Bitpay enables settlement in stable cryptocurrencies

Maria Rodríguez
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Bitpay enables settlement in stable cryptocurrencies

With BitPay, companies can avoid worrying about “chargeback fraud and identity theft”. Customers can pay without delivering confidential personal information, and reimbursements are made through the merchant with no chargebacks.

This Monday, the famous bitcoin payment processor, BitPay, informed that from this October 15, it will settle global payments with stable cryptocurrencies, known as stablecoins. This announcement was made through a press release. The company explained traders can now choose to receive a settlement in two fully guaranteed and regulated credit currencies: Circle’s “USD Coin” (USDC) and the Gemini “Gemini Dollar” exchange (GUSD); both currencies linked to US dollar. The co-founder and Chief Executive of the company, Stephen Pair, said: “The introduction of stable cryptocurrencies, USDC and GUSD offers BitPay customers a new alternative in addition to Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, by offering the option of stable currency”. According to the official statement, the objective of this new service is to provide businesses with a “non-volatile” settlement solution which will not depend on traditional bank transfers. The system will allow the business to take its profits in Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and, in case of a sudden market movement; traders can change their earnings to stable cryptocurrencies (USDC or GUSD). In this way, losses will be avoided and it will not be necessary to wait for a bank to make the exchange effective.

This option will be available on a 24/7 basis. That is another advantage compared to those of traditional banks. The stores only require a portfolio with support for tokens ERC20, which must be added in the control panel of Bitpay in order to enable the reception of USDC and GUSD in Bitpay.

Why stable cryptocurrencies Stable cryptocurrencies are cryptoactive designed to maintain a constant price. Its value is linked to a stable fiduciary currency, such as US dollar or products such as gold. Gemini Dollar stable cryptocurrency is one of the two authorized by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). This institution accepted Gemini Dollar on September 10. The most dominant stable cryptocurrency is Tether (USDT), which is ranked eight by market volume. However, it was not included as one option for Bitpay settlements. Paxos Standard (PAX) is another stable cryptocurrency which is out of Bitpay list. This is the other stablecoin regulated by the NYDFS. Since its launch, its performance has been even better than GUSD or USDC. It is currently ranked 137th by trading volume in the CoinMarketCap ranking.

Bitpay’s new advantages • With BitPay, businesses can accept payments in eight fiat currencies (direct bank deposits in 38 countries) and four cryptocurrencies (deposits direct banking in 240 countries) for a fixed charge of 1%. Transactions with credit cards can cost up to 3%.• With BitPay, companies can “receive payments in any amount, from anywhere in the world and from any computer or mobile device”.• With BitPay, companies can avoid worrying about “chargeback fraud and identity theft”. Also, customers “can pay without delivering confidential personal information, and reimbursements are made through the merchant, with no chargebacks”. BitPay assures traders around the world who use BitPay that they can accept Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and “now have the additional option of receiving their settlement in a cryptocurrency equivalent to US dollars”.

By María Rodríguez

Bitcoin and Top Altcoins Consolidate their Gains: Light at the End of the Tunnel!

Andres Chavez
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Bitcoin and Top Altcoins Consolidate their Gains: Light at the End of the Tunnel!

It is no secret that, since peaking on January 7, the crypto market has been mired in a concerning decline that has been going on for months now. However, prices are slowly beginning to climb back to more normal levels and, according to the most relevant token behavior on Tuesday, they are starting to sustain growth.

Prices reflected stability on Tuesday, as bitcoin and most altcoins when through minor alterations in value, whether the colors showed red or green: there were no abrupt changes like recent week witnessed.

Bitcoin, the king of the jungle, is trading at $6,580 at the time of this writing. It will probably not reach the $19,000 it was worth in December any time soon, but its recent behavior is starting to correlate with experts’ opinion that state BTC will recover swiftly by the end of the year. Yesterday, Bitcoin experienced a temporary spike, reaching $6,673, but since then it has experienced a correction that resulted in a 1 percent daily drop.

The month has been kind to Bitcoin holders, as the top coin in the market is up 1.72%, showing some much-needed stability despite a minimal 0.06 weekly drop in comparison with the price on October 9th.

At the same time that Bitcoin surged yesterday, Tether (USDT) fell well below its usual range (below $0.925.) However, it also experienced a price correction.

Another token that has steadily maintained its value is Ethereum. ETH slightly fell, with a 0.3 percent change, keeping its gains from yesterday after two days of losses. Right now, at press time, Ethereum is trading at $210. The top altcoin is still in red for the week (by 7.5 percent) and the month (3.2 percent,) though.

Ripple experienced one of the biggest surges on Tuesday, growing 3 percent in value. It is now trading at $0.454. Yesterday, XRP peaked at $0.567 along with ETH and BTC, but also saw a price correction. Ripple is still in red for the week at 4.4 percent, but given its resounding surge in September, its monthly gains are still at a whopping 64%.

Every other top ten cryptocurrencies listed on the specialized site CoinMarketCap alternated gains and losses of no more than 2% each, marking a renewed and refreshing stability in a market that has endured one of its most difficult tenures on recent months.

Tether recovered from yesterday’s tumble and is now up 1.6%, reaching $0.98 at the time of this writing. Meanwhile, Litecoin (LTC) is trading at $54.25, down 1.66 percent, while Cardano and Monero each went up 1 percent in the last 24 hours.

If you want to know which coins in the top 20 were the biggest risers, consider that Tezos (XTZ) went up by 13 percent on the day, trading at $1.44. However, both Dogecoin (DOGE) and Binance Coin (BNB) fell 3 percent at press time.

After temporarily reaching a total market cap of $220.2 billion on October 15, the value of all cryptocurrencies fell to $211.1 billion at the moment of typing this piece.

By Andrés Chávez

Bitbox, LINE’s Crypto Exchange, Lists Its LINK Token, Tradable against BTC, ETH

Andres Chavez
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Bitbox, LINE’s Crypto Exchange, Lists Its LINK Token, Tradable against BTC, ETH

LINE’s cryptocurrency exchange Bitbox announced this week that its digital token would be available exclusively for trading against some of the top assets in the industry, according to the news site CoinDesk.

Japanese messaging app LINE owns Bitbox, and it has announced the listing of its native token, LINK, on the platform, against Bitcoin (BTC,) Ethereum (ETH,) and the notable stablecoin Tether.

LINE has made the news for its attempts to venture in the blockchain and cryptocurrencies world, with the specific intention of applying both to mainstream uses and real-life applications.

Meet the LINK Chain Platform

The LINK Chain platform is relatively new, having been announced in August as Bitbox’s proprietary blockchain network. To perform its operations, LINK Chain implements a combination of delegated proof-of-stake and Byzantine fault tolerance to act as a consensus method.

LINE refused to handle the token distribution via an ICO (Initial Coin Offering.) Instead, it will use a reward system to incentive users to try innovative services and decentralized apps within the network; giving LINK users a prize for using certain features within the LINE ecosystem.

LINE’s intentions involve handing out 800 million of the total 1 billion LINK tokens for free for people that use the decentralized applications currently being made available on the LINK Chain environment.

According to recent reports, the remaining 200 million tokens will be managed by LINE Tech Plus, a subsidiary of the LINE Corporation, to be held in reserve.

The Asian instant messaging company also stated that it would be launching three new “dApps” with a focus on several product reviews. Users that participate in such activities will be eligible to receive LINK tokens as a reward for their contributions to the system. The mode will be up and running in the next few months, according to LINE’s officials.

LINK officials and developers stated that among the activities that can provide users with rewards within the app would be content creation, commerce, social, gaming, and digital asset exchange. The announcement read that LINK “holds a minimum value of USD 5 when used for payment within the LINE ecosystem, but can rise in value according to market conditions.”

Bitbox itself is also a very young project, being launched into the market in July this year. It can be used on virtually all nations, with the notable exceptions of the United States and Japan because of regulatory requirements for licensing in the two countries.

Despite only being in the market for less than a day, the new digital coin experienced a notable drop in value, with losses of nearly 35 percent just five hours after its launch on Bitbox. At press time, it was trading at $3.12.

A Little Bit about LINE

LINE is a freeware app that allows its users to instantly communicate on electronic devices such as smartphones, tablet computers, and PCs. The app has a simple user interface that lets people write texts, send and receive images, video, and audio, as well as performing free VoIP conversations and conferences.

By Andrés Chávez

Fidelity launches a custody platform for cryptocurrencies

Maria Rodríguez
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Fidelity launches a custody platform for cryptocurrencies

The company seeks to respond to the demand of investors’ storage services and encrypted trade. Fidelity is one of the five largest financial services providers in the world, holding about 7.2 trillion dollars in client assets.

Fidelity Investments, a US financial services provider, will launch a storage platform that will handle the transactions of digital assets of business customers, the company reported on Monday, October 15.

Tom Jessup, leader of the new division, made the announcement at Bloomberg’s Crypto Institutional event. Some of the clients they hope to attract are institutional investors, such as hedge funds, marketing intermediaries and family offices.

“In our conversations with some institutions, we are told that providers need a reliable platform to interact with digital assets in a meaningful way. These are the needs of a sophisticated level of service and security similar to the experience they have”, said Jessup.

To respond to these requests, Fidelity plans to build a “scalable infrastructure” that takes advantage of the company’s existing experience in building platform stories. The new company will offer “institutional custody”, commercial execution and “customer service”, as it’s indicated in the press release.

Abigail Johnson, Chairperson of Fidelity Investments, said: “Our goal is to achieve native digital assets, such as bitcoin, that are more accessible to investors. We hope to continue investing and experimenting, in the long term, with ways to make this asset class easier for our clients to understand and use.

Some of the cryptocurrencies that guard the platform are Bitcoin and Ethereum. Other cryptocurrencies will be mentioned during the launching of said platform. Fidelity will keep the cryptocurrencies in cold storage, along with the “physical and cybernetic controls of several levels”, as part of their security system.

The chairperson of Fidelity Investments, Abigail Johnson, reaffirmed that the aim of the new platform is “to make native digital assets, such as Bitcoin, more accessible to investors”.

Nowadays, the cryptographic product market is attracting a growing list of traditional financial services giants, including the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley. According to international recent news, Billionaire Mike Novogratz’s Crypto Fund is Fidelity’s first custodian client. The investor is also Galaxy’s Digital executive director. This company aims to achieve a similar objective as Fidelity to institutionalize the cryptocurrency market. In the past, Novogratz contributed $302 million to Galaxy Digital to build a full-service merchant banking business in the crypto and blockchain space. Months later, Galaxy Digital was listed on Canada’s stock market, enabling investors to directly invest in the cryptocurrency market. The partnership between Fidelity and Galaxy Digital is expected to lead to clients of the Novogratz-led firm to invest in the cryptocurrency market through Fidelity.

By María Rodríguez

Recent Study Shows that Crypto Assets Represent No Risk to Financial Stability

Andres Chavez
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Recent Study Shows that Crypto Assets Represent No Risk to Financial Stability

According to the Financial Stability Board (FSB), cryptocurrencies do not represent a risk to global financial stability; this was stated amidst the recent odd behavior of the market and rumblings that the crypto universe is about to collapse.

A report published by the FSB on Wednesday, October 10, noted that the financial community, led by central banks and high-ranked officials, did not think that blockchain-based digital tokens can significantly alter the global economic landscape.

The conclusions of the paper can be summarized remarking that cryptocurrencies, according to the FSB, are not an effective means of payment, store of value or unit of account, facing critical threatening situations such as liquidity problems, market volatility, operational risks, and others.

Cryptocurrencies Account for 2 Percent of the Value of Gold

The document is titled “Crypto-asset markets: Potential channels for future financial stability implications” and made the news almost immediately after its publication on the Internet. Bankers and people working in the financial industry do not see any dangers in cryptocurrencies given that their total market cap peaked at $830 billion and went down to the $210 billion today. That number, according to the report, is 2% of the gold’s value these days.

Nevertheless, the FSB does advise current regulators to monitor the latest trends on the crypto market because of their use and implementation; if not the market cap itself, has experienced a fast growth rate.

Beware of Market and Price Manipulations

Additionally, the FSB warns people about the possibility of price ‘corruption’ regarding cryptocurrencies, saying that elements such as illiquidity, a fragmented market structure, concentrated ownership, and other situations “make crypto assets potentially susceptible to price manipulation.” The organization also stated that there are several questions surrounding policy making and consumer/investor protection as well.

In July, the FSB had reported that crypto projects were in need of in-depth monitoring because the market was developing at an accelerated rate. That paper was presented to the higher ranked officials of G20, including ministers and central bank governors.

Regarding regulations within the crypto market, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expressed a similar sentiment than that of the FSB, but back in May. The organism stressed that there are no risks about the potential impact of cryptocurrencies in the financial stability of global markets. Yet, the IMF warned that, if the growth patterns continued to increase in the digital tokens world, there could be issues if the proper regulatory framework was not in place.

A Little Bit More About the FSB

FSB stands for Financial Stability Board, which is an organization with international reach that provides recommendations regarding the global financial landscape. It monitors trends and developments, too.

The FSB was founded in 2009, after the G20 London Summit, and it successfully succeeded the Financial Stability Forum (FSF.) The FSB has its headquarters in Basel, Switzerland.

The FSB is formed by 68 local financial institutions. Among them are central banks, watchdogs, and ministries of finance. Mark Carney is the Chairman, and Dietrich Domanski is the Secretary General.

By: Andrés Chávez

The Crypto Market is about to “Implode”, according to the Juniper Research Group

Andres Chavez
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The Crypto Market is about to “Implode”, according to the Juniper Research Group

While it is no secret that the crypto market has experienced some changes in the last weeks, the growing nature of the blockchain technology and the increasing number of Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) and related projects tell a story of hope. The applications of cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based solutions are on the rise.

However, not everybody shares the same optimism. The Juniper Research Group revealed the results of its most recent study, and the baffling conclusion stated that the cryptocurrency market is at the risk of implosion, citing a low transaction volume as one of the main culprits.

The piece of news was reported by Bloomberg this week. The study, which title is “The Future of Cryptocurrency: Bitcoin & Altcoin Trends & Challenges 2018-2023” assesses the primary challenges of digital tokens with an eye on the future, paying special attention to regulatory, social, and technical aspects and potential issues.

The paper was powered by a survey and touched interesting subjects in its analysis, such as regulatory modifications and developments in different markets as other causes of the projected collapse.

Juniper suggests that the recent uptick in hacking attacks has severely damaged the potential and current investors’ confidence in the exchanges, as some of them have failed to fend off the action of cybercriminals. Blockchain forking represents another point in the analysis that affects the recent volatility in the market and the hypothetical scenario proposed by the researching group.

Judging By the Numbers

According to Juniper, even the Bitcoin blockchain platform has experienced a marked drop in daily transaction volumes, going from 360,000 per day at the end of 2017 (arguably the biggest year in the crypto market and the exact moment in which Bitcoin was trading at an all-time high $20,000) to nearly 230,000 in September of 2018.

When it comes to daily transaction values, the numbers are, again, disconcerting. In the same period, it went from $3.7 billion to less than $670 million, and this is always according to Juniper’s data. Crypto transactions amounted to, approximately, $1.4 trillion. In the second quarter of 2018, the values collapsed 75%, with a total market capitalization down to $355 billion.

Juniper said that judging by the activity and trends shown in the first half of the third quarter, it estimated “a further 47 percent quarter-on-quarter drop in transaction values” in that timeframe. Citing concerns about the “innate valuation of Bitcoin, and of the operating practices of many exchanges,” the firm concludes that the market is about to implode. Not too long ago, Diar published a similar sentiment.

A Little Bit about Juniper Research

The Juniper Research foundation was created in 2001 by the Industry Consultant Tony Crabtree. It is now one of the leading analyst firms in the mobile and digital tech sector, specializing in identifying and appraising new high growth market sectors within the digital ecosystem.

The firm offers market sizing and forecasting with competitive analysis, strategic assessment, and business modeling. Among its services are research, forecasting & consultancy for Digital Technology Markets, and Harvest, which is an interactive online platform that lets users view and download the latest data trends and forecasts.

By Andrés Chávez

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