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NYSE GOES CRYPTO: Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the Atlanta-based firm that owns the New York Stock Exchange, plans to launch a digital assets platform including, to start, a bitcoin futures product.
Called Bakkt, the platform will offer a one-day "physical" bitcoin futures contract – meaning bitcoin is actually delivered on a specified date, unlike the Chicago exchanges' bitcoin-linked contracts, which are settled in cash.
The product is expected to launch in November, pending U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) approval, ICE said. Full story
DOLLAR DOMINANCE: CoinDesk's analysis shows that the U.S. dollar, not the Japanese yen, is the dominant currency traded for bitcoin by a wide margin.
Previous estimates showed otherwise because they lumped together spot trades and derivative products denominated in yen, but excluded derivatives in the case of the dollar, leading to apples-and-oranges comparisons.
Correcting for these errors, CoinDesk found the dollar makes up 56 percent of spot market-only trading and 68 percent of total trading (spot and derivatives) of fiat for bitcoin. Full Story
PLEASED TO MEET YOU: A project announced Thursday, Handshake is seeking to reform the internet certificate authority (CA) system and domain registrars. It will allow entities to claim domains after proving cryptographically they own a corresponding website, in a decentralized system.
Handshake aims to give $100 million worth of its tokens to the developers and organizations it partnered up with and those that share the project's spirit, among them GitHub, the P2P Foundation, Freenode, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Tor Foundation and other like-minded non-profits.
Spearheaded by the creator of bitcoin's lightning network, Joseph Poon, Handshake has raised $10.2 million. Investors include A16z Crypto, Founders Fund, Polychain Capital and Draper Associates.
Underscoring their dedication to the idea of decentralization, Handshake's creators vow to dismantle their own entity quickly after launch. Full Story |
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The key performance indicators (KPIs) for bitcoin cash (BCH) have maintained an average of about ten to twenty percent to those of bitcoin (BTC): - Exchange volume jumped to >100 percent of BTC's early on, before settling to lower levels
- On-chain transaction volume remained low but on-chain transaction counts have been consistently increasing this past month to 50 percent levels
- Average fees have stayed low at 2 percent to 5 percent that of BTC. In other terms, a few pennies vs. a dollar
Learn more research insights here. |
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 The Oxford Fintech Programme gives you the tools you need to build the future of transactions and commerce. In this online fintech programme, you'll explore emerging technologies that will disrupt marketplaces and financial services, and examine the state of the industry and plan disruptive intra- or entre-preneurial interventions. Find Out More |
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| | BEARS ARE BACK: Bitcoin fell to a two-week low of $7,282 Friday morning on Bitfinex and was recently trading at $7,350; technical charts show a bullish-to-bearish reversal. Full story |
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BEST OF THE BEST
Don't miss Yahoo Finance's interview with Louis Freeh, a former FBI director whose law firm, Freeh, Sporkin & Sullivan (FSS) released a widely panned report on Tether's dollar backing earlier this summer.
Freeh discusses that report, which was a snapshot of Tether's bank accounts on a single day. He again stressed that it was not an audit, and addressed some other concerns related to the document.
Asked if the relationship between Tether and one of the firm's partners, Judge Eugene Sullivan, represents a conflict of interest, Freeh said that the judge "was not on site to conduct any of the interviews with the banking partners."
He also said that the law firm had enough qualified staff to investigate crypto, and was planning to hire some more.
THE REST
BLOOMBERG: Citing anonymous sources, the news wire reports that the SEC has approached a number of brokerages that deal with cryptocurrencies with questions about their business practices, fees generated from trading, financing and initial coin offerings.
The agency also asked about investment advisers' involvement, the sources said.
FOREIGN POLICY: Anja Manuel and Leo Carter of RiceHadleyGates LLC discuss why the U.S. must explore the broad use of blockchain as soon as possible.
The tech "could be enormously useful" in the national security space, but can be dangerous if mishandled, they write. Management of the supply chains for defense systems, governments employees' background checks, sensitive data storage, quick recognitions of hacks — blockchain would make these all much more efficient, the authors argue.
MOTHERBOARD: Instead of hunting or begging for cheap power, this crypto mining operation decided to produce some itself.
Canadian company DMG Blockchain is building a hydro power substation in Southern British Columbia. The firm hopes to plug it into the local grid and use it to supply electricity to its expanded mining operations. |
 We've launched our new podcast, Late Confirmation, which are the top stories in the blockchain world, delivered daily from the team at CoinDesk, sponsored by Oxford Fintech Programme. Listen to Latest Episode and Subscribe |
WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER |
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