Category: Exchanges

A growing number of crypto tax software developers are trying to bolster their products’ technical credibility with the Certified Public Accountant’s (CPA) stamp of attestation.  Attestation is an independent review conducted by a CPA, whose report includes conclusions about the reliability of data, statements – or systems, in the case of software services. Lukka and Verady, two competing developers, both announced on Jan. 21 their tax software solutions have received System and Organization Control (SOC) attestation reports from independent auditors. In doing so, the companies’ respective executives told CoinDesk, they…

Deribit is launching daily options as the exchange faces increasing competition in the crypto options market. Deribit announced this week it would begin offering daily bitcoin index options Feb. 3. Scheduled every day at 08:00 UTC, users will be able to begin trading options at a strike price of $125. Contracts expire two days after being listed. The exchange will try to offer contracts that move within a 5-percent range around at-the-money (ATM) levels, Deribit’s post said. The news gives traders a much wider range of expiry dates, and the…

Prosecutors appear to have a strong case against Virgil Griffith, the ethereum developer charged with conspiring to aid North Korea, legal experts say. For one thing, the mere act of giving a presentation in Pyongyang might have violated the U.S. Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control’s (OFAC) sanctions, depending on what he said there, according to lawyers interviewed by CoinDesk. So could attempting to transfer money between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and another nation, as Griffith allegedly did. It probably won’t help his case if the…

Bitfinex, the world’s seventh-largest bitcoin exchange by trade volume, has launched margin trading for Tether Gold (XAU₮), enabling traders to execute more advanced strategies on the yellow metal in a digital form. As of Jan 30, 12:00 UTC, traders are now able to execute on margin using Tether Gold against pairings such as tether’s native stablecoin (USDT), bitcoin (BTC) and the U.S. dollar (USD). These pairs can now be traded with initial equity of as low as 20 percent, giving traders a maximum of up to 5 times leverage, according…

Roger Thomas Clark, an alleged operator behind the Silk Road darknet marketplace and advisor to founder Ross Ulbricht, pleaded guilty to “conspiring to distribute massive quantities of narcotics,” prosecutors announced Thursday. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said in a press release that Clark, who was known online as “Plural of Mongoose,” “Variety Jones,” “VJ” and “cimon,” pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, and will be sentenced on May 29. Silk Road is most famous for being a darknet marketplace where users could purchase…

Silvergate Bank is venturing even further into a field where few financial institutions dare to tiptoe. The La Jolla, Calif., lender made a name for itself providing hard-to-come-by U.S.-dollar banking services for businesses that deal in cryptocurrency. But now Silvergate wants to handle digital assets themselves. While the bank has no such services in its roadmap yet, it has applied for the New York trust license with the aim of providing custody and settlement for crypto. One example of this might look like “providing settlement services for their bitcoin trades,”…

Nomura Research Institute (NRI) will launch a benchmark rank and compare Japanese cryptocurrency assets on Friday. The Tokyo-based management consultancy and research firm said the “NRI/IU Crypto-Asset Index Family” – created in coordination with Intelligence Unit LLC (IU) – will be available through NRI’s financial information database, IDS, to domestic and overseas institutional investors, financial information vendors and crypto exchanges. The benchmark is intended to pull together information specific to the Japanese cryptocurrency market, including data on crypto-yen pairs and closing values, all in local time. A benchmark index is…

Gitcoin, BCash and Zcash all try different paths to fund public protocol development, plus the latest in CBDCs from Japan and Cambodia and Andrew Yang on crypto. The best way to fund open-source projects remains a question,and one that – in the context of crypto protocols – has never had higher stakes. Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen live action experiments in a number of different approaches.  Gitcoin Grants used a quadratic funding program to match grants to technology builders and media creators in Ethereum.  After months and months of…

Listia is discontinuing work on the Ink protocol, a cryptocurrency built for marketplaces, CoinDesk has learned. The project was funded with a $15 million token sale for the XNK ERC-20 token, which announced results in January 2018. Listia, a used-goods marketplace, is now shifting entirely to the props network, created by Union Square Ventures–backed startup YouNow. “We are not shutting down anything like the team, operations or any of the new tech that we have built, but yes we have decided to move our apps and tech on top of…

They’re definitely not equity, but could “exchange tokens” be bellwethers for one of crypto’s best use cases? (Spoiler: Probably not) Among thousands of venture-backed startups, tokens, coins, blockchains and open-source technology projects, exchange operators now stand out among the top revenue getters in the crypto asset category. Coinbase, not the largest by trading volume even among exchanges whose trade data is trusted, reported $173 million in 2018 non-U.S. revenue, leading Reuters to estimate Coinbase’s global revenue as north of $500 million.  If crypto has proven itself in one use case,…