M^5Wire >> April 19 : Change, Emerging Order, SWIFT :)

TODAY'S COMMENT: Inescapable industry change - because of ...Mueller, Russia, and the U.S. or... private blockchain dev or... decentralized crypto making headway... tough call.

Overall Crypto Market

As for the overall market, one day might stand out this quarter.

Well if anyone in crypto wanted the spotlight to aid in getting the truth to curdle:

Russian operatives used cryptocurrency at almost every stage in their online efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, according to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's final report on his investigation.

_{- from CNN}

Hard to imagine crypto tech will be slid under the rug now. An important looming question:

Main Crypto-specific Players

Right now, the major currencies seem much less pertinent than how the overall market, regulations, and popular opinion are coming together. Still, it is crucial to remain aware of the constant innovation in blockchain technology; especially the implementations on the horizon. For today though, consider:

Crypto ETFs are not new news any more. However, a recent London ETF by a US company (Invesco) illustrates that businesses might be gravitating toward hospitable crypto environments.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced the terms of its regulatory sandbox in report on April 18. Per the terms of the sandbox, various applications of blockchain technology can be tested, while cryptocurrency-related projects are clearly excluded.

_{- from Cointelegraph}

Other banks are also issuing warnings against Bitcoin investing.

Corporate Influence

Invesco (mentioned above) manages assets amounting to nearly a trillion dollars in 25 countries (on-the-ground) and has been around since the 30's.

Hope you're not tired of me bringing up IBM. Their World Wire is in the news again. This time it is suggested that they are the answer for crypto and the rest might be a waste of time- (headline is rather close to these words):

...on the one end, where JPM Coin and World Wire find ...strong ties to the traditional banking systems ...on the other hand, there is the decentralised cryptocurrency...

_{- from Forbes}

“...banks...SWIFT...whole ‘wire departments’ ...” ... ...“IBM is using World Wire to compete with SWIFT for international bank transfers. ...Individuals or companies cannot use World Wire, so they would still have to go through the regular banking process to send international payments.”...

_{- from Forbes}

...middle ground of ‘no-coiners’ ...the White Company, ... easy to use and user-friendly front end, with a stable coin, ... ...“Our payments platform, for example, is built on Stellar, which is a dedicated payments protocol supported by IBM, ...”..

_{- from Forbes}

All this illustrates the building of what was termed a 'middle ground' to connect decentralized cryptocurrencies with private blockchain solutions. Their (i.e. Chase, IBM) explanatory flight (race) over international barriers (KEYWORD: cross-border payments) issues seemed left in haste. Though, it appears much more uniform agreement (outside of big banks and SWIFT card companies) has formed:

It is quite agreeable that blockchain tokens, digital assets, cryptocurrencies, or whatever sort of label lands on them, are the future.

_{- from Forbes}

Emerging Projects

ATM, I am big on crypto gaming dev leading the charge.

Additional Comments from Today's Flyby

Just got tired working for cryptonuts at the end.

Though I must say that Forbes unveiled a blockchain 50 and Hewlett Packard has a chain linking commercial. But what do you expect when IBM buys the crypto add space :/