Skip to main content

CoinDesk Crypto

Longtime Analyst Bove Says Cryptocurrency Is One Challenge to Dollar’s Dominance

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

The long-existing, U.S. dollar-ruled financial system could come to an end amid challenges from a potential multiple-currency system, which includes digital currencies, according to an Aug. 14 research note by Dick Bove, noted senior research analyst at Odeon Capital Group LLC, a New York City-based investment bank.

  • “The new currencies might be paper, metal or digital impulses,” Bove wrote. “The possibility of this happening can only be described as frightening, yet the probability is quite high.”
  • This possible change to the world’s financial system was brought up after prices on gold and other precious metals moved higher.  
  • The U.S. dollar has also been under attack from a number of flanks, such as China and Russia pushing for the renminbi to replace the dollar in international trade, as well as the rapid growth of the U.S. money supply. 
  • Bove, who’s been a Wall Street analyst for five decades, noted the recent bitcoin rally while discussing cryptocurrencies as an alternative to the dollar, saying,  “Anything can be used as a currency as long as enough people will accept it.”
  • Yet, Bove concluded that, for now, gold is “a clear option” for investors to consider to protect themselves from the rising risks to the dollar system.
Related Stories
CoinDesk

Long-Time Analyst Bove Says Cryptocurrency One Challenge to Dollar’s Dominance

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

The long-existing, U.S. dollar-ruled financial system could come to an end amid challenges from a potential multiple-currency system, which includes digital currencies, according to an Aug. 14 research note by Dick Bove, noted senior research analyst at Odeon Capital Group LLC, a New York City-based investment bank.

  • “The new currencies might be paper, metal or digital impulses,” Bove wrote. “The possibility of this happening can only be described as frightening, yet the probability is quite high.”
  • This possible change to the world’s financial system was brought up after prices on gold and other precious metals moved higher.  
  • The U.S. dollar has also been under attack from a number of flanks, such as China and Russia pushing for the renminbi to replace the dollar in international trade, as well as the rapid growth of the U.S. money supply. 
  • Bove, who’s been a Wall Street analyst for five decades, noted the recent bitcoin rally while discussing cryptocurrencies as an alternative to the dollar, saying,  “Anything can be used as a currency as long as enough people will accept it.”
  • Yet, Bove concluded that, for now, gold is “a clear option” for investors to consider to protect themselves from the rising risks to the dollar system.
Related Stories
CoinDesk

Long-Time Analyst Bove Says Dollar’s Dominance Challenges Include Cryptocurrency

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

The long-existing, U.S. dollar-ruled financial system could come to an end amid challenges from a potential multiple-currency system, which includes digital currencies, according to an Aug. 14 research note by Dick Bove, noted senior research analyst at Odeon Capital Group LLC, a New York City-based investment bank.

  • “The new currencies might be paper, metal or digital impulses,” Bove wrote. “The possibility of this happening can only be described as frightening, yet the probability is quite high.”
  • This possible change to the world’s financial system was brought up after prices on gold and other precious metals moved higher.  
  • The U.S. dollar has also been under attack from a number of flanks, such as China and Russia pushing for the renminbi to replace the dollar in international trade, as well as the rapid growth of the U.S. money supply. 
  • Bove, who’s been a Wall Street analyst for five decades, noted the recent bitcoin rally while discussing cryptocurrencies as an alternative to the dollar, saying,  “Anything can be used as a currency as long as enough people will accept it.”
  • Yet, Bove concluded that, for now, gold is “a clear option” for investors to consider to protect themselves from the rising risks to the dollar system.
Related Stories
CoinDesk

Blockchain Bites: Ripple’s Rebuff, DeFi’s ‘Degens’ and China’s CBDC

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

Both the U.S. and China are advancing on their central bank digital currency (CBDC) designs, there’s a new smart contract language for Bitcoin and the Department of Justice (DOJ) seized millions worth of crypto from addresses linked to terrorist organizations.

You’re reading Blockchain Bites, the daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news, and why they’re significant. You can subscribe to this and all of CoinDesk’s newsletters here. 

Top shelf

Digital Dollars
The U.S. Federal Reserve is actively investigating distributed ledger technologies for use in digitizing the dollar, CoinDesk regulatory reporter Nikhilesh De said. “To enhance the Federal Reserve’s understanding of digital currencies, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston is collaborating with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a multiyear effort to build and test a hypothetical digital currency oriented to central bank uses,” Federal Reserve Board Governor Lael Brainard said Thursday. While the monetary authority was long looking into a digital dollar, the coronavirus crisis and China’s ongoing experiments with a CBDC have provided impetus to “remain on the frontier of research and policy development.”

Related: Money Reimagined: How a Dangerous Idea Could Work

Trial Expansion
China is planning a major expansion of testing for its digital yuan. The Ministry of Commerce announced new trial sites for the digital currency/electric payment (DC/EP) including in Hebei province, the Yangtze river delta, Guangdong province and the cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Hong Kong and Macau. When the new trials might start was not disclosed, but the ministry reportedly said that the project design is hoped to be wrapped up by the end of this year.

Dark Markets
The U.S. DOJ announced the “largest ever seizure of terrorist organizations’ cryptocurrency accounts” on Thursday, including “millions of dollars” and 300 crypto accounts. In a press release Thursday, the DOJ announced it had investigated and dismantled “three terrorist financing cyber-enabled campaigns” involving al-Qaeda, Hamas and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). In al-Queda’s case, the organization maintained a network of Telegram channels and 155 wallets intended to solicit bitcoin to fund terroristic acts. 

Ripple Reset?
The CEO of Ripple has pushed back against a Financial Times report saying the firm was moving away from using XRP for cross-border payments. CEO Brad Garlinghouse tweeted late Thursday, “Ripple has absolutely no plans to ‘reset’ our strategy” and that banks around the world were already using the XRP token as a cross-border payment solution.” The FT reported earlier that day Ripple was diversifying its approach, quoting Garlinghouse as saying his company aimed to be “Amazon of the cryptocurrency world,” or a platform for everyday consumers not just an interbank settlement layer. 

Identity Integration
BitMEX will instate mandatory identification protocols for exchange users. Ben Radclyffe, commercial director for BitMEX’s parent company, said the changes are set to remove barriers to entry for some of its target users, improve the security of the platform, and “get ahead of evolving regulation.” Easy registration, high leverage, and bitcoin-only account balances helped BitMEX bootstrap liquidity from all directions and give rise to its reputation as the destination trading platform for unorthodox cryptocurrency traders, CoinDesk’s Zack Voell reports. 

Quick bites At stake

Related: Blockchain Bites: Coinbase’s Loans, Ethereum’s Fees, YAM’s Bug

The developer team behind Curve DAO was as surprised as anyone when it learned its open-source project went live Thursday. 

The anticipated protocol and associated CRV token were deployed on the Ethereum blockchain Thursday at 22:25 UTC, ahead of schedule, when a pseudonymous community member took the liberty of publishing the contracts found on Github.

This premature move cost 19.9 ETH (approximately $8,000), and was an attempt for the developer, who goes by 0xc4ad, to get ahead of trading. “Yo, @CurveFinance ! Saw your DAO is ready to rock and I gots to MAXIMIZE MY ALPHA ! So I went ahead and deployed it for you,” they wrote. 

The Curve team members initially told users not to deposit funds on the platform, but quickly announced they had accepted the contract as legitimate. 

While the pseudonymous developer was christened “chad” for his gusto, accusations of a pre-mine were leveled at early stakers after it was discovered roughly 20,000 CRV tokens were doled out before Curve’s official announcement, Decrypt reports. 

Developed by one of the most respected DeFi projects, Curve Finance, this exploit has some asking whether crypto is becoming too reckless.

Adam Cochran, a partner with Cinneamhain Ventures, said on Twitter this move has shattered trust in the Curve team. “So we have a team that either makes bad impulse choices to validate a front-runner and reward pre-mining, stores keys incorrectly, wanted a pay day (sic) for them and their friends, or let people get a pay day for bad legal advice,” he wrote.

The rise and fall of YAM, the memetic BASED and Tendies projects, and now the unilateral deployment of a legitimate monetary experiment are all part of a growing exuberance in crypto not seen since the last bull run. 

But it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. As my colleague Will Foxley Smith wrote Thursday in a story exploring this theme: 

“These new projects are about leveraging Ethereum’s tech for unintended uses. They’re about making crypto fun again.

“They’re about making money.”

Market intel

Crypto’s Edge?
U.S. jobless claims fell to 963,000 last week, according to the latest report, the first weekly figure below 1 million since March. Financial markets saw this as a neutral or negative move, “since it might relieve pressure on authorities to speed up more trillion-dollar stimulus packages,” CoinDesk’s First Mover reports. Crypto, too, seems unconcerned with the larger macro-environment. Lennard Neo, head of research at Stack Funds, wrote Thursday, “Bitcoin could be a ‘risk-on hedging-type asset,’ where it performs relatively well in thriving markets, yet acting as a hedge to global uncertainties, displaying financial attributes that fall in between that of equity and gold.”

Post-Halving 
Publicly traded bitcoin miner Hut 8 announced a sharp drop in Q2 revenue. Closing the quarter with a C$6.4 million gross loss, the rising value of its bitcoin holdings pushed the firm’s net income into the black. The company mined 795 BTC last quarter, a 29% decrease from the 1,116 BTC mined during the prior quarter. Hut 8 has 2,954 BTC on its balance sheet as of the end of Q2 2020. The company also noted it raised C$8.3 million in gross proceeds from its public offering, which will be deployed to upgrade its existing mining equipment. Meanwhile, rival firm Marathon Patent Group will buy 10,500 new Antminer S-19 rigs for $23 million from Bitmain.

Tech pod

Simplified Language
Minsc, created by Bitcoin developer Nadav Ivgi, is a new programming language that makes it easier for developers to write smart contracts on Bitcoin. The protocol’s go-to language, Bitcoin Script, is unwieldy and overly complicated, according to CoinDesk contributor Alyssa Hertig. Minsc builds on another alternative Miniscript, unveiled in 2019, to create a simplified and secure programming language. 

Op-ed

Staying Clean
J.P. Koning, a CoinDesk columnist and writer for a prominent Canadian bank, weighs in on bitcoin’s proposition as digital gold – and found the precious metal can teach the industry about “staying clean.” “Bitcoin suffers from neither a purity problem nor a counterfeiting problem,” he writes. “But it does have its own unique quirk. [T]rackability means some bitcoin addresses may not be as good as others – they may hold funds that were stolen from an exchange, or used to pay ransom, or have been mixed by an anonymizer. These aren’t the sorts of bitcoin addresses that a sophisticated investor wants to be associated with.”

Podcast corner

Pysh’s Dish
The prominent podcaster and bitcoin advocate Preston Pysh joins The Breakdown to discuss Bitcoin’s stock-to-flow model, the inevitability of negative interest rates and the significance of MicroStrategy’s $250 million bet on Bitcoin. 

Who won #CryptoTwitter? Related Stories
CoinDesk

Crypto Exchange INX Plans $117M US IPO With Small Israeli Underwriter

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

INX has named a low-profile Israeli outfit to underwrite its reported $117 million initial public offering (IPO) later this year.

  • In an amended filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week, the Gibraltar-based crypto and security token exchange confirmed it had chosen A-Labs Finance and Advisory to underwrite its IPO.
  • A private company based outside of Tel Aviv, INX’s website names digital asset manager Silver Castle as another of its clients.
  • A-Labs has received a $500,000 fee to underwrite the offering and will receive an additional $500,000 should the IPO take more than $10 million in investment. Should the sale reach the $117 million hard cap, A-Labs can expect to take home a total of $8 million.
  • A-Labs is only able to promote the sale to non-U.S. investors.
  • INX's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month – which put the expected IPO price in the middle of its previous target range to raise $117 million in proceeds – didn’t name A-Labs as the underwriters.
  • INX’s executive managing director, Alan Silbert, is the brother of Barry Silbert, the founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group, CoinDesk’s parent company.
  • Per this week’s filing, A-Labs had agreed to manage INX’s IPO in September 2017 and has slowly accumulated more than 10% of INX’s common stock.
  • A definite IPO date, as well as the venue, have yet to be confirmed.

UPDATE: (Aug. 14, 16:47 UTC): Changes sixth paragraph to note the most recent IPO target is within the prior range.

See also: First Mover: Crypto’s $35T Moment Could Come From Analog-World Stock Listings

Related Stories
CoinDesk

Crypto Savings Accounts Are Coming to Fintech Firms That Use Wyre

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

Crypto payments startup Wyre is offering white-labeled savings accounts that dole out interest on crypto, the company announced Friday. 

Wyre’s client list includes startups including crypto custody firm Casa, wallet provider BRD and traditional enterprises such as banks.

“Partners of Wyre are able to offer their users a crypto savings account by simply creating a new savings sub-wallet via the Wyre API,” the company wrote.

Related: Epic Games Blasts Apple’s ‘Anti-Competitive’ Payments Practices in Lawsuit

The new product’s interest rates are meant to be more stable than interest rates at crypto lenders because Wyre will manage funds between MakerDAO, Compound and two centralized crypto lenders, said Jack Jia, Wyre’s vice president of business.

Like most things in crypto, the interest rates at crypto lenders are vulnerable to market drops or borrower supply. With Wyre’s new savings product, called Wyre Savings API, the company is aiming “to offer stable yield that has the least counterparty risk,” Jia said. 

Read more: BRD Partners With Wyre to Build Bank Transfer Wallet Feature

For the new product, Wyre is only working with crypto lenders that have lending licenses, SOC1 and SOC2 audits and work with licensed custodians.

Related: Facebook Taps David Marcus to Lead Payments Initiatives

“In the traditional markets we’re seeing a lot of instability and Treasury yields are down,” Jia said. “There are a lot more traditional financial institutions looking for yield.”

In the initial stages of the product’s development, Jia’s team had envisioned releasing the product as a smart contract but chose an application programming interface (API) instead to make it more accessible to businesses unfamiliar with crypto, he added.

As of Aug. 12, interest rates were 2.4% on bitcoin (BTC), 2.4% on wrapped bitcoin (WBTC), 3.3% on ether (ETH), 5.8% on USDC and 5.7% on dai. Wyre has plans to roll out more tokens in the future.

Funds can be pulled out any time, and interest is accrued instantly and paid out weekly on the product, Jia said. 

Related Stories
CoinDesk

First Mover: As Wall Street Goes Topsy-Turvy, Crypto Traders Are Bullish as Ever

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

As the coronavirus takes its devastating toll on the U.S. economy, financial pros are increasingly confounded by the markets. 

The economy is in its worst shape since the early 20th century, and stocks are soaring. The U.S. government’s borrowing is expected to triple to a record $4.5 trillion this fiscal year, yet 10-year Treasury yields are close to historic lows.

You’re reading First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily markets newsletter. Assembled by the CoinDesk Markets Team, First Mover starts your day with the most up-to-date sentiment around crypto markets, which of course never close, putting in context every wild swing in bitcoin and more. We follow the money so you don’t have to. You can subscribe here. 

Related: CME Rises in Bitcoin Futures Rankings as Institutional Interest Grows

A report Thursday showed that U.S. jobless claims fell to 963,000 last week, the first weekly figure below 1 million since March. But in the topsy-turvy logic of financial markets, the improvement was seen as neutral or even negative – since it might relieve pressure on authorities to speed up more trillion-dollar stimulus packages.  

“The good news may be bad news now,” Chris Gaffney, president of world markets at TIAA Bank, told Bloomberg News. 

Bank of America analyst Athanasios Vamvakidis acknowledged last week in a report that it was hard to tell if the dollar’s recent slide in foreign-exchange markets was due to ebullience over easy Federal Reserve monetary policies – or fears that the U.S. currency might be at risk of losing its status as the dominant world currency. 

What’s striking is that, through it all, crypto traders have stayed almost unequivocally bullish. 

Related: Ripple CEO Hits Out at Reports Claiming Firm Is Pivoting From Interbank Payments

Bitcoin is up 64% in 2020, more than double the gains for record-breaking gold. Prices for ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain, have tripled this year, thanks to the fast growth in decentralized finance, known as DeFi, and in digital “stablecoins” linked to U.S. dollars.  

John Todaro, director of research at cryptocurrency analysis firm TradeBlock, noted in an email Thursday that the market value of 10 digital tokens associated with DeFi has quintupled this year to almost $10 billion. 

Lennard Neo, head of research at Stack Funds, wrote Thursday in a report that bitcoin might do well in any of the currently plausible market scenarios: “Bitcoin could be a ‘risk-on hedging-type asset,’ where it performs relatively well in thriving markets, yet acting as a hedge to global uncertainties, displaying financial attributes that fall in between that of equity and gold.”

Trading volume on Mexico’s leading cryptocurrency exchange has quadrupled this year. The number of bitcoin “whales” holding at least 1,000 bitcoin tokens is at its highest since August 2017, according to CoinDesk’s Omkar Godbole. 

Mentions are becoming more common in mainstream financial publications. The Financial Times reported Thursday that crypto hedge-fund managers have returned more than 50% through July, compared with the low-single-digit gains that hedge funds generated across traditional asset classes.

Barstool Sports president Dave Portnoy, who has gained a following this year for live-streaming profanity-laced trading sessions to millions of retail day traders, reportedly owns $1 million of bitcoin after meeting with the Winklevoss twins, founders of the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange.

It’s all become so bizarre that some cryptocurrency analysts acknowledge even they can’t really make heads or tails of the markets these days. 

“Ultimately, when it comes to investing in this environment, the risk factor is through the roof,” Mati Greenspan, founder of the cryptocurrency research firm Quantum Economics, told subscribers Thursday. “All risk metrics and meters have long been broken, so we really need to approach all investments with extreme caution right now.”

That’s probably the safest interpretation. 

Bitcoin Watch

Bitcoin printed gains for the second straight day on Thursday, despite risk aversion in the stock markets. Even so, the immediate bias remains neutral, with the cryptocurrency still trapped in an ascending triangle (above left). 

The current consolidation could end with a bullish breakout above $12,000, as ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, has jumped to fresh multi-month highs, confirming a bull flag breakout, or a bullish continuation pattern on its daily chart. That could be taken as a positive signal for bitcoin, as ether has recently led the market higher with its DeFi-led price rally. 

Supporting the case for the bullish breakout in bitcoin is the recent surge in institutional participation. Open interest in futures listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) rose to a record high of $841 million earlier this week and is up by over 100% over the last four weeks, according to data source Skew. 

A triangle breakout, if confirmed, would shift the focus to resistance at $12,325 (August 2019 high). The short-term outlook would turn bearish if buyers fail to defend the lower end of the triangle, currently at $11,280. That could encourage selling and lead to a deeper decline toward the Aug. 2 low of $10,659. 

Token Watch

XRP (XRP) – One of the largest cryptocurrency projects by market value is “still trying to find compelling uses” eight years after its launch, according to the Financial Times. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said it may take “years” to develop “a lot of utility through XRP.” Michael Arrington, a crypto hedge-fund manager, told the FT that Ripple’s efforts to work with banks is “like Uber trying to disrupt the taxi industry by working with the taxis.” The XRP token is underperforming this year, up 45% versus bitcoin’s gain of 59%.  

Band Protocol (BAND) – The much-awaited “oracle” token started trading Thursday on the big U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, according to CoinDesk’s Danny Nelson. The token’s price has surged more than 10-fold since the start of May, according to CoinGecko. Oracles provide price feeds for semi-automated DeFi lending and trading platforms. As previously reported by First Mover, the Band Protocol is being watched closely by cryptocurrency traders and analysts as a potential rival to Chainlink, whose  LINK token has also jumped 10-fold in price this year, and is most valuable among digital assets with a market cap of at least $1 billion. 

Yam (YAM) – The DeFi protocol was “a Frankenstein of other DeFi protocols,”  according to the data firm Messari. It was a “blaze of social media-hosted meme-economy glory,” wrote Mati Greenspan of Quantum Economics. The Defiant, a newsletter, dubbed it the “YAMpocalypse.” Here’s what happened with Yam this week, according to CoinDesk’s Will Foxley and Paddy Baker: The project launched Tuesday, and the next day prices for the token shot up to $160. Early Thursday, a critical bug was discovered that effectively killed it, and the market value  tumbled by $60 million in 35 minutes. “The longer it takes you to do due diligence in this cycle, the lower your alpha,” Amentum Capital co-founder Steven McKie told CoinDesk. 

Tweet of the Day What’s Hot

How DeFi ‘Degens’ Are Gaming Ethereum’s Money Legos (CoinDesk)
First there were Tendies and YFI. Then came (and went) YAM. And, as of yesterday, we have Based Money.  Meet the new decentralized finance, in what amounts to a crossover between massive multiplayer online games and crypto pump-and-dump schemes.

The Federal Reserve Is Experimenting With a Digital Dollar (CoinDesk)
The U.S. Federal Reserve is actively investigating distributed ledger technologies in collaborating with researchers at MIT, pondering how they might be used for digitizing the dollar.

China to Launch Major Expansion of Digital Currency Trials (CoinDesk)
China is planning a major expansion of testing for the central bank-led digital yuan across a number of cities and regions including Hong Kong.

US Prosecutors Seize Bitcoin Allegedly Tied to Al Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas (CoinDesk)
The U.S. Department of Justice announced the “largest ever seizure of terrorist organizations’ cryptocurrency accounts” on Thursday, including millions of dollars and 300 crypto accounts.

Related Stories
CoinDesk

CME Rises in Bitcoin Futures Rankings as Institutional Interest Grows

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has leapt up the listings to become the third-largest bitcoin futures exchange by number of open contracts.

  • As of Thursday, open interest (or open positions) on the CME stood at $800 million – up nearly 120% from the July low of $365 million.
  • CME’s 15% contribution to the total global open interest of $5.22 billion on Thursday was the third-highest among the major derivatives exchanges.
  • In first and second positions, respectively, OKEx accounted for 23% of the total open interest on Thursday, while BitMEX contributed 18.6%.
  • Open interest on the CME had hit a record high of $841 million on Monday.
  • Increased activity on the CME shows institutional interest in the cryptocurrency is rising, according to industry experts.
  •  A month ago, open positions on the CME were 12% of the aggregate global total.
  • Back then, CME was the fifth-largest exchange by open interest and BitMEX was the industry leader.
  • CME’s climb is “an indication of increased institutional demand for bitcoin,” said Vishal Shah, an options trader and founder of derivative exchange Alpha5.
  • Chris Thomas, head of digital assets at Swissquote Bank, told CoinDesk that institutions prefer to trade futures of any product via an established and regulated exchange like the CME.
  • “It’s a norm – institutions understand each part of the trade cycle when trading on the CME and don’t have to set up new processes to manage risks that they would have to while buying physical bitcoins,” Thomas said.
  • While open interest on the CME has increased to record highs, daily trading volumes have recently cooled.
  • The exchange traded futures contracts worth $347 million on Thursday, down 73% from the high of $1.3 billion registered on July 27.
  • “It means there is less price sensitivity for trades on the CME and implies less risk for extremely high bouts of volatility,” Shah told CoinDesk in a Telegram chat.
Range play continues
  • Bitcoin is trapped in an ascending channel, as seen on the daily chart.
  • A UTC close above $12,000 would confirm a breakout and imply a continuation of the rally from July lows near $9,000.
  • A move below the lower edge of the channel may invite stronger selling pressure. 

Also read: Bitcoin Entering ‘New Adoption Cycle,’ Coin Metrics Exec Says

Related Stories
CoinDesk

Marathon Signs New $23M Contract With Bitmain for 10,500 Bitcoin Mining Rigs

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

Marathon Patent Group has signed a purchase agreement with Chinese mining manufacturer Bitmain to drastically increase output with 10,500 new Antminer S-19 rigs at a total cost of $23 million.

  • The Nasdaq-listed mining company announced Friday the new order will see its bitcoin mining capacity quadruple from 3,020 units to over 13,520 rigs.
  • Only last month, Marathon agreed to purchase a total of 1,360 rigs – 660 S-19s as well as 700 rigs from rival manufacturer MicroBT.
  • The new rigs will be installed this weekend at the company’s facility in Quebec.
  • Having started expanding capacity in Q4 2019, the company says it expects the additional hashrate will make its mining facility a revenue-earning venture.
  • Bitmain plans to ship 1,000 previously purchased rigs to Marathon in October and November.
  • The deal means the Las Vegas-based Marathon will soon become one of the largest operators in the whole of North America, making up 1.2% of total hashrate on the Bitcoin network.
  • Marathon’s stock price was up over 12% to just under $4 at press time.

See also: Mining Firm Hut 8 Reports 28% Drop in Q2 Revenue Following Bitcoin Halving

Related Stories
CoinDesk

Singapore’s Central Bank Backs New Code of Practice for Crypto Companies

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

A Singapore cryptocurrency industry non-profit has released a code of practice for digital asset payment providers that was guided by the city-state’s central bank

  • The Association of Cryptocurrency Enterprises and Start-ups Singapore (ACCESS), a group comprising over 400 crypto and blockchain-related businesses, announced the release Thursday.
  • The Monetary Authority of Singapore “facilitated” the initiative, aimed to assist regulatory compliance and enhance crypto industry conduct, while the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) also helped with its development, ACCESS said.
  • The guidance is designed around the requirements of the country’s Payment Services Act, which was updated early in 2020 to require digital asset businesses operating in Singapore to register for a license.
  • Specifically, it attempts to offer a standardized approach to combating money laundering and terrorism financing through know-your-customer (KYC) best practices.
  • ACCESS chairman Anson Zeall said the guidance would point both global and local digital payment service providers “in the right direction” and facilitate successful applications for operating licenses under the act.
  • The code had been two years in development to ensure it’s “in line with both the interest of our members and that of regulators,” Zeall said in a tweet on Friday.
  • The code comes amid efforts to align with the Financial Action Task Force’s June 2019 guidance for global supervisory frameworks for virtual asset service providers.
  • The code is expected to “evolve over time” collaboratively and will continue to be updated from “time to time” to ensure relevance, ACCESS said.

See also: Singapore Begins Crackdown on Unlicensed Bitcoin Sellers

Related Stories
CoinDesk

Ripple CEO Hits Out at Reports Claiming Firm Is Pivoting From Interbank Payments

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

The CEO of Ripple has firmly criticized the Financial Times for saying the creator of the third-largest cryptocurrency was moving away from wholesale cross-border payments.

  • On Twitter late Thursday, CEO Brad Garlinghouse said “Ripple has absolutely no plans to ‘reset’ our strategy” and that banks around the world were already using the XRP token as a cross-border payment solution.
  • The FT reported Thursday that Ripple was ditching its old solely bank-focused strategy for a more diversified approach – a platform offering payment services for financial institutions and everyday consumers.
  • Quoting Garlinghouse, the FT said Ripple would use its XRP token hoard to create whole new use cases and become the “Amazon of the cryptocurrency world.”
  • Ripple’s primary aim has been its blockchain interbank settlement layer, which makes cross-border transactions cheaper and faster than traditional wire transfers. Clients can optionally convert fiat currencies into XRP.
  • But the FT said its biggest partner, the Spanish bank Santander, recently decided against using XRP for its cross-border solution, supposedly because it wasn’t sufficiently traded in some of its key markets.
  • CoinDesk had approached Ripple for comment but hadn’t received a response by press time.

See also: Goldman Sachs Sells $6.5M of Shares in Ripple Partner MoneyGram: SEC Filing

Related Stories
CoinDesk

Attorney Ordered to Pay Out $5.2M for Bitcoin Escrow Mishap

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

A New York attorney has been ordered to pay over $5 million to a crypto investment firm for dereliction of duty as an escrow agent.

  • The agent, Aaron Etra, will have to pay more than $5.25 million plus 4% interest ($59,887) for violating his contractual duties to San Francisco investment firm Benthos Master Fund, according to a document filed at the district court in the Southern District of New York on Wednesday.
  • Etra had been employed by Benthos to act as an escrow agent in 2018 and was entrusted with holding $5 million meant for the purchase of bitcoin.
  • The firm had arranged the bitcoin purchase agreement with a firm called Valkyrie Group, which had planned to buy 10,000 bitcoin from a Russian oligarch, according to Law360.
  • When Benthos saw that Etra was moving money out of escrow without authorization, the firm formally requested Etra cease all activity relating to the release of its funds.
  • Benthos argued to the court that the attorney released $4.6 million of its funds in violation of Etra’s “contractual and fiduciary duties.”
  • As a result, Benthos claims it received none of its expected bitcoin.
  • On June 28, 2019, Benthos began arbitration proceedings based on a clause in the escrow agreement.
  • Despite receiving formal notice of the bid to resolve the issue, and having communicated with the arbitrator via email, the attorney failed to appear at the March 17, 2020 arbitration hearing.
  • The arbitrator then awarded Benthos $5,254,561 on April 9, 2020 which included damages and the cost of arbitration, plus the pre-award interest.
  • He had previously been ordered to repay the firm’s remaining $400,000.
  • When Etra attempted to appeal the decision as “one-sided” on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan said Etra “only has himself to blame” for having failed to appear or provide evidence.
  • Etra “was clearly required to arbitrate any disputes under the escrow agreement” and having failed to do so is now liable, the judge said in a court document filed on Thursday.

See also: Ex-NYSE Broker Accused of Running $33M Crypto Scam Pleads Not Guilty

Related Stories
CoinDesk

China to Launch Major Expansion of Digital Currency Trials

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

China is planning a major expansion of testing for the central bank-led digital yuan, according to a Wall Street Journal Report on Friday.

  • The country’s Ministry of Commerce said earlier today that the digital currency – dubbed DC/EP, for digital currency/electric payment – would be trialed in major cities across the most developed regions.
  • These include Hebei province, the Yangtze river delta, Guangdong province and the cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Hong Kong and Macau.
  • The ministry added that some poorer regions in China’s center and west may also be able to join the trial if they can meet specific requirements.
  • When the new trials might start was not disclosed, but the ministry reportedly said that the project design is hoped to be wrapped up by the end of this year.
  • DC/EP is already being out through its paces in regions such as Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu and Xiong’an, and commercial entities are also helping with the initiative.
  • As CoinDesk reported, several firms owned by Tencent are said to be working with the research wing of the People’s Bank of China on testing the digital yuan: food retailer Meituan-Dianping, video-streaming platform Bilibili and ride-hailing startup Didi Chuxing.
  • The commerce ministry added that the use of innovative technology, like digital currency and AI, is aimed to boost the nation’s economy, as well as encourage “higher value” industries, the WSJ reported.

Also read: Bank of Japan Forms New Team to Explore Central Bank Digital Currency

Related Stories
CoinDesk

BitMEX to Mandate ID Verification for All Traders as Maverick Exchange Ends Wild Ways

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

BitMEX, one of the oldest and most controversial cryptocurrency derivative exchanges, announced mandatory identity verification for all users.

  • Registering to trade on BitMEX takes “less than 30 seconds,” according to its homepage, where new users outside of restricted jurisdictions are required to enter only an email address, password, and pick a country of residence.
  • That will end on Aug. 28 when verification will be mandatory for all users, a process that will include proofs of location, funds, trading experience, and more, according to Ben Radclyffe, commercial director for the BitMEX parent company, 100x.
  • The policy change comes with a six-month “grace period” ending in February 2021 to accommodate unverified users completing the process.
  • Easy registration, high leverage, and bitcoin-only account balances helped BitMEX bootstrap liquidity from all directions and give rise to its reputation as the destination trading platform for unorthodox cryptocurrency traders.
  • The exchange’s primary motivations for this change are to remove barriers to entry for some of its target users, improve the security of the platform, and “get ahead of evolving regulation” in the cryptocurrency industry, Radclyffe said.
  • The change also will help BitMEX to better understand its user base, he added.
  • BitMEX’s corporate strategy has included plans for mandatory identity verification “for a while,” but running the verification system at scale for all users took time, Radclyffe said on a call with CoinDesk, noting a “material technological lift”.
  • The Eden Island, Mahé-based exchange has prohibited U.S.-based traders from using its platform since 2015, and recently blocked would-be traders in Hong Kong, Bermuda, and Seychelles as well.
  • Notably, a “good number” of BitMEX users have already verified their identities voluntarily, according to Radclyffe. Individual verification should take no more than five minutes to complete, he said. Corporate verification is a more involved process, however.
  • Over the medium and long terms, mandatory identity verification should increase the volume and liquidity on BitMEX, Radclyffe told CoinDesk, even if, in the short term, some traders decide against completing the process.
  • Radclyffe also described mandatory identity verification as a “building block” that sets the stage for future BitMEX products and a general “ability to do more.” For example, he told CoinDesk that BitMEX plans to host a “very significant” trading tournament later this year, which will require user identity verification.
  • BitMEX, known for popularizing the perpetual swap futures contract among cryptocurrency traders, is currently the second largest cryptocurrency derivatives exchange by open interest, with just less than $1 billion in open bitcoin futures contracts, according to Skew.

Related Stories
CoinDesk

Boontech, Founder Pavithran Settle SEC Charges Over Fraudulent ICO and Registration Violations

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced today that it has charged Virginia- based company Boontech and its founder Rajesh Pavithran for fraud and failure to register the firm’s tokens that were sold as investment securities. 

According to the SEC’s announcement, between November 2017 and January 2018, Boontech sold $5 million worth of its tokens, Boon Coins, to more than 1,500 investors in the United States, without registering the digital asset with the regulatory body. 

  • The announcement said the firm and Pavithran made false statements about how they had managed to eliminate volatility for their digital asset by using “patent pending” technology to hedge it against the dollar, despite what the SEC said was the complete absence of such a technology. 
  • While the firm and its founder claimed that their platform was faster because it was built on a private blockchain, the SEC said that these claims were also false and the firm used the same public blockchain as its competitors. 
  • Without accepting or denying the charges, Boontech and Pavithran have settled the allegations by agreeing to disgorge $5 million, plus interest, raised by the token sales. The settlement also requires that Boontech destroy all of the Boon Coins in their possession and withdraw them from all digital asset trading platforms.
  • In addition, the settlement requires Pavithran to pay a penalty of $150,000 and bars him from serving as an officer or director of any publicly traded company. 
Related Stories
CoinDesk

Congressman Tom Emmer to Lead First-Ever Crypto Town Hall

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

Minnesota congressman and chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) Tom Emmer announced Thursday that next week he will lead the first cryptocurrency town hall to celebrate innovators leading the development of virtual currencies.

  • According to the announcement made on Emmer’s campaign website, the town hall is intended to encourage “politically-engaged voters” to take part in the growing digital asset transformation as the election nears.
  • The event will feature leaders of the blockchain industry including Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, eToro’s  managing director Guy Hirsch, BitPay CEO Stephan Pair as well as Bloq co-founder and Chairman Matthew Roszak.
  • The announcement said that the panel will discuss “ways to keep the United States on the cutting edge of innovation.”
  • Emmer is a member of the House Financial Services Committee, a ranking member of the Financial Technology Task Force, and co-chair of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus.
  • The town hall event is organized in partnership with the Chamber of Digital Commerce (CDC) PAC.
  • The town hall will be held virtually on Aug. 20 at 12:30 p.m ET and is open to the public. 
  • You can register for the event here.
Related Stories
CoinDesk

Doctor Who to Enter the Cryptoverse as BBC Plans Trading Card Game on Ethereum Blockchain

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

BBC Studios has issued an exclusive global license to the U.K.-based mobile game publisher Reality Gaming Group to develop a digital trading card game on the ethereum blockchain for its hit sci-fi show, Dr. Who.

  • According to Thursday’s announcement, fans will be able to collect and trade digital versions of their favorite characters, and battle friends in the Doctor Who: Worlds Apart game. 
  • Trading cards collected by players will be tokenized into non-fungible or unique tokens that cannot be copied, and function as a digital collectible that can be used during the game or be traded between friends. 
  • Just like physical trading cards, there will be rare cards featuring the various doctors, their companions, allies and enemies.
  • Kevin Jorge, senior producer for Games & Interactive at BBC Studios told CoinDesk via an email that because Dr. Who is one of the most loved and long-running shows on TV, developers will have 56 years’ worth of content to draw from.
  • Jorge added that the additional security of blockchain technology will also give fans the peace of mind that they are safe from scams and piracy.
  • “The cards will be ERC721 running on a private fork of ethereum, trading on our own marketplace – but we will eventually be running on interacting with ethereum mainnet so that users can withdraw to 3rd party platforms like OpenSea,” Reality Gaming Group co-founder and tech lead Morten Rongaard told CoinDesk via an email.
  • Reality Gaming Group debuted its first blockchain powered augmented reality game Reality Clash in 2019, and has over two decades of experience in mobile, PC, augmented and virtual reality gaming platforms, the statement said. 
  • According to the announcement, limited edition cards, in packs of five, will be available for purchase from October while the game is set to go live on PC in 2021 with mobile to follow.
Related Stories
CoinDesk

Epic Games Blasts Apple’s ‘Anti-Competitive’ Payments Practices in Lawsuit

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

Epic Games has filed suit against Apple Inc. for allegedly monopolizing the in-app payments market and making “innovations” like bitcoin payments all but impossible.

  • The developer of hyper-popular video game Fortnite claimed in its suit filed Thursday that Apple is acting anti-competitively by imposing an “oppressive” 30% sales tax on app sales as well as banning third-party payments processors from its platform.
  • As a result of Apple’s behavior, it has hurt payment innovation, Epic claims.
  • Would-be competing in-app payment processes could accept “bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies” if not for their outright exclusion, Epic Games said.
  • Epic Game demanded the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California prohibit Apple from acting in an anti-competitive manner and end what it called Apple’s stranglehold on in-app payments.
  • The lawsuit appears to be a legal volley in a campaign Epic Games began against Apple after the tech giant booted Fortnite from the Apple app store on Thursday.
  • Apple cited Fortnite’s Thursday implementation of its own in-app payments system as reason for the boot, according to The Verge.

Related Stories
CoinDesk

Market Wrap: Stuck at $11.5K, Bitcoin Surpasses 25K Locked in DeFi

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

The spot bitcoin market was fairly dull Thursday. That doesn’t mean it’s not moving: Holders of the cryptocurrency are increasingly plowing it into decentralized finance.

  • Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $11,543 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Slipping 0.50% over the previous 24 hours.
  • Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $11,274-$11,661
  • BTC slightly above its 10-day and 50-day moving averages, a bullish to sideways signal for market technicians.

Little changed in the past day for bitcoin’s price. The top asset in the crypto market is back in $11,500 territory, where it was Wednesday, after briefly bottoming to $11,274 on spot exchanges such as Coinbase. 

Read More: Bitcoin Recovers From $11.3K Despite Losses in European Stocks

Related: Writing Bitcoin Smart Contracts Is About to Get Easier With New Coding Language

However, the state of the options market continues to suggest that traders anticipate a bumpier bitcoin ride over the longer term, according to Chris Thomas, head of digital assets for Swissquote Bank. “Implied volatility has edged higher, but only slightly. This shows that traders are still anticipating another big move, hence preferring long volatility strategies.”

John Willock, CEO of digital asset liquidity provider Tritum, expects bitcoin to move much higher before the year is done, but it will not be a steady upward trend. “There are quite a few psychological barriers to break along the way, especially once we get to $15,000, Willock said. “If our current pace keeps up I could definitely see $16,000 this year,” he added. 

Swissquote’s Thomas also said the options market is currently seeing less institutional interest and more individual traders. He noted retail-friendly platform Deribit’s increase in bitcoin options open interest (outstanding contracts) versus more institutional-focused CME’s relative stagnation.

Deribit is an upstart crypto-only derivatives platform, while CME is a trading stalwart used by the biggest financial players for all types of commodities bets. “This shows that institutional players are standing aside, likely preferring to take a summer break,” Thomas said.

Related: How DeFi ‘Degens’ Are Gaming Ethereum’s Money Legos

Read More: DeFi Frenzy Drives Ethereum Transaction Fees to All-Time Highs

Bitcoiners plow BTC into DeFI

The second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, ether (ETH), was up Thursday trading around $394 and climbing 1.3% in 24 hours as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET). 

Read More: Daily Profitability for Ethereum Miners Hits Over 2-Year High

The amount of bitcoin locked in decentralized finance, or DeFi, surpassed 25,000 BTC Monday, and is currently at 27,027, according to data aggregator DeFi Pulse. 

The top place for parking BTC in DeFI: Wrapped bitcoin, or wBTC, which allows investors to use the world’s oldest cryptocurrency on the Ethereum network. Over 21,000 BTC is locked in wBTC, by far its largest DeFi use. 

Mark Hornsby, chief technical officer for crypto custodian Trustology, told CoinDesk that bitcoin’s role in DeFi could be bullish as investors feel comfortable about its role as the dominant cryptocurrency – and lock more of it inside Ethereum’s network. 

“Due to its dominance, the bitcoin blockchain is an attractive proposition for DeFi,” Hornsby said. “Arguably, the lending and borrowing originating from these ‘wrapped’ instruments could bolster the underlying asset and, thus, bitcoin’s price point,” he added.

Other markets

Digital assets on the CoinDesk 20 are mixed Thursday. Notable winners as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET): 

Read More: Token Sales Are Back in 2020

Notable losers as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET): 

Read More: DeFi Meme Coin YAM Succumbs to Fatal Bug, Makes Plans for ‘YAM 2.0’

Equities:

Read More: Coinbase to Offer Bitcoin-Backed Loans to US Customers

Commodities:

  • Oil is down 0.54%. Price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $43.21.
  • Gold was in the green 1.8% and at $1,951 as of press time.

Read More: Elliptic Teams With Fireblocks to Automate Security and Compliance

Treasurys:

  • U.S. Treasury bonds were mixed Thursday. Yields, which move in the opposite direction as price, were down most on the two-year, in the red 5.6%.

Read More: Why It’s Time to Pay Attention to Mexico’s Booming Crypto Market

Related Stories
CoinDesk

cLabs Acquires Summa to Boost Crypto Interoperability on Celo

CoinDesk Crypto
6 years 1 month ago

It was a match made in Silicon Valley heaven. The token-funded startup cLabs just acquired the decentralized finance (DeFi) startup Summa, best known for making wrapped Ethereum tokens that can represent locked amounts of bitcoin.  

The acquihire bolsters cLabs’ multifaceted engineering team, which specializes in Bitcoin, Zcash and Cosmos projects in addition to Celo software projects. 

Marek Olszewski, CTO of cLabs, said the newcomers will help the Celo community “execute on the platform’s interoperability vision.”

Related: Brazil’s Ailing Economy Is Helping Dollar-Pegged Stablecoins Find Traction

“Over the last two years we’ve built the interoperability space from scratch. We’re excited to continue that work with Celo,” said Summa co-founder James Prestwich, whose startup was acquired for an undisclosed amount. 

Read more: Investors on CoinList Pour $10M Into Celo Token Sale in Roughly 12 Hours

With the addition of six people from Summa, cLabs’ Olszewski said there are now 100 people on staff. Along those lines, cLabs engineer Tim Moreton said the goal is to make sure people with established roles in different crypto projects are involved with the Celo community as well. 

Moreton added the priorities for 2020 are smoothing value transfers in and off of the Celo platform, including value from Bitcoin or Ethereum, and getting the Celo mobile app “into the hands of thousands and thousands of people … who don’t have cheap or easy access to financial services, but they do have access to a smartphones.”

Related: Bitcoin News Roundup for May 27, 2020

cLabs has raised more than $40 million so far, through a combination of venture capital and token sales. Much like Facebook’s dwindling Libra project, Celo’s stated goal is boosting financial inclusion in emerging markets. The startup has remote staff working in Latin America, Asia and Africa, in addition to the team in California.

Zack Voell contributed reporting.

Related Stories
CoinDesk
Checked
6 minutes 32 seconds ago
CoinDesk Crypto
Leader in cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, blockchain, DeFi, digital finance and Web 3.0 news with analysis, video and live price updates.
URL
https://www.coindesk.com/
Subscribe to CoinDesk Crypto feed
#channel
All
Business
Nasdaq
NasdaqCryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies
Crypto
CoinDesk
Stocks