U.S. lawmakers are asking the nation’s financial guardians to clarify crypto custodianship while France wages war on anonymity.
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Author: Daniel Kuhn
Quick Take
- The primary challenge for institutions to participate in DeFi is with risk management and KYC/AML requirements. DeFi introduces new challenges in addition to financial risk
- Lending rates on centralized lending desks have been influenced by the demand to generate yield from liquidity mining
- Centralized lending markets work between institutions and DeFi protocols to redirect risk to e.g., crypto funds who are willing to take on protocol risk
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Author: Mika Honkasalo
BTCUSD is consistently the most popularly viewed symbol in 2020.
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Author: Zack Voell
The number of developers in crypto is ticking up again, and one network remains a clear winner in attracting coders.
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Author: Brady Dale
You can register for the event and learn more about our panelists below:
Register for the Event
Our panelists:
Caitlin Long – CEO, Avanti Bank
Sina Nader – COO, FTX.US
Andrew Peel – Head of Digital Asset Markets, Morgan Stanley
Walter Hessert – Head of Corporate Strategy, Paxos
This event is brought to you by Paxos. Paxos is a regulated financial institution building infrastructure to enable the movement between physical and digital assets. Launched earlier this year, Paxos Crypto Brokerage is an API-based, turnkey solution that enables companies including PayPal and Revolut to integrate cryptocurrency buying, selling, holding and sending capabilities into their own applications. Paxos also offers other enterprise-grade solutions including stablecoin as a service and blockchain-based settlement of securities and commodities.
© 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.
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Author: Andreas Nicolos
Swivel Finance has raised $1.15 million in a seed round led by investment firm Multicoin Capital.
The seed round included investments from Electric Capital, CMS Holdings, Defiance Capital and Divergence Ventures. Several angel investors also participated in the round, including Huobi corporate investment advisor Alex Pack and Aave founder Stani Kulechov.
According to the team behind the project, Swivel will use the new funds to hire additional engineers as well as launch the protocol on the Ethereum mainnet in the next few months.
Swivel is a decentralized protocol for fixed-rate lending and interest-rate derivatives that enables lenders to “lock-in” fixed-rate interest rates on their ERC-20 tokens with low transaction overhead and less risk.
“We’ve been hearing lenders ask for fixed-rate products for a long time, but when it came to backing those fixed-rates, the incentives just weren’t there previously,” said Swivel Finance co-founder Julian Traversa. “With the addition of interest-rate swaps, speculators can freely take on floating-rate leverage and ‘farm’ in the process, clarifying these incentives while creating both a demand curve for fixed-rate lending and a decentralized yield curve.”
© 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.
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Author: Saniya More
Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chairman Heath Tarbert says he intends to resign his position early next year.
Tarbert firmed up cryto regulation during his tenure by asserting that ether is a commodity and falls under the CFTC’s purview. Tarbert’s term was set to expire in 2024, which also coincided with the deadline for the CFTC’s holistic framework for crypto assets.
Tarbert began serving as the CFTC’s top official in July 2019. In his announcement, he said he was humbled by the bipartisan support fo his leadership and agenda across Congress.
With the transition into president-elect Joe Biden’s administration, other key regulators have announced their departures including Securities Exchange Commission chairman Jay Clayton and the agency’s Director of the Division of Corporation Finance Bill Hinman, who also made significant remarks on Ethereum during his tenure.
With Tarbert’s exit, that opens the door for Biden to choose a new chairperson of the SEC.
In his statement, Tarbert thanked his fellow commissioners for what he says was a productive 17 months in office, and referred to the agency’s COVID-19 response as the CFTC’s “finest hour.”
A finalized date of departure was not included in the email, nor any window into transition plans.
© 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.
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Author: Aislinn Keely
A contest for inclusive fintech shows the potential for crypto-related tech to help the world’s poor, but also how much it still needs to develop.
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Author: Leah Callon-Butler
CFTC Chairman Heath Tarbert intends to leave the role early in 2021, opening the door for President-elect Joe Biden to name a new top commodities regulator.
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Author: Nikhilesh De
Count this as a significant sign of blockchain adoption among the finance majors.
JPMorgan announced on Thursday that it executed a blockchain-based repo transaction, leveraging its eponymous JPMCoin. The announcement comes two months after JPMorgan unveiled a rebrand of its blockchain unit — now dubbed Onyx — and said that its stablecoin-like product had gone into production.
As for the repo transaction, the bank said the use of blockchain translated into an “atomic trade settlement.”
The repo market is where big banks go to borrow money from other large financial institutions to cover operating costs — typically, to be paid back within a day. The market is known for its inefficiencies.
“The repo market provides a widely used form of secured financing, however, current operational limitations prevent the meaningful use of such financing to meet intraday liquidity needs,” the bank said in a press release. “Using blockchain enables borrowers and lenders to execute shorter-term, intraday repo transactions with real-time, simultaneous transaction settlement, creating new ways to access intraday liquidity.”
The bank plans to make its product available to other counter-parties in the future. Already, rival Goldman Sachs has conducted successful trade simulations with BNY Mellon serving as a tripartite agent.
“This is an exciting project which vividly highlights where enterprise blockchain can address a real-world problem in the financial system and we look forward to going live in early 2021,” said Mathew McDermott, Global Head of Digital Assets at Goldman Sachs.
© 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.
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Author: Frank Chaparro
