Private Equity Moris Beracha Wuani

Standard Token Protocol (STP), a firm hoping to bring transparency to the tokenization process, announced Wednesday it has raised a total of $7 million through the sales of its STP tokens. The fund was raised through two rounds from investors including Neo Global Capital, BlockVC, AlphaBit. STP develops an open-source standard for projects looking to tokenize their assets. The company highlights compliance, claiming that the protocol will ensure tokens fully comply with region-specific regulations and KYC requirements. Meanwhile, the firm’s STP tokens could be used to pay for issuance fees and compliance investigation or to be used for staking and governance on STP’s platform,  per the company’s white paper. STP’s offering of compliance-proof tokenization protocol seems timely as initial coin offerings (ICOs) regain momentum, with 109 offerings raising a total of over $236 million in April alone,  according to ICObench’s data .  However, the ICO sector is also no...

by Nathan Rodriguez   Binance Coin has reportedly extended its latest gains, thus it set a new all-time high in Bitcoin-denominated value. Also known as BNB, it is the token issued by the world’s largest digital currency exchange by trade volume called Binance. Setting A New Record At press time, the aforementioned token was trading at around 0.002619 BTC or $9.60. It is worth noting that before it reached the new figure, it was only able to reach 0.002688. This was believed to around 10:00 UTC Monday. This is basically the crypto’s highest price in its entire one and a half year history, as per the data from Binance. The company said to have first listed BNB for trading sometime in July 2017. Since then, the token was successful in receiving at least 9,600 percent return on investment, particularly from its Initial Coin Offering (ICO) on December of the same year and with a price of $0.10. At the same time, the BNB still has a lot of ways to go...

By Marie Huillet    Denmark’s Tax Authority has been authorized by the country’s Tax Council to obtain information regarding all trades of cryptocurrencies across three domestic crypto exchanges . An official announcement published on the agency’s website reported this development on Jan. 14. The authorization means that three unspecified Danish crypto exchanges now have legal disclosure obligations to hand over identity information that includes names, addresses and personal tax numbers, as well as details of all crypto transactions made on their platforms between Jan. 1 2016 to Dec. 31 2018. The Tax Authority has said it will use the information to ensure that citizens who have traded in crypto have duly paid the correct tax. Karin Bergen, a director at the agency, is quoted as saying that its fresh mandate will give it completely new opportunities in relation to its control in the cryptocurrency sector.   Any information pertaining to f...

  New cryptocurrencies such as Tether may be pegged to the dollar, but they have big flaws By Barry Eichengreen W hile the mania for cryptocurrencies may have peaked, new units continue to be announced, seemingly by the day. Prominent among the new arrivals are so-called “stable coins.” Bearing names such as Tether, Basis, and Sagacoin, their value is rigidly tied to the dollar, the euro, or a basket of national currencies. It’s easy to see the appeal of these units. Viable monies provide a reliable means of payment, unit of account, and store of value. But conventional cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, trade at wildly fluctuating prices, which means that their purchasing power – their command over goods and services – is highly unstable. Hence they are unattractive as units of account. No grocer in their right mind would price the goods on their shelves in bitcoin. No worker would want a long-term employment contract that paid them a fixed number of thos...

 By William Suberg Liechtenstein bank Union Bank AG announced it was issuing its own security tokens and in-house cryptocurrency backed by fiat in a press release Friday, August 17. Union Bank, which has concentrated increasingly on blockchain this year, said issuing its so-called “Union Bank Payment Coin (UBPC)” was a further step towards becoming a “full-service blockchain investment bank.” UBPC will act as a stable coin, the institution explained, and will have fiat currencies “such as the Swiss franc” as its backing. “Our goal is to become the world's first blockchain investment bank and to provide tangible solutions which help drive efficiencies, reduce cost base and open up new revenue opportunities for our customers and intermediaries alike,” chairman of the board of directors Mohammad Hans Dastmaltchi commented in the release. “...As such, our fiat-backed Union Bank Payment Coin has the potential to disrupt the approach to international trad...

By Moris Beracha/ Crypto.BI According to a quarterly report released by Cipher Trace, the quantitative investment firm, specializing in the systematic trading of cryptocurrencies, in the first half of 2018, more than $760 million in cryptocurrency was stolen from exchanges, nearly three times more than in 2017. The growth in the demand for currency in the industry of services has driven, according to this report, money laundering of coins. Also, the services that clean dirty funds are widely available, said CipherTrace, and some have even advertised through Google AdWords. Likewise, many exchanges, and new ones are opening all the time, have security vulnerabilities. And cryptocurrencies, once stolen, often cannot be returned or even traced to the thieves. “There are so many cryptocurrencies now, and they are worth so much money, and there are so many exchanges globally where you can cash out, that we’ve seen not just traditional cyber gangs, but we’ve seen a new s...

By Moris Beracha According to Coin ATM Radar, a company specialized for studying the Bitcoin ATM market, the number of automatic teller machines for purchasing and selling Bitcoin is growing by 10% on a monthly basis. Only in 2018, the number of bitcoin ATMs rose from 2,000 to 3,000 units distributed around the world. The company estimates that by the end of this year the number of Bitcoin ATMs will reach 6,300 units. Despite the negative price trend of Bitcoin at the beginning of the year, Bitcoin ATM industry is apparently following a different path. General Bytes and Genesis Coin are two companies that lead the market with respect to bitcoin ATM installation. So far this year, General Bytes stays on top with 76 new ATMs installed (10.4% increase), followed by Genesis Coin with 61 installations (6.7% increase). The United States still tops the countries with the highest number of Bitcoin ATMs installed, followed by Canada. In Europe Austria i...

BITCOIN has swept the world with its volatile, unpredictable but potentially profitable price swings. How do you buy bitcoin if you are looking to invest? By Owen Gough  The cryptocurrency market is an incredibly unpredictable world, where bitcoin prices and fluctuate wildly in an instant. The bitcoin craze has simmered down in recent months after prices slumped to more than half of the 2017 peak of $19,000. Investor confidence has waned, but there is still plenty of opportunities for new traders to buy and sell bitcoin in an attempt to make a profit. The UK is not particularly active in the cryptocurrency market, with Britain usually placed at the bottom of the top 10 most active markets, according to CryptoCompare. Like all other markets, there is potential for investors to lose a lot of money on bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, so it is always advised to stay cautious. Indeed, many experts warn new traders to stay away from bitcoin, which is notoriou...

By Billy Bambrough The bitcoin price bull run over the last month, which saw it climb from around $6,300 to highs of $8,400 in a matter of weeks, could be over. Bitcoin has slumped by 5% over the last 12 hours, falling well below the psychological $8,000 mark as traders and investors fret over coming tax crackdowns and blockchain-based applications being adopted by the traditional financial institutions. Bitcoin hit lows of $7,675 at pixel time, down from daily highs of $8,168, according to CoinDesk data. Meanwhile, other cryptocurrencies are suffering — and many of them haven't had quite the bull run bitcoin has over recent weeks to cushion the fall. Ethereum is down by 6% over the last 24 hours, while ripple is down around 4% and bitcoin cash is off by 5%. Here's what's pushing the bitcoin price lower... South Korea, which has emerged as one of the most important markets for bitcoin and cryptocurrency in recent months due to its large volumes of trading, is mulling ...

By Billy Bambrough, Forbes. Bitcoin's Lightning Network has been hailed as the saviour of bitcoin transactions — the thing that will allow the clunky and encumbered original blockchain-based cryptocurrency to compete with the likes of more nimble bitcoin cash, dash coin, lite coin and ripple. On bitcoin forums many talk of the Lightning Network as though it will solve all of bitcoin's problems, making transactions quick, cheap and easy. One question few have asked is, if the Lightning Network grows into a widely used bitcoin modification, what it will do to the bitcoin price — something that is closely linked to miners' fees and transaction costs. The Lightning Network, first proposed by Thaddeus Dryja and Joseph Poon in a 2015 white paper, creates a layer on top of the bitcoin blockchain, where transactions can be passed back and forth before being added to the underlying blockchain. When sending a Lightning payment, two parties deposit the funds at one bitcoin address,...