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Decentralized betting platforms like Polymarket and YieldWars are seeing accelerated trading volume growth leading up to the 2020 presidential election.

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) will require all cryptocurrency exchanges operating in the city to be regulated.

Ashley Alder, chief executive officer of the Hong Kong securities watchdog, said in the Fintech Week event on Tuesday that the requirement will apply to all platforms even if they do not trade security tokens, according to a report on Reuters.

The move appears to be widening the SFC’s approach last year, which was allowing crypto exchanges to voluntarily join a regulatory framework if they operate in Hong Kong and “offer trading of at least one security token,” according to the SFC’s announcement in 2019.

However, Alder said some exchanges managed to operate outside the SFC’s regulatory radar under that approach. 

Currently, several major global crypto exchanges such as Huobi, OKEx and BitMex have operations based in Hong Kong. BitMex and its co-founders are facing criminal charges filed by the U.S. Department of Justice. 

 

© 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.

PayPal’s CEO remarked about the payments company’s newly-unveiled crypto offering during its Q3 earnings call on Monday and highlighted how the firm intends to add more digital currencies in the future.

What forms those digital currencies will take remains to be seen, but his comment about central bank digital currencies hints that PayPal might support digital forms of money created by the world’s monetary authorities. As The Block previously outlined in its global survey of CBDC efforts, many central banks around the world are pursuing such initiatives. 

Highlighting PayPal’s work with regulators on the digital currency front, PayPal CEO Daniel Schulman noted: “This is just the beginning of the opportunities we see as we work hand-in-hand with regulators to accept new forms of digital currencies.”

On the question of CBDCs themselves, Schulman remarked that “from my perspective and all my conversations are a matter of when and how they’re done, not if,” adding:

“And I think that our platform with its digital wallets and the scale that we have right now can help shape the utility of those currencies. That can range from interoperability between wallets, between the currencies themselves, and, importantly, into our network of merchants for commerce.”

PayPal made waves last month when it went public with its long-rumored plan to support the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies. 

During the call, Schulman remarked that “our base is very eager for us to offer these capabilities” and said that crypto functionality has been extended to “10% of our base.” He added that waiting list demand was “two or three times what our expectations were.” 

© 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.

PayPal’s cryptocurrency products are going to expand rapidly in 2021, executives said on the company’s third quarter earnings call Monday.

Crypto derivatives platform Opium Protocol has raised nearly $3.25 million in a funding round.

The fresh cash injection includes participation from Galaxy Digital, Alameda Research, Hashkey Group and CMS Holdings — to name a few. The new funding will help the Amsterdam-based startup introduce further derivatives to the decentralized finance market, which has grown at a fast clip over the course of 2020. 

As The Block previously reported, Opium’s platform is known for several credit default swap-like products for the DeFi world, including ones tied to wBTC and lending protocol Aave. Similarly to Wall Street’s CDSs, Opium’s products aim to offer traders a source of insurance for positions in other DeFi products.

“As a decentralized derivative exchange for professional traders, Opium can offer any type of derivatives that you can see in the traditional finance world,” said Xiao Feng, chairman at Hashkey. “We believe derivatives are indispensable for the open finance system, and Opium can make the open finance system more comprehensive and more massively adopted.”

© 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.

The share of overall bitcoin miner revenue from transaction fees rose to roughly 12% in October — the highest level since January 2018.

The development, according to data from Coin Metrics, is perhaps unsurprising given that the end of October saw a notable jump in bitcoin transaction fees. Blockchain transaction fees are higher when the network is busier, as users pay more to compete for a limited amount of block space. 

Another likely factor: bitcoin fees are paid in the form of BTC, and the digital asset’s value rose above $13,000 during October, briefly passing $14,000 on Halloween, according to Coinbase data. 

 

Miners generated a total of $352.57 million in monthly revenue during October, according to data from Coin Metrics.

© 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.

Bitcoin’s price is trending up after a dip while traders are moving ether off from centralized exchanges.

Data from CryptoQuant, a crypto information provider, indicates a significant increase in bitcoin funds outflows from Huobi Global in the past day — a development that comes as the firm has issued a public denial about rumors of an arrest of one of its executives.

In a tweet thread posted November 2, Huobi said that rumors about “the arrest of a Huobi senior executive by local officials” are “false.” 

“All of Huobi’s management team members have been accounted for and have not been detained or arrested,” the firm said. “We understand that the spread of false information can lead to concerns about the safety of user assets, but please rest assured your assets are safe.”

According to CryptoQuant, the outflow increase peaked after midday on Monday. The service highlighted the development in an earlier tweet.

The rumors also appear to have affected the price of Huobi’s token, as shown by market data published by CoinGecko. The price of Huobi Token is down more than 9 percent in the past 24 hours. The token is currently trading hands at about $3.77, per the data site. 

© 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.

Companies can now raise more money under three key securities exemptions without having to register with SEC.

In a chaotic year of dueling recriminations and very different visions of the future, the real question of this U.S. presidential election is: Who is better for bitcoin?