Private Equity Moris Beracha Wuani

By Leigh Cuen Bitcoin wallet and blockchain explorer provider  Blockchain just launched its first exchange platform. Blockchain’s head of retail products, TD Ameritrade alum Nicole Sherrod, told CoinDesk the custodial exchange, called The PIT , can connect to non-custodial Blockchain wallets for nearly instant transfers. Registration opens today, with the ability to trade up to 26 assets rolling out over the next two weeks. Sherrod said that with nearly 40 million wallets already created – and an exchange matching-engine set up in London’s Equinix LD4 data center – PIT could be posed to attract more liquidity than competitors. “That’s what market makers are looking for,” Sherrod said. “They want to co-locate [data center servers] with you, they want to directly connect to your matching engine. It’s the way it’s done on Wall Street.” Indeed, Tom Haller, previously the chief software architect for trading systems at the New York Stock Exchange, co...

By Adrian Zmudzinski Youniqx Identity AG, a subsidiary of the Austrian State Printing House, has developed a cryptocurrency hardware wallet, reveals a press release published on July 29. Per the report, the hardware wallet — named Chainlock — enables the offline storage of private keys allowing access to cryptocurrency wallets. The device is reportedly capable of generating the private key, and is also water and heat resistant. The wallet in question will be available via the firm’s partners, including Tokenize Exchange in Singapore and Coinfinity in Central Europe. The release further claims that the Austrian State Printing House is specialized in identity document manufacturing that “implements and offers personalisation solutions for identity documents such as the highly secure Austrian passport.” The printing house has been active in document management for over two-hundred years. As Cointelegraph recently reported, Daimler, the German multi...

By Martin Young The fallout from last week’s US senate hearings on Facebook’s Libra project is still being felt across the crypto ecosystem. Many are blaming the social media giant for Bitcoin’s recent correction but in reality it is just part of the natural rhythm of the market. Bitcoin Back at Four Figures Following a week of consolidation Bitcoin fell back below $10k during Asian trading today. It is the third dip into four figures since BTC hit its 2019 high of $13,800 at the end of June. The previous two times have seen lower lows so in all likelihood BTC will fall to $9k or below in this correction. According to Tradingview , BTC dipped to $9,870 a couple of hours ago. The move has resulted in a 5 percent slide on the day and another thousand dollar decline from its weekend high of $11,000. Analysts are expecting a further fall into the $8,000 zone which will present buying opportunities for many. The down trend is clearly intact and with lower highs f...

    By William Suberg     Venezuelans traded more bolivars for Bitcoin ( BTC ) than ever before last week, but the statistics say more about fiat than cryptocurrency .  Yet another Bitcoin volumes record for Venezuela Data from Coin Dance , which tracks trading activity on P2P exchanges Localbitcoins , Paxful and Bisq , confirmed the seven days to July 20 were Venezuela’s biggest on record. During that period, users on LocalBitcoins alone generated volumes of over 57 billion bolivars, beating the previous all-time high of 49 billion, which appeared in the previous week. Weekly LocalBitcoins Volume (Venezuelan Bolivar) Courtesy of Coin.dance As Cointelegraph reported , Venezuela’s currency continues to suffer from runaway inflation, which estimates claim has reached 10,000,000% , leading citizens to resort to alternative means of storing value. The country’s official alternative, state-issued digital currency Petro , was declared...

By Ana Alexandre   The Iranian government’s Economic Commission has approved a mechanism of cryptocurrency mining in the country, according to an announcement by the Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture on July 22. Iran’s Economic Commission approves crypto mining ‘mechanism’ Governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), Abdolnaser Hemmati said that “a mechanism to mine digital coins was approved by the government’s economic commission and will later be put to discussion at a Cabinet meeting.” Initially, Iranian authorities announced that they are planning to authorize Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining earlier in July, when the CBI governor Abdol Hemmati reportedly claimed that the Iranian government had approved some parts of an executive law that would authorize mining of cryptocurrencies in Iran. At the time, Hemmati argued that digital currency miners in Iran should contribute to the country’s economy, rather than letting mine...

By Moris Beracha .-  The bitcoins and the main cryptocurrencies in the market were designed with some important security patterns, which make them quite difficult to steal. The fundamental aspects of cryptocurrencies include protecting user privacy, avoiding asset theft and avoiding harmful practices such as double spending. However, there are some failures that are sought out by hackers, which allow them to take over and empty some accounts, leaving losses, in some cases, of thousands or millions of dollars. According to the Bit2me cryptocurrency and blockchain academy, about a billion US dollars in Bitcoin have been stolen to date. They recall the thefts in Mt Gt I and II, for a total of 769,408 bitcoins; the 173,655 bitcoins seized by the FBI when closing Silk Road; the robbery known as “Pony” Botnet, which stands out due to the number of machines involved, and which amounted to a total of US $ 220,000 in various types of cryptocurrencies that...

By William Suberg   United States president Donald Trump would cause a Bitcoin ( BTC ) price crash if he banned it, but the law would likely prevent him, economist and trader Alex Krueger concluded on Twitter July 15. Trump, who announced his distaste for cryptocurrency in general last week, initially failed to impact market sentiment. A subsequent breakdown over the weekend sent Bitcoin below $10,000 . Publishing a dedicated thread on the chances of Trump banning the cryptocurrency, Krueger argued he could theoretically have some success. By targeting entry and exit points for retail and institutional investors, the president would turn Bitcoin into an isolated, more illiquid asset as it is used by lay consumers.  “Trump could also go after fiat onramps, by simply forbidding banks to service crypto exchanges, or by requiring banks to not service exchanges unless conditions XYZ are fulfilled (and make that practically impossible),” Krueger ...

By Ana Alexandre     The operator of now-defunct Bitcoin ( BTC ) exchange BitFunder, Jon Montroll, has received a 14 months prison sentence following federal charges of obstruction of justice and securities fraud , finance and trading industry news outlet FinanceFeeds reported on July 12. The proceedings against Montroll began last year. In July 2018, Montroll pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, admitting that he provided false balance statements to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in an investigation of the fake 6,000 BTC BitFunder hack in 2013. The proceedings against Montroll ended on July 11, 2019, wherein Judge Richard M. Berman of the New York Southern District Court ruled to imprison Montroll for 14 months and determined 3 years of supervised release. Although Montroll’s counsel argued in favour of a probationary sentence, the government made a case for a sentence from 27 to 33 months’ imprisonment. Recentl...

By Andrew McAuley After a period of good returns from equities and bonds and with the official cash rate at 1.0 per cent, many investors are looking for ways to reduce risk and diversify their portfolios. Adding alternative investments such as private equity is one way to do this. Alternative investments are any asset other than stocks, bonds, and cash, and which can act as building blocks to diversify portfolios. Hedge funds, commodities and real estate are all considered part of the alternative investments universe, as is private equity. Investors should aim to build a self-financing private equity portfolio that has sufficient distributions to cover future capital calls. Private equity funds take equity stakes in companies or assets that are not publicly traded and work closely with the management teams to increase their value to be able to sell again at a higher price. Thus, by their nature they are less correlated with equity and bond markets as...

By Vildana Hajric   While U.S. lawmakers zero in on Facebook Inc.’s ambitious plan to upend the global financial system via its cryptocurrency project, technical indicators are flashing major warning signals when it comes to the price of digital assets. Based on the GTI VERA convergence-divergence indicator, the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index -- which tracks some of the largest digital assets and is comprised 30% of Bitcoin -- received its first sell signal since early June. The indicator detects positive and negative trends, and the last time it flashed a warning sign on June 4, the index fell about 10% in one trading session.  It’s been a volatile month for crypto assets. Prices surged in June after Facebook announced plans to launch its own digital coin called Libra, which the company hopes will one day trade much like the dollar. The launch added to optimism that digital assets are becoming more widely adopted by mainstream instituti...

By Max Boddy The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) outlined regulatory compliance issues for cryptocurrency custodians in an announcement on July 8. According to the joint statement, the organizations have yet to discover a set of circumstances in which a crypto custodian could comply with the SEC’s Customer Protection Rule, which is described as follows: “Put simply, the Customer Protection Rule requires broker-dealers to safeguard customer assets and to keep customer assets separate from the firm’s assets, thus increasing the likelihood that customers’ securities and cash can be returned to them in the event of the broker-dealer’s failure.” The report further claims that a crypto custody service may not be able to sufficiently demonstrate that it actually controls the assets it purports to hold. The SEC and FINRA discuss how simply holding a private key, for instance, is not sufficient to demons...

By Daniel Kuhn Bitcoin Wallet, a lucrative South African “investment scheme,” used to attract hundreds of investors a day, many of whom clamored at the company’s doors to invest. Now, the company’s shuttered office is attracting hundreds of protestors demanding their cash back, according to Ladysmith Gazette. As of July 4, the enterprise that many regulators and media had begun suspecting of operating as a Ponzi scheme shut down. The firm enticed investors with promises of 100-percent returns in just over two weeks by reinvesting customer deposits in cryptocurrencies. These same investors want to know where their money went now that the company closed. Bitcoin Wallet founder Sphelele “Sgumza” Mbatha admitted to the Ladysmith Gazette on Saturday that he doesn’t have any more cash to pay out to clients. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know online or how this system works. [It has] to be workshopped,” he said. Before closing, Bitcoin Wallets had grown so popular that M...

By Helen Partz European crypto exchange Bitstamp has set up its own Lightning Network (LN) node to boost the network’s capabilities, the company tweeted on July 8. As a second layer over the blockchain of the biggest cryptocurrency, bitcoin (BTC), the LN is designed to enable fast and zero-fee transactions by creating payment channels between users. Specifically, the network aims to address bitcoin’s scalability problem by keeping the majority of transactions off-chain. By launching its own LN node, Bitstamp aims to promote the growth of the network, as well as encourage the crypto industry to adopt the technology, the firm wrote in an official announcement. Bitstamp said that bringing more nodes to the LN will keep the network active, describing the nodes as its basic building units. As more nodes generate payment channels, the total network liquidity increases, which in turn increases the transactions capabilities on the network, Bitstamp explained. Most recently, LN ser...

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s markets watchdog is proposing banning the sale of derivatives based on crypto-assets to retail consumers from early 2020 due to what it considers the prevalence of market abuses. Prices of crypto-assets - which include currencies like bitcoin as well as tokens representing other tradeable assets - are very volatile, and there is a lack of a clear investment need for products referencing them, the Financial Conduct Authority said on Wednesday. The FCA “considers these products are ill-suited to retail consumers who cannot reliably assess the value and risks of derivatives or exchange traded notes (ETNs) that reference certain crypto-assets,” it said in a statement on its public consultation on the proposed ban. Such a blanket ban on crypto derivatives will force customers to use unregulated providers offering less protection, said Jake Green, a financial regulatory partner at law firm Ashurst. “The real question is whether the FCA is sho...

By  Daniel Kuhn    Monarch, una plataforma de billetera e intercambio, lanzó un mercado de activos digitales para admitir 1,900 fichas separadas. La compañía también anunció una asociación con el proveedor de servicios financieros Ambisafe para crear un sistema de comercio alternativo con licencia que permitirá la inversión en entidades de token.  Según la compañía, se ofrecerá un token previo a la IPO para SpaceX, que representa acciones privadas de la compañía aeroespacial, en el ATS. Monarch Marketplace consolida una serie de servicios que incluyen una cartera descentralizada, un intercambio ERC20, un rastreador de cartera y la integración de KYC universal en una plataforma que también permite servicios financieros como compras de crédito de criptomoneda y ofrece una tasa de interés anual (APR) del 7.1 por ciento en las tenencias de criptografías. El presidente de Monarch, Robert Beadles, espera que el conjunto de aplicaciones de su compañía opti...