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BackOverview of crypto market news, progress on new products and funding.
Check out our weekly “This Week in Crypto” summary or watch the full video here.
Crypto Market News Highlights
1) Bitfinex Sparks Controversy Allegedly Manipulating $20,000 Bitcoin Price High
It wasn’t necessarily Bitfinex, but it was more aligned with Tether – one of Bitfinex’s sister companies. Bitcoin’s price went as high as it did mainly on the back of two things – the ICO bubble, and giant pyramid schemes in China. That’s it. Kevin doesn’t see any real evidence supporting the supposed Bitfinex manipulation.
2) Stellar burns half of total supply, XLM price jumps 15% in minutes
This was announced at their conference in Mexico. Kevin was actually planning on going there but he ended up going to Pakistan.
From a regulatory perspective, this is a bit scary. That’s a big manipulation of supply. At the same time, it was probably a good move in terms of PR.
3) Bakkt Opens Bitcoin Custody to All Institutions, Futures on Track for New ATH
Bakkt was such a big buzzword. Then it launched, and nothing happened. The reason Bakkt is different is that it’s physically settled, settled in Bitcoin. Bitcoin traders thought this was going to be a big deal. What they failed to realise is that institutional guys could care less – they’re there to make money on a volatile asset, so they don’t care if it’s cash settled. There are several options out there, major one being the cash settled CME.
4) Kraken CEO: Bitcoin Bulls Constantly Exhaust Kraken’s Liquidity Pool
So they need some more liquidity.
5) Crypto.com launches new exchange, eyes Top 10 spot within 5 years
Clap clap clap for Crypto.com, welcome to the game. They’re well funded, and their comment is pretty realistic. They probably have the money in the bank to support operations for five years. Kevin doesn’t think it would be too hard for them to get to the Top 10 in 5 years. Why? Because the amount of competition that’s going to exist in 5 years, outside of major financial institutions, will be close to zero. It’s basically going to be CoinMetro and 4–5 other guys, and Crypto dot com will probably be one of those. Hats off to Crypto dot com, and good luck.
Live Questions
Market makers online before the end of the month?
Very possible. When we got ink on paper, market makers are rolling in.
Will you still need to sell XCM once the 2 million funding comes in?
The plan would be no. Obviously we want to hold on to that XCM.
Could you repeat news about funding?
Finalizing agreements with a group of investors. Waiting on an email with KYC data. We set a timeline for next week to have funds start to roll in. Most of the funds should come in by the end of next week.
Binance announced that they will add 180 fiat currencies for trading. What do you think?
Just adding a pair – so what? At the end of the day they still can’t accept these currencies, they’re simply pricing in them. While that may make it easier for individuals to understand the prices they’re paying for the underlying crypto asset, it’s not a big deal. At all. All it takes is connecting to a quote feed from an FX source.
If they were accepting 180 fiat currencies as deposit methods, that would be much bigger news.
In a few years when CoinMetro hopefully is a powerhouse crypto bank, do you think you’d keep your HQ in Tallinn?
We would definitely still have a presence here, even if it’s just from a structuring standpoint giving the way tax works here. And it’s in the EU. Not much of a reason to look at another place in the EU, unless there’s specific local legislation that happens and there’s a stall on getting EU-wide directive.
We definitely would have other offices. Would Tallinn remain our global HQ? That remains to be seen.
News on debit cards?
It’s moving, progress is being made, but we’re still waiting on third parties to finish on their end.
How is the CSD moving along?
Moving along well. Kevin was in Riga yesterday and had a meeting with the project lead. Everything is going according to plan. They’re about a week behind the four month schedule, mainly because we had a few changes that needed to be made in terms of how reporting needs to happen based on underlying regulations for the CSD.
But everything is going along well, they’re now through the second stage and now into stage three of five. The third stage starts to bring in the tokenization element as well as custody and things like that. So, some big pieces coming up in the next sprint.
Once the money hits your accounts, will we see a big marketing push?
Not right away, no. The goal of this money is self-sustainability, to get our revenues to the point where we are self-sustainable. That means there will be a major focus on marketing. We still have a small bit of finetuning that we need to do before we start that marketing push.
We also need to test marketing. Tests have to be done on low budgets, so there’s a process. We’re going to give ourselves 2-3 months to work our way through hiring, the process of creating and testing marketing and copy, and where we’re going to market. In that same time, we need to finetune some of our products – mobile, simplifying, dashboard, there are a few things that has to be done.
When PARSIQ launch?
Scheduled to be tradeable before the end of the month.
Any news on MAP and margin posting?
MAP is Oliver’s pet project, so leaving that answer for Oliver.
Our full dev team is focused on TraM and XCM utility. Once those are done, margin posting is the next venture. Some work has already been done there, both on the GUI side and the programming side.
Are you willing to share any details about the marketing plan?
Some details, sure. It’s like having a war plan, if we tell the enemy where we’re going, they’re just going to go there first.
How will the funds be split overall?
That’s a board decision, and that’s something we’ll be discussing likely in the first or second week of December. A chunk to marketing, and we have to hire some more people.
Any updates regarding using Chainlink and Quant for the CSD? Is it going to happen?
No updates on that. We postponed those talks a bit, because Kevin was travelling and one of the guys on the dev team was sick. Those talks will probably happen over the next couple of weeks.
Regarding the equity the investors received, how much did you give them?
The valuation is 50 million, so you can do the math.
Will there be a floor on PRQ price when it’s tradeable?
There hasn’t been a discussion, yet. It’s not CoinMetro’s own token, so CoinMetro can’t dictate how that token is going to be traded.
Are you working on something special behind the scenes? Like MAP was announced unexpectedly.
There’s always ongoing talks here. We have a lot of smart people in CoinMetro, and we talk about a lot of things all the time. Sometimes things stick, sometimes they don’t. MAP is one of those things that stuck.
We’re always looking at improving the ecosystem. Right now, MAP is the side project that’s being more focused on.
Will you use some of the new funding to go after new licenses in various regions?
This funding will not be used for licensing because unfortunately, it’s not enough. The goal for the fundraising is self-sustainability. Once we get even in 30% of self-sustainability and we show improvements month on month, it’ll be very easy to get further funding.
How about the self-assessment framework from LHV so CoinMetro can list more projects?
Still don’t have that from them. Kevin will dig back into LHV as soon as we get funding out of the way.
Would CoinMetro ever consider offering derivatives on its platform?
There are some regulatory issues there. There is a big grey area. In the EU, a derivative which is settled in crypto that isn’t considered a currency and it’s virtually settled – it’s a grey area.
How far down the road is integration with FXPig?
As we get closer to self-sustainability, that becomes an easy thing to do.
You mentioned that CoinMetro may be involved in global remittance service. What corridors would you plan to target, and is being a Ripple ODL partner part of that process?
Ripple wasn’t part of it when Kevin made the statement. Obviously we target the corridors with more remittances than anywhere else in the world. That’s Asia – India, Pakistan. Latin America, Mexico, down into central/south America.
Remittance is a natural business for the blockchain. You build a dashboard that has the ability to transfer between two people cross border, and then underpin that on top of crypto assets and also have fiat onramps – you already have a remittance service. It’s just about marketing it that way, and creating a user experience that flows like a remittance service.
Reddit Questions
How many use cases will XCM have?
We’re working on four-five right now. But with every new product we launch, the goal will be to tie in XCM. So in the future, Kevin would hope there to be dozens of use cases. A few strong use cases is enough in terms of tokenomics.
Will there be staking?
There may be at some point in the future. Right now most of our assets sit with BitGo. BitGo started staking, but so far not on any asset that we have listed. If they start to stake assets we do have listed, then yes – we wouldn’t hold those staking rewards for ourselves.
“Kevin Explains Crypto” Term: Angel Investors
The difference between an angel investor and any investor: an angel investor is usually a wealthy person or a group, that invest in startups. They usually come in at seed phase. They’re called “angel” because they come in just at the right time, when the company is just starting out and needs money.
Interested in learning more? Have a look at the video where Kevin explains “Angel Investor”:
Listen to Last Week’s TWiC on the Go
Get the complete scoop by tuning in to our audio version of last week’s TWiC on SoundCloud. Happy listening!
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Well, that’s it for this week’s AMA with CoinMetro Founder Kevin Murcko! Please join us next week on CoinMetro’s Facebook and YouTube Channel at 1 PM (UTC) for another round and make sure you submit your questions to the CoinMetro subReddit!
As always, we’re available to answer any questions you may have on our Telegram Group 24/7.