CoinMetro’s CEO, Kevin Murcko brings you the most recent crypto market news during the weekly AMA every Friday.
Binance Balances and Orders Are Allegedly Not Being Processed Right
They had a technical issue. All tech related companies have tech-related issues from time to time. Even CoinMetro.
Point is that no matter how big your company is, how much money you have — this happens to everybody.
In more traditional markets, most systems are standardized, and most companies are using the same back office. Tech issues happen rarely, but If something does happen, it generally affects many companies at the same time.
Bitcoin’s Lightning Network Is Growing ‘Increasingly Centralized,’ Researchers Find
Lightning is basically centralized by its very virtue. You need to have credit in the Lightning Network in order to make Lightning payments. Someone has to manage the credit, thus it is centralized. The bigger it grows, the more centralized it becomes.
When it comes to Bitcoin, likely the most decentralized asset in crypto, is slow and needs something like Lightning to speed it up. For that speed, things need to be centralized.
Sweden Is Testing Its New Central Bank Digital Currency
The E-krona. Kevin was just in Montenegro talking with the Central Monetary Authority/Central Bank about this, and also did a lecture about it at one of the biggest private universities in Montenegro.
This is a test, so it is kind of like monopoly money, just to show how the system will work.
All countries in the world will issue central bank digital currency. That does not mean they will issue their own version of Bitcoin. If you have an account with some e-money provider, like Revolut, you have already dealt with electronic money.
Most large economies around the world have some provision for E-money. What it means is that it’s backed by the actual, legal tender.
The difference with a central bank issued digital currency is that the currency is actually legal tender.
This is a big step forward. It means that they don’t have to print money to issue e-money. They don’t need two separate ledgers, between the legal tender and e-money. It’s just one unit.
Every single country will have a central bank issued digital currency.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao Says Bitcoin Halving Not Priced In Yet
How wouldn’t it be priced in? Everybody knows about it!
It’s one thing for instance in currency trading, you have something called Non-Farm Payroll, NFP. NFP comes out the first Friday of every month. The NFP is an indicator of how many non-farming jobs that entered/exited the market. That is a big mover in the currency market, because it’s one of the biggest direct impacts on spending/GDP. It can move the USD/EUR many basis points.
A few days before NFP, you get all the experts’ opinions on what they think the NFP will be. And it starts to get priced in.
Kevin has been in circumstances where the experts’ say on the NFP ends up being completely wrong. But most of the time, it’s pretty close.
In this scenario, we have a piece of news, and there is no question about what the news will be, or when it will happen. How the fuck is that not priced in, as soon as you know it’s going to happen?
It’s an idiot statement.
That doesn’t mean that nothing will happen. Why? Because most of the time in the markets, the exact opposite of what you expect to happen will happen first. If you expect positive news for Bitcoin — expect selling to happen before buying. Because the guys who know that it’s going to be positive, are not going to buy into other peoples’ buying. That’s stupid. They want to buy into peoples’ selling.
They simply wait. News come out. All the small fish see that the prices aren’t going any higher. They wonder why, and they sell. And that sell pressure triggers a lot of stops real quick, and makes the price fall even further.
Kevin expects this to happen around the day of the halvening.
To say it’s not priced in, is absolutely moronic.
Crypto Exchange FCoin Insolvent After Revealing Up to $130M Bitcoin Shortfall
Not much good to say on this news story. FCoin? They really fucked you there.
Kevin doesn’t know the background of the FCoin, and won’t read the story. But he would almost rest assured that these guys don’t have the background to which they should be running a financial enterprise.
They are probably not regulated by any stretch of the imagination. They had no four-eye principles inside the companies. Not watching the money, no automatic alerts, not proper testing.
Kevin read somewhere that these guys had an issue since 2018, and the issue compounded over time. At no point did anyone catch it, until they went bankrupt.
That would be the good side of the story.
It is possible that they were actually stealing the money, and just now they were found out.
Pick your poison, but it is still poison regardless.
SEC Nails Enigma ICO: Orders Refund, Registration and Fine
As Kevin has been saying for almost three years, this was well expected. Not specifically for Enigma, but the SEC would go after ICOs after they got some judicial precedent.
There we go. And Kevin expects more to come.
Visa Grants Coinbase Power To Issue Bitcoin Debit Cards
This one is slightly mis-stated. Coinbase got a VISA principal membership. Most of the time, principal membership is granted by the fact that you issue a lot of cards. So you become a principal member.
That gives you a seat, which will help you dictate some policies and how VISA will go about distributing in certain areas of the world.
These cards are not linked directly to Bitcoin. “Issue Bitcoin Debit Cards”. No. They’re issuing USD/EUR debit cards, and the Bitcoin is getting converted on their side.
It’s a good step for the industry as a whole, that’s for sure. Coinbase does a lot of things that they should be doing. Though, as Kevin has mentioned in the past, when CoinMetro does any type of KYT (Know-Your-Transaction), Coinbase tends to be in the middle of it. A lot of medium to high risk transactions. That’s probably because they’re just big, and they get exposed to lots of transactions.
Having said that, they are doing a lot of good things and they are doing what they can to comply with regulations. Them becoming a larger part of the VISA network is good for all of us. It means that VISA, Mastercard, and the like are starting to open up to crypto-companies.
CoinMetro is working towards offering Debit Cards tied to your CoinMetro account.
Binance CEO Says Crypto Exchange Has Applied for a Singapore License
It’s basically akin to the AMLD5 that exists in Europe. Same type of registration that CoinMetro has in Australia.
So, not a big deal. Maybe they would have gone after a Stored Payments License, which you can actually move up to 35 million in Singapore on a yearly basis, without actually needing a license. Which is a reason why a lot of fraudulent entities end up in Singapore first.
They probably have a lot of clients in Singapore, so it’s likely something they have to do. And they should acquire it. It’s more of a registration, and not something that usually gets denied.
It does show that from 2 years ago till now, Binance is finally paying some attention to regulations.
Find out about CoinMetro’s practices to comply with AML and KYC regulations.
UK Crypto Exchange Coinfloor Launches ‘No BS’ Service for Bitcoin Beginners
Coinfloor also dropped all other assets, so they are a Bitcoin-only exchange. Which could make sense, as there are way more newbies in the world than there are people who know what they are doing.
The fact that they are only focusing on Bitcoin, and the vast amount of liquidity right now is in Bitcoin, makes sense.
Kevin’s question is what happens when Bitcoin is not the main liquidity engine inside of crypto or the tokenized market — what do they do then?
CoinMetro’s SimplEX is a super-easy to use exchange to buy and sell crypto — perfect for newbies.
Brazilian Crypto Exchanges Crushed Under the Weight of Tough Laws
Kevin thinks this is better said as “Brazilian Crypto Exchanges crushed under any type of law”. They went from having no oversight, to having some oversight. That knocks out any of the lowest hanging fruits, the guys that didn’t know what they were doing.
If you are running a financial business and you didn’t expect the tax board or regulators to show up one day — it was inevitable. Like Darwin’s Law. Only the strong survive.
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Tune in every Friday for “This Week in Crypto” with CoinMetro’s CEO Kevin Murcko on our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/coinmetro
