Friday, November 2, 2018

Banking in the Bahamas 🌴

November 2, 2018

Tether Confirms it is Banking in the Bahamas

Banking in the Bahamas

After weeks of speculation, Tether Limited has finally put the banking rumors to rest. In a new announcement, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin revealed that it was now banking with Deltec Bank & Trust in the Bahamas.

The release follows weeks after its previous bank, Noble Bank, was allegedly listed for sale after it had lost all of its clients - including Tether.

Now, since rumors circulated that Tether did not have a solidified banking relationship, it seems like the company chose to reveal its new information with Deltec with hopes to restore confidence in USDT.

Tether boasts balance

Aside from the new bank announcement, Tether's statement clearly wanted to reiterate that its bank accounts are fully stocked with enough reserves to back the outstanding USDT supply 1:1 with U.S. dollars.

To do so, Tether chose to include a letter from Deltec, addressed to Tether, that clearly states "at the close of business on October 31, 2018, the portfolio cash value of your account with our bank was $1,831,322,828."

In addition, Tether mentions that Deltec has reviewed and will continue to review multiple areas of Tether's operations to assess the company's ability in maintaining the correct reserve amount.

Will the FUD stop?

While the announcement does kick some of the rumors out of the door, critics argue that there still hasn't been a third-party audit completed on Tether's reserves to ensure integrity.

Regardless, USDT's movement in the market has relaxed the past few days as the stablecoin finally begins to rest much closer to its $1 peg.

INSTITUTION

Crypto Investment Firm Raised $330 Million This Year

We're in a bear market?

According to CNBC, Grayscale, a New York-based cryptocurrency investment firm, raised $330 million so far this year. The bear market does not seem to be slowing down this firm from raising funds.

$330 million is a staggering number when you put it into perspective. It is 13 times more than the firm raised at this same time last year and the most it has raised in its history.

In the third quarter alone, Grayscale brought in $81.1 million from investors. In total, Grayscale now has $1.5 billion in assets under management.

Michael Sonnenshein, managing director of Grayscale Investment, said the market is no hindrance:

"Bitcoin prices doing nothing but go down the entire year has not deterred our existing clients from putting more capital to work. Asset inflows are really strong despite these price declines."

Taking advantage of the market

Grayscale's new investors see the current price slump as a great opportunity to enter the market. When Bitcoin had its run at the end of last year, most investors thought they were too late to begin investing. They now feel like they have a second chance.

The chart below depicts the profile of investors entering the market via investment in Grayscale, notably a ramp up in institutional investors:

EXCHANGE

40,000 Ugandians Sign Up for Binance in First Week

Eager for crypto

Just a couple weeks ago, Binance launched its service in Uganda. This is the first time Binance was made available to an African country.

According to Coindesk, 40,000 people in Uganda signed up for Binance during its first week live. Obviously, Uganda's citizens were eager to get their hands on some cryptocurrencies.

At launch, Ugandans are only able to trade Bitcoin and Ethereum, but Binance does support fiat deposits in the country's currency.

Crypto can make a difference

Uganda represents a perfect frontier for one of crypto's main use cases. It is estimated that 74% of households in the country do not have a bank account.

Crypto can offer the Ugandan people access to a safe, secure means of storing value without the red tape involved in opening a bank account.

Prior to Binance's entrance, Ugandans were very limited in their options for accessing crypto. LocalBitcoins was the only option for the people to trade crypto within the country. However, citizens could look to exchanges operating within nearby countries.

NEWS

Nasdaq is Looking to Tackle Crypto Market Manipulation

Tackling fraud

According to Bloomberg, American stock market exchange Nasdaq is looking to help cryptocurrency exchanges weed out manipulation, scams, and fraud.

While Nasdaq has reportedly been using this technology for years to help police securities, currencies, and other markets, it is only now starting to experiment with the technology in digital assets.

Allegedly, Nasdaq's surveillance technology monitors activity to "help capture and analyze behaviors" that may be associated with different illegal activities such as pump-and-dump schemes and insider trading.

Growing demand

While regulators push and shove over whether or not the cryptocurrency market is manipulated, exchanges are taking matters into their own hands to legitimize the industry.

So far, U.S. crypto exchange Gemini has already implemented Nasdaq's surveillance technology and it seems there are many more customers lined up.

Tony Sio, Nasdaq's head of exchange and regulator surveillance, commented on the demand:

"We're now getting approached every week or two. We won't work with all of these firms though since a lot of them are quite early stage or not reputable yet."

BITS

But wait, there's more...

A lawyer for Bitcoin Foundation founder Charlie Shrem has denied claims by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss that he "stole" 5000 bitcoins (now $31.7 million) from them in 2012.
U.S. rapper T.I., also known as T.I.P., is being sued for $5 million by a group of people after his FLiK token has reportedly failed.
Innosilicon's mining equipment no longer works on Sia following a planned algorithm change, but not everyone went along with the fork.

MEME