FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

David Marcus, head of Facebook Financial, has said he hopes both the cryptocurrency known as Diem and the social media firm’s wallet Novi will launch in 2021.

Speaking at the Singapore FinTech Festival, Marcus said he hopes Facebook will be given the “benefit of the doubt” by regulators.

The Financial Times recently reported that Diem could go live in a limited capacity as early as January.

Diem is the new name of the project formerly known as Libra, a proposed stablecoin led by Facebook with the support of 26 other companies. The association announced its rebrand last week.

When first unveiled by Facebook in June 2019, Libra was met with a chorus of disapproval from regulators around the world.

The association has since made various tweaks to the vision it had initially outlined, and applied for a payment system licence from FINMA, the Swiss regulator, in April 2020.

On announcing the rebrand last week, Diem said that it would proceed “only upon receiving regulatory approval, including a payment systems license for the operational subsidiary of the Association from FINMA”.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Quick Take

• The following is an excerpt from the ‘2020 Macro Overview’ section of the Block Research’s forthcoming year-end report.
• We provide evidence of Pre-Covid19 economic deterioration & financial system stress, arguing that the pandemic likely exacerbated a recession that was already on the horizon. 
• We also make the case that traditional financial system stress likely contributed to the cryptocurrency market drawdown in Q4 2019. 

This research piece is available to
members of The Block Genesis.
You can continue reading
this Genesis research on The Block.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Quick Take

• In 2020, options trade volume growth outperformed futures trade volume growth by about 5.4 times.
• Ethereum options have seen an increase in trade volume by over 2,800% from January until the end of November.
• Deribit remains the clear cryptocurrency options market leader for centralized exchanges, controlling over 90% of total trade volumes.

This research piece is available to
members of The Block Genesis.
You can continue reading
this Genesis research on The Block.

BBVA, Spain’s second-largest bank, is reportedly launching cryptocurrency trading and custody services in the coming months.

CoinDesk reported the news on Monday, citing “two people familiar with the plans.” BBVA will reportedly offer the services from Switzerland and is awaiting regulatory approvals.

“There are still some compliance hurdles so this will not be in December, but I expect they [BBVA] will be live next month,” one source with knowledge of the plans told CoinDesk.

BBVA is said to be working with Swiss fintech Avaloq and Swiss crypto custody infrastructure provider METACO for integrating their custody solution SILO. Russia’s Gazprombank also recently launched its crypto custody services in Switzerland via SILO. METACO is also known to be working with Standard Chartered for the bank’s planned crypto custody offering.

BBVA, METACO, and Avaloq all declined to comment to CoinDesk.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.