Category: Crypto News

Categories
Bitcoin Crypto News Institutions Investing

Goldman Sachs is Planning to Introduce Bitcoin Investment Services in Q2

Goldman Sachs is Planning to Introduce Bitcoin Investment Services in Q2

Several world-renowned financial companies are gradually preparing to offer Bitcoin and cryptocurrency services amid the growing interest for the emerging asset class amongst their clients. Multinational investment bank Goldman Sachs has been reported by CNBC to have plans to debut a Bitcoin investment offering for its wealth management clients.

Morgan Stanley made a similar move recently – meaning that two of the world’s most prominent investment banks are looking at offering their clients access to Bitcoin and digital assets.

Clients in Goldman’s Private Wealth Management Group will Access Bitcoin

As CNBC learned from Mary Rich, global Head of Digital Assets for Goldman Sachs’s private wealth management division, the investment bank is looking to begin offering its first-ever Bitcoin investment vehicles for clients in its private wealth management group in the second quarter of 2021. 

Rich said the bank wants to offer a “full-spectrum” of investments of the crypto, either as “physical bitcoin, derivatives or traditional investment vehicles.”

The bank’s decision to offer Bitcoin services comes amid the increase in demand for such an offering amongst the private wealth clients, according to Rich, who added:

There’s a contingent of clients who are looking to this asset as a hedge against inflation, and the macro backdrop over the past year has certainly played into that. […] There is also a large contingent of clients who feel like we’re sitting at the dawn of a new Internet in some ways and are looking for ways to participate in this space.

Mary Rich, Head of Digital Assets at Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs is currently seeking approval for the service with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the New York Department of Financial Services. 

Only a few weeks ago, Goldman Sachs joined the list of companies that filed for a Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) in the United States.

Categories
Bitcoin Crypto News Gold Oil

Bitcoin Outperformed Oil and Gold With Over 100% Increase in Q1 2021

Bitcoin Outperformed Oil, Gold With Over 100% Increase in Q1 2021

The price of Bitcoin (BTC), the leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has more than doubled since the beginning of the year.

This exponential increase is second to none in the institutional-grade assets class, hence, making the cryptocurrency the best performing asset in the first quarter of 2021 according to cryptocurrency market research platform Messari.

While BTC appreciated over the past three months, the precious metal gold plummeted in value within the same period. 

Bitcoin: The Best Performing Institutional Asset

Bitcoin was the best performing institutional-grade assets within Q1 of 2021, according to Messari researcher Mira Christanto. The cryptocurrency increased by 103 percent in value. Back in January, BTC was valued at around US$28,994. However, the price has surged to over US$59,000.

Within Q1 also, Oil increased by 26 percent, followed by Global Stocks (3 percent) and the USD (1 percent). The yellow metal was rated the institutional asset with the most significant loss. According to Messari, Investment Grade Bonds dropped by four percent in Q1, followed by Government Bonds, which fell by five percent. Gold declined by ten percent in value.

An ounce of gold was traded at nearly US$1,900 on 1 January 2021. However, the value has declined to US$1,707 at the time of writing.

Gold price [source: GoldPrice]

Institutions Bet on Bitcoin as a Better Asset

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, many large companies began considering Bitcoin as a better store of value and inflation hedge. This includes the publicly-traded company MicroStrategy, MassMutual, Tesla, Square, and many other corporations. According to CoinGecko, there are 21 known public companies that have Bitcoin on their balance sheet. These institutional investments seem to have helped BTC maintaining an upward movement in value.

Categories
Crypto News Industries Institutions Trading

Prometheum Partnering With Anchorage To Launch Alternative Trading System for Digital Assets

The alternative trading system (ATS) is set to be a trading venue that matches buyers and sellers for both digital and traditional assets, if approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Opening Privileged Services to the Public

As announced by Anchorage, Prometheum CEO Aaron Kaplan stated that the ATS application is still pending at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Notwithstanding the approval, the company has built a system that allows brokerage firms and clearing firms to speak to each other easily in an effort to win over Wall Street companies to use a platform with which they’re familiar.

Currently this kind of service is only open to accredited and institutional investors, but Prometheum Ember ATS (“PEATS”) will be available to the public as well.

A public ATS for digital assets will allow more efficient order matching and better price discovery, bringing smaller price spreads and simplified participation for all investors,

Aaron Kaplan, Prometheum CEO

When the ATS goes live, Prometheum will be a full-service SEC and FINRA registered electronic market integrating both traditional and blockchain technology for the trading of digital asset securities, with on-chain custody and settlement provided by Anchorage Digital Bank.

It’s a Nasdaq on the blockchain

Aaron Kaplan, Prometheum CEO
Prometheum Homepage: Prometheum

Anchorage Holds the Key for Prometheum to Operate

Anchorage’s bank charter allows it to hold digital assets for broker-dealers and their clients, said Anchorage CEO Nathan McCauley. ATS itself “is something that is a trading system but it’s not regulated as an exchange.”

Other ATS providers for digital securities include OpenFinance and the Public Private Execution Network. Security token firm Securitize applied for both a broker-dealer license and an ATS in October.

Adding more ATS platforms for the digital security market will give issuers more liquidity for their tokens

Nathan McCauley, Anchorage CEO

During its charting process, Anchorage got specific approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to custody security tokens on behalf of broker-dealers, McCauley added. The bank plans to offer cash loans with security tokens acting as collateral. Regulatory foundations are being set by these landmark organisations and act as support for the first public market for digital asset securities.

Categories
Bitcoin Crypto News Ethereum

Grayscale Records Over $3 Billion Increase in AUM Over 3 Days

Crypto Exchange Volumes Rise 37% In May 2021 To US$2.2 Trillion

Just as the cryptocurrency market recovers, the largest digital currency investment company, Grayscale Investment, saw a significant increase in its assets under management (AUM). Within three days, Grayscale gained over US$3 billion in assets. 

The Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) Trust products account for the largest share of the entire AUM. However, some people are worried GBTC and GETH premiums are trading well below the market price of the underlying assets.

Grayscale Reports a Total of over $44 Billion in AUM

Grayscale has reported a total of US$44.1 billion in assets under management as of 29 March 2021. The company supports about 13 crypto investment products, five of which were added on 17 March, including Chainlink (LINK) and Basic Attention Token (BAT). The GBTC product accounts for about US$37.3 billion, followed by GETH, which represents about US$5.58 billion of the total AUM.

Three days ago, the investment company reported a US$41 billion AUM. The $3 billion increase could be partially attributed to the recent increase in the market value of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Last week, BTC was trading mainly around US$55,000. However, since the start of the week, the cryptocurrency showed stronger price momentum, and it could cross US$59,100 soon.

The Issue With Grayscale Premium

Many users have shown much concern about the negative Grayscale Premiums. Since February, the company’s share price for GBTC has been dropping lower than the underlying cryptocurrency itself. According to data from OTCNode, GBTC is trading at a premium of -10 percent compared to the current price of Bitcoin. GETH premium is also negative (-8.66 percent).

Grayscale might consider buying back the shares to curtail the declining premiums, as previously announced.

Categories
Crypto News Stablecoins Tether

Tether’s USDTs are Fully Backed, Moore Cayman Confirms After Audit

Tether's USDTs are Fully Backed, Moore Cayman Confirms After Audit

According to this announcement by Tether, third-party audit and assurance services provider Moore Cayman has confirmed USDTs in circulation are fully backed.

Over the recent years, many FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) stories have circulated in the cryptocurrency space concerning Tether’s asset reserves. Many people had argued that the company was only posting figures and that its US dollar-backed stablecoin (USDT) were not fully backed.

This controversy was mostly fuelled by the massive number of USDTs usually minted by Tether. Some people were concerned that the cryptocurrency market, especially Bitcoin (BTC), would crash if there were evidence that Tether’s assets are not fully backed. This announcement might help reduce all these FUDs and worries amongst crypto investors.

USDTs are Fully Backed by Tether Reserve

At the time of writing, there were over 40.6 billion USDTs in circulation, according to CoinMarketCap. Judging by Moore Cayman’s assurance report, it’s believed that Tether’s reserves back all these assets.

“Tether has always been fully backed, and the assurance opinion we made available today confirms it once again. As Tether’s growth in the market continues to validate our business, we understand the public’s interest in this matter and are pleased to share this attestation as part of our ongoing commitment to transparency,” Tether noted in the announcement.

USDT Remains the Largest Stablecoin

Stablecoins are backed by an asset, and USDT, in this case, is backed by the United States fiat currency. USDT is the largest and most-traded USD stablecoin in the crypto market. It has a market capitalization of over $40 billion, ranking as the fourth-largest digital currencies. 

The USD Coin (USDC) is the second-largest US dollar-backed stablecoin with over $10 billion in market capitalization. Recently, Visa added USDC as a settlement currency.

Categories
Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Institutions

PayPal Will Allow Crypto Payments to its 29 Million Merchants in the U.S.

PayPal is now allowing U.S. customers to pay with cryptocurrency the same way they would with a credit or debit card. The crypto checkout service will allow using crypto holdings to pay at millions of merchants worldwide.

Following its previous plans to allow crypto payments with its digital wallets, PayPal’s crypto checkout service is live today in the U.S. All users will be able to easily convert their Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin to fiat money and use it with its 29 million merchants.

This is the first time you can seamlessly use cryptocurrencies in the same way as a credit card or a debit card inside your PayPal wallet.

Dan Schulman, CEO of Paypal [Reuters]

Payments With Crypto

PayPal allowing crypto-payments is a considerable milestone for the crypto-space. The move came weeks after Tesla announced that customers can now buy its vehicles using Bitcoin.

Schulman believes that by converting crypto into fiat, merchants will not take into consideration their inherent volatility.

We think it is a transitional point where cryptocurrencies move from being predominantly an asset class that you buy, hold and or sell to now becoming a legitimate funding source to make transactions in the real world at millions of merchants.

Dan Schulman, CEO of Paypal [Reuters]

Besides Paypal, Crypto.com announced a global partnership with Visa to accelerate the worldwide adoption of cryptocurrencies and crypto-payment methods. This will allow further expansion of MCO cards all over the Middle East, Africa, and Asian countries.

Categories
ChainLink Crypto News DeFi Stablecoins

Chainlink Becomes Sole Provider of Price Data for Origin Dollar (OUSD)

Chainlink (LINK) Oracles have now been integrated onto the Origin Protocol’s mainnet as well as becoming the sole provider of real-time price data for OUSD.

According to a press release from Origin Protocol, the integration of Chainlink price oracles are a “big deal” for the growth and security of the only stablecoin that earns a yield while still in your wallet.

What Does The Integration Mean for Origin Protocol?

By going all-in on Chainlink, we ensure that our users have the highest quality data and most secure oracle infrastructure every time they mint or redeem OUSD. Importantly, Chainlink has given Origin the flexibility to interact directly with oracles built specifically to price certain stablecoin trading pairs, leading to decreased on-chain costs and a more accurate minting/redeeming process.

Matthew Liu, Origin Protocol Co-founder

Additionally, the first Chainlink Price Feed for Origin Tokens (OGN-ETH) is now live and available for use by other DeFi protocols wanting to quickly and safely launch support for OGN markets. The OGN-ETH Price Feed is already being used and supported by the C.R.E.A.M. lending platform.

Since the DeFi boom, it has become increasingly important to use the most accurate price data, making Chainlink tech more valuable to companies working in the DeFi space. Today, Chainlink oracles are one of the most important linchpins to the security of DeFi, securing billions of dollars in on-chain value. Demand is only growing as DeFi gains more widespread adoption and protocols opt for the highest standards of data quality and reliability.

Chainlink USDT-USD Price Feed Oracle Network [Medium]

These Chainlink nodes collectively source price data from numerous off-chain data aggregators like BraveNewCoin and Amberdata, ensuring each price point has volume-adjusted market coverage across all trading environments.

Slow Price Data can Lead to Losses

Traditionally when origin was using a mixture of oracle providers:

[…] prices had to be calculated by first fetching the price of ETH and then calculating the exchange rate using ETH oracles. This increased the chance of prices being outdated, causing users to receive less OUSD than they reasonably expected. It also increased the gas costs due to additional on-chain transactions.

Josh Fraser, Co-founder Origin Protocol

One benefit of having these direct price feeds is that it simplifies smart contract code. In the Ethereum world, simpler code also means gas savings, which is now roughly 15% cheaper when minting or redeeming OUSD, thanks to this direct price feed integration.

But since they now rely on numerous secure nodes and premium data sources, OUSD users receive highly accurate, available, and tamperproof price data, which is also inherently resistant to various data manipulation attacks such as those carried out via flash loans.

Categories
Australia Binance Crypto News Swyftx

Binance Australia CEO and Swyftx Founders Featured amongst Brightest Aussies Under 30

Jeff Yew (Binance Australia), Alex Harper and Angus Goldman (Swyftx)
Jeff Yew (Binance Australia), Alex Harper and Angus Goldman (Swyftx)

In a recent article the Courier Mail published a list of 30 Australians under 30 with outstanding business achievements thanks to technology.

The selection featured personalities innovating many different fields, including cryptocurrency platforms. Focusing on that, two entries have made the cut and we are happy to highlight them in congratulations for their respective results.

Jeff Yew, CEO of Binance Australia

Jeff Yew (Binance Australia)
Jeff Yew (Binance Australia)

Binance Australia is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges locally based and operated in Australia. It is led by Jeff Yew, a 27 year old who funded his university degree by investing into Bitcoin. Before Binance Australia, he was the CPO of another cryptocurrency-related business, TravelByBit – an Australian startup facilitating crypto payments in the travel industry, making Brisbane the first city in the world with a crypto-friendly airport.

[…] I believe Bitcoin is the single most important social infrastructure in the history of humanity and I’m committed to see it through till the end. […] It’s the money of the people in the digital age.

Jeff Yew [Twitter]

In the last few months, Binance Australia has reported massive trading volumes and growth. You can read more about Binance Australia in our review.

Alex Harper & Angus Goldman, Founders of Swyftx

Alex Harper and Angus Goldman (Swyftx)
Alex Harper and Angus Goldman (Swyftx)

Alex Harper and Angus Goldman founded Swyftx, a Brisbane-based and AUSTRAC-registered Australian crypto currency exchange and trading platform. The couple of now-26 year olds first met at a Summer Computer Science Camp held at the University of Sydney. Later on Alex and Angus decided to quit their jobs, investing their savings and joining efforts to eventually launch Swyftx in 2019.

We wanted to solve the many problems we faced as consumers, including a distinct lack of customer service, dated user interfaces, poor education practices and high fees.

Swyftx

In a short amount of time, Swyftx has seen record-breaking growth, also recently becoming the first exchange in Australia to offer Debit Card Payments. Feel free to check out our review of Swyftx.

Categories
Bitcoin Bitcoin Mining Crypto News

Bitcoin Mining Hash Rate Soars as BTC Nears US$60,000 Again

South Korean BTC 'Kimchi Premium' Plummets After Soaring Over 23%

As the leading cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC), is staging a comeback to the US$60,000 price level, its network hash rate just reached another all-time high.

This indicates that more mining machines have been deployed on the BTC network. What’s more interesting to note is that most miners are seemingly not selling off their coins at the moment. Hence, there may not be a significant increase in the number of BTC deposited to exchanges, even with the spike in hash rate.

Bitcoin Hash Rate Sets New All-Time High at 165.99M TH/s

Total Hash Rate of the Bitcoin network [Blockchain.com]

According to the data from Bitcoin explorer Blockchain.com, the network hash rate reached another major high of 165.992 Million Tera Hash per second (TH/s). Hash rate is basically the measuring unit of the processing power of the Bitcoin network. So, an increase in hash rate denotes that there are more miners processing transactions on the BTC blockchain.

The development today is not so surprising, given that the BTC mining industry has been growing rapidly. In recent months, many companies purchased more advanced mining machines to increase their processing power. This somewhat coincides with the growth in the market price of Bitcoin. Some companies tend to increase their mining hash rate when there are massive increases in Bitcoin price.

Meanwhile, a spike in the BTC hash rate is usually followed by an increase in mining difficulty to offset the number of resources required to mine Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Price Update

Bitcoin was trading at US$57,750 at the time of writing. The cryptocurrency reached as high as US$58,200 on Monday. From a circulating supply of 18.6 million BTC, the crypto’s market capitalization sits around US$1.078 billion.

Bitcoin price and volume [CoinMarketCap]

Overall, the crypto market has increased by 2.57 percent over the last 24 hours, possibly due to the mild increase in BTC.

Categories
Bitcoin Crypto News Institutions

Former SEC Chairman Jay Claton Becomes an Advisor to a Bitcoin Fund Manager

Former SEC Chairman, Jay Claton Becomes an Advisor to a Bitcoin Fund Manager

The former chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Jay Clayton, will be serving as an advisor to One River Asset Management, a company behind a $2.5 billion Bitcoin fund.

One River Appoints Clayton as Regulatory Advisor

According to Bloomberg’s report on Monday, Jay Claton has been appointed to serve as regulatory advisor to the digital assets manager. Besides the former SEC chairman, two other government officials, Kevin Hassett and Jonathan Orszag will be joining One River for the same role. Hassett served under President Donald Trump’s administration as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, while Orszag is an economic consultant who previously worked in the Clinton administration.

The digitization of our financial ecosystem isn’t just coming, it’s already here. Three years ago, I didn’t believe we would be where we are today – the number of respected investors who have embraced digital assets. I would not have predicted this level of take-up.

Jay Clayton

However, Clayton noted that the development today doesn’t translate to a change in view on the importance of the rule of law and of regulation for the digital currency space or any other industry.

I see a wide range of outcomes for digital assets that include strong government regulation, domestically and globally. The time frame is uncertain, but I expect there will be international coordination if not international consensus around digital assets.

Jay Clayton

About One River Asset Management

One River reportedly began purchasing Bitcoin back in November, when the cryptocurrency was still trading around $15,000. From $1 billion in Bitcoin then, the company currently sees about $2.5 billion in Bitcoin under management. The CEO at One River, Eric Peters, seems to believe in digital currencies more as a store of value and inflation hedge rather than alternatives to fiat currencies.