Bitcoin News

Fidelity’s Crypto Platform In “Final Testing” The broader crypto industry was shocked on  mid-October , when Fidelity Investments, a Boston-based investment giant with tens of thousands of clients, and similarly impressive assets under management, revealed that it would be launching a pro-Bitcoin crypto platform. This platform, now known as Fidelity Digital Assets Services (FDAS), headed by Tom Jessop, was marketed as a way for Fidelity’s 13,000 institutional clients to gain access to top-of-the-line cryptocurrency custody and trade execution. While many were caught off guard by this announcement, Jessop explained in an  interview  with Laura Shin, a leading crypto journalist, that Fidelity’s Bitcoin ambitions started in 2014, when the company began to research and even test the flagship cryptocurrency. Rumor has it that Fidelity also set up a semi-mining farm, likely in a bid to understand blockchain technology more in-depth. And eventually, after years of exper...

Edan Yago is the founder of  CementDAO , an effort to bring together stablecoins into a unified ecosystem.  He previously was the CEO and co-founder of software firm Epiphyte and helped set up the industry associations DATA and the Stablecoin Foundation.  The views expressed here are his own. —————————- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been gone to significant lengths in an attempt to understand the crypto asset space. This effort is to be applauded. However, the SEC has failed to come to terms with one fundamental aspect of crypto assets and systems. Namely, properly constructed crypto systems do not involve “persons” or “entities” and do not represent a form of property. For this reason, they do not have any analogue in the traditional financial world, nor can they fall under financial regulation. In the traditional financial world, assets are a claim on a specific property. For example, a commodity, shares in a company or a debt o...

Top professional services firms, including EY, PwC, and KPMG, are currently hiring hundreds of blockchain and cryptocurrency experts to offer auditing services to companies involved in the loosely regulated sector, the Financial Times reported on Oct. 29. Auditors Grapple with Crypto and Blockchain Despite a prevailing lack of consensus on how digital assets should be accounted for and the overall negative sentiment large financial institutions have towards cryptocurrencies in general, major accountancy firms don’t shy away from providing services to companies in the sector. Companies such as EY, PwC, and KPMG are ramping up their by hiring specialized staff and developing their own in-house technologies to support the crypto audit process. The main reasoning behind the overwhelming support the industry has gotten from the auditors stems from their belief that businesses will continue to use the blockchain technology underpinning it even as the hype around cryptocurrencies die...

Russia’s former Minister of Economics and Trade, Herman Gref, has spoken out in favour of cryptocurrencies and their transformational nature as a future threat to the financial sector’s status quo. Gref, who was Russian Economics minister between 2000 and 2007 is CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of the largest Russian bank Sberbank. In a recent forum, he suggested that over time centralised money supply models would give way to new innovations. However, Gref did suggest that such change would take time and certainly wasn’t imminent, although he felt that blockchain adoption was a much nearer prospect.  Cryptocurrency adoption would, in his view, take another decade before it could offer a challenge to current banking systems , commenting that, as yet“… it’s not likely that any state is ready to part with the centralised money supply model.” Talking of DLT the ex-minister suggested that the significance of the new technology is starting to find its way into fina...

Walmart   is now selling bitcoin for $1. But in a new spin on the volatile and ever-changing world of cryptocurrency, this digital currency is made of chocolate. Frankford bitcoins , are 1.42 ounces of milk chocolate wrapped in gold-colored foil made by Frankford Candy. They’re reminiscent of the regular old foil-wrapped milk chocolate coins of yesteryear. But of course, entirely different because they’re called bitcoin. Bitcoin   is a digital decentralized currency that’s created and then held electronically. Frankford just added the milk chocolate. View image on Twitter Frankford Candy @frankfordcandy Lots of Milk Chocolate + Bitcoins = Pure happiness. 12:49 AM - Sep 7, 2018 20 See Frankford Candy's other Tweets Twitter Ads info and privacy Frankford Candy, which has been in business since 1947, is hardly the first company to see opportunity in the rise of cryptocurrencies. Who can forget Long...

Canada’s “first” and “only” regulated Bitcoin (BTC) fund First Block Capital Inc. has obtained mutual fund trust status, allowing investors to put their fund units in self-directed registered accounts, according to a press release published September 10. First Block Capital Inc. (First Block) announced that investors in its flagship product the FBC Bitcoin Trust — available for accredited investors only — can now put their holdings in such accounts as a Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) and a Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA). Essentially this will allow accredited investors to deposit their fund units into accounts which provide substantial tax benefits for retirement and savings purposes. There are several types of accredited investors in Canada which include but are not limited to: an individual registered as an adviser or dealer by securities regulators; a person who beneficially owns financial assets in the amount that exceeds $1,00...