Cryptocurrency exchange Binance listed the tokenized version of Apple stock (AAPL) on its new “stock token” market. At the moment, the crypto exchange supports four stock tokens for trading on its platform.
Binance is Bringing the Stock Market Closer to Crypto
Binance confirmed the listing of the Apple stock in a tweet on Wednesday, which means crypto users interested in buying AAPL can now access it in the form of a token. These stock tokens are pegged in the ratio of 1:1 to the underlying stock. Holders of these tokens will qualify for economic returns on the underlying shares, as well as potential dividends.
At the time of writing, the AAPL token was trading at the price of $133.51 USD, which represents about a 0.60 percent decrease over the last 24 hours.
Binance Stock Tokens are tokens of stocks (i.e., shares of public companies) that trade on traditional stock exchanges. Each Stock Token represents one ordinary share of the relevant stock. These Stock Tokens are fully backed by a depository portfolio of underlying securities held by CM-Equity AG, Germany (“CM-E”).
Binance
Binance Now Supports Four Stock Tokens
So far, the crypto exchange supports four stock tokens, which include Apple (AAPL), MicroStrategy (MSTR), Coinbase (COIN), and Tesla (TSLA). Binance is open to tokenizing more stocks on its new market. On Friday, the exchange will list Microsoft stock (MSFT) tokens for trading, according to an announcement earlier this week.
All these coins are available for trading with Binance’s USD-backed stablecoin, BUSD.
SafeMoon is a decentralised finance (DeFi) token that launched in March 2021 with the aim of protecting their investors against whales that create bubbles and speculation sell-off that can damage a brand’s future prospects. Basically the token rewards you for having diamond hands in a new token class they call “reflection tokens”.
We’ve all been there, seeing those shiny 6 digit figures can be pretty damn tempting to jump in. However, almost always the token suffers from the inevitable valuation bubble, which is then followed by the burst and the impending collapse of the price.
SafeMoon White Paper
SafeMoon is Expensive to Trade
If you’re thinking of trading the SafeMoon coin then think again because you will be hit with a massive 10%-12% trading fee. With 5% of every purchase or sale is redistributed amongst all wallet holders, and the other 5% is split half burned half sold into BNB because of a contract.
SafeMoon Tokens Supply
According to the SafeMoon white paper there is a total token supply of 1 quadrillion, with a launch supply of 777 trillion. If you sell it, you will be hit with a 10 to 12 per cent transaction fee, half of which is redistributed to existing holders, helping to create what they hope will be a ‘price floor’. This mechanism was added to reduce the likelihood of pump and dump schemes.
1,620 Cryptocurrency Dead Coins
Cryptocurrencies are gaining popularity, with some 106 million users globally trading in more than 2,300 cryptocurrencies. However, 1,620 have crashed (“dead coins”) some of which were caused by pump and dump schemes or massive speculative sell-off. This is important to note, as these new coins promise prices to the moon, and a lot of them end up as dead coins.
How Is SafeMoon Different From Other Liquidity Providers?
SafeMoon has three functions that take place during each trade: Reflection, Manual Burn, and LP Acquisition.
The rewards from providing liquidity are static, compared to others that fluctuate based on the amount of coins that help provide liquidity. This is called reflection, and aims to eliminate problems caused by these farming rewards.
Sometimes burns matter; sometimes they don’t. Manual Burns are a strategy that aim to implement a burn strategy that is beneficial and rewarding for those engaged for the long term.
The white paper states that “Automatic Liquidity pool (LP) is the secret sauce of SafeMoon”. Essentially this process is there to help keep the value of the coin more stable when people start selling, through the various methods of capturing LP and reinvesting it into the pool.
How They Plan to Ensure Safety
Developers burned all tokens in the Dev Wallet prior to the launch
Held a fair launch on DxSale
LP locked on DxLocker for 4 years
LP generated with every trade and locked on Pancake
Toward the future they plan an integration process with WhiteBIT, a crypto-to-fiat currency exchange offering more than 150 trading pairs, and BitMart, the cryptocurrency trading platform. SafeMoon also plans to develop a non-fungible token (NFT) exchange, as well as charity projects and crypto educational apps.
Baillie Gifford, one of the world’s renowned asset management companies, has invested in Blockchain.com, which is a Bitcoin wallet and blockchain explorer. In the announcement on Tuesday, the crypto company said that Gifford’s investment is the largest single funding they have ever received.
Baillie Gifford Invested $100 Million in Blockchain.com
The Edinburgh-headquartered asset manager reportedly invested about $100 million USD in the cryptocurrency company. The investment comes as part of the recently-concluded Series C funding, wherein Blockchain.com secured about $300 million USD. DST Global partners led the investment round, and it included Lightspeed Ventures and VY Capital, per the announcement.
Baillie Gifford is a 110-year-old asset management company with an early record of investment in today’s biggest tech companies, including Amazon, Google, Tesla, Airbnb, and so on. The investment in Blockchain.com marks its first move in the cryptocurrency space as a startup investor.
As one of their first investments in a crypto company, we’re honored to include them on our journey to bring the next 1B people into crypto. It’s also a validation that a balanced and diversified retail/institutional business has incredible growth potential in the coming years.
Peter Smith, the CEO, and co-founder of Blockchain.com, wrote.
Blockchain.com is currently valued at $5.2 billion following the latest funding round.
Blockchain.com is Interested in Going Public
Besides being a household name in the crypto space, Blockchain.com is also one of the digital currency companies interested in going public, following Coinbase’s stock debut on NASDAQ last week. While speaking with The Telegraph, Smith said they are planning to debut on the public market “when the moment’s right for us, and we’re figuring out when that is.”
Kraken and eToro are two other crypto-related companies expecting to go public in the coming years.
Strive, a UK-based company focused on teaching young kids the basic tenets of finance, has built crypto piggy banks that allow crypto-savvy parents to give kids a time-honoured way of helping kids learn about the value of cryptocurrency.
The piggy banks connect directly to any external wallet to display the BTC balance. This is designed to help parents introduce their children to cryptocurrencies in an innovative way.
While a child may not care much about hash rates and mining difficulties, they may very well care about the increasing sum displayed on the gadget’s digital display counter. It can display in USD, EURO and AUD and 30 other currencies. Other versions may be available as shown on the original Kickstarter.
The Future Of Money
According to Andrew Birt – the co-founder and CEO of Strive – the gadget priced at $149 USD aims to fill the niche left open by the skyrocketing adoption of cryptocurrencies. While there are a myriad of children’s books breaking down the advantages of delayed gratification, cryptocurrency has jumped onto the scene recently enough that even the majority of adults are still confused about it.
“Without a doubt, the crypto market is here to stay. With $2T now stored in crypto across 68M crypto wallets around the globe, there’s still a surprisingly visible lack of resources to teach kids about digital currency. This is why we’ve built Penny the Pig – to give everyone a simple, safe and responsible way to explore the space of cryptocurrencies and learn about the future of money.”
Andrew Birt gives his son pocket money in Bitcoin himself – and says his son used to ask him constantly to check the price of Bitcoin on his phone. Now, he no longer has to.
Example of a kid receiving payment for making her bed – source
Penny the pig and the kids can:
Pay allowances (set as regular payments or one-off payments)
Set goals to help kids learn how to save
Make chores fun with set tasks and rewards
Send the kids encouraging video messages
Get others to add to the bank for birthday presents
With a bit of luck, the next generation of children will be better prepared – and if Australia is any indicator, the signs are promising.
If you want to buy a piggy bank there is an initial limit of 1000 units so you’ll need to be quick. They also accept BTC or ETH as payment. Currently only Coinbase wallets are supported with more to follow.
In a recent post, The Oasis Foundation – which sprung from the roots of Oasis Labs, the team behind the Oasis Network – stated that DeFi insurance provider Tidal Finance will be bringing their services to the Oasis Network.
As a company known for providing a selection of pools with risk assessments, Tidal Finance allows investors to hedge their bets depending on how much risk they are willing to take.
More Security For Investors?
The aim of implementing insurance policies on a DeFi network is to protect investors who, although interested in DeFi, may dither due to the relative immaturity of the decentralized business sector. Although DeFi is attracting more and more investors – with over $100 billion worth of assets locked into DeFi ventures – certain issues in the not-so-distant past may still give prudent investors reasons to look elsewhere.
According to the blog post, Tidal Finance will be providing cross-chain insurance for Oasis customers. In return, Tidal Finance will be able to expand the scope of their activity, taking advantage of the confidential smart contracts that are one of the major selling points of the Oasis network.
This integration will go beyond just providing insurance capabilities. The Oasis Network’s unique ability to keep smart contracts and their data confidential, will also allow Tidal to explore expanding their claims process to include anonymous, democratized voting on claims processing with their community. In short, their community could vote on whether a particular claim should be approved in a privacy-preserving manner.
Oasis Protocol Foundation
Confidential smart contracts also have uses outside of the financial sector. For example, a hypothetical medical establishment allowing payment in cryptocurrencies could receive payments this way, ensuring the relationship between the doctor and the patient remains confidential – a cornerstone of medicine ever since the Hippocratic Oath was put to paper.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore has warned crypto investors to be wary of new tokens and to do their research before investing. The warnings come after the Prime Minister of Singapore had his account created without permission on BitClout – a platform for social tokens.
Pre-Loaded Identity
Lee Hsien Loong – the Prime Minister of Singapore – issued a statement on social media informing people that he was not involved in any of this and does not endorse the platform. The creator coin using his likeness had used his profile picture and Twitter bio in order to create the token – rising at a market cap of over $9800.
I have discovered that my Twitter profile (and others as well) has been used without my permission or knowledge on a blockchain platform that allows users to buy and speculate with its proprietary cryptocurrency.
The site’s creators are anonymous, but I have sent an open tweet out to ask that my name and photo be removed from the site immediately, as I have nothing to do with the platform. It is misleading and done without my permission.
Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore
Although the Prime Minister’s account has since been taken off of BitClout, it appears that his account may have been pre-loaded by the platform, going by the number of Twitter followers that users have – over 792,000, in Loong’s case.
The PM encouraged crypto investors to only deal with businesses regulated by the relevant Singaporean authorities in order to benefit from the protection of the applicable law.
Although Singapore is, overall, a country that is very welcoming to Blockchain – even collaborating with Australia on certain issues – the need for caution in an industry rife with investment opportunities will never diminish.
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.
A new survey out of Mizuho Securities on Monday estimates that 10%, or nearly $40 billion of the $380 billion in direct stimulus checks, may be used to purchase Bitcoin(BTC) and stocks.
According to CNN as it stands, 90% of American households qualify for the $1400 per person (including dependants) stimulus check, following the U.S. President Joe Biden signing the stimulus package into law.
People Prefer Bitcoin
Yahoo Finance reported Monday that Mizuho managing director Dan Dolev and his team surveyed approximately 235 individuals with less than $150,000 of household income. Of that, about 200 said they expect to receive the third round of direct stimulus payments in the coming days.
Stimulus check BTC and stock allocation
The results show that 35% – 40% of the people that participated in this survey are aiming to invest some of it in crypto (Bitcoin) or stocks, with 61% saying they would choose Bitcoin over equities.
The survey predicts that bitcoin will account for 60% of total incremental investment spend. We calculate it could add as much as 2-3% to bitcoin’s current $1.1t trillion market value
Dan Dolev, Mizuho Securities, MD
Source: Know-your-meme
Considering the sample size of the survey is only 235 it remains to be seen whether these outcomes will come to fruition, yet the outlook is positive that a reasonable part of the stimulus will find its way into the crypto economy.
Others Also Weighed in on How Stimulus Checks Might be Spent
Mizuho isn’t the only one making predictions, David Kostin, Goldman’s chief U.S. equity strategist recently stated :
We expect households will be the largest source of equity demand this year […] A good chunk of the new stimulus money about to be funnelled into American households shortly via the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill may find its way into the stock market
David Kostin, Goldman’s chief U.S. equity strategist
Ray Dalio also commented yesterday on investing and that money shouldn’t be spent on bonds due to “ridiculously low yields” and rather encouraged people to buy higher-returning, non-debt investment assets in a LinkedIn Blog post.
JPMorgan’s relationship with crypto has been a long and turbulent one. Back in 2017, Matt Dimon — the chief executive of JPMorgan — called it a fraud and said he would fire any of his employees investing in it.
“The currency isn’t going to work. You can’t have a business where people can invent a currency out of thin air and think that people who are buying it are really smart. I would fire them in a second, for two reasons: It is against our rules and they are stupid, and both are dangerous.”
However, they’ve since softened their stance, allegedly going so far as to have meetings with high-level Coinbase management.
Memo On Crypto Risks and Benefits Sent Out
This February, a memo explaining crypto to clients was sent out by the JPMorgan Private Bank. The prestigious bank requires clients to have at least $10 million to deposit when opening an account, and it is the chosen business of many high-rollers worldwide.
Daniel Pinto — the co-president of JPMorgan — stated last month that although clients are not clamouring for crypto facilities just yet, they almost certainly will in the future. He reportedly added that he himself is personally open to more expansion into the crypto space.
The memo sent out to clients provides 3 ways that the real value of Bitcoin should be measured.
Primo — by applying Metcalfe’s law which gives the value of an asset as equal to the square of its users, Bitcoin should be valued at $21,667.
Secundo — If the going rate on gold would be transposed into the crypto space, Bitcoin should be worth $540,814.
But the highest value possibly assigned to Bitcoin comes from the third way of evaluating it.
Tertio — If the total amount of money is compared to the total supply of Bitcoin available, Bitcoin should be worth $1.9 million.
The takeaway seems to be that although cryptocurrencies are as volatile as always, big banks seem to agree that their future could be much brighter than it may seem even after a year where cryptocurrencies skyrocketed. However, caution is still advised — just in case Metcalfe is right.
After founding the first two Bitcoin ETFs in North America last week, Canadian authorities have now set their sights on an even loftier goal – being the first country in the world to found an ETF for Ethereum.
First Of Its Kind
If the filing is approved, the ETF will be traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) as ETHX.
CI Global Asset Management released a statement outlining their action plan, stating that cryptocurrencies are not only here to stay – they are changing the way the financial world operates. As a result, they intend to stay well ahead of the curve by founding an ETF for the 2nd largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
According to Kurt McAlpine – the CEO of CI Financial, which is CI GAM’s parent company – the ETH ETF will reduce the number of hoops traditional investors have to jump through before investing in what they see as the future of currency.
“CI is quickly establishing a leadership position in this space, having launched CI Galaxy Bitcoin Fund and recently filing a preliminary prospectus for CI Galaxy Bitcoin ETF, in partnership with blockchain and cryptocurrency experts Galaxy Digital. With these funds, we are reducing the friction points that investors have traditionally faced in buying and holding cryptocurrencies. CI Galaxy Ethereum ETF is an important addition to that lineup as this emerging asset class gains increasing interest and validation.”
Furthermore, Mike Novogratz – the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Galaxy Digital Holdings – stated that Ethereum’s decentralized nature that lends itself to building applications on it’s blockchain stands to become a pillar of the so-called “Web 3.0”.
If approved, ETHX will invest directly in Ethereum using its holdings – which will be priced using the Bloomberg Galaxy Ethereum Index, which is owned by Bloomberg Index Services.
