trading - Pwim.Net

LedgerX “Not Yet Approved” by CFTC to Launch Physical Bitcoin Futures

The United States Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) confirmed that LedgerX has not yet been approved to offer physically-settled Bitcoin futures in contrary to previous announcements.

LedgerX has officially launched their product on July 31, as they revealed to CoinDesk that they had launched the first physically-settled Bitcoin futures contracts in the U.S, surpassing Intercontinental Exchange’s Bakkt and TD Ameritrade-backed ErisX. CEO of LedgerX, Paul Chou disclosed to the media that retail customers can now be able to trade the product using the company’s new platform.

CFTC Chief Communications Officer Michael Short said in an emailed statement on Aug 1, “LedgerX has not yet been approved by the commission.” The CFTC approved LedgerX as a designated contract market (DCM), which was one of the two approvals LedgerX needed to proceed with the launch.

However, the CFTC has not yet approved the amendment the derivatives clearing organization (DCO) license. The CFTC states that they have 180 days to approve or deny a DCO application, which led to the conclusion by the LedgerX team that this period has passed, and they have not received an objection from the CFTC as they submitted the amendment on Nov 8, 2018. Paul Cho added that since it has been more than 180 days, they do not understand why the amendment has not been approved. He also added that there is little difference between swaps and futures products, but officially, they still lack the approval to launch physical Bitcoin futures.

Australian Securities Exchange Partners with VMware to Go Blockchain in 2021

Applying Blockchain to CHESS, the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) will use blockchain for its registry, settlement and clearing system by 2021.

A recent press release shows a new agreement with the NYSE listed companies namely VMware and Digital Asset holding and the ASX for the replacement of the CHESS system by 2021. The three-party memorandum of understanding (MoU) with these companies will merge blockchain projects in Australasia and equally the coordination to restore the equities clearing and settlement.

Additionally, the MoU consists of supporting the open-source smart contract, especially the programming language called DAML (partially owned by the ASX).

In 2017, we saw the disclosure for the blockchain replacement of the CHESS system with clear efficiencies such as quicker transaction, decreasing costs and heightened security. The process has experienced delays in terms of implementation as it requires lengthy periods for user development and testing. The first implementation in early May 2017 exhibited the first code app on the new platform called the “Customer Development Environment.”

The ASX deputy confirms the alignment of this new partnership with the company’s beliefs as well as its commitment to delivering the distributed ledger technology, on track to replace the CHESS replacement system.

Image via Shutterstock

BTI Report Reveals Kraken and Coinbase as the Cleanest Crypto Exchanges

The September issue of the Blockchain Transparency Institute’s market surveillance report shows that the cryptocurrency exchange volumes of Kraken and Coinbase are the cleanest in the industry.

The institute is also primarily responsible for filtering these volumes through its proprietary algorithm.

“Since the start of 2019, global wash trading has reduced by 35.7% among the real Top-40 exchanges. The process of sharing our data reports with many of these exchanges has resulted in enhanced mechanisms for detecting wash trading accounts and shutting them down.”

Evidence in the report reveals that the cleanest exchanges continue to stand with Kraken, Coinbase, Poloniex, and Upbit. In contrast, the exchanges with the highest rates of wash trading are: OKEx and Bibox.

Globally, the report shows that Japan and the United States are in the lead of exchanges with accurate volume reporting. The report claims:

“This can be due to several factors, the main of which is the legal and regulatory standards in these countries. However, stricter regulatory frameworks do not always produce the cleanest exchanges.”

Bitwise Asset Management published Bitcoin trading figures and admitted up to 95% of Bitcoin trading volume was due to wash trading.  

In a report published earlier this year by Bitwise Asset Management, revealed that up to 95% of Bitcoin trading volume seen on CoinMarketCap was due to wash trading.

Bakkt Platform Launched: Trades 71 Bitcoin Futures Contracts in 24 Hours

Intercontinental Exchange’s (ICE) Bakkt platform traded 71 Bitcoin (BTC) futures contracts in its first 24 hours following its launch on Sept. 22.

ICE’s historical data on Bakkt’s Bitcoin/USD futures contract trading reveals that the platform traded 71 BTC at press time, with the last trading price recorded at $9,875 per Bitcoin.

According to his recent analysis, Rakesh Upadhyay believes that as the currency’s price has been range-bound, institutional traders are currently not in a hurry to initiate positions which has resulted in the Bakkt launches lukewarm reception.

Bakkt’s Initial margin limits

Prior to the platform’s launch, ICE announced their tentative margin requirements for the futures contracts. Bakkt set the initial hedge requirement for daily and monthly futures contracts at $3,900, while the speculative initial requirement for both contracts is $4,290. The margins for inter-month add-ons on monthly and daily futures contracts are between $400 and$1000 for the hedge rate and $440 and $1,100 for the speculative rate.

Mission behind Bakkt

The BTC futures trading platform was announced last year and is now the first of its kind to receive approval from United States regulators. Bakkt was established by the ICE with the intention of creating an integrated platform or “seamless global network, that enables consumers, merchants and institutional clients to buy, sell, store and spend digital assets.

Bakkt CEO, Kelly Loeffler said that the platform is a reflection of Bakkt’s mission of, “Expanding access to the global economy by building trust in and unlocking the value of digital assets.” The creation of the platform provides both consumers and investors with ‘reliable and regulated infrastructure’ while continuing the push for the mainstream “adoption of new digital currency-powered technology and financial instruments.”

Image via Shutterstock

Is Bitcoin Going To Experience Its Biggest Weekly Loss Of 2019 This Week?

For the first time in over six months, Bitcoin’s acceptance has been below key support. Yesterday, the prices plummeted below a four-month low of $7800 and this phase of price volatility lingers. Bitcoin is currently trading at $8,030 on Bitstamp. This is a 20% decline from Monday’s opening price of $10,022. Assuming these prices remain at this level till Sunday’s UTC close, this would be the year’s biggest weekly loss so far.

Bitcoin has been dramatically hit with a rapid drop in one-fifth of its value. On Tuesday evening, bitcoin dropped by $1,500 within an hour to hit the $8,000 threshold. The prices dropped again after another sharp sell-off to as low as $7,830. The entire cryptocurrency market has also experienced this rapid drop.

BTC weekly chart

According to data from Bloomberg, bitcoin dropped by 9% and traded for as low as $7,736 in New York. This is its lowest record price since May. The total market capitalization continues to show new multi-month lows across crypto markets. Altcoins are not left out of this phenomenon of losses. Ether (ETH) is currently down by 2.54% and sells at $165.41. XRP is down by 1.54% and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is down by 4.92%, selling at $214.48.finally, Litecoin (LTC) is down by 3.16%, changing hands at $55.01.

Bitcoin prices have failed to hold onto signs of recovery. More downward price actions have been experienced as at yesterday. Back in the second week of January, there was a 13% fall back and this has been the biggest weekly loss so far. If bitcoin experiences a greater loss than this, it would be the most severe of the year. From all indications, only a short-lived corrective bounce is possible over the weekend. It is likely that cryptocurrency would close below $8,719 on Sunday and would be the biggest weekly loss so far.

Image via Shutterstock

Institutional Trade-at-Settlement Product for Spot Bitcoin to be Developed by Blockfills and Tassat

Tassat and Blockfills entered into a strategic partnership to create an institutional Trade-at-Settlement (TAS) product for spot bitcoin (XBT/USD), which will expectedly to be open in the market for traders in mid-December. According to the report, this trading option will permit traders to deliver their block bitcoin orders at a specific price and at three specific times: 15:00 Central European Time (Paris), 15:30 Central Standard Time (Chicago), and 15:00 Hong Kong Time.

On the subject matter, the Director of Sales at Tassat, Josh Gibson, commented thus:

“TAS provides a way to offset the risk of price movements on their futures positions and/or rebalance the gamma on options positions with no risk of excessive slippage. With the growth of digital asset derivatives, participants of all kinds will need new and efficient ways to hedge their positions.”

In accordance with the collaboration, based on Tassat’s robust bitcoin reference rates, executable and aggregated institutional-size quotes, it will handle the settlement price at each window. On the other hand, Blockfills by using its known electronic trading infrastructure will manage the matching, order flow, execution, and settlement of trades.

The report cited the comments of the partners, which showed that each company recognized and welcomed it in all goodness. In this regards, Michel Finzi, Chief Commercial Officer at Tassat, commented on this saying that:

“We are very excited to be partnering with Blockfills to bring an important and proven execution methodology from the traditional markets to the growing digital asset marketplace.” He also said that that design their “

Also, Neil Van Huis, Director of Sales and OTC Trading at Blockfills, said:

“The goal at Blockfills is to establish a global digital asset trading and prime brokerage solution to help fuel innovation and institutional adoption of digital assets. This new TAS product will complement our existing offering of digital asset products, and we look forward to leveraging on our already well- established partnership with Tassat.”

Image via Shutterstock

Grayscale Announces the Launch of its Diversified Crypto Investment System for Trading

Grayscale Investments, the American-based crypto management fund, announced a plan to launch its diversified crypto investment system for trading. This investment product is known as Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLCF), and trading will begin in no distant time with access to US securities.

Being Grayscale’s fourth investment product made open to the public, the following shares will be available to investors: Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (OTCQX: GBTC), Grayscale Ethereum Classic Trust (OTCQX: ETCG), and Grayscale Ethereum Trust (OTCQX: ETHE).

Matthew Beck, Grayscale’s Director, Investments, and Research, commented that cryptocurrencies are a new and significant source of profits to investors and which also allows for diversification. He then noted that this new initiative would help investors who wished to have new ways of gaining profits.

“Digital assets represent a new and important alternative source of return for investors. Their unique market opportunities, use cases, and risk exposures can also enhance diversification. A well-constructed, diversified investment product like Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund is an important tool for investors seeking to build more balanced portfolios with higher risk-adjusted returns,” Beck said.

Through their registered investment accounts, investors have the opportunity to buy and sell without restrictions tradable Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund shares. This opportunity parallels their beforehand ability to buy and sell unregistered securities; the only difference is that they have to look for the symbol: GDLCF.

Image via Shutterstock

How is CoinMarketCap Combating Fake Crypto Trading Volumes with its New Liquidity Metric?

Crypto data aggregator, CoinMarketCap (CMC), held its inaugural large-scale event, The Capital, bringing together leading stakeholders in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. Held at the Victoria Theatre in Singapore on Nov. 12-13, CMC released its new metrics for assessing liquidity for the industry to solve the problem of volume inflation caused by crypto exchanges and market makers. Blockchain.News sat down with Carylyne Chan, the Chief Strategy Officer of CMC in Singapore, for an interview on the new liquidity metric and other initiatives CMC is putting forward for a more transparent crypto ecosystem in terms of data.

Liquidity metric: Combating inflated volume reporting by crypto exchanges

It was announced at The Capital that CMC has revealed that the website has released a new metric to rank crypto exchanges by using liquidity in addition to the ranking by trading volume. The change in ranking methodology focused on combating inflated volume reporting by crypto exchanges. Chan believed that the previous solutions such as picking a few “trusted” exchanges or unscientific correlations like web traffic were not comprehensive to address the root cause of the issue.

Chan stated that there are three components to the liquidity metric system, the distance of the orders from the mid-price, the size of the orders, and the relative liquidity across different market pairs. The liquidity metric has been designed to measure liquidity adaptively while polling market pairs at random intervals over 24 hours and the result is based on the average. This way, time zone differences and change in order book depth due to immediate market conditions would be accounted for.

Chan further explained, “Why we got to liquidity in the first place is because liquidity is the most important aspect for traders. For us, we are moving away from volume; the volume has lost a little bit of its purpose to gauge real trading interest. Liquidity metric itself can help us to ensure that we account for orders that are close to the mid-price and higher, and orders that are further from the mid-price, we discount that market.”

On the relative liquidity aspect across different market pairs, Chan said: “When we think about liquidity across different digital assets, we have to account for liquidity for different types of assets. For example, if you have a BTC/USDT paired on a very liquid exchange, its liquidity will be higher than if you have a much more illiquid market, let’s say that 2000th ranked coin on another exchange. What we’re really trying to say is that we can account for each of these different assets, because the liquidity metric adapts to each of them based on how the absolute liquidity is.” There will be three phases on the new Liquidity metric on CMC’s website: firstly on the ranking of trading pairs, followed by exchanges and finally, cryptoassets.

Chan explained that CMC’s acquisition of the Hashtag Capital team was for the company’s pricing algorithm. “When I described the graph-based algorithm, the genesis came from the Hashtag team. After we brought them in, we also did a lot of research with them on liquidity. They have also been critical in the creation of the Liquidity metric,” said Chan. She also added that the Hashtag team had made very “big contributions” there.

CMC’s graph-based algorithmic pricing model

Regarding CMC’s graph-based algorithmic pricing model, Chan said that the current way of pricing is mostly based on volume. “We look at the volume of that particular market pair and how much it contributes to volume as a percentage of everything, and we average out the price (i.e., volume-weighted average price),” Chan elaborated.

Under the new graph-based model, the way that pricing works will be different. “We put all of the assets in a graph model. We start mapping the relationship between each of them to see how each asset’s price affects another’s price.” She also mentioned that regression and solving simultaneous equations are used to investigate how the models could be mapped out. “We do that over and over across multiple iterations until we get to the best and the most stable price.”

Binance Announces New Global Merchant Program for Crypto Peer-to-Peer Users

Leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance has announced a new program into its array of programs and services. This program is available for all users and members of the platform as the exchange aims to service P2P users very better and to ensure optimal liquidity for them.

In a blog post, Binance noted that the P2P Merchant program is being launched with the sole aim of serving the increasing demand of Binance global users and providing higher liquidity. This program enabled the involved merchants to earn revenue by providing fiat currency payment solutions. They are also known to enjoy zero transaction fees as well as professional service support from Binance.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) stated that they only selected merchants with all carefulness when the P2P trading service was first launched. However, now they are looking for more global merchants.

“In the past quarter, there has been increasing growth in trading volumes on the Binance P2P platform, and we have constantly received requests for more fiat-to-crypto access from our global community. To meet the growing users’ demand, we are seeking credible merchants for the Binance P2P trading platform globally. We welcome quality payment services providers to join Binance’s Global P2P Merchant Program,” CZ said.

Binance opened the new program, keenly looking and waiting for P2P merchants globally in order to provide stable and better services for them and also ensure good liquidity. They are therefore calling on all outstanding teams to join Binance Global P2P Merchant Program.

Before now, merchants who joined the P2P platform did it through a strict invitation and referral program. However, to ensure a quality user experience and also protect the interests of their outstanding merchants, Binance expressed that the Global P2P Merchants Program will adopt an elimination mechanism. It will excite Binance to launch more promotional activities for the P2P merchants.

Image via Shutterstock

7 Steps in Luno: How to Convert Your USD to Nigerian Naira Using Bitcoin

In recent times cryptocurrencies have been gaining a lot more recognition than in the past, it is almost accurate to say that the speed at which they have been gaining recognition is almost exponential. Bitcoin has the largest market dominance has seen a steady increase from the end of 2019 to date.

Africa happens to be one of the regions in the world that have been responsible for this sudden surge. With Nigeria being at the forefront of this race, Google trend had indicatedan increase in the Google search for Bitcoin for the last few months. Considering the fact that the country has been experiencing some relatively troublesome economic situations, it is not uncorrelated with the efforts its citizens have been making which is a clear pointer that they are now seeing this digital currency as a more stable alternative.

According to the latest World Bank report, in 2019, 9.3% of the value to be transferred is charged as the cost of sending funds to sub-Saharan Africa via regular Remittance services — with Nigeria being the highest user — This is said to be the highest remittance rate anywhere around the world.

Besides the relatively unstable economy, the number of Nigerians in diaspora have been on the increase and seeing that cryptocurrencies are a better alternative to remittance services offered by local financial operators, migrants in need of sending funds to their friends and loved ones are gradually resorting to the use of Bitcoin to escape the exorbitant charges by the banks and other financial operators.

This newly found interest also explains the recent increase in the number of exchange platforms that have been springing up to meet this growing demand for liquidity within this space. Some platforms where Nigerians can receive funds in dollars or Bitcoin and convert to Naira has been seen as a way out of the too many constraints fiat presents, they include Luno, LocalBitcoins, Paxful, Bitpesa, to mention but a few.

In this article, we would be explaining in detail the steps to take in opening an account as well as the process of conversion of USD/BTC to Naira. We would be using Luno which happens to be one of the country’s oldest and trusted exchange platforms.

Luno (formerly known as BitX) offers a 0% fee for users who make liquidity by placing an order while market takers are meant to pay a fee between 0% to 1% for the Nigerian Naira. Bank transfers and credit card deposits can also be made on the platform easily, while bank transfers are free, credit card deposits will incur a fee.

The ease of use, low fees, and high transaction limits are some of the major features that endear it to many Nigerians, thereby giving it a very positive reputation. Besides the BTC/NGN trading pair, Luno also has other Bitcoin trading pairs which include:

BTC/EUR

BTC/ZAR

BTC/MYR

BTC/IDR

Below are the steps to receive and convert your US Dollars or BTC to Nigerian Naira:

Step 1: Visit the Luno website to create an account.

Step 2: Sign up to create an account and sign in using your registered email and password.

Step 3: Select the purpose of opening the account. Note that this is what Luno will use to determine what kind of account a user intends to open.

In this case for “receiving funds into the country”.

Step 4: Now to receive Bitcoin go to the Homepage and click on the BTC option.

Step 5: Click on the receive icon to reveal the wallet address and a bar code to receive BTC.

Step 6: Name your wallet and scan the barcode or copy the wallet address and paste as a message to the sender.

Step 7: Select BTC as the currency you would like to sell and input the amount.

Finally, click on “Next”, now when you get your Naira, link your account to the Luno platform and transfer to your account. It would take a little while for the balance to reflect but after you do that all you have to do is wait for your account to be credited.

Image via Shutterstock