Tag: Exchanges

In swift response to news of the heavily flooded western and southwestern regions of Japan, the Binance cryptocurrency exchange has pledged to donate the equivalent of one-million U.S. dollars (USD) (“in either BNB, BTC, or JPY”) toward a relief fund that members of the crypto community can also contribute to. According to Changpeng Zhao (Co-Founder & CEO, Binance) the Binance “team is contacting local authorities to figure out final delivery logistics.”

What Happened in Japan?

On Saturday, Japan’s southwestern and western regions experienced a relentless bout of torrential rainfall. What ensued was widespread flash flooding and landslides, the likes of which resulted in dozens upon dozens of deaths, the abandoning of countless homes, severe property and infrastructural damage, and widespread heartache.

And so, in an effort “to help out the victims in West Japan that were affected by the heavy rains on 7/7/2018,” the Binance Team published an announcement on Sunday declaring a $1,000,000 USD equivalent donation.

Binance Encouraging Others to Donate

In an effort to maximize the financial aid that comes from the crypto community, the Binance Team also stated that they were “calling on [their] crypto friends and partners to join [them] in the relief initiative.”

For those wishing to donate to those affected in West Japan, the Binance Team provided instructions on how to execute both an anonymous donation and a named donation.

Regardless of anonymity, donors will be sending ether (ETH) and/or Ethereum-based ERC20 tokens to a donation address created by Binance. We have deliberately not included the address in this article so as to encourage our readers to safely retrieve it from Binance’s official announcement.

Address “for Charity Purpose Only”

As for how these pooled donation funds will be partitioned, the crypto industry behemoth stated that “all outgoing transactions from the Binance donation address will be explained by Binance and used for charity purposes only.”

Given the short time, we had to keep this very simple for this time.  We will build something more systematic later. Our team is contacting local authorities to figure out final delivery logistics too.

— CZ (not giving crypto away) (@cz_binance) July 8, 2018

New Low for Scammers?

Whilst not at all surprising (a sad enough statement in and of itself), to actually see the amount of opportunistic scamming activity that prevailed out of the respective tweets from Binance and Zhao was something else entirely, given the compassionate impetus underlying Sunday’s donation plea.

For those looking to donate, please take measures to ensure that the donation address is indeed the one Binance has shared in their below-linked official announcement.

#Binance West Japan Disaster Relief Donationhttps://t.co/wkvqK6liwD pic.twitter.com/XkDOqEShVJ

— Binance (@binance) July 8, 2018

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The MakerDAO blockchain company – responsible for the well-known DAI stablecoin – has partnered with the world’s largest business commerce platform, Tradeshift, in order to launch a blockchain-based pilot program designed to accelerate the payment process for small businesses.

In a Friday press release, MakerDAO revealed that both they and Tradeshift were partnering “on a project to unlock liquidity access for small business around the globe from the $9T of capital trapped in outstanding receivables.”

The partnership will see Tradeshift’s business commerce platform fuse with MakerDAO’s Dai Credit System; adding an extra element of stability and security for the San Francisco-based Tradeshift, thereby allowing for the establishment of an enhanced “supply chain liquidity marketplace for business, developers and investors.” The announcement went on to explain exactly how the Ethereum-based DAI stablecoin promises to help these three aforementioned use cases.

Our partnership with Tradeshift proves the potential of the blockchain to level the economic playing field for businesses of all sizes around the globe.” – Rune Christensen (CEO, MakerDAO)

Tradeshift Cash Serves as Guinea Pig

An “instant invoice financing solution that gives micro, small and medium sized businesses (MSMEs) access to instant cash flow based on their outstanding receivables,” known as Tradeshift Cash, is currently where the first implementation on the supply chain liquidity marketplace is being pilot tested, according to MakerDAO’s.

The trade receivables market has very tight margins, which leaves no room for a volatile digital currency as instrument for settlement. The Dai Credit System is a unique vision for a transparent and stable token that allows anyone to represent real-world currency settlements on the blockchain.” – Gert Sylvest (Co-Founder, Tradeshift)

OFFICIAL: @Tradeshift — the leader in #SupplyChain payments & marketplaces — and Maker have created a partnership that unlocks liquidity access for small businesses around the globe from the $9 TRILLION of capital trapped in outstanding receivables: https://t.co/pqmPLcCiz2 pic.twitter.com/7uK5i6hAf2

— Maker (@MakerDAO) July 6, 2018

Blockchain Push Continues for Goldman Sachs-Backed Tradeshift

Tradeshift has notably expressed more interest in the blockchain and crypto sector, recently. Last October, they signed on as a premier member to the board of Hyperledger; the Linux Foundation’s open source collaborative effort helping to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies.

In late-May, too, Tradeshift successfully raised $250 million in a Series E funding round; lifting the company’s valuation to $1.1 billion – at the time. Leading this most recent capital raise was Goldman Sachs and Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments).

On the below-attached May interview from Bloomberg Technology, Christian Lanng, (CEO & Co-Founder, Tradeshift) explains why the blockchain/DLT space demanded more of their focus:

The Huobi Group empire has officially entered into yet another market. This time, it is by way of Australia, after Thursday saw the Huobi Australia cryptocurrency exchange go live.

In their announcement, Huobi Australia confirmed that the exchange “will officially start trading at 10:00 AM (AEST), 5th of July.” They then revealed that a total of ten local fiat-to-crypto trading pairs were to be opened progressively, over the course of Thursday (10:00 – 17:00).

In order of opening, the following cryptocurrencies are being paired against the Australian dollar (AUD): Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Power Ledger (POWR), Aelf (ELF), Cortex (CTXC), DATA (DTA), and IOST (IOST).

Interestingly, seven of these ten cryptocurrencies comprise the Huobi 10 Index (HUOBI 10), an index launched on Huobi Pro in late-May that is vetted for market value, scale, and liquidity.

Huobi Australia notably showed some love to one of the domestically-based crypto projects in Power Ledger. Last October, the initial coin offering (ICO) of Power Ledger’s POWR token – native to their leading peer-to-peer renewable energy marketplace – managed to raise $34 million AUD (~$24 million USD); a then-record ICO raise by an Australian-based project.

Huobi Australia made a point to mention in Thursday’s announcement that they “will open more trading pairs to all users” in the future. Presumably, this implies that markets for BTC and ETH pairings will arrive before too long, and possibly even HT trading pairs – the native exchange token of Huobi.

Partnering with Huobi Group to bring Huobi Australia is Melbourne-headquartered Blockchain Global – the largest blockchain-oriented enterprise in Australia, who provide various resources, globally, in order to help accelerate the development of the blockchain ecosystem.

In the relatively pro-crypto Australia, the new digital asset exchange will be regulated by three federal-level governmental bodies: the Australian Transactions Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

Hello Australia! We are now open for trading.#huobi #exchange #lowerfees @cryptonewsday @BlockchainCTR @BlockchainAUS @BlockchainGL @Huobi_Pro @HuobiNews pic.twitter.com/mpTwdQiGnN

— HuobiAustralia (@HuobiAu) July 5, 2018

Forgotten member of the former Chinese ‘big three’ crypto exchanges – BTCC – has today relaunched their digital asset trading platform which lists popular coins like Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC), and even offers certain fiat-to-crypto tradable pairs.

According to a press statement issued by BTCC on Monday, their revamped launch will be celebrated by offering their customers “zero trading fees for the first three months.”

Some features that BTCC have added as part of this relaunch include new trading pairs (e.g., USD pairings with Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), and Litecoin (LTC), plus other crypto-to-crypto pairs), new rewards point system, improved liquidity and deposit/withdrawal speed, and tighter bid-offer spreads.

On the unique reward point system being introduced, BTCC stated that it would basically serve as a stopgap whilst they work on finalizing their self-named native crypto token. When released, these reward points accrued in the interim will be “fully convertible,” according to BTCC’s announcement.

For a limited time, they declared that “more than 10,000 reward points are up for grabs” as part of a promotional event designed to onboard new customers to their trading platform.

The Seven-Year-Old Exchange You’ve Likely Never Heard Of

The launching of BTCC is by no means “just another” exchange start-up joining the market. The pioneering trading platform used to be called BTC China – and was co-founded in 2011 by early Bitcoin adopter Bobby Lee (brother of Litecoin creator, Charlie Lee).

Forced out of China due to government regulation last September, the exchange element of BTCC went offline as Lee took to focusing its resources on the lucrative BTCC mining pool and Mobi bitcoin wallet. BTCC was then acquired in January of this year by a blockchain investment fund headquartered in Hong Kong.

Be the first to try the new BTCC Exchange: https://t.co/MOhWDVbAEh 🚀 With #zero #trading #fees for the first 3 months, you can #trade the #cryptocurrencies you want, the way you want it 😍 pic.twitter.com/NYk3qjThsx

— BTCC (@YourBTCC) July 2, 2018

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Two major factors are limiting the adoption of cryptocurrencies by the financial mainstream: storage and reporting. Some of the features of digital assets, for instance wallets and private keys, simply do not mesh well with existing financial arrangements. There is also the problem of how to measure valuations, of paramount concern to financial institutions who must always keep their books in good order.

Hoping to address these issues, leading cryptocurrency platform Coinbase has announced that its cryptocurrency custody service, “Coinbase Custody” is today open for business. Over the next few weeks it will be “on-boarding a set of world-class clients that includes leading crypto hedge funds, exchanges and ICO teams.”

Two weeks ago the news broke that Coinbase had been testing such a service with a small group of institutional clients. One of those, Kyle Samani of Multicoin Capital, said that if Coinbase gets it right, “the market will come to recognize that custodianship is a solved problem.” If that happens, it will “unlock a big wave of capital.”

Making crypto accessible by finance

Coinbase has made it its mission to “make digital currency investment accessible to every eligible financial institution and hedge fund in the world.” In order to bring in institutional interest the service must be easy to use and monumentally secure. Coinbase Custody aims to be a one-stop shop for institutional investors due to its combination of the platform’s “battle-tested cold storage for crypto assets,” its “institutional-grade broker-dealer and… reporting services,” and its “comprehensive client coverage program.”

While Coinbase is already responsible for $20 billion of its clients crypto assets, the new service adds segregation of crypto assets on-chain, better reporting and security, plus the option to sign off on transactions using “offline private keys that require a quorum of geographically distributed agents.”

In order to meet regulatory requirements Coinbase has partnered with Electronic Transaction Clearing (ETC), which is both registered with the SEC as a broker-dealer and is a member of FINRA, meaning that it is subject to independent auditing.

Currently, Coinbase Custody is only available in the US and Europe but expansion into Asia is planned for later this year. Provided that everything goes well with regulators, the platform will soon increase its crypto options from the present menu of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash.

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Kraken Digital Asset Exchange has shared a Sunday blog post taking aim at a (since-updated) article published last Friday that implied the San Francisco-based crypto trading platform was in some way involved in Tether-related (USDT) market manipulation, after having cited multiple “red flags” identified by relevant experts.

Before falsifying the “troubling” article, Kraken made known their disbelief at the half-baked arguments that underpinned its entire premise; expressing how “it defies logic” that the article was ever approved for publication.

The longstanding Kraken exchange also thanked five community members for each composing what they described as “thorough evisceration[s]” of the “would-be Tether takedown” that unnerved certain readers upon its publication last Friday. One such dissection was further shared by the chief executive and co-founder of Kraken, Jesse Powell, as seen below.

The market for intelligent reporting in crypto hit an all-time low today on @Bloomberg.  https://t.co/XDOpzLaoiH.  @cryptoscopia slays: https://t.co/Hfy7rM4dVv

— Jesse Powell (@jespow) June 29, 2018

Kraken Tackles Tether FUD

The cryptocurrency trading platform – which has been operative since 2011 – provided five rebuts in their Sunday blog post; the accumulation of which represented substantial evidence that poked numerous holes in the accusations implied by last Friday’s widely-read article.

Counter-arguments put forward by Kraken were that:

USDT enjoys price stability due to arbitrage and design;

Kraken’s one USDT market is miniscule relative to overall volume;

USDT price and/or volume manipulation appears futile, anyway;

Exchanges do not see USDT presenting a solvency risk; and

New USDT issuance seems reasonable, given their own fiat deposit figures

Oh, One More Thing

In closing, Kraken’s thorough blog post took aim at one other point raised by the recent article: that the “third-most-common trade” seen on the crypto exchange during the authors’ examination was a suspicious-looking 13,076.389 USDT; potentially indicative of wash trading (i.e., artificially bolstering trade volumes by simultaneously executing buy and sell orders).

In an effort to seek out clarity, Kraken revealed how they asked “the botter responsible for the mysterious 13076.389 orders” how the seemingly random figure came to be. The answer, Kraken disclosed, was exactly that: “literally randomly selected.”

On Tether: Journalists Defy Logic, Raising Red Flags https://t.co/Ptpv5rZDlA

— Kraken Exchange (@krakenfx) July 1, 2018

“No Evidence” of Kraken Manipulation, Edit Says

Notably, the article which prompted the need for Kraken to publish their Sunday blog post took to editing their piece on Saturday. Alterations included the statement that there was “no evidence that Kraken itself is involved in any manipulation has emerged.”

Included, also, were comments from Powell. Whilst he did not verify the legitimacy of the data set that was published – despite allegedly having been asked by the journalists to do so some “4-5 weeks” beforehand – the Kraken chief executive revealed that “nothing looks out of place to us in our publicly available data feed.”

Leading cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, has listed SelfKey (KEY) – an Ethereum-based ERC20 token (short for “Key to Encrypt Yourself”) that can be used to access the products and services on the SelfKey distributed key management and recovery system, such as the SelfKey identity wallet.

On Tuesday evening at 7:29 PM (GMT-7), the Binance Twitter account (@binance) revealed their decision to list SelfKey – as depicted below.

#Binance Lists #SelfKey ( $KEY )https://t.co/U4urzZojhF pic.twitter.com/5vV2eKQ5gW

— Binance (@binance) June 27, 2018

Per their listing announcement, Binance told their users that KEY deposits had already been enabled. The premiere crypto exchange chose to open two trading pairs for SelfKey’s native ERC20 token: KEY/BTC and KEY/ETH. These will open at “2018/06/27 6:00 AM (UTC).”

Not to be confused with the more valuable (by market cap) THEKEY (TKY) – a NEP5 token built atop the NEO blockchain – SelfKey’s KEY represents an ERC20 token that’s built on the Ethereum protocol. Per page 20 of their whitepaper, transferring to an alternative blockchain “remains an option for SelfKey in the future should the Foundation board determine this as the best course of action.”

Binance Unlocks 33% Jump For KEY

With Binance having listed such a low-cap crypto token (i.e., market cap ranked ~430^th at time of announcement), it was barely surprising to see that the price of SelfKey’s KEY spiked near-immediately after news of the listing broke on Tuesday.

According to CoinMarketCap, KEY went from a Bitcoin value of 110 satoshis (sats) just prior to the Binance listing news, to hit a peak of 146 sats by 7:59 PM (i.e., 30 minutes after the listing); an increase of 32.7 percent.

To learn more about what the SelfKey network represents, below is an explainer video uploaded by their YouTube channel last October:

In a race to entrench their leading positions in the highly lucrative cryptocurrency exchange sector, Huobi Group and Binance have each upgraded their respective offerings on Monday, albeit via different mechanisms, with the former bolstering their talent stocks, and the latter upgrading their back-end technology.

Huobi U.S. Partner Gets CEO

For the rapidly evolving Huobi Group – the Singaporean parent company of one of the world’s leading crypto exchanges in Huobi Pro – Monday saw their exclusive U.S. strategic partner, HBUS Inc., issue a press release revealing that they had appointed a chief executive officer (CEO).

Indeed, the soon-to-be-launched HBUS crypto marketplace is to be led by Frank Fu who, per Monday’s announcement, “will be based in San Francisco, where his blockchain expertise [and] global management background uniquely position him for success.”

#HBUS, the exclusive, soon to launch U.S. strategic partner of @Huobi, one of the top blockchain asset and crypto exchange providers, today announced the appointment of Frank Fu as Chief Executive Officer.

— Huobi NEWS (@HuobiNews) June 26, 2018

This above-mentioned experience derives from Fu’s extensive corporate background (see: LinkedIn profile). The newly-appointed HBUS CEO leaves Meitu, Inc.; a Chinese tech company where Fu “held several executive positions including managing director of Meitu Global and international investment.”

In this particular role, HBUS’ press statement detailed that Fu was responsible for having generated “a combined growth of 500 million new mobile subscribers globally.”

I look forward to assembling a team dedicated to building a world-class virtual currency and digital asset platform that offers the best customer experience, technology innovation, and regulatory compliance.” – Fu

As for how Fu developed his intricate knowledge of blockchain technology, Monday’s announcement implied that it was borne out of the culmination of Fu having “founded several blockchain mobile consumer applications and digital media startups in the US and Asia.”

Binance Bolsters System

Whilst Monday saw Huobi (via their HBUS partner) declare their investment in a talent upgrade, Binance instead took to developing the back-end technology powering their globally renowned crypto exchange.

This – as Binance warned users on the weekend – required the temporary suspension of withdrawals and trading on Tuesday, starting at 2:00 AM (UTC). Although Binance told its community that the upgrade would take “approximately 4 hours” to complete, they subsequently declared that the estimated time frame “will be extended.”

#Binance has commenced the scheduled system upgrade. The upgrade will take approximately 4 hours.
Withdrawals and trading will be suspended during this period.
We apologize for any inconvenience caused and thank you for your patience. pic.twitter.com/Q7pCfQLkDY

— Binance (@binance) June 26, 2018

It is uncertain if Binance or its CEO, Changpeng Zhao, will reveal whether or not the system upgrade was done so as to facilitate for an upcoming announcement or strategic collaboration with another crypto-based entity.

Just as likely, however, is that Binance scheduled the upgrade after realizing that the low trading volumes currently being seen in the downtrodden crypto market would make for an apt time to for it to be executed. Of course, performing a system upgrade amid the current market climate will inconvenience far fewer of Binance’s customer base (relative to a bull market, for instance, where daily user activity would be much higher).

Data migration will take a little longer than expected, again. Apologies for the extension.

— CZ (@cz_binance) June 26, 2018

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Huobi Group, the parent company of one of the leading cryptocurrency trading platforms, Huobi Pro, have divulged more details on two of their upcoming service offerings – Huobi OTC and Huobi Quant Trading – on Monday afternoon; both of which are tailored toward experienced market traders.

Huobi OTC

According to Monday’s press release, Huobi OTC – the “over-the-counter” service used predominately for those wanting to trade a sizeable amount of cryptocurrency – is set to “start beta testing in the UK in Q3 2018.”

Huobi OTC helps protect all parties from adverse price volatility in the market-at-large.”

Distinguishing their “user-friendly OTC platform” from other major players in the space, the announcement suggested, was the fact that Huobi OTC will “have a 0% commission free, [meaning that] it is completely free for transactions.”

Huobi Quant Trading

Joining in on what the giant crypto company believes is “gaining in popularity,” Huobi will soon take to fully launching their Huobi Quant Trading offering.

The Huobi API system allows investors to participate in three main quant areas: arbitrage, market making, and trend prediction.”

As to why more and more crypto traders are finding cryptocurrency quant trading to be of significant value, Huobi Group explained that “by using quantitative analysis (based on mathematical computations), trading opportunities are found which, due to their complexity, require execution by an automated system.”

Another clear benefit of quant trading, the world-leading virtual asset financial services group went on to state, “is that emotion is removed from the trading process.”

Specialised Services Targeting Large Crypto Investors – Huobi details two options for crypto experts!

Find out more https://t.co/nKAUi8ObVg#HuobiGroup #HuobiSummit #Huobipro #Hadax #Exhibitions #Trading #Summits #London #European #Amsterdam #Europe

— Huobi Pro (@Huobi_Pro) June 25, 2018

Huobi’s Monday announcement preceded the final instalment of the crypto exchange’s European Quant Trade Summit, which is to be held in Amsterdam on Tuesday.

Notably, from 15:35 to 16:00, Huobi Quant Trading will be introduced by presenter Gray Meng (Senior Operation Director, Huobi). A discussion panel on quant trading is then scheduled for a 16:15–17:00 timeslot.

Huobi OTC also appears set to enjoy some publicity from tomorrow’s Amsterdam summit, with Erica Jiang (Global Operation Manager, Huobi OTC) scheduled to deliver a presentation from 17:15 to 17:30 that is dedicated to the zero commission Huobi OTC service.

Huobi Token (HT) is currently up 6.1 percent over the past 24 hours, according to CoinCheckup. Along with the native token (i.e., Binance Coin (BNB)) of rival crypto exchange Binance, HT has been one of the market’s best performing cryptocurrencies in recent months.

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