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BackProgress on PARSIQ and CSD, plans for the future and more.
Check out our weekly “This Week in Crypto” summary in our blog post or watch the full video here.
Crypto Market News Highlights
1) Pompliano: The U.S. Must Tokenize the Dollar to Remain Competitive
They don’t have to tokenize the dollar to remain competitive because the USD and all major fiat currencies around the world have been dematerialized for the past 20 years.
Governments can move debt and money cross-border pretty darn fast over virtual ledger systems. Instead of the ledger system they use now, they’ll use some type of distributed ledger technology, that has some degree of decentralization or immutability.
2) Blockchain Transparency Institute: 64% of Tether is used for fake trading
A lot of Tether is used for fake trading, a lot of Tether is used by Tether in between their own accounts to manipulate their own volumes. 64% – could be 94%, could be 54%. Definitely a large piece of volume.
3) Ripple acquires Icelandic crypto exchange (Algrim) to expand presence in Europe
Ripple is doing a lot of changes to their website. They got rid of any reference to xRapid and xCurrent. They will probably rebrand into one single service. They’ve had problems onboarding institutions to connect to their remittance network, and this is probably step one of many steps.
4) Sia Network’s Creator, Nebulous, Settles With SEC For $225k; Like Block.One’s EOS, No Fault Admitted
The cool thing about the SEC decision (especially on Block.One) is that they focused on when they were selling before they got a platform. They likely fined them close to a 100% of what was raised.
Once the token went from being a security to being a utility, the fine didn’t continue. So the SEC played pretty honest ball here, awesome for the market.
5) Institutional Investors are Manipulating the Price of Bitcoin: Arcane Research Report
Kevin thinks that the Bakkt release shows what the true underlying institutional appetite is right now for Bitcoin. The volume yesterday was 1 Bitcoin. The first day it was 5 million worth of Bitcoin.
What is so interesting about Bakkt? It’s backed by physical Bitcoin. That should mean that the more people buy in Bakkt, the more Bitcoin is pulled of the physical market, the more demand and the higher the price should go on all connected exchanges.
Institutional investors don’t care – they use CME because they’re already onboarded at CME. They can easily buy and sell a volatile asset, put it at 1-2% of their portfolio, and move on. They’re not even taking the time it takes to get onboard Bakkt. They don’t care about it being physically backed.
Live YouTube Questions
When is funding expected?
The Brazilians came back with a few negotiations that they wanted to do. Some of the individuals in the initial funding decided they had other commitments.
We are in a bit of a negotiation to see exactly how we’ll move forward with CoinMetro and with the CSD. However, we now have 2-3 other funding possibilities that are getting close as well.
The Brazilians are now working on a better schedule on when the money needs to hit, what size deposits need to hit, and obligations on both sides.
Are you happy with the PARSIQ IEO? Will there be more marketing?
PARSIQ will run multiple rounds. Whether they run every round with us or elsewhere as well for other regions of the world, remains to be seen.
Kevin looks on the successes here. The product was launched, the IEO system works and the system will help protect investors. With limited spend-up before the initial IEO, we saw some funds come in on day one. This is just the whitelist part of the sale, the public sale will happen after and will be longer than the whitelist sale.
PARSIQ has begun more aggressive marketing and we’ve started spending some on our side as well, mainly on traffic and a few other things.
How is the CSD development going?
It’s going well. We’re in the third week of the first four months development cycle to get the MVP into the sandbox. The project lead in Latvia is on-point with his organization. We are very, very impressed with how they put everything together and how tight their sprints are.
How is the progress in Montenegro?
Montenegro is going great. Kevin is going back there in November for a workshop with the central bank to do a DVP, that’s Delivery versus Payment, basically settlement with the central bank using stablecoins.
We now have their application package. CoinMetro will submit their application probably sometime next week, to be included as the first official entry into the sandbox.
We are already in the process of establishing a company in Montenegro, getting into the sandbox, and starting to provide the services we already are offering globally, locally in Montenegro. On top of that, we are working on offering trading of regulated assets.
Any big news from your Korean trip?
Lots of good talks for business development. Kevin and Sergey from Chainlink had an hour long conversation, mostly wrapped around the CSD. We’re going to establish a relationship there to see how we can use the Chainlink oracles in the CSD to take fungible tokens, but add non-fungible values to them via oracles pulling off-chain data.
Kevin talked to Algorand about working with the CSD. Possibly getting some money out of their foundation. Few other things happened, Kevin made a few contacts for possible listings, fundraising opportunities, and IEOs as well.
IBA (International Bar Association) panel went great. There were lots of questions. We got an offer to go to Canada to talk to the regulator there and possibly do a workshop. Good for both companies, a little bit of awareness.
How long until CoinMetro is able to list securities in the sandbox?
We should apply next week, not sure how long it will take to get approved – likely quite fast. Hopefully before the end of the month.
Has CoinMetro benefitted from lots of sign ups from this IEO?
Kevin doesn’t know the amount of the top of his head, but we’ve seen triple digit signups. The actual conversion into signups is quite high but the conversion from signups to actually spending into the IEO are low.
This may be a funding issue: a lot of people are new to crypto and they have to move in euros, and many may not be based in euro.
How do you think CoinMetro will look like at the end of the year? Will everything go according to your plan?
TraM will be out, Margin Posting should be out.
We should have multiple fiat currencies, and be in Montenegro doing regulated assets. We should be close to launching the CSD, alongside to do a full capital market push with a lot of PR and a lot of market exposure. We should have money in the bank from investors.
Once money comes in from investors, marketing is one of the first things we’ll tackle. Kevin thinks we’ll have over half a million of volume per day towards the end of the year.
Steady growth always wins the game.
Can you share anything noteworthy about the market maker “testing a bot” earlier this week?
There was some bot testing going on. Some of that bot testing were bots we were working on internally, not necessarily market making, but to spread the risk out a bit, and to cover some of the extra margin that we’re giving for the extra collateral that we just raised – €2,5k up from €1k.
There were also one or two clients of ours, one that came from the FX side, that were testing bots.
Are you still focused on the big retail market or more on the big volume traders?
We’re a retail firm. Retail firms also have larger volume traders that like to cannibalize retail flow. So, the focus for us is on retail – not just about trading. TraM and margin posting will elevate us above just trading. As will our challenger banking side.
What is the benefit of using Chainlink for the CSD?
The oracles will allow us to pull in off-chain data and then peg that to an on-chain asset. Meaning that we may be able to take a fungible token and add non-fungible values to them. Meaning that KYC can be applied to that token and it and travel in the block.
There are also other things, but this one is the most interesting. Outside of that, we can bring on KYC through an off-chain process, and peg it on-chain to a wallet ID, and that person doesn’t have to get KYC’d at other connected MTFs.
What can we expect by the end of the month?
Expecting the website to be completed. TraM should be released. We may start to see some additional IBANs and currencies rolling in, that really depends on our partner.
We’ll probably see the new platforms come out, such as the Express platform. Our Pro platform will have Margin and Trade combined in it.
Are you still hanging on to your vision of turning CoinMetro into a worldwide FinTech that will change the financial market for the better?
Yes, combined with the CSD, that’s our ultimate goal. One financial platform that people can use no matter where they live in the world, poor, rich, middle class – whatever. Our platform gives everyone the ability to earn passive income, to learn more about markets, interact with other people in the markets, trade, invest, earn money, spend money.
All in one interactive system where there’s a community built behind it. When you bring in the CSD and regulated assets, it adds a whole other layer. People have access to markets they never had access to before. Fractionalized markets, don’t need a lot of money to participate. All these different vehicles to be able to grow their wealth, regardless of where they started.
“Kevin Explains Crypto” Term: Satoshi
Satoshi is the pseudonym of the person(s) who created Bitcoin.
A Satoshi is also the smallest movement Bitcoin can make. It’s 8 decimal points. Normally called SATs.
Want to know more? Check for more details in the video below.
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 12:00 (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.