international office in Singapore in the first quarter of this year, spearheading a general push into Asia, the company said. The company also plans to launch a derivatives business […]

Regulated crypto payment services firm BCB Group has partnered with Huobi Global to help the Seychelles-based exchange giant connect its trading desks to the banking system in the U.K. and Europe. Announced Tuesday, customers of Huobi’s over-the-counter (OTC) platform will be able to instantly settle transactions in euros and pounds (GBP) via BCB’s BLINC network. Cryptocurrency exchanges have struggled in recent years to secure banking relationships and establish an interface with the fiat currency world, with some large exchanges having massive daily volume in closed systems of crypto-to-crypto trading. Prior to partnering with BCB, Huobi did not have a European fiat […]

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 looking at digital custody. We are broadly exploring digital custody and deciding what the next step is,” said the Goldman source, who asked not to be named. (An RFI on crypto custody was issued by […]

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 susceptible to hacks and losses. However, centralized exchanges also get hacked on a semi-regular basis, and traditional insurance cover within the crypto industry remains thin on the ground and prohibitively expensive. Indeed, for many large […]

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 notional payoff.  Customers of eToro in European countries that allow such trading in contracts for differences (CFDs), were told via email on the evening of Friday, Jan. 8: “If you do not increase the margin […]

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 regulator, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), and also said it was providing technology to Singapore’s DBS bank, which announced its entrance into the digital asset space last month.  BC Group CEO Hugh Madden said […]

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. The financial terms of the deal were not revealed. “Brazil has always been a very important market for us,” Serrano said in an interview. “BitcoinTrade has a very good reputation in the market, very good […]

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 view to building a “digital asset gateway” in Switzerland. Also this week, SDX said it is partnering with crypto-friendly Japanese bank SBI to build a digital asset exchange in Singapore by 2022.  This latter announcement […]

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 partnered with the Stellar Development Foundation to issue a euro-denominated stablecoin with Tempo, and has also received approval from the German regulator BaFIN to issue tokenized bonds, also on Stellar, said Radoslav Albrecht, Bitbond founder […]

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 Conduct Authority’s regulatory sandbox in the U.K.   Pyctor, a collaborative effort between ING, ABN AMRO, BNP Paribas Securities Services, Citibank, Invesco, Societe Generale, State Street, UBS and others, is designed to make banks feel comfortable […]

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 is significant room to grow and we are just scratching the surface of helping investors gain access to the space.”  Created by the team behind crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, Vincent currently includes regulated crypto deals from […]

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 of the plans told CoinDesk that BBVA is “launching its Europe-wide crypto initiative from Switzerland.” “There are still some compliance hurdles so this will not be in December, but I expect they [BBVA] will be […]

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 year. Apps like PayPal, Square and Revolut are embracing bitcoin and its price is near all-time highs. “I am blown away by just the reception and the support we’ve gotten from the community about our […]

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 with Mastercard to release two debit cards in early 2021. A standard plastic debit card will be available to free-tier users for a $10 issuing fee, while a metal Mastercard is included with three months […]

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 Reserve’s rule change proposal would reduce the threshold from $3,000 to $250 for AML compliance for any transfers – in crypto or fiat – that go outside the U.S.  Concerns over user privacy in relation […]

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 see how incongruous the traditional system of checking transactions created half a century ago by SWIFT is becoming. Global AML watchdog FATF has recommended local regulators of the G-20 countries and beyond try to graft […]

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 proposal submitted last month, FinCEN and the Federal Reserve would modify the thresholds at which banks must collect and store fund transfer information, reducing it from $3,000 to $250 for any transfers – in crypto […]

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 debacle raises troubling issues around blockchain decentralization and how token projects often rely on fallible intermediaries. Following the hack, many projects whose tokens were stolen from the exchange were urged to react quickly and change […]

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 them, is growing in popularity with custody tech providers like Fireblocks and Curv. But one challenge with MPC has been where to store key shards: The whole process was thought to be too computationally heavy […]

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 $17.4 billion in the first quarter, according to a recent Silvergate Bank earnings call. Existing members of Silvergate’s SEN payment network include Gemini, Kraken and ErisX.  “We’ve launched SEN for our corporate clients so now […]

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 and $200 million, is building on its existing business relationship with BitGo. (Amber Group’s suite of offerings, which includes Amber Pro and Amber App, have used BitGo security tech since 2018.) Back in February, Amber […]

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 card for the U.S. in early 2021. Crypto apps are the flavor of the month, with PayPal joining Square, Robinhood, Revolut and Ziglu, who are all competing in this space. ZenGo CEO Ouriel Ohayon talked […]

“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 financial institutions (including 25 of the largest 50 banks) to start building on top of the platform.  “Liink participants have the ability to build applications on the network, and in doing so are able to […]

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 of the project is to democratize the value from data and artificial intelligence (AI), which tends to accumulate in the hands of a few internet giants. In order to monetize data created by individuals, businesses […]

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 the news at its annual developer conference, CordaCon. Blockchain tribalism – R3’s Corda competes with Hyperledger Fabric, the enterprise blockchain heavily backed by IBM – has been put aside in favor of commercial sense, it seems. […]

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 concern that the new service does not allow bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to be withdrawn or deposited. Once you buy the coins, they stay in your account until you sell. “Currently, you can only hold […]

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 running on Corda’s distributed ledger technology (DLT). R3 began life as a pay-to-join DLT consortium of big banks, which over time realized the value of hosting a large developer community and created the open-source Corda […]