Taylor Scott, Author at tridEX

4th June 2021

Celsius Crosses New Company-High In BTC Assets

Crypto yield-earning platform Celsius now holds over 100 bitcoin, according to a company press release issued today. BTC accounts for roughly 25% of the platform’s total community assets.

Celsius: The In’s And Out’s

Despite a challenging month for bitcoin in May, the company also reported that BTC users with inflows over doubled the amount of users transferring out BTC, with roughly 750,000 users globally. The company’s landmark passing of 100K BTC holdings sets a new company high.

APY rewards for Celsius users vary, generally between 3.51% – 6.2% for U.S. users, depending on the amount of BTC in their account. International customers are currently offered 4.4% APY for BTC in their Celsius accounts. In today’s release, the company noted that nearly 2,500 BTC have been paid out to customers in crypto rewards.

The other side of Celsius’ business is through borrowing; the firm offers no origination fees, no credit checks, easy refinance options, and aggressive rates for borrowers in both USD and in a variety of stablecoins. Crypto lending has increased in popularity recently, and could potentially improve general liquidity and price discovery for many assets, but also comes with inherent risks.

Related Reading | Celsius Network’s CEL Token Now Listed On OKEx

The Competition

Celsius continues to emerge in a competitive DeFi crypto lending landscape, battling with notable contenders such as Nexo and BlockFi. Aggressive rates continue to be a major sticking point for consumers. BlockFi is currently offering anywhere from 0.5% to 5% APY for BTC interest, and Nexo is currently offering between 6% and 8% APY on BTC interest. Rates often are variable and can fluctuate, and will also depend on whether the consumer is redeeming them through BTC or through the platform’s native coin. However, native token rewards are typically not accessible for U.S. consumers.

Celsius' native token, CEL, is sitting at record high levels lately. | Source: CEL-USD on TradingView.com

What It Means

Celsius started off in 2017 and now looks to maintain a somewhat aggressive strategy to grow it’s position in the market, amassing over $5B in crypto assets. The firm continues to look at partnerships to bolster growth, including a recent partnership with NBA athlete and crypto entrepreneur Spencer Dinwiddie, and increasing conversations surrounding the firm’s upcoming web app.

Additionally, the platform could likely look at more corporate partners to increase growth as well. Last month, the platform partnered with B21 Crypto, a global, mobile-first crypto platform. This allowed B21 to launch a new ‘Earn’ feature, allowing the company’s users across 82 different countries access to the weekly yield services that Celsius provides to it’s consumers. The company has also invested further in similar partnerships that have already been established, including crypto exchange Liquid. Liquid was the first exchange to support Celsius’ native CEL token in 2019.

2nd June 2021

Google Adjusts Crypto Ad Policy

Search engine turned tech behemoth Google is adjusting it’s advertisement policy around cryptocurrency wallet and exchange services, according to a web announcement from the company today. Changes are set to take effect in August. Let’s take a look at the brass tax around the new policy, and how it differs from Google’s stance over the past few years:

The Google Policy: What’s Changing?

Effective August 3rd, crypto exchanges and wallets targeting U.S. consumers “may advertise those products and services when they meet the following requirements and are certified by Google”, according to the published statement. The adjustment is part of Google’s broader Financial products and services policy.

The aforementioned requirements in the initial report include registration with both “FinCEN as a Money Services Business and with at least one state as a money transmitter” or “a federal or state chartered bank entity”. Previous Cryptocurrency Exchange certificates that were issued will be revoked, and crypto wallet and exchange firms must request new certificates as early as July, once applications are made available.

Additionally, advertisers will still need to comply with any relevant local, state, and federal legal requirements, and comply with broader Google Ads policies.

Notably, the update also specifically excludes “initial coin offerings, DeFi trading protocols, or otherwise promoting the purchase, sale, or trade of cryptocurrencies or related products” from being advertisers. Additionally, “ad destinations that aggregate or compare issuers of cryptocurrencies or related products” will also not be allowed.

Google’s History With Crypto Ads

The policy change is the first since 2018, when cryptocurrency advertising was broadly banned early in the year. By September of 2018, the search engine relaxed their policy and allowed exchanges to become ‘certified’ with Google in order to advertise. Certification was applicable only for advertisers targeting U.S. and Japanese markets.

This has led to unique challenges, particularly for exchanges looking to build rapport in the U.S. market.

Increased crypto adoption has likely been in a factor in influencing Google's recent policy adjustment | Source: CRYPTOCAP on TradingView.com

What It Means

The move suggests that Google is warming up to allowing crypto exchanges and wallets advertise, while still implementing substantial regulatory hurdles in order to do so. Despite going unchanged for years, today’s adjustment in policy certainly wasn’t anticipated by most crypto advertisers. While the door will still remain closed for a good portion of crypto institutions, the policy is undoubtedly more lenient than it’s predecessor from 2018.

Despite strict guidelines to date, the firm has still faced past scrutiny for allowing scam projects to slip through company advertising rules; how that is impacted moving forward remains to be seen.

1st June 2021

The Soccer Club That’s Offering Ownership Via NFT

Thought you’ve seen it all in NFTs? Think again. Sure, we’ve seen digital art collectibles, even some with tangible assets intertwined. Recently, we’ve even seen NFTs including things like patents and Nobel Prize-winning invention documentation. Today, Liga MX franchise Club Necaxa announced their intent to offer something especially unique via NFT – team ownership.

Bidding Is Big: Club Necaxa

The soccer club is fresh off the heels of selling nearly half the franchise; the recent sale valued the franchise in the “low nine figures” according to a Sportico report. The sale was also noteworthy in that it was US investors first venture into what’s described as “the NFL of Mexico”. Real estate investor Al Tylis and DC United executive Sam Porter spearheaded that effort. Major capital investors from NBA players like Shawn Marion, Richard Hamilton, and Victor Oladipo, along with other names in sport such as Justin Verlander and Mesut Ozil joined in with the ownership group as well.

With regards to the purchase, Tylis said that “sports are effectively media properties, and I saw something a while back that I found relatively shocking: In the U.S. alone, more people watch Liga MX than Major League Soccer and Premiere League combined – it was just an unbelievable number to me.”

Tylis has recognized the NFT ‘buzz’ as well, acknowledging that the attention in such a unique NFT listing certainly was part of the draw. The decision was “absolutely a way to generate interest” in Necaxa and noted that they are “adding something unique, and which has never been done before” in implementing an NFT with club ownership.

OpenSea runs on the Ethereum network, and will be host to Necaxa's initial club token sale. | Source: ETH-USD on TradingView.com

The Club Necaxa Token

The one-of-one token is set to go up for auction in the days to come, and will run until June 18th. The franchise has said that it will carry permanent equity, not subject to dilution or future capital calls. The 1% ownership will always be 1%. The token will be listed on OpenSea and will remain transferrable after initial sale. Blockchain consultancy B9Labs worked with the franchise in launching the token, which is expected to launch with a $1.3M starting ask price.

Beyond franchise ownership, the club’s token will also allow the owner access to club facilities, tickets for both home and away games, and any championship rings that the club wins.

While many soccer clubs have been looking at, or engaging with, ‘fan tokens’ – often launched by companies like Socios, Necaxa is turning the dial up a notch here. Digital presence, meet tangible ownership.

Related Reading | Marsis: Creating New Frontiers In NFTs Space

28th May 2021

SEC Sues Five People Over BitConnect Lending Program

A Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) civil lawsuit has been filed against five individuals allegedly involved in promoting BitConnect’s “lending program”. BitConnect shut down it’s main lending platform operations in 2018 after regulatory warnings and allegations of fraud.

The SEC’s Civil Lawsuit

In a press release issue today on the SEC website, the body alleges that the individuals contributed to promoting and raising over $2B from retail investors in an unregistered digital asset securities offering. The issued complaint alleges that a network of promoters, four of the five defendants, offered and sold securities as part of the platform’s lending program without being registered broker-dealers, and without registering the securities with the SEC. This includes a flurry of “testimonial” style videos, the press release states, uploaded to YouTube to justify the merits behind the program. Promoters received commissions based around their success of soliciting funds, the complaint states.

The fifth individual listed in the complaint is accused of “aiding and abetting” the unregistered offering and sales, as a liaison between BitConnect and the promoters, and as a company representative at events and conferences.

In the press release statement, New York SEC Associate Regional Director Lara Shalov Mehraban stated “we allege that these defendants unlawfully sold unregistered digital asset securities by actively promoting the BitConnect lending program to retail investors. We will seek to hold accountable those who illegally profit by capitalizing on the public’s interest in digital assets.”

The BitConnect History

The platform initially launched in 2016, paralleled with the BitConnect Coin (BCC); the company leveraged a so-called “trading bot” and offered high-yield returns to users with daily calculated interest. Within the following year, UK government bodies were demanding BitConnect to verify it’s legitimacy, and by 2018, the operations started to shut down following increased government pressure in the U.S.

The BitConnect Coin, at it’s peak trading at nearly $500, immediately dropped over 90% following the shutdown. State securities divisions had started to apply pressure right before the shutdown, including alleging that BitConnect was a Ponzi scheme, and that BitConnect was not registered to sell securities in their respective states. Within weeks, BitConnect’s assets were frozen following a temporary restraining order.

It was undoubtedly a dramatic rise and fall for BitConnect. Take a blast from the past with our NewsBTC write-up following the platform’s shutdown.

$XRP is the latest token to face SEC scrutiny. | Source: XRP-USD on TradingView.com

SEC Scrutiny

With continued emergence in broader crypto and blockchain technologies, platforms, and projects, the SEC has been active in recent years. Most notably, Ripple’s XRP has been at the forefront of SEC investigation, and is speculated to potentially developing a “Ripple Test”, as the Howey Test could be put to the max as part of the SEC’s review. Generally speaking, many see Ripple Labs as being plenty capable to overcome the SEC’s scrutiny, and Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse recently stated that Ripple Labs could very likely go public following the SEC’s resolution. The SEC is alleging that Ripple engaged in lobbying efforts to alter the public’s perception of XRP.

28th May 2021

UC Berkeley To Auction Nobel Prize-Winning Inventions As NFTs

NFTs have been a pillar around a variety of upcoming projects and firms. From music, to fashion, to sports – and beyond – NFTs have been a hot topic. Now, the University of California Berkeley is looking to fund research by way of two NFTs at the heart of “biomedical breakthroughs”.

Magnificent Minting

In an announcement on the UC Berkeley website today, the university shared that two Nobel-Prize winning inventions will be up for bidding. The NFTs will consist of internal forms and correspondence centered around research that led to two groundbreaking biomedical advances.

One of the two NFTs, titled ‘The Fourth Pillar’, has been minted on Foundation and will be listed in a 24-hour auction as early as Wednesday, June 2nd. The NFT represents an invention around cancer immunotherapy developed by UC Berkeley’s Jim Allison. Allison’s discovery shared the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The name is driven from immunotherapy becoming the ‘fourth pillar’ of cancer therapy, alongside surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.

The second NFT, yet to be minted, will recognize UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna for her 2020 Nobel in Chemistry, centered around CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing. The informational release has noted that the university will continue to hold the relevant patents surrounding the research.

Foundation.app is an Ethereum-powered NFT marketplace. | Source: ETH-USD on TradingView.com

Blockchain At Berkeley

The proceeds from the Foundation auction will go towards funding innovation research and education, with a portion going specifically to UC Berkeley’s blockchain innovation hub and student group, ‘Blockchain at Berkeley’. The university has also engaged in blockchain through other means, such as the Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator, a blockchain-focused curriculum and partnership with industry executives.

The university’s chief innovation & entrepreneurship officer Rich Lyons said that the release “represents something magnificent”. Lyons added that “there are people who recognize and care about symbols of great science, and even if they never intend to resell the NFT, they want to own it and they want resources to go back to Berkeley, where the basic research behind these Nobel Prizes came from, to support further research”.

The university will also take a portion of the proceeds and allocate them towards carbon offsets to eliminate the energy costs of minting the NFT.

It’s uncharted territory for the university here, as no precedent has been set on an NFT like this. However, to Lyons and the Berkeley team, there seems to be a bit of allure in that sense; “people give us donations all the time because they care about the institution and the science, so here is a way for somebody to invest in the institution in a slightly different way”, Lyons said.

26th May 2021

Polygon (MATIC) Releasing Development Kit For Ethereum-Connected Chains

Safe to say, Polygon has been on a tear lately. On the heels of a DappRadar report noting more than 75,000 active users and nearly $1B in value flows through their layer 2 protocol, the Polygon team has announced a new developer SDK for streamlined app creation. In the past month, our team at NewsBTC anticipated continued success for MATIC, and now the protocol is unleashing more developer-friendly materials.

Polygon’s SDK

Polygon-tracked apps continue to grow with regards to DeFi and Exchange-related categories. Today’s announcement will allow developers to continue that growth. Polygon announced that they will be launching a new software development kit (or SDK) for developers to unleash their own Ethereum-connected blockchains. The SDK will include a number of different plug-and-play modules and the team has stated it was designed to reflect a “Polkadot on Ethereum” approach.

The SDK is set to include modules like consensus, synchronization, TxPool, JSON RPC and gRPC. An initial version of the SDK will allow developers to create standalone chains with complete interoperability with Ethereum; a following version of the kit will enable dev teams to create layer 2 protocols directly connected to Ethereum mainnet.

The Perspective

Compatibility with Ethereum as the protocol optimizes is clearly top of mind for the Polygon team. While scalability for Ethereum is a major talking point, Polygon is at the forefront of the conversation in terms of protocols addressing scalability concerns, while still looking to implement interoperability. In a statement surrounding the SDK’s release, co-founder Sandeep Nailwal noted that “with advanced ‘layer 2’ solutions, Ethereum 2.0 all coming online now or soon, the need for a comprehensive interoperability framework is stronger than ever. With the Polygon SDK, we are solving pressing needs for Ethereum’s multi-chain future, including ease of deployment and inter-L2 communication”.

$MATIC has seen a strong recovery after the recent market-wide slide | Source: MATIC-USD on TradingView.com

Looking Forward

As DeFi continues a high-flying emergence, Polygon looks to continue to be on the forefront. The protocol emphasizes lower gas fees relative to Ethereum, and fast transaction speeds. The aforementioned user growth, along with the protocol’s transaction speeds, have led to increased market attention. The protocol also took a vocal approach in a re-brand from Matic in recent months. Accordingly, billionaire Mark Cuban has is a recent investor, and is quickly implementing it into his NFT portfolio company Lazy.com. Other recent partnerships include computing network Aleph.im, with a focus on security and permanence in the NFT market.

Following the news, $MATIC has continued to show strong growth with prices nearing record-highs, and is looking to crack the top 10 in crypto in terms of market cap.

24th May 2021

UPenn’s Wharton: DeFi Can “Transform Global Finance”

The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business is consistently seen as one of the best business programs in the U.S., and is the oldest collegiate school of business on the globe. In a new ‘Blockchain and Digital Asset Project’ report, titled “DeFi Beyond the Hype”, Wharton School contributors detail the ins and outs of DeFi, and conclude that DeFi has the “potential to transform global finance”.

DeFi Beyond The Hype: An Overview

The Wharton report, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, provides an excellent high-level overview of the current DeFi landscape. On the first page of the twenty page brief, the team acknowledges that despite growth in DeFi services surging from under $1B in 2019 to over $80B in present day, DeFi as we know it is still “early in its maturation”.

The Wharton collaborators, led by Professor Kevin Werbach, bucket DeFi services into six different silos: stablecoins, exchanges, credit, derivatives, insurance, and asset management. The report goes on to take a deep dive into each of these silos and how DeFi operates within them, while still acknowledging that at times, the lines between them can get blurred. Werbach and team provide a strong fundamental overview looking at all the key parts of the DeFi machine as well (wallets, oracles, digital assets, etc.).

The team also outlines four “defining characteristics” of DeFi: engaging with financial services, trust-minimized operation and settlement (i.e., public permissionless blockchain integration), non-custodial design, and open, programmable, and composable architecture.

Related Reading | Top 10 DeFi Projects In Q2 2021

Addressing The Details

The report takes the time to address the gritty details that make DeFi so desirable for some, such as governance tokens and other incentives that drive liquidity. It also addresses the costs and benefits of this decentralization, and outlines the fine lines between centralized governance, partially decentralized governance, and decentralized governance.

Additionally, the report looks to outline opportunities and challenges in DeFi while being somewhat partial. Opportunities are vast, and include aspects such as reduced friction and transaction costs, improved accountability, improved market access, and greater inclusivity of financial services. However, they don’t come without inherent challenges, like throughput, operability across blockchains (and with traditional services), regulatory questions (particularly in the current landscape), and more.

Ethereum has been a focal point in the DeFi landscape. | Source: ETH-USD on TradingView.com

That’s A Wharton Wrap

The detailed report condenses a well-rounded full scope of DeFi in a thick twenty pages. However, beyond simply providing a broad perspective of what DeFi is, the Wharton team also takes the time to address protocols such as Uniswap and SushiSwap, asset pool protocols like Compound and AAVE, and more.

Wharton (and increasing academic institutions) are continuing to show and share their perspective around DeFi and blockchain tech as it develops. As the report aptly states, “tools are emerging to simplify the user experience on and across DeFi services”.

In closing, the report concludes that “DeFi will ultimately succeed or fail based on whether it can fulfill its promise of financial services that are open, trust-minimized, and non-custodial, yet still trustworthy”. It’s safe to conclude that there are many who believe that DeFi is well on it’s way to achieving exactly that.

Related Reading | DeFi Is About To Undergo A Radical Transformation

24th May 2021

Mark Cuban: We’re In “The Great Unwind”

In a tweet reply over the weekend, billionaire businessman and crypto advocate Mark Cuban described the current price action as part of the “great unwind”. The comment was in response to Larry Cermak, Director of Research at The Block, and emphasized the implications of over-leveraged traders leading to ‘unwinding’.

In a response to Newsweek about the tweet specifically, Cuban elaborated, “if there is one thing crypto enthusiasts lose track of, it’s that at its base, there are a lot of participants from token holders to validators, miners and others all get rewards”.

Cuban And Crypto

Mark Cuban is no stranger to crypto. The Dallas Mavericks owner, ‘Shark Tank’ regular, and serial entrepreneur has been outspoken about smart contracts, NFT projects, and more.

In a detailed email exchange published by Wall Street Journal columnist Andy Kessler, Cuban describes present-day NFTs as “proof of concepts” for what’s to come. Cuban pressed further when asked about smart contracts’ use case in things like mortgages, “smart contracts on blockchains, particularly Ethereum, is an enormous game changer that every company will use”.

Mark Cuban, of course, has put his money where his mouth is too, as an early investor in crypto tools like OpenSea, CryptoSlam.io, and others; additionally, he’s doubled down recently on allowing his Dallas Mavericks to accept bitcoin, ethereum, and dogecoin for ticket sales in light of Elon Musk’s comments surrounding Tesla and bitcoin.

According to Mark, it’s all “no different than the internet of 1995 where people weren’t quite sure but eventually they saw the network effect and value. Smart contracts are going to eat a lot of the software-as-a-service world.”

Volatility Just Beginning?

Cuban insists that the best projects will persevere. Nonetheless, it’s likely that the rollercoaster ride of ups and downs will continue.

The crypto ‘fear and greed index‘ recently hit a resounding level 12, a level rarely seen. In March of 2020, the index scored around 10, and in April 2018, a record level 16 was hit. The index currently sits at 10 (“extreme fear”) at time of writing.

Volatility is nothing new, but been exacerbated recently| Source: CRYPTOCAP on TradingView.com

Mark Cuban’s Love For Ethereum

Cuban undoubtedly understands that bitcoin is the most established store of value in the crypto space currently, but the projects being built on ethereum seem to be one of the most exciting major players in the crypto space – emphasized by his public statements and by his private investments.

Cuban has said the impact of Ethereum 2.0 “could be greater than we currently imagine” and has invested in ethereum-based projects, such as Polygon.

Despite the rocky ride, Cuban seems to have his eyes laser-focused on the long-run.

21st May 2021

Algomint, Algorand’s Digital Asset Minter, Set To Arrive Q3 2021

In a press release this week, the team at Algorand has announced that Algomint, the “golden bridge to the Algorand DeFi ecosystem”, is coming to market in Q3 2021. The platform will bring liquidity and unlock further DeFi potential in the Algorand network.

Algomint

The Algomint platform will allow users to engage in investing, trading, sending and receiving, borrowing and lending, staking, and yield fielding with 46,000 transactions per second and $0.001 fee per transaction.

Algomint will allow users to trade bitcoin in the Algorand DeFi marketplace by having them mint goBTC on the platform, while locking the original bitcoin on a 1:1 ratio in a secured 3rd party custody vault. Users will burn goBTC by the same ratio when they go to withdrawal bitcoin from the network. Algomint will utilize this same functionality for other cryptocurrency assets, such as ETH and USDT. With a Q3 product launch, the platform will initially offer goBTC and goETH as the first core assets to serve the ecosystem. Algomint will also look to engage with users through a governance token, goMNT, which is expected to also launch in Q3 2021. In the following quarter, the team anticipates launch goUSD while introducing programmable liquidity by way of the team’s Balancer Decentralized Exchange.

The Team

The Algomint team is led by Meld Gold founders Michael Cotton and AJ Milne. Meld Gold leverages Algorand’s protocol to add efficiency and accessibility in the gold supply chain.

Algorand’s team sees the clear potential around the explosion of DeFi and applicable use case with Algorand’s protocol. The press release cites annual DeFi growth at a 7,500% rate, despite Ethereum’s challenges around speed and transaction costs. The release also notes that only 1% of the Wall Street capital inflow this year is being applied in the DeFi network, alluding to substantial potential in the marketplace.

$ALGO looks to continue efforts in the DeFi landscape. | Source: ALGO-USD on TradingView.com

What’s Being Said

In the press release, Algorand COO Sean Ford stated that Algomint will be “providing a necessary bridge for digital assets to enter the growing Algorand ecosystem” and that he is excited for the corresponding opportunities for users to engage on the platform. “Tools like Algomint serve as foundational components for the incredible expansion of DeFi on Algorand that we are currently seeing”, he added.

And partners echoed that sentiment. CFA and Chief Investment Officer of Apollo Capital Henrik Andersson added to release that Algomint would be “essentially opening the Algorand network to the rapid growth we are seeing elsewhere in the DeFi markets”. Andersson saw the value proposition as especially valuable, emphasizing that “having the ability to take advantage of transaction speeds of 4 seconds and costs of less than $0.001” would provide the market “a very different proposition”.

20th May 2021

U.S. Treasury Calls For IRS Reporting Of $10K+ Crypto Transfers

Continued political buzz is abundant lately around crypto, and today is no exception. In a initial report from Bloomberg this morning, the U.S. Treasury has shared intent to require businesses, and likely individuals as well, that transfer $10,000 USD and above in crypto to report the transactions to the IRS. The move is part of a broader plan from the Biden administration to strengthen tax compliance.

The Treasury Talk

The information was sourced from a Treasury report titled ‘The American Families Plan Tax Compliance Agenda‘. “As with cash transactions, businesses that receive cryptoassets with a fair market value of more than USD 10,000 would also be reported on. Although cryptocurrency is a small share of current business transactions, such comprehensive reporting is necessary to minimize the incentives and opportunity to shift income out of the new information reporting regime”, the report stated.

Interestingly, the report specifically cited both cash and crypto as being viable shields from tax reporting; specifically, the report even describes crypto as posing a “significant detection problem by facilitating illegal activity broadly including tax evasion”. The report goes on to acknowledge that crypto transactions “are likely to rise in importance in the next decade”.

The report is likely to tie with IRS Form 8300, which requires individuals, companies, corporations, partnerships, trusts, estates and the like to report cash payments of over $10,000 USD.

Continued investment in broader crypto has the federal government paying attention | Source: CRYPTOCAP - TOTAL on TradingView.com

Flurry Of Federal Chatter

The U.S. government has had increasing amounts of public-facing commentary. The Treasury’s commentary seems to ring a bit inconsistent from broader messages. Today’s report comes after two Federal Reserve policymakers stated earlier this week that cryptocurrency does not have a “reach into the economy that has systemic implications” for the Fed. St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard and Atlanta Federal Reserve President Raphael Bostic both noted the volatility of crypto being a known trait, with Bostic adding that crypto was not “something I really incorporate very much into how I think about where our policy should be”.

The U.S. isn’t alone in the public discussion, either. Norway’s central bank has expressed concern that crypto’s volatility could be concerning for their banking system, and of course China’s potential rigid stance of crypto, with mining especially at the forefront, has consistently been a point of conversation in the space.

Of course, institutions have held a variety of views globally as well. Wells Fargo has warmed up to crypto investments, along with other major U.S. institutions, however the Bank of Canada recently stated that volatility in cryptocurrency assets is an emerging vulnerability for the country’s financial system.

19th May 2021

Wells Fargo Plans To Add Actively-Managed Crypto Product

Wells Fargo is the next major banking and financial services provider to join the mix of offering crypto assets. The news comes after last week’s report that Swiss-based institution UBS Group AG was looking to make a similar move.

Wells Fargo’s Change In Perspective

Just a few years ago, Wells Fargo was banning credit card crypto charges. This week, the firm’s wealth and investment division is anticipating the roll-out of an actively managed crypto strategy. The investment offering will be available to qualified customers as early as next month.

The biggest U.S.-based banks continue to adapt with the changing landscape; Goldman Sachs, Citi, Morgan Stanley and others have continued to be in talks of engaging, or actively engaging, in new crypto offerings. Wells Fargo holds nearly $2T worth of assets.

In the same vein with the aforementioned UBS Group AG announcement, initial investment offerings are anticipated to be available to the firm’s high-value client accounts.

What’s The Word?

In an interview with Business Insider, Wells Fargo Investment Institute Darrell Cronk shared some of the firm’s perspective. Cronk shared that the investment strategy is anticipated to be available around mid-June and has been in the works for months. Cronk added, “we think the cryptocurrency space has just kind of hit an evolution and maturation of its development that allows it now to be a viable investable asset”. Cronk described crypto as an “alternative investment” that required deep due diligence.

The statement comes just six months after company representatives noted that the bank was not recommending crypto to clients because it didn’t have the infrastructure to support the asset in client accounts. Broader crypto success seems to have changed the tune for the company, as Wells Fargo has reportedly been working on a “professionally managed solution” for several months, and is now wrapping up the manager research and due diligence process.

Wells Fargo has warmed up to the idea of having crypto assets as part of a diversified portfolio | Source: BTC-USD on TradingView.com

Looking Forward

Cronk was still wary, however, particularly around customer regulations and protections. “There’s a whole element of consumer protections and regulations that have to still evolve with the changing landscape. So we’re not without risk, it’s just that we think there could be a viable investable option for those clients who show an interest”, Cronk stated. With this line of thinking, Cronk added that the company does not currently see digital assets as their own “asset class with a strategic allocation to it in every portfolio”, but rather for qualified investors to have a “nice diversifier to portfolio holdings”.

18th May 2021

Polygon ($MATIC) Sees 75K Active User Growth

Dapps are continuing to shine recently. As if the chart wasn’t enough to convince you, $MATIC has been a star performer too. Data released this week from DappRadar shows a substantial uptick in Polygon-based decentralized applications. This follows our piece from just a few weeks ago, highlighting $MATIC’s big rally. Let’s recap some of DappRadar’s findings.

The Polygon Network

The data out from DappRadar shows a number of metrics worth calling out with regards to the second-layer solution to Ethereum. It starts with calling out nearly $1B in value flows through their layer 2. Additionally, the materials note that the top twenty Polygon dapps interacted with more than 75,000 active user wallets in just the past week. Finally, in the past month, Polygon-tracked dapps on DappRadar increased from 61 to 93; 46 of those fall in the DeFi and Exchange categories.

Polygon’s Pitch Point

As the DappRadar materials point out, there are a couple sticking points for Polygon that are main drivers for it’s reason emergence: lower gas fees, and fast transactions. It’s not surprising to see Ethereum gas fees slowing motivations for DeFi applications recently. However, unlike other Ethereum-based ecosystems, $MATIC looks to bring other advantages to the table too. Major pitch points include validation system security, scalability by way of joint PoS consensus and Heimdall architecture, and PoS chain Plasma. Major competitors include Polkadot ($DOT), Cosmos ($ATOM), and Avalanche ($AVAX).

Polygon’s leading dapps in DeFi include QuickSwap, Aave, and ParaSwap – Aave made the expansion over to Polygon in March. QuickSwap reported a 210% user increase last week, and a 240% increase in transactions over the same period.

$MATIC has performed exceptionally well during recent times, where many mainstay cryptocurrency’s have seen pullbacks, in what many describe as “DeFi Summer”.

$MATIC has been performing exceptionally well this year | Source: MATIC-USDT on TradingView.com

Exposure & Expansion

Projects and platforms continue to assist $MATIC with recent growth. Recent partnerships include Decentraland and Maker, and recent platform support includes Coinbase and Binance. Additionally, the team announced Tether (USDT) and USDC integration in September last year. Other unique engagement has taken place in the network as well, such as COVID-19 test verification used by government officials in India.

It’s not just $MATIC seeing rapid growth, either. DeFi is arguably undergoing a radical transformation, as we highlighted recently.

$MATIC launched in 2017 and moved to mainnet by the end of the year; the network went through the Polygon rebrand just a few months ago. $MATIC has now surpassed a $11B market cap and has cracked the top 25 of top coins per market cap, according to CoinGecko, hitting record-high price and coming close to $2 this week.

15th May 2021

Samsung Adds Support For Hardware Wallets On Galaxy Devices

Samsung Electronics has added new support assets for blockchain users with hardware wallets this week. The move will impact mobile Galaxy owners, allowing them to use third-party hardware wallets with the Samsung Blockchain Wallet app. In their press release, Samsung has sought out to explicitly provide hardware support for Ledger Nano S and Nano X. The company stated, however, that they plan to support more cold-storage wallets moving forward.

Samsung Blockchain

The journey to initiate hardware support, of course, started with straightforward blockchain integration. In 2019, Samsung released Samsung Blockchain and dedicated crypto wallet support, without extensive fanfare. The company rolled out the blockchain software in tandem with the Galaxy S10 release. A major focal point for the blockchain offering is the included software development kit. The kit opened the door for Samsung to support developers in creating decentralized apps. Dapp support is driven through the Blockchain Keystore SDK.

Of course, the other major emphasis of the Samsung Blockchain is security. This comes by way of the company’s self-described ‘Samsung Knox’ and ‘Trusted Execution Environment (TEE)’. Knox is a secure holding space for crypto users that is separate from the main operating system, accessible only via PIN or biometric authentication. Knox is essentially a “secure processor dedicated to protecting your PIN, password, pattern, and Blockchain Private Key”, as the company describes it.

Galaxy Support

The update to begin supporting cold-storage wallets will be applicable for Galaxy users running Android 9.0 and above. The company also cautioned that in the initial roll-out, Nano X bluetooth features may be limited.

The Korean-based firm continues to keep promotional activity around new blockchain-related features somewhat under the radar, despite continuous and evolving support.

BTC's consistency has given more companies good reason to integrate | Source: BTC-USD on TradingView.com

Continued Crypto Support

Samsung has continued to release crypto-related support with a relatively quiet approach. In 2020, the firm partnered with crypto exchange Gemini to streamline Galaxy users consumer experience. The company continues to offer consumer and developer assets, such as a dedicated crypto newsfeed available in the Blockchain Wallet app. For developers in particular, offerings include extensive resources, such as APIs that allow dapps to securely sign for transfers of virtual assets.

After initially support ethereum in 2019, and adding bitcoin shortly thereafter, the company now offers over thirty coins, including stablecoins. Samsung continues to stay relatively quiet despite what seems to be continued investment. In a public statement, head of blockchain and company VP Woong Ah Yoon stated that monthly active users of the blockchain app have doubled over the past seven months. Without sharing hard figures, Yoon added the smartphone wallet is currently used to hold hundreds of millions of USD in AUM (assets under management).

14th May 2021

MicroStrategy Discloses A $15M Bitcoin Purchase

When it comes to bitcoin, MicroStrategy is looking for more. This comes after buying over 20,000 BTC in the first quarter of the year, at an average cost of roughly $52K (for a total cost exceeding $1B). Now, the business intelligence firm led by Bitcoin advocate Michael Saylor is adding to their position.

The Macro MicroStrategy

Saylor shared on Twitter today that the company purchased an additional 271 BTC, at a cost of $55,387 per coin. He also noted that as of today, the company holds over 90K BTC in total with an average of just over $24K per coin. Also included in the Twitter post is the company 8-K referencing the purchase.

In a Q1 release, the company stated that “first-quarter results were a clear example of our two-pronged corporate strategy, to grow our enterprise analytics software business and acquire and hold bitcoin which is generating substantial shareholder value”. The company’s latest bitcoin purchase seems to reaffirm that position from just a couple months ago.

The news comes on the heels of Tesla CEO Elon Musk suspending payments in bitcoin for vehicle purchases, citing environmental concerns.

Who’s Who

MicroStrategy ($MSTR) is the largest independent publicly-traded business intelligence company in the US, with a product used by a number of different Fortune 500 firms. The recent 8-K, and previous bitcoin purchases, aren’t the first time MicroStrategy has ingrained crypto into the business. Just last month, the firm released an 8-K disclosing it’s decision to pay their board of directors in Bitcoin.

Saylor has been an outspoken crypto advocate, and last year led MicroStrategy to be the first publicly-traded company to modify corporate strategy in adopting bitcoin. Only 32 publicly traded companies, of 40,000 on the market, have bitcoin on their balance sheet. MicroStrategy is the largest publicly-traded corporate BTC holder to date. The firm’s stock took a nearly 10% dip on the day.

MicroStrategy reported a 10% jump in revenues in the first quarter, with an over 50% increase in product licenses and and subscription revenues.

MicroStrategy continues to look to "buy the dip" | Source: BTC-USD on TradingView.com

The Crypto Conviction

As if the public-facing business decisions weren’t enough, Saylor’s statements on crypto broadly will tell you quite a bit about the company’s optimistic perspective. Just yesterday, Saylor described bitcoin as the “most powerful and disruptive technology of our lifetime”. Additionally, Saylor hosted a “Bitcoin for Corporations” conference in February. Saylor often talks of the ‘Bitcoin Standard’ as a way to help struggling countries revive their economies.

Given that Saylor continues to be a vocal advocate for crypto, even saying that there is “zero chance” of bitcoin being replaced, it seems like MicroStrategy’s engagement in the space is likely to continue through the coming quarters.

12th May 2021

MoneyGram Supporting Retail Bitcoin Buying In US

In partnership with Coinme, MoneyGram has announced today their intent to accept buying and selling of Bitcoin at over 12,000 US locations. The announcement also included the intent to expand support for Bitcoin internationally by the back half of 2021.

MoneyGram & Coinme Partnership

MoneyGram is a long-time global payments operator citing nearly 150M consumers over the past five years. Coinme is a licensed crypto exchange that also operates over 20,000 physical ATMs. The goal of the collaboration is to “bring Bitcoin to thousands of new point-of-sale locations in the U.S.” in the near term.

The partnership press release also cited the company’s intent to create “global cash on and off-ramps” to “ensure access to Bitcoin”. MoneyGram CEO Alex Holmes added that the “innovative partnership opens our business to an entirely new customer segment as we are the first to pioneer a crypto-to-cash model by building a bridge with Coinme to connect Bitcoin to local fiat currency”.

The Rollout

MoneyGram and Coinme emphasized that having a service rollout that is “specifically designed for customers who may be interested in utilizing Bitcoin for the first time” was top of mind. Over the course of the next few weeks, the firms will start making transactions available throughout the 12,000 MoneyGram locations. The full rollout is anticipated to scale out over 20,000 US locations and be “fully operational in the coming weeks”.

The partnership follows a number of major financial services companies ingraining crypto transactions into their day-to-day operations. CashApp has added Bitcoin transaction support, Venmo announced last month that they intend to support crypto purchases and sales, and Mastercard intends to offer support for customers cryptocurrency transactions later this year. Other fintech and tech-forward companies, such as Square and Tesla, have also added Bitcoin to their balance sheet in recent months.

Coinme also has a partnership in place with Coinstar that enables crypto transactions at Coinstar kiosks throughout 6,000+ locations in the US.

Accessibility to BTC has been a focal point for many companies. | Source: BTC-USD on TradingView.com

MoneyGram & Crypto

This isn’t the first time MoneyGram has worked to ingrain their business in the broader cryptocurrency landscape. The company had previously formulated a partnership with US-based crypto, Ripple (XRP). The partnership came to a mutually-agreeable ending in March, though the companies reiterated a commitment “to revisiting our relationship in the future”. The partnership termination came shortly after reports of an SEC-filed lawsuit against Ripple, for engaging in an unregistered securities offering through XRP transactions as early as 2013. The deal included Ripple paying transaction fees for MoneyGram using the XRP token in international settlement deals.

MoneyGram is a Dallas, TX based firm publicly traded on the NASDAQ ($MGI).

10th May 2021

Report: Swiss Bank UBS Group Planning To Offer Crypto To Top Customers

Swiss-based bank and financial services provider UBS Group AG looks to be the next to enter the fold. Reports released to start the week state that the banking behemoth is considering several different alternatives to offer digital currency investments.

UBS Joins The Club

The news comes not long after major US-based firms, such as Goldman Sachs and Citi, have been associated with similar moves. Goldman recently opened up trading with non-deliverable forwards tied to Bitcoin, Citi has been reported to be considering crypto services, and Morgan Stanley and Bank of New York Mellon are getting involved as well. Goldman’s crypto desk came back open being put on hold for roughly three years.

In a statement, UBS Group representatives said “we are monitoring the developments in the field of digital assets closely. Importantly, we are most interested in the technology which underpins digital assets, namely the distributed ledger technology”. According to the Bloomberg report releasing the news, UBS Group spends roughly $3.5B USD annually on technology maintaining and modernizing existing infrastructure and innovating new tools for employees and products for clients.

Also cited in the report was news that Swiss competitor Julius Baer is discussing offering clients access to crypto access.

The Clientele & Perspective

UBS is reported to be strongly taking in consideration the volatility of cryptocurrencies, and accordingly will likely be allowing just a small portion of clients total wealth for a crypto investment offering. Additionally, the firm will only be allocating the investment to it’s wealthier asset class. Options for these investors will likely include investing through third-party investment vehicles.

The news comes just a few months after UBS Group suggested concern in published guidance for clients. In the published report, the firm stated that they “wouldn’t rule out further price increases” but that they were also “skeptical of any essential real-world use cases”, driving difficulty for the firm to “estimate a fair value for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies”. The report added that there is “little in [UBS] view to stop a cryptocurrency’s price from going to zero when a better designed version is launched or if regulatory changes stifle sentiment”.

BTC's historical volatility has been countered with increasing stability recently | Source: BTC-USD on TradingView.com

UBS Group & The Swiss Landscape

UBS is Switzerland’s largest investment bank by total assets, and offers a bevy of financial services. This move would be the first of it’s kind for UBS, but other Swiss banks (outside of the aforementioned Julius Baer) are also looking to get aggressive in the cryptocurrency space, such as Swissquote, which partnered with digital assets provider Taurus last month. Switzerland recently introduced legislation that opened the door for blockchain finance into legal code.

10th May 2021

“Time To Switch To Satoshis” Says Galaxy Digital CEO Novogratz

It’s been a busy few months for crypto financial services firm Galaxy Digital. From sales to satoshis, the company has been making headlines. Galaxy Digital is fresh off the heels of acquiring digital assets infrastructure firm BitGo, and is one of four firms to lead a recent Canadian petition for an Ethereum ETF.

Now, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz posted over the weekend on a Twitter post that he’d like to see more evolution in the crypto landscape, particularly with how we view Bitcoin on exchanges.

Seeing Satoshis

In his tweet, Novogratz suggests that consumer perception around the dollar value of Bitcoin can be better addressed by reducing units to satoshis (SATS), rather than full units of BTC. No major cryptocurrency exchanges do so, leaving Novogratz to ask, “which exchange will be the first to quote in SATS?”, while tagging some of crypto’s biggest executives in the industry.

Square’s Cash App added SATS last year, but no crypto-dedicated exchanges have followed. Additionally, crypto tracking website CryptoMarketCap tracks SATS, which are valued at 0.00000001 BTC.

Is It Psychological?

The main premise is of course, the psychological aspect around having a more affordable unit to build an individual’s cost basis of Bitcoin around. Billionaire and crypto-enthusiast Mark Cuban explained the hype around Dogecoin around this exact concept, stating that “it’s hard for someone with $100 to get excited about owning a fraction of BTC or ETH. It’s easy with Doge”. Blockchain Research Lab co-founder Ingo Fiedler expressed similar sentiments, stating that “while it makes financially no difference to change the denomination from BTC to Sats, it has a psychological impact that likely helps further adoption”.

Despite this barrier, recent analysis from Glassnode shows that addresses holding less than 1 BTC make up over 5% of the crypto’s circulating supply. Companies like Lolli have aimed at normalizing this unit of value, by way of rewarding consumers with small amounts of satoshis as they spend money with partnered companies.

Alternatively, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell explains that it is not necessarily that simple: “Have to think through the UX, discoverability. 99% of new users coming in will be looking for bitcoin/BTC and have no idea what a satoshi/sat is. Don’t want to confuse them.”

BTC has seen stable and steady growth to start the year. | Source: BTC-USD on TradingView.com

Legacy Of The Lexicon

Satoshis come from mysterious BTC creator Satoshi Nakamoto, who has been the center of speculation around the pioneering cryptocurrency since it’s 2008 whitepaper. It was just over a decade ago that Nakamoto sent his final emails to developers stating that he was moving on to other projects. A number of individuals have been identified as potential pioneers that fit the bill of Nakamoto, but none have led to a definitive answer.

Continuous questions remain rooted in the name: who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Does institutional adoption of BTC interfere with Satoshi’s desire of removing a middleman? It was just last month that the U.S. state of Louisiana passed a resolution to commend Bitcoin’s success as becoming the first decentralized trillion dollar asset, but questions still loom around the legendary Bitcoin developer.

Nowadays, the questions reach beyond the origination of the Satoshi Nakamoto moniker, and into the realm of how should we be measuring our crypto holdings.