According to a new survey by Harmony Healthcare IT, millennials prefer getting medical advice online to going to their doctor; 76% of the respondents said they used specialized websites like WebMD or news articles.
It highlights the current transformation of the healthcare sector. Millennials, who will outnumber baby boomers by 20m in 2030, are favouring retail clinics and telehealth for healthcare treatment. The online presence of traditional providers is also important: 65% said they only see doctors who can be found online, with 48% saying they would prefer to have a virtual visit with a doctor than an in-person appointment.
One of the main argument is cost: WebMD for instance, the first choice website for those surveyed, is free, which makes it the economically more sensible option, as only 35% of those surveyed set aside savings for medical emergencies, with 51% of those saving less than US$100 per month.
Analysis and Comments
The first thing that is probably important to note about this survey is that the respondents are American (which explains the emphasis on cost advantages).
However, a much larger study conducted by Accenture in February looked at four times as many consumers from all around the world and came to similar conclusions: there is a shift away from traditional care offerings, towards online alternatives.
Importantly, this shift was not only found among members of the youngest generations (Millennials and Gen Z), but also Generation X (the one after the Boomers).
I can see that I’m going to have to type this quickly.
The comments on “Crypto Market Cycles – Part 1” are already drawing me into discussing the Part 2 subject matter! Okay *cracks knuckles*, here goes:
Yesterday we looked at the market cycles of traditional markets. In truth, I didn’t really look at the cycles per se, rather I pointed out that the future nature of long-term cycles has become unpredictable. Thus to assume that they will continue as normal would be a mistake. Basically I pointed out that an upset was looming.
Part Two – the market cycles of Bitcoin and the altcoins
If you think that tracking the cycles of the regular markets is tricky, then you must see just how tricky it is to track Bitcoin!
I have already stated that mistakes are made when analysing Bitcoin cycles. I firmly believe that the large majority of analysts with their 4-year Bitcoin cycles based on halving events are talking utter rubbish! We’ve just gone through a Litecoin halving event, did you notice the change? No? Nor did anybody else for that matter. In fairness, you could say that the big bullish climb comes some time after the halving event – and you would be right – but you would be dead wrong if you thought that it was because of the halving event. I have debunked this halving cycles hype nonsense in some detail – take a look:
Bitcoin is cyclic. It does follow repetitive patterns at the macro and micro scales. We know that, we’ve seen them.
BUT:
WE DO NOT YET HAVE THE ABILITY TO PREDICT THOSE CYCLES WITH ANY DEGREE OF ACCURACY!
Why not?
Some of the reasons were mentioned in the halving posts linked to above. From a technical analysis perspective – we simply do not possess sufficient reliable data. It will make it simpler to explain if I illustrate this graphically:
Made by Bit Brain with TradingView
You CAN NOT trust the information of a time when Bitcoin sold for $100 a coin. The market was TINY! Every significant buy or sell had the power to skew the charts radically – giving a false perception of market conditions and manipulating it (intentionally or not) to an enormous degrees. There were simply not enough people trading Bitcoin at the time, with the result that general trading could not smooth out anomalies. The problem compounds as you move back in time: the sub-$50 Bitcoin of early 2013, the sub-$10 Bitcoin of 2012, the sub-$1 Bitcoin of 2011. The anomalies thus reflect on the charts of the time and make them unusable.
I normally cite mid-2013 as my cut-off point after which data becomes usable. It’s a thumb-suck on my part, but it’s an “educated thumb-suck”. Taking an average over time does work, but only when there is sufficient data. Pre-2013 data is insufficient to create a meaningful average!
That leaves us with only about six years of usable data.
Six years.
And from THAT alone you want to deduce market cycles? I’ll have some of what you’re smoking thanks!
It’s hard enough just to establish the basic trendlines of such a short period, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to deduce accurate market cycles!
Anyone who claims that they can do so is either:
Lying
A fool
This is about the best you can do under the circumstances:
Made by Bit Brain with TradingView.
That’s the kind of chart which I have been showing in my long-term posts for well over a year now. From a TA point of view, you really can’t do much more than that when looking long-term. We SEEM to have some sort of channel or trend with a fairly firm baseline and parallel market peaks. We don’t have enough of them to predict the timing of the next peak, or how smaller bull/bear runs may behave within the confines of the channel. We don’t know if the channel should curve, or even which way it should curve. Yes I have seen the downwards curving charts based on data that goes back to 2010. No, I don’t agree with them (the trend may curve downwards later, but the data they are using to show that already is wrong to use in that fashion) – see above.
For this reason I turn to fundamentals when making long-term BTC predictions. I’m not going to break the market down in fundamental terms now, that would take days. Instead, I’m going to tell you what I foresee from a fundamental point of view.
I believe that the rough baseline you see above will continue to be followed in its upwards direction. Importantly, I believe that the BTC capitulation of late 2018 did NOT end due to the return of bullish sentiment, but rather because it crossed into critically oversold territory (reaching and possibly breaking through the baseline). I believe that price was bought back up to where it should be (in around April of this year), that the buying was largely interpreted as a bull run, and that it then caused some hype – which is why BTC ran up to $13k before stagnating. I believe that price will continue to fall slowly until the baseline is once again approached, this is because (as I said earlier) bullish sentiment has NOT returned yet! (That’s also why my own BTC buy orders are sitting in the $8000s.)
To put it another way: I think that the baseline represents the adoption of BTC. As more people adopt it, so demand pressure on price increases and value derived from Metcalfe’s Law (which deals with the size of a network) is reflected on the charts. Any dip below that baseline becomes unsustainable. Thus price is forced upwards by organic growth.
When bulls take charge, then price shifts Northwards of this baseline. When that will happen and for how long are questions that we can not yet answer – we do not have that data or sufficient prior data to extrapolate from.
I have said multiple times that the 2019 “bull run” started too early to be sustainable. This is why I say so. I maintain that we have NOT seen a proper bull run this year, just a little hype which is still dying down. I maintain that the proper bull run is yet to come – and from fundamentals, it looks like it will be BIG!
Which brings us back to the traditional market cycles. If fiat systems were to collapse today, would BTC be ready to pick up the load? I often doubt it…
BUT
I may be wrong to do so.
Recent catastrophic fiat-crisis events in Greece, Turkey, Zimbabwe and Venezuela have shown us that a population is capable of VERY RAPIDLY turning to BTC in times of crisis. BTC may not rival gold as a legitimate store of value YET, but its benefits over gold become obvious when you need to procure a lot of it quickly! Argentina is showing us that right now – as they also join the group of nations whose fiat currency is no longer trusted by their people. I honestly believe that the demise of ALL fiat is inevitable, as human beings we simply can not be trusted not to exploit a system which is so easily corruptible, the temptation will always be too great. It only takes one greedy person to ruin it for everybody!
I know that the mindset shift is a big one. When things are going well – which is basically the ONLY way that those who have grown up in First World countries are familiar with – then it is very difficult to justify not trusting your fiat and swapping it into “riskier” assets. You don’t know how good you’ve had it…
But when your country/currency suddenly becomes chaotic, then you very quickly realise that it is in fact your FIAT which has no value and it is your fiat which is the riskiest asset of all!
Let me put it to you like this: if the global economy crashes tomorrow, people will pour into Bitcoin. If the global economy crashes next year or three years down the line, people will pour into Bitcoin even quicker. Once they pour in, they won’t pour out again. Bitcoin will get a chance to prove itself globally, and the end of fiat dominance will be a fait accompli.
Before I end this…
That’s all I needed to say today. Don’t worry about the cycles too much – because nobody knows what they will do next. When the world needs it, Bitcoin will be ready and waiting.
Oh, one more thing: you didn’t think that I had forgotten the altcoins did you?
If you have been following this post so far, then you will know why the altcoins continue to perform poorly this year: no bull run yet. (Ah! It all makes sense now, doesn’t it?) Altcoins run when sentiment is high. They are the spillover of funds destined for BTC, but looking for better returns offered by lower market cap investments. When BTC does run, the altcoins will run too – faster than BTC. But as long as sentiment is low, altcoins will stay low. Take a look around, the crypto blogs are DEAD! Even I am struggling to remain motivated as a blogger, I’ve been focusing much of my attention elsewhere lately.
Sentiment is down. The bull run has yet to come. Altcoins will follow BTC when it does. That’s the altcoin “cycle” – do whatever BTC does – only more so, and with a slight delay.
Remember that not all altcoins are equal. We can expect the good ones to do well. We can expect dead ones to stay dead. We can expect new ones to get hype which they do not deserve. Shop carefully! My advice is still to go and find the good projects which have survived the altcoin winter – and invest in them. They are far cheaper than new projects, and they have proven staying power. There are FANTASTIC deals out there TODAY!
The End
…not that cycles have an end…
Yours in crypto
Bit Brain
“The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first”
~ Mark Twain
“Crypto does not require institutional investment to succeed; institutions require crypto investments to remain successful”
We are seeing a very high level of fear (or low level of greed). I posted below a graph of their Fear & Greed Index followed by a graph of the Bitcoin Price.
In the last 18 months, the indicator dipped strongly 2 times before and when it did you can see the reaction by BTC a few weeks later !
American cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is adding support for Basic Attention Token (BAT) and Waves (WAVES.)
According to an announcement on Aug. 21, the exchange’s users will be able to deposit, withdraw and trade both assets starting Aug. 22. Kraken will roll out trading pairs between BAT and WAVES and Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH,) as well as with fiat currencies such as the euro and the U.S. dollar.
“The first trade executions will take a bit longer because sell orders cannot be placed until deposits are credited,” the post adds.
Bitcoin quickly fell from $10,842 to $10,082 earlier today, confirming a rising wedge breakdown on the hourly chart. The bearish reversal pattern has opened the doors for a retest of $9,467 (Aug. 15 low).
On the way lower, prices may find support at the 100-day moving average, currently at $9,882. The average served as strong support earlier this month.
The bearish case would be invalidated if prices rise above $11,000 with high volumes in the next 24 hours. As of writing, that looks unlikely. A convincing move above $12,000 is needed to revive the bullish setup, as per the weekly chart.
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has sanctioned three Chinese nationals and their cryptocurrency addresses, alleging they violated money laundering and drug smuggling laws.
OFAC named Xiaobing Yan, Fujing Zheng and Guanghua Zheng as narcotics traffickers under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, freezing any property they own within the U.S. and listing a number of email aliases, citizen numbers and passport information for the three.
The agency also listed a number of bitcoin addresses, as well as one litecoin address, that the agency claims belong to the Chinese citizens.
Ethereum wants to translate all of its resources into 15 languages as part of a push to make the network more accessible, the Ethereum Foundation announced yesterday.
The foundation says it’s only focusing on translating its website at the moment—Ethereum.org—but has plans to expand its translations to include “important community resources like documentation, guides, blog posts, and more.”
Its first full translation, Ethereum.org/ko, is the result of a team of eight translators led by Taeyeon Kim, and translates everything on Ethereum’s recently relaunched site into Korean.
San Francisco-based nonprofit Kiva, a company that crowdfunds loans for financial inclusion, has launched a blockchain platform for credit history with the government of Sierra Leone.
According to a Reuters report on Aug. 21, Kiva and President of Sierra Leone Julius Maada Bio jointly launched the blockchain initiative in the country’s capital.
The platform will use biometric data collected by the government, such as fingerprints, in order to access the credit history of citizens in the country. This will purportedly give a way for lenders to obtain citizens’ credit history.
“Trading will start at 18:00 on August 22, 2019 (UTC+8) and withdrawal will open at 20:00 on August 22, 2019 (UTC+8).”
STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion
Here is the chart of yersterday :
Here is the current chart :
So the worst case that I was talking about yesterday just happened. We are now testing the low and the support line that I traced for you which has been created by the 2 previous lows around the same level. Till now we have a bounce from this support line but let’s see if it will be enough if the BTC continues to correct.
President of Free Republic Liberland Vít Jedlička presented update on development of blockchain governance at Web3 Summit, Berlin. You can meet him in Hackerspace.
If you have been in the CryptoWorld for a while, you probably came accross this indicator.
What is it?
The crypto market behaviour is very emotional. People tend to get greedy when the market is rising which results in FOMO (Fear of missing out). Also, people often sell their coins in irrational reaction of seeing red numbers. With our Fear and Greed Index, we try to save you from your own emotional overreations. There are two simple assumptions:
Extreme fear can be a sign that investors are too worried. That could be a buying opportunity.
When Investors are getting too greedy, that means the market is due for a correction.
Therefore, we analyze the current sentiment of the Bitcoin market and crunch the numbers into a simple meter from 0 to 100.
The complete list of factors with their weighting
Volatility (25%)
Market Momentum/Volume (25%)
Social Media (15%)
Surveys (15%)
Dominance (10%)
Trends (10%)
For a full disclosure on what are these factors exactly referring to please go to their website
We are seeing a very high level of fear (or low level of greed). I posted below a graph of their Fear & Greed Index followed by a graph of the Bitcoin Price.
In the last 18 months, the indicator dipped strongly 2 times before and when it did you can see the reaction by BTC a few weeks later !
I am not saying it is a 100% probability metric but something is SURE; I prefer buying when people are scared than the opposite. And today, it seems investors are being careful maybe too much?
Altcoins continue to get hammered. Meanwhile, BTC is plodding along steadily in a sideways direction, the bulls trying to break to new 2019 highs, but not having the power to overcome the bears who could plunge prices back towards $8000. The old 5 August chart (shown below) from THIS POST is still valid from the bearish perspective. I consider the market to be in favour of the bears at the moment, so this is still the chart which I am basing my own BTC buying prices on.
From https://mentormarket.io/cryptocurrencies/bit-brain/btc-beginning-of-the-week-analysis-2/
What we are watching is the interplay of market cycles. Lately I have found myself discussing market cycles in the comments sections of various posts on multiple platforms.
I would like to thank CryptosDecrypted in particular for inspiring this post. If you read his post titled “The Sunday Recap – Down the Rabbit Hole 42“, you will see that he chats a bit about market cycles, a chat which we continued in the comments section of that post. Incidentally you can follow him on Twitter if you don’t already do so. He’s a quality crypto analyst and blogger, so I recommend that you keep an eye on what he has to say: https://twitter.com/GordonBuckley3
Bitcoin price moves in cycles. Altcoin prices move in cycles – generally together and closely tied to that of Bitcoin. The major financial markets of the world move in cycles. In his blog post, CD remarked:
“My two cents – we are a full economic cycle from BTC (and only BTC) becoming established as a reliable counterweight to global market corrections.”
That got me thinking a bit, to the point that I believe I must share my own views on the topic (hence this post). Note: I’m not saying that CD is wrong, his opinion carries weight and is probably at least as valid as my own. Realise that none of us analysts own a working crystal ball, we all just call what we observe as best we can. Here is my take on it:
Traditional Markets
I doubt that we’ve seen a proper global stock market crash since The Great Depression. Bear (pun intended) with me here: I realise that the 2008 crash is spoken about in hallowed tones. But 2008 was akin to a failed suicide attempt: a dramatic cry for help, but a cry which averted the disaster. You see: the markets bounced straight back. The reason that we don’t call it “The Great Depression II” is that it was nowhere near that scale or duration. Yes, it has absolutely had a lasting effect on some asset classes, look at precious metals for instance, but the fiat based assets recovered and moved on!
We must now ask the “How?” and “Why?” questions. The answer is not pretty.
Zooming out on the situation and looking in retrospect, we can observe how fiat saved itself. Contrary to reason and sound financial practice, solid assets – good stores of value – were sacrificed in order to prop up the failing fiat house-of-cards. As analogies go, I don’t think you can do better then comparing fiat money to a house-of-cards. Ironically, the booming housing market played a role in the last “crash”, ironic because property is typically a good store of value. Regardless of the cause, the markets took a big dip, but they were prevented from crashing entirely. Governments stepped in to protect their house-of-cards from being blown down by the Big Bad Wolf. Unfortunately for them, there was no Big Bad Wolf. All there was was a very shaky arrangement of unbacked fiat-based derivatives built on top of an unbacked fiat money system.
The markets dipped simply because investors were no longer confident that what they held was worth what the markets said it was worth. That’s bad. That means that the fiat foundation of the house-of-cards has cracked. But fear not! The government came along and applied liberal doses of Quantitative Easing plaster and patched over the cracks. Then they painted it with a big tin of debt coloured paint, the special kind which contains micro-particles of Fractional Reserve Banking.
So we’re all living in the same house-of-cards which we lived in a decade ago, only now it is much MUCH bigger, is covered in considerably more debt, contains a wealth of inefficient private entities which should have died (but which were bailed-out with public funds), and is generally looking about as sturdy as a crowbar made of cheese.
This matters.
The reason this matters is because the really big crash has not been avoided, it’s been delayed. A healthy corrective crash – a correction which would have weeded out much of the unsustainable fiat rot – was prevented from occurring. What has happened is that the market’s have been set up to fail, far more than they ever would have a decade ago if they had just been allowed to crash organically.
That matters too.
That matters because it means something very important to us: There is no precedent for what will happen next.
We can talk about market cycles, but we will be kidding ourselves. What happens next will break new ground. Our best bet will be to look at what happened during the Great Depression. But even that was almost a century ago and in a very different world – there is only so much that we can take from that example. 2008 may look big to us, but that’s only because we don’t have something bigger to benchmark it against. We haven’t seen a proper crash since the establishment of Bretton Woods. That caused an upset of its own, but that was just the market reestablishing its footing at the time. Everything since then has been a mini-crash or a temporary correction, much like 2008 – fiat has yet to fail, so far it has not been allowed to do so in an unrestricted fashion.
Look at the cryptocurrency market of 2008. that was a crash, a proper crash. All the little altcoins that should no longer exist due to poor management, lack of funds, lack of performance or just poor marketing – they were wiped out. Nobody bailed them out, and the altcoin world is now far stronger for it. The fiat markets took the exact opposite approach, they did the equivalent of bailing out the shitcoins which should have died, be it the tiny little ones or BITCONNNEEEEEEECCCCTTT!!! itself!
From the public domain; modified by Bit Brain
Take home point: the market cycles may well soon “break” and behave unpredictably. The current system is an unsustainable house-of-cards. Something has to give, and when it does, it will definitely have enormous repercussions.
End of Part 1
Let that sink in a little. In Part 2 we will look at crypto cycles – BTC and the altcoins. Then we will determine if and how these cycles may influence one another.
Yours in crypto
Bit Brain
“The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first”
~ Mark Twain
“Crypto does not require institutional investment to succeed; institutions require crypto investments to remain successful”
The increased cost of transacting on the ethereum blockchain is hurting the software’s adoption, says project creator Vitalik Buterin.
Speaking with the Toronto Star this week, Butertin suggested projects that are considering whether to build on the technology will likely be butted out as the blockchain is overloaded with transactions, or in his words “almost full.” (While a blockchain cannot ever be technically ‘full,’ Buterin’s comments indicate his current sentiment on the severity of the problem.)
Still, Buterin’s comments speak to his understanding of the difficulties ahead for the project, with major planned upgrades including Ethereum 2.0 and a switch to proof-of-stake consensus ahead.
He told the newspaper:
“If you’re a bigger organization, the calculus is that if we join, it will not only be more full but we will be competing with everyone for transaction space. It’s already expensive and it will be even five times more expensive because of us. There is pressure keeping people from joining, but improvements in scalability can do a lot in improving that.”
Ethereum’s seven-day transaction fee average, a measure of demand on the network, actually sits at a 50-day low, falling since July 1 to sit around 0.11 ether per transaction currently.
Facebook is reportedly already under investigation by the EU over antitrust issues related to its Libra cryptocurrency project.
A document seen by Bloomberg indicates that the European Commission is “currently investigating potential anti-competitive behavior” by the Libra Association. The report describes the document as a questionnaire suggesting the commission is concerned that Facebook’s planned digital payment system could unfairly lock out competitors.
The governance structure and membership of the Libra Association is apparently under scrutiny. A number of major companies including Mastercard and Visa have already signed loose agreements to partner with the Libra Association on the project.
Smart contracts could soon get a boost in bitcoin as prominent programmer Pieter Wuille has unveiled a new coding language designed specifically for their use.
Posted to the bitcoin developer mailing list Monday, the ‘Miniscript’ language aims to make it easier for programmers to write up “smart contracts” or conditions for spending bitcoins. Programmers Wuille, Andrew Poelstra and Sanket Sanjalkar have been working on the code for roughly a year, Wuille said.
Although it’s been shared around behind the scenes, Wuille said he is now posting it to the email list because it’s now it’s reached “a stage where I’d like to get it some more attention.”
Backing up a bit, “Script” is the smart contracting language in bitcoin, which allows users to specify certain conditions need to be met before the bitcoin can be spent. Say, funds are locked up until a certain time before they can be spent. Or, two people need to sign off on a transaction before the money can be moved, a concept called “multi-sig.”
Eleven crypto projects announced Tuesday they had joined the Messari Disclosures Registry, including four top-100 projects by market cap: Cardano, Lisk, V Systems and Beam.
The new batch of crypto assets brings the total number of projects listed on the registry to 54. It launched with 12 projects in November 2018.
“The ability to find basic information on networks and their underlying tokens will be essential to responsible growth in the industry; and we’re thrilled to be working with such a great group to move the industry forward,” Ryan Selkis, Messari’s founder, told CoinDesk.
Bitcoin (BTC) price faced fresh bearish sentiment Aug. 21 after a rejection of $11,000 sent markets tumbling hundreds of dollars in minutes..
$9K Levels on horizon for Bitcoin price
Data from Coin360 shows BTC/USD topping out at just under $10,900 before reversing. Hours later, a sudden loss of support saw the pair dip to below $10,100 before bouncing slightly higher*
“Launch of a campaign to attract international organizations from 67 countries in the field of wildlife protection, improvement of…”
STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion
Here is the chart of yersterday :
Here is the current chart :
Today, we validated the testing of the resistance line at 0.18$ but we failed to break it and so we are currently having a rejection. Except if the BTC is starting a new correction, I think we should try soon to break this line again in the coming hours. The worst case would be that we go test the support line related to the previous low around 0.165$.
Bitcoin continues to consolidate on top of support at $10,650. Bears are threatening a major break down, while bulls defend $10,000.
In today’s video we’ll discuss a few different scenarios, including a large potential bear trap. We’ll also discuss key areas to watch and so much more. I hope you find it helpful.
I hope this has been helpful. I’d be happy to answer any questions in the comment section below. Until next time, wishing you safe and profitable trading.
Workin
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According to recent data from GoodRX, an app tracking drug prices, only 3% of insurance claims for Eli Lilly’s insulin were for the half-price version that the company revealed shortly before being questioned by Congress on soaring insulin prices.
According to the article, many pharmacists do not know that a cheaper version is available or it cannot be accessed because it wasn’t added to individual patient’s list of drugs that are covered.
The company said it was aggressively working to increase awareness as well as access to the cheaper diabetes drug.
Analysis and Comments
Best Healthcare analysts expect a strong downward pricing pressure and slowing volume growth for the previous classes of drugs such as DPP4 and basal insulins.
This will likely result in a slowdown in the sales growth for the global pharmaceutical market. We project the global diabetes pharma market to grow at only 3% CAGR to reach $46bn by 2025.
While the overall diabetes pharma market is set to slow, GLP1 and SGLT4 are likely to experience rapid growth.
The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) is almost ready to launch its government-backed digital currency, official sources say.
An Aug. 20 report from the CPC-owned English-language news portal China Daily further revealed that the central bank digital currency (CBDC) may have been influenced by the unveiling of Facebook’s planned cryptocurrency, Libra.
‘Inspiration from Libra’
After five years of research and system development work since 2018, the PBoC is almost ready to launch its CBDC, the deputy director of the bank’s payments unit Mu Changchun revealed at a forum last week.
Trials for the currency have been ongoing and the institution is reported to be testing multiple approaches for the project. If things proceed smoothly, the PBoC expects it could launch the currency sooner than Libra.
The latter’s recent announcement is notably reported to have influenced the PBoC’s original design for its planned CBDC. Yang Dong — director of the Research Center of Finance Technology and Cyber Security at Renmin University of China — told China Daily that the announcement of Libra had sparked debate among Chinese regulators and motivated the project’s designers to involve more non-governmental institutions in the currency’s development and issuance process.
He stated: “Further testing is needed before officially launching the Chinese CBDC, gaining inspiration from the Libra.”
The World Bank has issued a second round of its landmark blockchain bonds.
The international financial institution raised another $50 million AUD ($33.8 million U.S.) by selling the “blockchain-operated debt instrument” (bond-i), according to Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CommBank), which managed the sale jointly with RBC Capital Markets and TD Securities.
Both new and existing investors participated, CommBank said.
All told, the World Bank has issued $160 million AUD ($108 million U.S.) of these bonds, which run on a private version of the ethereum blockchain. It is “the first bond created, allocated, transferred and managed through its life-cycle using distributed ledger technology,” according to CommBank.
“We are happy to see the continued, strong support and collaboration from investors and partners,” Andrea Dore, the World Bank’s head of funding, said in a press release. “The World Bank’s innovation and experience in the capital markets is key to working with our member countries to increase digitization to boost productivity in their economies and accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.”
The New York State Supreme Court has ruled that the New York Office of the Attorney General (NYAG) has jurisdiction over cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex.
According to a court filing on Aug. 19, this will allow the NYAG to continue its investigation of the exchange over allegations of fraud and misleading investors.
In the filing, Judge Joel Coehn dismissed a motion by Bitfinex to terminate an action by the NYAG that would prosecute Bitinex under a New York law — the Martin Act. The NYAG originally alleged that Bitfinex and associated stablecoin firm Tether covered up an $850 million loss and in doing so, misled investors in the state of New York.
The allegations have resulted in a protracted legal battle between Bitfinex and state prosecutors, with the exchange claiming that it spent $500,000 and hired over 60 lawyers in order to comply with documentation requests by the NYAG.
INX Limited, a crypto exchange startup, plans to raise up to $129.5 million through an IPO, in the first security token sale registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
No, that’s not a typo for “ICO,” the initial coin offerings that tested the limits of securities law during the go-go days of 2017. IPO means IPO here: INX, which is domiciled in Gibraltar, filed a draft F-1 (the SEC’s prospectus form for foreign issuers) with the agency on Monday and will market the tokens to retail and institutional investors through the initial public offering.
As such, it’s a major milestone since to date, token sales have been unregistered. Some issuers confined their marketing to wealthy investors so they’d be exempt from the registration requirement and filed notices with the SEC. Most didn’t even bother to tell the regulators what they were up to, and over the last year, the agency has brought a slew of cases against ICO teams for illegally selling unregistered securities.
Metallicus, the startup behind the peer-to-peer payments platform Metal Pay, received an undisclosed angel investment from the youngest bitcoin millionaire, Erik Finman.
In partnership with Metal Pay CEO Marshall Hayner, the two look to develop the first “all-in-one” cryptocurrency banking platform, which includes a 17 digital asset exchange, a digital bank and a payments application with social features similar to Venmo.
Founded in September, Metal Pay has processed approximately $11 million in total payments from nearly 130,000 registered users across 38 states. On a monthly basis, the company processes $1 million in crypto or fiat for around 30,000 active users, according to Hayner.
Finman staked a modest amount of bitcoin to finance the development of the banking and exchange ecosystem, he said, which currently holds approximately $2 million in crypto and fiat on the platform. Though Finman is willing to put in his entire “400 something” bitcoin fortune to fund Metal Pay’s growth, the 20 year old told CoinDesk.
“The trading will open at UTC 4:00, August 20th .”
STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion
Here is the chart of yersterday :
Here is the current chart :
We are currently testing the resistance line at 0.18$ but till now we are not able to break it. Most of the altcoin are not doing a so big UP with the bounce from the BTC so I don’t expect that STEEM will do better. We need a second bigger UP on the BTC to help us to break that resistance line and confirm that the low at stort term has been touched on the STEEM.
