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Just because gold is losing momentum and bitcoin is gaining it doesn’t mean investors are selling gold to buy bitcoin – not yet, anyway.

Fidelity Investments CEO Abby Johnson says the mutual fund giant’s custody business around bitcoin has been “incredibly successful” and has a “tremendous pipeline.”

The MicroStrategy CEO took to Twitter to dismiss widespread speculation that his company’s recent massive purchases of bitcoin have turned it into an investment firm or de facto ETF.

No firm decision has been made on whether Europe will move forward with a digitized version of the euro. But a new statement from the European Central Bank (ECB) leadership suggests that the institution is eyeing the potential market implications of such a move.

The Governing Council is the primary decision-making body within the ECB. In a December 11 statement outlining decisions made on the monetary policy front, the Council noted the Eurosystem’s ongoing movement toward a possible digital euro creation. A decision on this, as previously reported, could come as early as January.

Echoing officials like ECB chief Christine Lagarde, the statement highlights that “[t]his does not, however, imply any intention to crowd out the private sector’s role in providing payment services.”

Rather, it frames it as a possible opportunity for payment services: ” Moreover, supervised private intermediaries would be best placed to provide front-end solutions and ancillary services and to build new business models based on a digital euro, should such a construct be introduced.”

What those business models might look like will depend on the ultimate scope and actual use of the digital euro. The ECB published a digital euro report in early October noted several important factors that would lead to such a launch, including digital currency adoption by central banks worldwide and a decline in cash use.

“A digital euro would preserve the public good that the euro provides to citizens: free access to a simple, universally accepted, risk-free and trusted means of payment. It also poses challenges, but by following appropriate strategies in the design of the digital euro the Eurosystem can address these,” the ECB said at the time.

© 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.

November saw a significant jump in monthly trade volume for Ethereum options, according to data collected by The Block Research.

The November figure — $1.76 billion — represents a 153% increase from October’s $695 million. It’s the highest reported monthly volume, surpassing August’s record of $1.03 billion.

As highlighted in the graph above, Deribit continues to be the dominant market leader in terms of Ethereum options trade, accounting for some $1.64 billion. OKEx accounted for roughly $105 million of the monthly volume.

The Block Research’s Lars Hoffmann noted in a recent column that 2020 has seen a significant ramp-up in cryptocurrency options activity. 

“2020 has been a significant year for cryptocurrency options. Overall, the market structure of centralized exchanges for options trading has matured — exemplified by the strong growth rates in both trade volumes and especially open interest,” Hoffmann wrote. 

© 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.

As conventional wisdom grows that central banks can go more deeply into debt than previously thought, one economist asks, how much is too much?

The Bank of France’s deputy governor said there has been a “hands-on approach” with the bank’s experiment to launch a digital euro for the general public.

The U.K.-based digital bank startup Revolut announced Friday the addition of  four additional crypto tokens and currencies to its platform for Europe-based users.

In the December 10 blog post, Revolut said it was adding support for EOS, OMG, XTZ (Tezos) and ZRX (0x). Revolut first started allowing access to crypto buying and selling in 2017. That year, the fintech startup added support for bitcoin, ether and litecoin. It has since added support for Stellar lumens, Bitcoin Cash and XRP.

Earlier this year, Revolut revealed some details — albeit backward-looking — about the nature of its customer base’s relationship with crypto. As reported in August, Revolut users held some $120 million worth of cryptocurrencies in 2019. That figure represented a 152% increase from the previous year.

Revolut struck up a partnership with Fireblocks in October as part of a bid to expand the digital bank’s suite of crypto-related products.

 

 

© 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.

France’s central bank began to experiment with central bank digital currency (CBDC) applications and use cases this spring. 

As previously reported, the Banque du France is specifically testing a so-called digital euro in the context of clearing and settlement of tokenized assets. And at the time, the central bank stressed that such experiments were just that — trials, nothing more.

New comments from a senior Banque du France official indicate that the institution is looking past the horizon, however, as the Eurosystem moves closer to the potential approval of a digital euro. ECB chief Christine Lagarde has spoken on numerous occasions, and an up-or-down decision is expected as early as January. 

On December 10, Denis Beau, first deputy governor of the French central bank, spoke about financial technology innovation, during which he touched on the ongoing CBDC experiments. In remarks, he stressed the trial’s expansive nature and its potential to rewrite the current regulatory framework.

As he noted (emphasis ours):

“Upcoming CBDC experiments – there will be eight of them – will help us to investigate not only the potential of technology but also to question the players in the ecosystem on what tomorrow’s landscape could look like, on subjects as fundamental as the methods of exchanging financial instruments for CBDCs, the improvement of the conditions for executing cross-border payments or new ways of making CBDCs available to financial sector players. In turn, these experiments will lead us to assess whether the regulatory framework currently in force needs to be adapted since we are carrying out these experiments within the current legal framework.“

Beau also framed the trials as part of the Banque du France’s preparation efforts should a digital euro move toward fruition.

“The experiments underway directly relate to the need for the Eurosystem, should circumstances so require, to be ready to issue a CBDC in order to ensure that central bank money is accessible to the general public and to preserve their freedom of choice of means of payment and their confidence in our currency,” Beau said, according to the published remarks.

 

© 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

• It wasn’t clear until over a year later the fact that Chinese police seized almost 200,000 BTC during the 2019 summer arrests of six PlusToken masterminds.
• Based on blockchain analysis, it appears the police approved the sales of much of the PlusToken bounty.
• But why that happened — and the details surrounding the sales — remain a mystery.

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