Craig Wright & Kleiman Start Settlement Discussions

Both parties of the Wright/Kleiman case have just entered settlement discussions and have requested a 30-day extension of all case parties to understand all the negotiations.

According to a joint motion filed on 12th September Craig Wright and Ira Kleiman have reached a “non-binding agreement in principle” in order to settle the case with both parties agreeing that by reaching a binding settlement is in their "best interests."

As reported by Sam Bourgi for CCN:
“Both parties are seeking an extension of all deadlines pertaining to the case in order to exclusively devote their efforts to settlement discussions. Currently, Kleiman’s motion for attorneys’ fees is due on Sept. 20, Wright’s opposition to sanctions ordered by Judge Reinhart is due on Sept. 23, and expert disclosures are due on Nov. 5.”

Several analysts have attributed the 40 percent federal estate tax incurred by Kleiman through the court’s ruling as the motivation for the plaintiff’s desire to settle.

This has been ongoing since last year when Ira Kleiman sued the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto, Craig Wright, for $10 billion alleging that Wright had sought to fraudulently gain custody over his late-brother Dave Kleiman bitcoin holdings.

Judge Bruce Reinhart was the man overseeing the case and ruled in favour of Kleiman in the end.

Reinhart concluded that Wright had made several “inconsistent statements” relating to material matters concerning his reported inability to demonstrate the value of his bitcoin holdings as of 31st December 2013. The Judge said:

“I completely reject Dr. Wright’s testimony about the alleged Tulip Trust, the alleged encrypted file, and his alleged inability to identify his bitcoin holdings.”

The magistrate says Wright’s testimony, “was not supported by other evidence in the record” and “defies common sense and real-life experience.” Reinhart went onto highlight that “when it was favorable to him,” Wright “appeared to have an excellent memory and a scrupulous attention to detail.”

But otherwise, Wright was found to be “belligerent and evasive.”

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. For more news on this and other crypto updates, keep it with CryptoDaily!Craig Wright & Kleiman Start Settlement Discussions#anchor(title)

The Phenomenal Growth Of Ripple Won’t Be Easy To Stop

When Ripple started, the project has continued to put together a string of serious partnerships with financial institutions over the past few years. When they started, Ripple was overlooked because of its relation with the traditional financial system which drove a lot of enthusiasts away from it because of the centralisation factor.

This year though, Ripple is one of those cryptocurrencies that you can’t really ignore. Now that it is making more and more partnerships such as the World Bank and EU Commission, Ripple is one of the biggest names in the industry.

Starting so many partnerships with some of the world’s biggest financial names is a big sign of significant growth which can’t be ignored. The work that Ripple is undergoing at the moment will be very important in setting the groundwork which will allow the other cryptocurrency projects to boom over the next few years. So whether you love or hate Ripple, it is important to keep up to date with their latest collaborations, as they are knocking down walls between both blockchain technology and the traditional financial world.

So with this, let’s take a look at what some of these high-profile institutions that have partnered up with Ripple and what they are about.

EU Commission
Earlier this year, the EU Commission announced the launch of the Internation Association of Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA).

INATBA was founded with the main aim to encourage with regulators, create a global model of governance for blockchain and develop interoperability standards for the whole industry.

The organisation brings together startups, policymakers, SMEs, global entities, regulators and more to boost the support for blockchain technologies at it tries to break into the mainstream.

Ripple has recently announced that they are actually one of the founding members of INATBA too.

World Bank
In March, Ripple’s remittance product, xRapid was included on the World Bank’s official webpage.

They have stated that remittances are a lot more expensive in the areas that they are needed the most. So with this, it is no surprise that they view DLT as having the potential to push forward changes to a whole industry when the world remittance costs are 7 percent as of the fourth quarter of 2018.

Ripple is growing at an incredible pace and these are just two of the hundreds of partnerships that Ripple have garnered over the years. Who knows what 2019 will hold but we can only assume its destined for bigger things.

The Genesis Capital CEO On Why No One Is Shorting Bitcoin

Following on from an interview we reported on yesterday called How Genesis Capital ‘Won’ The 2018 Bear Market, the firm’s CEO spoke on strategy and why no one is shorting Bitcoin at the minute too.

For a quick recap on another part of the interview with CryptoSlate, click here.

Strategy
So whereas there are hedge funds shorting Bitcoin, which may have built a platform for Michael Moro's lending firm, the game is changing…

Market-neutral funds are now a thing which is borrowing to balance the exposure between long and short positions. But apparently, shorting the spot price of bitcoin isn’t part of this tactic anymore.

Moro explained:
“The guys that were shorting Bitcoin in 2018—no one’s shorting Bitcoin today. Bitcoin’s almost become the base pair, and it does what it does. People aren’t shorting the spot. However, what people will do, is short the alts.”

As CryptoSlate write, this is most likely down to the Interbank Foreign Exchange market because the US Dollar is used by the public as a fiat base currency. So any significant action on the short end will go on in the fiat ‘alts,’ the Euro, Sterling, and so on. It looks as if the leading cryptocurrency is going the same way.

The CEO has indicated that altcoins are being put in their “pecking order” by institutional traders like his clients, who will short them back to their original fair value. They won’t be selling the leading cryptocurrency to take their short positions though.

“Relative to how Bitcoin performs, they’ll short Litecoin, or XRP, or Ethereum. If Bitcoin went up 5 percent in a day, and say Litecoin goes up 10 percent, they’ll short Litecoin back down. They’re almost putting things back into the relative valuation that these investors have made up in their mind, as in ‘here’s how the pecking order goes.’”

Will Bakkt’s Launch Imminently Impact Bitcoin?

Here we are, the one-week countdown before the Bakkt platform launches and hopefully, something interesting will start happening to the market.

All eyes on are the launch of the platform, especially Bakkt’s physically settled Bitcoin futures product, as it is widely believed that it could provide a much-needed boost for the aggregated crypto markets.

This all being said, it’s important to highlight that some investors could be slightly disappointed in the immediate results of the platform’s launch as well others which have released over the past year or so which have been met with nothing as what was expected.

But Bakkt is different.

If you've been around in the crypto space for the past year or so, you will most likely have heard about the Bakkt platform. Nothing has quite been hyped up like Bakkt before in the industry.

A popular cryptocurrency analyst on Twitter, PlanB has spoken about the upcoming platform in a recent tweet and has explained that he belies it will create a price discovery model aside from the cash market's influence.

“7 business days until … Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is offering physically settled Bitcoin futures through its Bakkt unit. It will act as exchange, clearinghouse and settlement authority. ICE BTC futures will create price discovery apart from any cash market influence. ”

As to what this will have on bitcoins price action, we don't know but it will surely be an interesting thing to watch.

The economist Alex Krüger, who focuses mainly on cryptocurrency, recently explained that VanEck’s Bitcoin Trust for institutional investors only has four bitcoins under management.

“Three days after launch, the VanEck bitcoin trust for institutional investors has reportedly managed to issue a whopping 1 (one) basket. It has 4 bitcoins or $41,400 in assets under management. Massive.”

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

SEC Chairman Says Their Close To Approving The Bitcoin ETF Proposals

Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Jay Clayton has said that the organisation is getting ever closer to finally approving a bitcoin ETF. However, Clayton went onto warn that further work needs to be done to avoid the manipulation of price and make sure the market is transparent.

Speaking to CNBC’s Bob Pisani during an interview, Clayton was asked how close we actually were to seeing an approved bitcoin ETF.

His response?
"Yes. But there's work left to be done."

A bit ominous yes, but it’s good to know that the SEC isn’t just brushing it off and inevitably going to reject the proposed ETF’s.

Watch the video here.

Manipulating price

Clayton has said that the SEC wants more info about custody as well as assurances against price manipulation.

"How do we know that we can custody and have a hold of these crypto assets? That's a key question. An even harder question — given that they trade on largely unregulated exchanges is — 'How can we be sure that those prices aren't subject to significant manipulation?"

Clayton continued, saying that progress has been made in these regards but he does clarify that "people needed to answer those hard questions for us to be comfortable that this was the appropriate type of product."

After the SEC once again delayed their final decision on the bitcoin ETF, one commissioner from the regular, Hester Peirce has said that the agency should already have approved the bitcoin ETF’s.

Peirce highlighted that the commission hasn’t been very open-minded when approaching the bitcoin ETF.

It will be interesting to see how this situation plays out and when the ETF proposals actually get approved but if Clayton’s words are anything to go by, we won’t be waiting too long. For more news on this and other crypto updates, keep it with CryptoDaily!

3 Fiat Currencies That Were More Volatile Than Bitcoin In 2019

Economy and financial experts always like to bring up the volatility argument against the adoption of cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin.

Nearly every time a person previously involved in traditional financial markets gets asked about their opinion of Bitcoin, their immediate answer is that it’s not stable enough to be a viable investment.

In some sense, they are indeed saying the truth, Bitcoin is extremely volatile, which is why it’s so attractive to beginners and veteran traders. Most don’t have to wait for months or years for them to see significant returns from the investment, as the markets tend to move quite often and quite radically.

But in terms of 2008 and 2019, the Bitcoin volatility has been slightly on the low end, meaning that there were no serious spikes to speak of, besides that one point where the crypto reached around $14,000 but corrected shortly thereafter.

In this article, I’d like to showcase several fiat currency pairs that were either as volatile as Bitcoin, slightly less volatile, or even more volatile in 2019.

There are quite a lot of them, but let’s focus on the more “popular” currencies if we can.

The British Pound
The GBP has been quite volatile ever since their decision about Brexit was announced. And by volatility, I mean that the currency has been going downhill, only resurging a little bit once the government was having trouble making decisions whether or not the decision should actually go through.

Even today, the UK parliament is struggling to make a definitive decision on how the UK will exit the European Union, and whether they will exit or not. What we know is that the EU is tired of postponing this decision, but they get better and better leverage the longer the UK fails to come up with a plan.

This failure to come up with a plan has led to the GBP declining to a point where it’s nearly as valuable as the Euro, and we all know that GBP was once considered one of the most stable, reliable and strong currencies in the global economy.

Now though, dozens of banks are trying to relocate outside of the country, while taking quite a hefty sum in the capital with them. The volatility index shows around 3% volatility for a 30-day framework in 2019 alone.

With BTC, the estimate for the last 30 days was around 3.49% and the next 30 days is around 4.21%.

The Turkish Lira
The Turkish Lira has been having a tough time as well, ever since the “coup” that nearly took over the country several years ago. Many believe that the country’s current government is authoritative and does not follow Turkey’s almost century-old Ataturk model.

With that model, Turkey was focusing on developing the economy and increasing the overall democracy in the country. Since President Erdogan solidified his position after the coup attempt, the Turkish Lira has been going downhill relative to the USD.

In fact, there were thousands of Turkish citizens fleeing to cryptocurrencies in order to somehow protect themselves from inflation, or at least purchasing property and investing via USD while there was still time.

In 2019 though, the status quo stabilized just a little bit, but compared to other fiat currencies the Turkish Lira was still has a much higher volatility index of 6%. As already mentioned in the paragraph talking about the GBP, Bitcoin’s volatility index was around 3% in the last 30 days.

This puts the Turkish Lira way above Bitcoin in terms of volatility. Furthermore, considering that Turkey is a massive trading hub between the East and the West, the volatility was extra confusing considering the amount of foreign currency that is funneled inside of the country.

New Zealand Dollar
The New Zealand Dollar will most likely be classified as the most volatile currency in the world after its inflation report.

According to a Forex news outlet Forexbonuslab, The currency has been bankrupting and enriching all at the same time, as traders enter the market with highly leveraged trades in the hopes of catching a slope or a spike.

The volatility index in the last thirty days was recognized to be around 7-8% which is way above what Bitcoin has been going through lately.

Considering the fact that the government of New Zealand is now considering crypto salaries as the common, lawful practice is a great indication of how much more stable cryptocurrencies are becoming for this market.

Overall, in this part of Oceania, Bitcoin is definitely a winner in terms of stability.

Will These Figures Stop The Criticism?
The criticism will most definitely not seize because of these figures simply because multiple experts still see Bitcoin as a bubble, an asset without anything supporting it when in reality, it’s the biggest supported asset there is.

There are millions of people that agree on the value of Bitcoin every single day and help move the market. This is exactly the same with fiat currencies. The only difference is that the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies makes it more volatile, as the market is usually divided 50/50 between the bulls and the bears. Whenever one side loses the other wins without a doubt.

This is the nature of any financial market and will continue to be so in the future.

Online Or Offline, How Should I Store My Bitcoin?

The crypto conundrum, where should you store your Bitcoin? Online, offline or perhaps somewhere between the two? With so many storage options available, it’s often hard to decide what to do. Ultimately, crypto storage is the responsibility of the investor and thus, your cryptocurrencies should be looked after as if they are real money, because, well… they are real money.

Offline Storage
Offline storage, in wallets that are not connected to a network, is often seen as the superior solution. Your assets can be stored on a USB type device that is cold, it’s offline and thus can only be accessed by the person who has the device. This can also be protected with a password, two-factor authentication and all of the other security parameters, meaning that in reality, this is the safest way to secure your crypto, it’s essentially unhackable.

The problem with this is that if you lose the device (the wallet) or it gets stolen, you lose the assets. Much like if you lose your cash wallet and it’s full of money, that money is lost and impossible to retrieve, therefore when you have an offline wallet, you need to make sure you keep it safe. Some people will opt to store their wallets in a bank vault or a safe, but then you are leaving its destiny in the hands of the bank, isn’t that the reason Bitcoin was created in the first place, to prevent this?

Online Storage
So, this brings us to online storage, a solution that allows you to access your cryptocurrencies across a number of devices, through a computer, a smartphone or even a web browser extension. Some online storage also allows you to store your cryptocurrency with an exchange, meaning you simply just need to log into an account to access it. Forgotten your password or private key? No problem.

The downside to this of course is that your assets are stored on a network which is hosted by an external entity. They are partly responsible for the safekeeping of your assets. By being online, if your storage provider goes bust, or shuts down, what happens to your Bitcoin? Moreover, by being within a network, your assets are exposed to a risk of hacks and theft, it’s something we have seen many times before and is something that we can only expect to see again.

The Solution
Well, it’s up to you. How you store your crypto is your decision and your decision alone. We would always recommend staying offline, though as you can see, online solutions do have some intrinsic benefits. As long as you practice good internet security and do your best to stay safe online, your assets should remain safe. Minimise risk, trade carefully and treat your cryptocurrency like real money - that’s our best advice.

People Are Investing In Bitcoin Mining Gear Again

A sudden decline in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining took place through 2018 for two key reasons. First of all, rising costs for energy and expensive mining equipment made the set up of mining operations far more costly than they used to be. Secondly and more importantly though, the decline in the value of Bitcoin set mining profits crashing. Because a single Bitcoin is worth far less than it used to be just one year ago, the action of mining went from a profitable one, to a financial drain and thus, people had to stop.

The full scale of this decline was frankly huge and saw a number of major mining operations close down - Bitcoin mining farms became too expensive to operate leaving miners out of pocket.

According to new reports however, there seems to have been a sudden uptake in the number of people buying cryptocurrency mining equipment. As people become more bullish about Bitcoin and as more investors are starting to see the light at the end of the (very long) tunnel, it seems that people could turn to Bitcoin mining once again.

According to Coindesk, miners in China are starting to make the most of buying second hand (used) Bitcoin mining equipment and are striking deals with hydroelectric power plants. A marriage of the two - cheap mining equipment and cheap power through an abundant water supply means that, with overheads down, Bitcoin mining could start to drive profits once again. With these hydroelectric power stations in operation, miners can expect to pay around $0.037 per kilowatt hour (kWh) for electricity, meaning they will be paying very little for the power required to run the mining rigs. One company behind this drive, Hashage, envisions a new wave of Bitcoin mining in China.

“Xun Zheng, the company’s CEO, told CoinDesk that over the past month the firm has been talking to individual miners and larger mining farms with a total demand of more than 1 million slots for deploying mining chips. According to Zheng, individual miners on average are looking to host 1,000 to 3,000 units of mining equipment each, while larger farms are eyeing at a larger scale of over tens of thousands of machines.”

Furthermore:
“He added although the exact electricity costs with local hydropower stations won’t be finalized until the end of March, miners have already started looking for resources and negotiating deals with mining farms before the season comes so that they have enough time to ship equipment to the mountains and set them up.”

Like many, Hashage have foreseen a new push towards Bitcoin mining, something that could prove to be lucrative in the instance that Bitcoin starts to move back up to that highly sought after $20,000.00 value. If Bitcoin does hit $20k, those miners will be very happy indeed.

Crypto Derivatives Block Trading Platform Launched By Dutch Exchange & Partner

You may have heard of the Deribit Dutch-based exchange. Well now, the exchange has launched a block trading solution in partnership with American trading communication platform Paradigm.

According to a press release, the firms said, that the institutional block trading solution is the first of its kind offered by a crypto-derivatives exchange.

The new block trading solution looks to give institutions the chance to directly negotiate crypto-derivative trades through a chat on Paradigm.

So what exactly are block trades? As reported by CoinTelegraph:
“Block trades are privately negotiated transactions in futures or options, or spreads and combinations of the two, that exceed certain minimum quantity thresholds. Once traders agree on a price, these transactions are submitted to the exchange for execution and clearing.”

By bringing in this new tool, Deribit and Paradigm wish to remove any potential execution risk in relation with the order book when institutional traders privately negotiated big trades through Telegram or Microsoft’s Skype and then manually coordinated execution on Deribit.

The CEO and co-founder of the Dutch exchange, John Jansen pointed out the benefits for institutions are further emphasised when trading options. According to the CEO, options traders can now create a portfolio of put and call options in different variations and trade them by blocks, further adding futures at the same time. This is rather than negotiating and trading options one at a time.

Jansen stated:
"The ability to negotiate deals privately and execute them automatically on Deribit platform but outside of the order book is a crucial step in onboarding institutional traders. You remove the risk of front running and offer institutions the ability to trade significant amounts without moving the markets and with a counterparty of their choosing.”

It will be interesting to see how this situation plays out.

Coinone Launched Exchange To Close Less Than Year After Release

The CGEX cryptocurrency exchange based in Malta has just closed down less than a year after it was launched by South Korea’s Coinone in October in 2018.

Well, the exchange hasn’t closed down just yet but it only has a few weeks left until it ceases its operations for good.

Earlier this month, an announcement was posted that said the exchange would close down on the 18th September at 2:50 UTC. it’s worth noting that this exchange is the third biggest one in South Korea.

After this, users will be unable to access their accounts. Deposits and withdrawals will also no longer be possible.

CGEX announced the news after the exchange temporarily suspended trading and deposits on July 17th.

In the post, it stated:
“To prepare for a new paradigm change in cryptocurrency exchanges, CGEX is preparing a new trading platform… The New CGEX will be introduced during the third quarter of 2019.”

The exchange opened on 28th October last year and since then, the exchange offered cryptocurrency-to-cryptocurrency trading which was implemented into Coinone’s activity in South Korea and Indonesia.

But unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to keep CGEX going.

A recently published report from Business Korea has even stated that South Korean projects are flooding into foreign exchanges due to the tougher cryptocurrency exchange market conditions.

“The number of South Korean companies listing their early-stage blockchain projects on foreign exchanges is steadily increasing, industry watchers said on Aug. 18. Medibloc and Temco, which have already listed their blockchain projects on South Korea’s major exchanges are seeking to list their projects listed again on overseas exchanges, including those in the United States and Singapore.”

These low transaction volumes are behind the firm’s decisions to avoid listing on domestic exchanges.