When it comes to choosing between blockchain and more traditional investments, the grass may be greener in the stock market, said Peter Brandt — the CEO of proprietary trading firm, Factor LLC. He went on to note, however, that it all depends on people’s choice of base currency. Brandt was clear that he had transitioned into mostly U.S. dollars while scoping out his next moves. “Right now I think the opportunities are greater in the equities market than they are in the crypto market,” he told Cointelegraph on Sept. 9. …
Month: September 2020
INX starts accepting crypto payments after raising $7.5M in its IPO
INX, a Gibraltar-based cryptocurrency exchange, is now accepting major cryptocurrencies as part of its initial public offering, or IPO. The company hopes to raise $117 million from both retail and institutional investors. According to the announcement, more than 3,000 retail and accredited investors registered for the INX token offering in the first 3 days. INX says that the company set the offering price $0.90 per token with a minimum investment of $1,000. BTC/USD, ETH/USD and USDC/USD exchange rates will be determined in the manner as disclosed in the final prospectus,…
Crypto.com views Chainlink integration as a gateway to DeFi
Crypto.com (CRO) is adding Chainlink’s price feeds to its DeFi wallet as it begins expansion into the booming space. The company chief operating officer Eric Anziani told Cointelegraph: “I would say with the partnership with Chainlink is kind of our first integration with a DeFi protocol, it brings value to our customers in terms of providing transparency in the prices that we’re giving them in our DeFi wallet and also making sure our ecosystem token CRO can be integrated into the external protocol by building a price feed for CRO…
Crypto mining and remote work drive GPU sales boom in Russia
Graphic cards’ sales in Russia are surging amid an increase in remote work as well as the apparent growth in cryptocurrency mining, a new report says. According to several local retailers like Citilink and Svyaznoy, crypto mining-related sales of graphic cards in Russia notably surged in August 2020, Kommersant reported on Sept. 14. Alexey Rusakov, an executive at local tech distributor Citilink, told Kommersant that sales from mining-enabled graphic cards have spiked 49% in August. This comes in line with a two-fold increase in sales by tech giant Nvidia on a year-on-year…
Report on global blockchain ecosystem by CV VC, PwC and Cointelegraph
From enterprise blockchain adoption to the rise of decentralized finance, it seems like the blockchain landscape is constantly evolving in different ways. While impressive, it’s important to understand how blockchain is being applied within various industries. In order to highlight blockchain’s current global impact, a Swiss blockchain investment firm, CV VC, is releasing a new report together with Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers Switzerland and Cointelegraph. Entitled “CV VC Global Report H1/2020,” this report provides a detailed overview of companies applying blockchain technology across eight different sectors, including art, crypto banking,…
No one can refuse China’s digital currency, says central bank exec
China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) known as the digital yuan should be regulated in line with cash-related laws, according to a senior exec at the country’s central bank. In an opinion article on Sept. 14, Fan Yifei, a deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), outlined the major regulatory principles for the operation of the digital yuan. the digital representation of the official currency of the People’s Republic of China. According to Fan, the digital renminbi is legally compensatory to the traditional fiat currency. In the article, the deputy governor…
China’s national blockchain project to support DAML smart contract language
The Blockchain Services Network (BSN), the largest blockchain infrastructure initiative in China, now has a unified smart contract programming language. Red Date Technology, a major tech company involved in the BSN’s development, will add support for DAML — a smart contract language developed by American blockchain startup Digital Asset. Announcing the news on Sept. 14, the companies’ executives said that DAML will now be the “exclusive standard” for developing decentralized applications, or DApps, on top of the BSN. The integration will enable the interoperability of DApps regardless of the implemented blockchain…
Investing in DeFi? Bet on diversification, not short-term gains
The decentralized finance space has grown exponentially over the last few months, to the point where more than $9 billion worth of crypto assets were locked in its protocols before crypto prices started dropping. The space had a little over $500 million locked in back in September 2019. This exponential growth in the last few months appears to be mainly related to a yield farming trend that started when lending protocol Compound began distributing its COMP governance token to users who interacted with the protocol. Put simply, yield farming —…
New technology changes the game
Economists, pundits, institutions and investors often talk about the global financial system. When stocks go up and trade thrives, they applaud its contributions to prosperity; when the markets crash and stocks dip, they blame its inhuman scale or its untrustworthy manipulators. But anyone who has attempted to diversify their portfolio with foreign stocks or acquire another nation’s bonds quickly comes to the same conclusion: The global financial system isn’t a single entity. “The system,” singular, is really “The systems,” plural. How do the pieces of the global financial system interact?…
How on-chain KYC can breathe new life into enterprise blockchain
Of all the developments in blockchain technology over recent years, enterprise adoption has perhaps been the most anticlimactic. As the initial coin offering bubble started to inflate during 2017, blockchain entrepreneurs and commentators alike were hyping the technology as a solution for almost every industry and business problem in existence. Fast-forward to 2020, and progress in enterprise blockchain has been lethargic at best. Almost without exception, notable implementations of enterprise “blockchain,” such as IBM’s Food Trust or Maersk-led Trade-ins, have used distributed permissioned ledgers. Proponents of blockchain technology point to…