Note: regarding Chain.com, employees are still talking about Bitcoin and Sequence on Twitter, not much about enterprise DLT. See below for an example of some odd maximalism by one of their developers.
Source: Twitter
- Waves sets up self-regulatory body to set ICO standards (Finextra) – hard to imagine the ICO “industry” being able to self-regulate beyond standardized press release formats
- SEC Halts Multimillion-Dollar ‘Munchee’ ICO for Securities Violations (CoinDesk) – the SEC cited several social media posts and Youtube videos in its takedown
- UBS to Launch Live Ethereum Compliance Platform (CoinDesk) been told this is a legit use case from multiple people
- Ethereum soars above $600 after a group of big banks announce a new project on its blockchain (Business Insider) it is actually above $700 now and the project is the same UBS one mentioned above
- Shares of retailer-turned-bitcoin-play Overstock.com rocket higher after Morgan Stanley reveals stake (CNBC) unclear why Morgan Stanley would invest in them, when was the last time you purchased something on Overstock?
- Chinese Bitcoin Exchange Goes Overseas After Government Shutdown (Caixin) this is Huobi making a deal with SBI Holdings. This is like 3rd or 4th cryptocurrency exchange that SBI has inked a deal with
- SunTrust joins Zelle (Finextra) anecdote: i used Square Cash this week but not Zelle (incidentally it was for lunch, and the guy paying didn’t have Venmo either).
- BitGo closes $42.5m Series B funding round (Finextra)
- The Visa innovation chief who was fired had a history of affairs with subordinates (Recode)
- Vanguard applies Symbiont smart contracts to improve index data distribution (Finextra) still unclear how big a deal this is relative to say, what DAH is doing with ASX or what Axoni is doing with DTCC and others.
- Blockchain holds promise for insurance industry (Business Insurance) quoted Stephen Palley (an attorney)
- We use blockchain to manage and transfer large amounts of data between a consortium of government agencies. (AWS for Government) there are a few slides pictured in the tweet from Chromaway’s presentation. Here’s a video from that event.
- Despite growth in regtech adoption, widespread manual processes leave firms exposed (Finextra) lots of stats although none that directly related to DLT
- Japan-South Korea blockchain payments enter trials Friday (Nikkei) 61 banks led by the SBI joint venture; the vendor is DAYLI Intelligence
- Facebook Messenger VP Joins Coinbase’s Board of Directors (Coindesk) the only surprise here is that David Marcus didn’t join Xapo’s board
- Cboe Gemini Bitcoin Futures Index launches (Finextra) earlier today, CME launched its futures product
- Mt Gox Creditors File Lawsuit to Haul Company out of Bankruptcy (BitsOnline) this is somewhat funny because: the appreciation of bitcoin since 2014 basically means that the 200k+ bitcoins that Mt. Gox still has, is now worth more than $3 billion and they want to cancel the bankruptcy
- 1000 different people, the same words (textio) non fintech news, but I thought it was interesting seeing the word association with values at companies
- “At over $2bn in volume today, Ripple will make $5mm in revenue selling 25bps of XRP, their standard selling pattern. It’s conceivable the company could make $500mm in annualized revenue in Q4. Yep.” (Ryan Selkis) Note: I spoke to a couple trader friends and they think Selkis’ math is a bit wrong because not all volume goes through Miguel Vias’ in NYC, that OTC desks like Genesis and Circle take a cut of that flow
- 2018: The Year We Make Cont(r)act (CoinDesk) this is an op-ed from Massimo Morini who is one of the most original thinkers
- FCA publishes Feedback Statement on Distributed Ledger Technology (FCA) they worked on this paper with a couple vendors on this including R3
- Blockchain consortium Hyperledger loses members, funding: documents (Reuters)
- Bitcoin futures are about to get another big boost (CNBC) TD Ameritrade is opening up futures trading on Monday
- Walmart, JD.com, IBM and Tsinghua University Launch a Blockchain Food Safety Alliance in China (PR)
- Maker sells $12M of MKR to partners, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital (PR) the same VCs are always in the same deals… this one is a “stablecoin”
- Japanese Internet Giant To Offer Bitcoin For Payroll (PYMNTS) GMO Internet Group, part of salaries can be paid in BTC, seems like a big risk with these volatility swings
- Deutsche Bank Says Japan’s Retail Investors Are Behind Bitcoin’s Surge (Bloomberg) supposedly a bunch of guys in their ’30s and ’40s day trading
- Coinbase Wants Wall Street to Resolve Its Bitcoin Trust Issues (Bloomberg) basically they want to be viewed as a bank… a bit ironic considering the Bitcoin “origin story.” Also, they have 225 employees
- UPS bets on blockchain as the future of the trillion-dollar shipping industry (TechCrunch)
- US Treasury Report: DLT Data Storage Raises Oversight Concerns (CoinDesk)
- Citi, CME Group Implement Baton Systems’ Distributed Ledger Platform to Drive Down Cost of Margin Funding (PR) this is Dan Mandell’s company (who previously worked at Dwolla and GS)
- Thales Outflanks Atos With Surprise $5.6 Billion Bid for Gemalto (Bloomberg)
- Cryptocurrency Can Promote National Security (WSJ) two people with legit backgrounds left the government to join Bittrex
- HPE Will Offer R3 Corda Blockchain Tech On Its Non-Stop Computing Platform (Forbes)
- A source involved said 9 banks are involved in Digital Trade Chain (vendor is IBM) and they’re looking at other uses (such as supply chain management).
- DCI will begin to license parts of their CBDC toolkit next year. The team has been heads down working on a fork of Bitcoin and Lightning. They charge about $1m per year but that is just for research, not for the IP.
- According to a source: two medium-sized DLT vendors recently pitched their tech for retail CBDCs to central banks but since the platforms are closed source the central banks are not very receptive.
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