While speaking at an event by the office of Financial Research Federal Reserve Vice Chairman for Supervision Randal Quarles talk about the issues digital currencies could pose to the markets; the current level of use doesn’t pose a risk but as the scale of usage increases so does the potential potential problem; Quarles said, “if the central asset in a payment system cannot be predictably redeemed for the U.S. dollar at a stable exchange rate in times of adversity, the resulting price risk and potential liquidity and credit risk pose a large challenge for the system.”; he also talked about the the benefits of blockchain technology and if the central bank would issue their own digital currency. Source.
Bittrex customers are unable to withdraw money from the cryptocurrency exchange and they have not heard from the company as to why this is occurring; the main issues appear to be involving verification of identities when they try to withdraw the money; the issues have been going on for close to 30 days for some customers and the company said the issue has only affected a small number of accounts. Source.
The statement provides considerations for main street investors and market professionals; investors should be aware of the risks of these types of investments which have less investor protections compared to the traditional securities market; to date no coin offerings have been registered by the SEC; the statement notes, “A change in the structure of a securities offering does not change the fundamental point that when a security is being offered, our securities laws must be followed.” Source
Bitcoin is the financial phenomenon of the year; Peter Renton, Founder of Lend Academy and Co-Founder of LendIt shares his thoughts on cryptocurrencies as well as a breakdown of his holdings. Source
With cryptocurrency market caps rising and futures markets being adopted 2017 saw hedge funds pour over $2bn into the space; the figures come from a Morgan Stanley note sent to clients with research included from Autonomous NEXT; the note also shows 84 of 100 crypto related funds started in 2017; this year has helped the market to begin being more widely accepted by traditional institutional investors. Source.
Prices of cryptocurrencies NEO, OMG and ETP crashed close to 90 percent on the Bitfinex exchange before reverting back to normal levels; the crash caused the closure of many accounts that made leveraged trades and lost those accounts thousands in potential profits; Bitfinex claims the exchange worked as it should in the situation, but traders disagreed and complained via social media about the crash as well as demanding refunds; the site was slow to respond and traders unable to access their accounts according to complaints; incidents like this test the overall cryptocurrency markets as many believe they are unstable and not safe. Source.
Coinbase has been the top cryptocurrency exchange for the US market as it’s process makes signing up and buying bitcoin simple; they have seen accounts jump from 5.5 million to more than 13 million in less than a year; their success has not been without growing pains with a number of outages occurring and customers lodging complaints that no one was available to help them; recently they also came to an agreement with the IRS to hand over records of customers involving more than $20,000 which was a compromise from a year long battle. Source.
IOTA has increased in value to $10 billion, up from $4 billion in about two weeks; the cryptocurrency though is different than most in that it is not based on blockchain; the article outlines how IOTA tokens work, which use a “tangle” to address the high cost of blockchain transactions. Source
eToro partnered with CoinDash to develop a set of social trading products built on blockchain technology; eToro CEO Yoni Assia tells Banking Technology, “With thousands of new coins in the market, it can be difficult for mainstream investors to navigate this new space. The CoinDash team is enabling users to better analyse their investments in cryptocurrencies, and to learn from others.”; the eToro marketplace has more than 4.5 million users in over 170 countries, they allow users to trade based on copying or following other individual’s portfolios and recently added access to cryptocurrencies. Source.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Founders Fund has amasses hundreds of millions of dollars or bitcoin recently; the fund started with about $10mn to $15mn worth of bitcoin and has since seen that initial investment skyrocket; while many traditional wall street names have yet to buy into bitcoin the move by Mr. Thiel and his fund point to their confidence in the currency; during an interview in October Mr. Thiel was reported to say, “While I’m skeptical of most of them, I do think people are a little bit underestimating bitcoin, specifically, because it is like a reserve form of money.” Source.