Wall Street Regulators Taking Aim At Crypto Companies

Two Wall Street regulators have taken actions against erring crypto companies and levied fines against them showing efforts to oversee the unregulated and popular asset group.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) indicted Timothy Ayre, owner of Rocky Mountain Ayre of perpetuating securities scam after he sold and marketed the crypto HempCoin.

Timothy could be fined or suspended from securities sector however a lawyer of Timothy states that they are considering to battle the charges since it’s ambiguous that HempCoin can be deemed security.

The US SEC also revealed that the heads of TokenLot, Eli Lewitt and Lenny Kugel accepted paying $471,000 in disgorgement and interest to clear charges that they worked as unregistered broker-dealers for the trade of digital tokens.

On another case the SEC noted that the hedge fund Cryptocurrency Asset Management LP agreed to pay a $20,000 fine after they were discovered to deceitfully note they are regulated by the SEC but are not.

HSBC Whistleblower Becomes Crypto Promoter

Herve Falciani, a former computer systems analyst at HSBC who leaked data exposing tax-evading and money-laundering clients of the bank has become a crypto promoter lending his efforts to increase cryptocurrency awareness.

The name of the project he is promoting is Taboow. The project has already received an investment commitment of several millions Euros.

According to Falciani, there is a need to democratize finance by increasing access to more people worldwide, and this can be obtained through the use of cryptocurrencies.

The anti-fraud activist is currently awaiting Spanish courts whether if he will be extradited to Switzerland where he has already been sentenced to a five-year jail sentence for industrial espionage.

The charge stems from an incident that happened almost a decade ago when secret bank files he has stolen were leaked to the finance minister of France, the current International Monetary Fund Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, which contained account information belonging to around 130,000 high net-value clients of HSBC and other legal entities that is said to be involved in tax evasion and money laundering.

BitGo CEO Sees Bitcoin Needs New Capital

A California-based Cryptocurrency infrastructure firm BitGo, has received approval from regulators from South Dakota to establish a custody solutions.

Its CEO, Mike Belshe states in an interview with CNBC that the traditional finance has started to get engage in cryptocurrency for the past few years now.

He also states that the market has grown and shown that it has real promise for the future and interest will continue to grow.

He then explains BitGo’s custody offering and describes it as initially servicing hedge funds, family offices and wealth management firms who are looking for proper custody solutions.

Brian Kelly, CNBC contributor and BKCM CEO, ask the BitGo executive about the speed and security measures the company has taken for its custody solutions knowing through experience that Security and speed of withdrawals are both important for a custody solution but are inversely correlated.

In response to Brian’s query Mike states that the lack of well-established custodians has been a barrier for institutions to get in as these firms are regulatory-bound to enlist the use of proper custodial solution stating that these services have to exist.

Ethereum Dapp Revival and Remme Launches Sidechain

There seems to be an inverse correlation between the price of Ethereum and the number of activities in Dapps.

Critics of Ethereum cite low number of daily average users was evidence of ETH price being driven largely by ICOs and speculation, whether their assessment is true or not several Ethereum dapps have seen a surge in usage following its price dips that is said to be the lowest in 14 months.

Most of the activities came from non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces.

NFTs like decentralized tokens and Cryptokitties have increased activities as the fiat valuations of the Ethereum have depreciated.

Decentraland has seen $270,000 of land parcels traded and Cryptokitties has done $170,000.

It is interesting to see if this momentum will be sustained since the price of ETH has returned above $200 now.

Distributed Public Key infrastructure (PKid) protocol Remme has release its sidechain testnet ahead of a full mainnet launch.

According to its CEO, Alex Momot, enterprises will have the opportunity to trial blockchain technology in the form of passwordless access management system that enables businesses to store key certificate data in centralized manner, eliminating single points of failure.

Citigroup and Morgan Stanley Reveals Institutional Demand For Bitcoin Surging

In recent weeks Citigroup and Morgan Stanley have revealed several financial instruments and products built around Bitcoin.

According to Alistair Milne, the chief information officer at Altana Digital Fun, the increasing interest towards cryptocurrencies as an asset class by banks and regulated financial institutions is crucial as it demonstrates the rapidly growing demand for Bitcoin for institutional investors.

Alistir also states that institutional money took the hedge fund industry from a $300 billion market to a $ 6 trillion market implying that it could do the same with the cryptocurrency market, the entry of Goldman, Citibank, ICE and Morgan Stanley all signal that institutional demand exist and will continue to grow overtime.

The sudden pivot of stance of banks towards cryptocurrencies demonstrate the rapid increase of demand for the asset class form institutions and the low price range might have triggered this surge of interest.

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