Tag: Exchanges

Following announcements earlier this month of Binance moving its headquarters to Malta, the world’s leading crypto exchange has now confirmed plans to support a fintech startup project. The Malta Stock Exchange (MSE) has teamed up with Binance for the program, which is designed to support new fintech and blockchain initiatives.

Dubbed the MSX Fintech Accelerator, the program will provide an initial 12 applicants with use of the MSE’s facilities, including accounting, payroll, conference rooms, training and communication services. Applicants will be mentored by volunteers from leading organizations such as Thomson Reuters.

MSE Chairman Joseph Portelli was quoted as saying the project will help bring products to the market faster and is offered to both foreign and local organizations. Binance confirmed the support, praising MSE’s provisions to help startups grow “in what is otherwise a highly competitive industry”.

In addition to the project, Binance has opened a bank account in the country and has plans to launch a Malta-based cryptocurrency trading platform to allow crypto-fiat trading.

The plans were announced by the Malta Stock Exchange on Twitter:

Tnk u ⁦@binance⁩. Lots more to come. Well done to all stakeholders, whose foresight, and bold action will make #Malta the Blockchain Island.⁦@JosephMuscat_JM⁩ ⁦@edward_scicluna⁩ ⁦@SilvioSchembri⁩ ⁦@cz_binance⁩  https://t.co/XC8K2tAwxF

— Malta Stock Exchange (@MaltaStockExch) June 19, 2018

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OKEx is now providing a service for budding entrepreneurs to launch their own crypto exchange. All you need is a domain name, logo, some management details and half a million OKB tokens (approx. $2.5 million). OKB is OKEx’s utility token which is now worth $5, up from the $1 they cost when released.

The project, entitled Digital Asset Exchange Open Partnership Program, is aimed at businessmen with solid crypto market experience and strong industry influence. Applicants will be set up on a matching system to OKEx and provided with all they need to get started, including offline and online crypto asset storage, a clearing system for transfers, crime prevention systems and customer support.

New exchanges must follow strict launch criteria, including specific distribution of tokens. 24 percent of tokens must go to OKB holders and 51 percent can be mined, with the remaining belonging to the exchange.

OKEx explains that the intention behind the project is to provide the closest thing to a truly decentralized digital asset exchange. They believe the service will inspire change and ideas within the blockchain industry. Originally from China, OKEx now features offices around the globe and trades over $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency a day.

Pre-packaged “businesses for resale” is not a new thing, with many traditional industries providing similar services for decades now. The idea started in the 60’s with music industry ‘white label’ vinyls, but now many electronics, banking and forex companies all offer pre-packaged business services for sale.

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Just as the fragile cryptocurrency market begun seeing some consistent buying volume on Wednesday (KST), it was wiped out near-instantly after one of the world’s most popular crypto exchanges, the Seoul-based Bithumb fell victim to a successful hack; losing 35 billion won (~$31.5 million USD) worth of virtual currency.

The funds, held by Bithumb in hot wallets so as to accommodate customers who keep “their” balances with the exchange for convenience, were seized between “last night and today (Wednesday),” stated the popular Korean exchange their press release (translated from South Korean).

The crypto exchange also alerted impacted customers that they will be wholly compensated (by using part of their capital reserves). They also notified readers that “all our assets are [securely safe] in Bithumb’s cold wallet.” Deposit and withdrawal features were temporarily disabled whilst Bithumb investigated the hacking incident.

*All deposit and withdrawal service will be stopped to make sure the security. We will keep notice you of the restart of the service. We apologize for your inconvenience and thanks for your understanding.

— Bithumb (@BithumbOfficial) June 20, 2018

News From Bithumb Sees BTC Succumb

As news broke at ~1:00 AM (UTC), cryptocurrencies endured a harsh marketwide sell-off, led by Bitcoin (BTC) which fell by roughly $200 within the hour, pushing it under $6,600. Per TradingView, BTC has found support back above this daily low and is currently tracking at $6,615.

Prior to the Bithumb announcement, the rejuvenated $293 billion crypto market looked on-track for a $300 billion valuation level, but instead slumped by about $10 billion as traders swiftly reacted to the unwelcome news.

Crypto Influencers Have Say

It appeared that Charlie Lee (Creator, Litecoin) was not overly surprised by the news of Bithumb having incurred a hack, given his below-tweet. The Litecoin inventor stressed the recommendation of purchasing “a hardware wallet like Ledger Nano or Trezor,” in a later tweet, adding that “they are easy to use.”

Another day, another hack. Hopefully BitThumb is able to cover this amount, though $30MM is not a small amount.

As I’ve said many times, be smart and only keep on exchange coins that you are actively trading. It’s best to withdraw right after trading. https://t.co/8YpVcHx8tK

— Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) June 20, 2018

Also quick to voice their opinion was Charlie Shrem (Founding Director, Bitcoin Foundation), who, in referring to how Bithumb is covering all of their affected customers’ losses, noted that “our industry is getting better and stronger.”

Bithumb hacked for $30M but covering all losses. Our industry is getting better and stronger https://t.co/P2HOaFYpWS

— Charlie Shrem (@CharlieShrem) June 20, 2018

Tweet Deletion Gets (Bi)thumb Down

Many community members noticed that Bithumb took to deleting their original tweet revealing that they’d realized “about $30,000,000” worth of cryptocurrencies had been stolen.

Bithumb deletes tweet about $30M hack for users which will be “covered” by @BithumbOfficial. This is bad. pic.twitter.com/UPaV5Qovrs

— :: lawson baker :: (@lwsnbaker) June 20, 2018

Bithumbがハッキング被害総額を記載した公式ツイートを削除したため、削除前のスクリーンショットを掲載しておきます。ご参考になれば。#Bithumb#ハッキング pic.twitter.com/Nw2pFrwcgh

— 仮想王金獅子 (@kizashi_coin) June 20, 2018

Did @BithumbOfficial just delete tweet about the hack?#Crypto #Bitcoin #btc #Hacked #Cryptocurrency #Bithumb #BithumbHack

— Crypto India News (@CryptoIndiaNews) June 20, 2018

Two Weeks, Two Korean Exchanges Hacked

In a blow to the young industry’s reputation, news of Wednesday’s Bithumb hacking incident came after the lesser-known South Korean crypto trading platform, Coinrail, lost some $37 million worth of virtual coins and tokens to cyber-thieves little more than a week ago.

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The cryptosphere learnt of a breakthrough announcement on Monday when Singaporean crypto startup Sentinel Protocol (UPP) issued a press statement welcoming Bibox Exchange – a top-10 crypto trading platform by volume – to their distributed teams of security experts dubbed ‘The Sentinels’.

How This Helps Bibox Exchange

Per the announcement, the burgeoning Bibox exchange will implement Sentinel Protocol’s decentralized Threat Reputation Database (TRDB). Customers of Bibox benefit for they can be protected “from falling prey to scams and frauds by instantly referring to” TRDB; a welcome feature indeed, given how lucrative a target crypto exchanges have appeared to capable hackers.

By adopting the free API that comes with TRDB, Bibox will be able to notify and alarm its users of “suspicious or malicious addresses.”

How This Helps Sentinel Protocol

Convincing Bibox to deploy their security layer means that Sentinel Protocol is now better equipped to build their “alliance with crypto exchanges, wallets, payment services as well as Dapps to share threat data.”

With Bibox Exchange on board, our joint security force to fight against crypto-asset attacks will accelerate the expansion of a defense line to cooperate and collectively prevent the use of stolen cryptocurrencies.” – Patrick Kim (CEO & Founder, Sentinel Protocol)

As this alliance grows, it places upward pressure on the UPP utility token’s value. This is because, as Aries Wang (Co-Founder, Bibox) explained in Monday’s press release, “to use these proactive security suites, crypto users need to use…UPP.”

Such value may indeed rise further with the upcoming launches of two more Sentinel Protocol creations, the machine learning-based S-Wallets and Distributed Malware Sandboxing.

“Exchanges are an important part of Sentinel Protocol’s security initiative.”
Read more about the *first partnership* in the industry between an exchange and blockchain security company. https://t.co/5zOjNvMDoF #NoMoreHacks #NoMoreScams #cryptoexchange #protection pic.twitter.com/ervPf9qKKC

— Sentinel (@s_protocol) June 18, 2018

Bibox Pairs UPP Four in Listing

Corresponding with the news of what marked “the very first partnership in the industry between a centralized exchange and a blockchain security company,” Bibox took to listing Sentinel Protocol’s UPP token.

In their listing announcement, Bibox divulged that UPP deposits and withdrawals will be made available from “11:00, June 17 2018 (GMT +8),” and that the four trading pairs which are being made available – UPP/BTC, UPP/ETH, UPP/BIX, and UPP/USDT – will go live at “13:00, June 2018 (GMT +8).”

200,000 UPP Giveaway Accompanies Bibox Listing

To acknowledge the listing event, Sentinel Protocol committed 200,000 UPP for Bibox to partition to its customers who trade enough of the newly-listed cryptocurrency.

According to the event page, Bibox will randomly allocate between 10 and 6,666 UPP tokens to users who trade (i.e., buying and selling) at least 1,000 UPP between 13:00, June 18 and 13:00, June 25 (GMT +8). Distribution will occur “within 5 business days after the event.”

Bibox Token (BIX) Beating Resurgent Crypto Market

The strategic alignment with, and listing of, Sentinel Protocol comes at a time where Bibox’s native token, BIX, has been one of the crypto market darlings for not just the past 24 hours (BIX is currently up ~8.5%), but for several weeks.

Indeed, whilst most of the attention has been on well-performing crypto exchange tokens Binance Coin (BNB) and Huobi Token (HT) during this drawn out bear market, little has been said for Bibox Token (BIX), despite it currently being the best monthly percentage gainer (+25.3%) of any cryptocurrency ranked in the top hundred for market cap.

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An insightful update on the status of crypto-specific custodianship – a major barrier said to be keeping institutional money parked on the sidelines – has been provided by way of Bloomberg on Monday.

Per their reports, a spokesperson for Coinbase Inc. – one of the largest crypto-related companies in the industry – “expects to win approval soon to serve clients requiring a so-called qualified custodian that meets tough U.S. standards for guarding assets.”

This comes as Kyle Samani (Managing Partner, Multicoin Capital), a well-established hedge fund manager within the crypto space, revealed that he and a select few others have recently formed “a small group of institutional investors who have been testing” the new crypto custody service being developed by Coinbase; “one of scores of such offerings in development.”

Having told Bloomberg that custodianship represents “the final barrier” preventing a multitude of institutional investors from participating in the young, speculative asset class, Samani predicts that this impediment will soon disappear:

Over the next year, the market will come to recognize that custodianship is a solved problem. This will unlock a big wave of capital.”

The article also made reference to a handful of other entities that are currently in hot pursuit of developing (or at least exploring) crypto-custody services. These include crypto startups such as Circle and BitGo, the recently-established custody consortium, Komainu, and “at least three giant Wall Street custodians,” Bank of New York Mellon Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Northern Trust Corp.

Commenting on the financial influx that Coinbase’s custodial service is expecting to attract, once finalized, Sam McIngvale (Product Lead, Custody, Coinbase) went on the record forecasting “about $20 billion in crypto assets.”

Such a predicted figure, Bloomberg reported on Monday, has been upward trending in recent months because “startups hold initial coin offerings, pumping their own tokens into the market.”

The article proceeds to take stock of where each of the above-mentioned enterprises are in relation to developing their respective custodian services. Citing Lex Sokolin (Global Director, Fintech Strategy, Autonomous Research LLP), the consensus appears to be that “the technology answer should be in the market toward end of year, and a traditional one will follow thereafter.”

When they do begin being offered, it will certainly represent yet another lucrative market entered into by the Coinbase juggernaut. Whilst pricing will likely fall with the arrival of competition, Coinbase currently charges their institutional clients a $US100,000 setup fee for digital asset custody. Additional demands include having a minimum balance of $10 million and accepting an assets-under-management (AUM) fee of 10 basis points per month (bpm).

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Popular cryptocurrency exchange BitFinex has launched a new initiative to promote innovation and development within the blockchain industry, dubbed the Hackathon Series. The first city to host the three-day event will be London on the weekend of July 20th, 2018.

The series hopes to see developers and trading enthusiasts across the globe come together for workshops, presentations and seminars by leading industry professionals. Designed around collaboration and innovation, the event seeks to address the rapid growth of the cryptocurrency industry and promote open-source development within it.

The Bitfinex Hackathon features open-source development, pizza & $20,000+ in prizes. London, July 20th – See you there.https://t.co/lyPCXmC0Yp

— Bitfinex (@bitfinex) June 15, 2018

Applications are free to those wishing to get involved, however, spots are limited and applications are judged based on unique education offerings, interest in the field or demonstrated ability to contribute. There are no specific requirements to enter but BitFinex has provided API documentation as a guideline and put an emphasis on creativity and ‘building without constraints’.

The Hackathon is entirely free to attend and includes food, drinks and resources provided by BitFinex.

Participants have the opportunity to win both cash prizes of up to $7,500 and development opportunities in upcoming projects. Both Ethereum and EOS have put forward prizes for innovative developments featuring their technologies, sponsored by Ethfinex and EOSfinex respectively.

Applications to enter must be submitted before July 15th, 8AM BST at the BitFinex Hackathon site.

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Following last months announcement, Bittrex has now officially begun offering direct trading of USD to cryptocurrency. Initial trading pairs include Bitcoin (BTC), Tether (USDT) and TrueUSD (TUSD) with US dollar (USD).

Bittrex CEO Bill Shihara spoke to Bloomberg about a month ago and mentioned a deal with Signature Bank but it was only towards the end of last month that the exchange began adding retail customers for USD trading. Since then, it took just over two weeks for the Seattle based exchange to implement the processes necessary to begin offering the new service.

Shihara commented on the extreme vetting process that the company endured in order to secure the deal, mentioning the strict Anti-money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) checks that are a top priority for US authorities when dealing with cryptocurrency.

They have since proceeded with adding initial test phase markets and clients in order to ensure everything is running smoothly before opening to all customers. For now, only citizens from the four US states of Washington, California, New York and Montana can participate in the scheme, but this will expand over time. Some international regions are also eligible.

Fellow cryptocurrency exchange Binance has also recently announced plans to begin offering fiat to crypto trading on its platform following the move of its headquarters from FSA-regulated Japan to crypto-friendly Malta.

Bittrex offers 288 trading pairs with almost 200 tokens and has an $84,7 million market value.

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Amid yet another gloomy day for the crypto market, Thursday saw three of the industry’s largest cryptocurrency trading platforms – Binance, Bithumb, and Huobi Pro – each list a top-35 ranked cryptoasset (by market cap). These were, respectively, Siacoin (SC), Cardano (ADA), and Decred (DCR).

Binance Lists Siacoin (SC)

On the day of its one-year conception anniversary, Binance announced that they would make Siacoin (SC) tradable in three of their four available markets (i.e., SC/BNB, SC/BTC, and SC/ETH). These trading pairs went live at 11:00 AM (UTC) on Thursday.

Siacoin (see: whitepaper), the primary currency of Sia – Nebulous Incorporated’s variant on the Bitcoin protocol that enables decentralized file storage via cryptographic contracts – unsurprisingly spiked immediately after Binance made known their intention to list SC. Per TradingView, SC spiked by 21.7 percent just two minutes after Binance’s listing announcement, before retracing.

#Binance Lists #SiaCoin ( $SC )https://t.co/BkyFi6GJ6Y pic.twitter.com/z71A74Q5Wn

— Binance (@binance) June 14, 2018

Bithumb Lists Cardano (ADA)

At much the same time as Binance’s announcement, Bithumb, the popular South Korean crypto exchange which typically ranks among the top six for 24-hour trading volume, revealed that they’d be listing ADA – the native token of Cardano (see: explanatory paper). The lesser-valued Status Network Token (SNT) was listed alongside ADA, also.

Already tradable on another major South Korean exchange in Upbit, the Bithumb listing suggest ADA is a much sought-after cryptocurrency in what is one the industry’s most fervent regions.

As the public officially learnt of Cardano’s Bithumb listing (i.e., 02:25 AM UTC), ADA had already spiked in value by 10.1 percent in the preceding thirty-minute period; the result of Bithumb having published their blog post 25 minutes beforehand. ADA peaked eleven minutes after the official listing announcement, climbing an additional 5.3 percent from the already-spiked valuation.

Cardano(ADA) and Status Network Token(SNT) will be listed on Bithumb Today!

https://t.co/EXmbe2dYUD

— Bithumb (@BithumbOfficial) June 14, 2018

Huobi Pro Lists Decred (DCR)

At 05:00 AM (UTC), Huobi Pro announced that they’d be making DCR, the native coin of the Decred (see: documentation hub) network, available for trade at 03:00 AM (UTC) on Friday; paired against both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).

The announcement further stated that “withdrawals will be available from 11:00, June 17, 2018 (GMT+8)” – exactly 48 hours after trading commences.

Whilst it took until 16 minutes after the official announcement had been uploaded for Huobi Pro to tweet about the news of the listing (i.e., at 05:16 AM (UTC)), the price of DCR was barely impacted in the interim (unlike ADA). By 06:06 AM, DCR’s dollar value capped out some 7.6 percent higher than when the tweet was shared.

 

(#) #! Deposit has already started.
DCR/ #BTC & DCR/ #ETH #trading pairs will be available tomorrow from 11:00am June 15, 2018(GMT+8).

Full Article: https://t.co/Cy6gHWo8JW@decredproject #Hadax #Decred pic.twitter.com/SOyASy5QqL

— Huobi Pro (@Huobi_Pro) June 14, 2018

Incredibly, the DCR listing represented one of seven Thursday announcements shared by the fast-growing Huobi enterprise. Among these were the distribution of EON, EOP, and MEETONE candies to their EOS-owning customers, the launch of their inaugural crypto-tracking index (i.e., HB10/USDT), and the declaration of a FIFA World Cup-based competition that involves airdrops of the All Sports (SOC) token.

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The Singapore-headquartered cryptocurrency exchange, COSS.io, revealed on Tuesday evening (PT) that they would be adding ten new USD trading pairs to their growing trading platform.

Short for Crypto-One-Stop-Solution, COSS revealed – via this tweet – that the ten cryptoassets scheduled for integration with their exchange are: EOS (EOS), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), ZenCash (ZEN), Lisk (LSK), Ark Ecosystem (ARK), Waves Platform (WAVES), Dash (DASH), OmiseGo (OMG), ICON (ICX), and NEM (XEM).

Something to note, however, is that despite COSS being in the minority regarding their ability to facilitate USD-to-crypto trading, they have in place a minimum deposit of $US1,000 for the time being.

New USD Pairings are now available on https://t.co/HI3mvwqrFI  ! Sign up for an account with us and start trading. @EOS_io @BITCOlNCASH @zencashofficial @LiskHQ @ArkEcosystem @wavesplatform @Dashpay @omise_go @helloiconworld @NEMofficial $coss #coss pic.twitter.com/YEYnFoVFat

— COSS.IO Official [NOT giving away ETH] (@cosscrypto) June 14, 2018

Tuesday’s announcement from COSS – who administer their own self-titled virtual token – comes amid a pivotal stage for the low-volume exchange. This past weekend, they issued a press statement declaring the start of a transitionary period toward COSS 2.0.

Whilst they listed over a dozen features that users can expect from COSS 2.0, the team was reluctant to share any sort of timeline. Encouragingly, however, COSS did promise that “over the next few months,” they’d publish content that explores these features.

Such publications will be much-anticipated, one would suspect, given the impressive suite of functions C.O.S.S Pte Ltd is alleging COSS 2.0 will be capable of offering before too long. Indeed, here are just some of these stated features:

Crypto dust conversion

New wallet system

1.5 million transactions per second (TPS) at launch

Full set of public and private APIs

Basket trading

TPS scaling built into the infrastructural back end

The human capital that the crypto-startup has at their disposal is more than ever before. Per the above-mentioned announcement, the core team totalled five members upon launch (i.e., April 1^st, 2017). As of this month, that number has near-quadrupled to nineteen, and they are expecting to soon be payrolling “a team of more than thirty developers working on COSS 2.0.”

At the COSSroads?

Per CoinCheckup, COSS – an ERC20 token built atop the Ethereum blockchain – is in severe free fall, trading at a price (USD) representative of a 95.5 percent decrease from its all-time high. COSS currently has a market cap of $15.9 million – ranking it the 350^th most valued cryptocurrency. Its exchange is currently ranked 126^th overall for 24-hour trading volume, according to CoinMarketCap.

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In a paper released today, a professor from the University of Texas explores a possible link between Tether (USDT) trading on the BitFinex exchange and the price hikes of late 2017.

The main summary of the paper notes that less than 1% of time involving bulk Tether-Bitcoin transactions account for 50% of Bitcoin gains and 64% of other cryptocurrencies.

In December 2017, the value of Bitcoin almost doubled – shooting up from approximately $10,000 to $20,000 in less than three weeks.

In his report, Professor John M Griffin notes that such patterns cannot be explained by investor demand but exhibit manipulation caused when stable-coin Tether is used to provide price support:

These patterns cannot be explained by investor demand proxies but are most consistent with the supply-based hypothesis where Tether is used to provide price support and manipulate cryptocurrency prices,”.

Coincidently, earlier this week a Freedom of Information Request was filed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The request was regarding subpoenas issued to BitFinex and was denied because, apparently, it could interfere with the CFTC’s law enforcement activities. The identity of the individual who made the request was not released, but may well have been related to the University of Texas report.

The professor’s paper goes on to note the obvious appeal of a decentralized, blockchain-based ledger but also points out that a majority of these trades conclude on centralized exchanges. This presents a problem as cryptocurrency exchanges operate outside of financial regulations and offer limited transparency.

While these concerns are noted, regulation and legislation of cryptocurrency markets have come a long way since the meteoric rise of Bitcoin back in late 2017.

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