Topic: Cryptocurrency and Blockchain – Industry News – (11.08.19 – 11.15.19) (Read 72 times)

Total Market Cap, as of 11.15.19 at 12:00pm (PST): U.S. $233,002,095,198 (- 2.75%)

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STORY OF THE WEEK
• The Shanghai headquarters of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) and Shanghai Municipal Financial Regulatory Bureau ordered district administrative offices to investigate cryptocurrency related activities in the city and complete inspection by November 22nd, 2019.

CRYPTOCURRENCY TRADING SERVICES
• Paxos has launched a product allowing traders on cryptocurrency exchanges to fund accounts using a swap tool that facilitates trades between U.S. dollars and various stablecoins. Binance will be first exchange to integrate the new product.
• Cryptocurrency wallet and investment app Abra adds support for 60 new cryptocurrencies and increases fiat withdrawals and deposits.
• OKEx has launched a Bitcoin (BTC) futures contracts margined using Tether (USDT). Users will be able to take long and short positions against the contract and the product will offer up to 100x leverage.
• Korean exchange Bithumb has launched an exchange token named Bithumb Coin under the ticket “BT”. Half of all exchange revenue earned will be used to buy 50% of the total supply over time.
• Crypto.com announced the launch of a new exchange service open to beta testers on November 18th, 2019 with a public rollout scheduled to happen sometime in December.

REGULATION
• The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has approved Tassat (previously trueDigital) to offer physically settled bitcoin margin swaps.
• After suspending Iranian users on its platform back in 2017, Bittrex will return frozen holdings back to the affected users. During that time, the U.S. Treasury Office of Foreign Control (OFAC) required Bittrex to disable Iranian user accounts as it was not allowed to service countries sanctioned by the U.S

INSTITUTIONALIZATION
• The fintech arm of Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group, Ant Financial has launched the test net of its blockchain network aimed to support small and medium sized businesses.
• The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) will be launching options on Bitcoin futures on January 13th, 2020 pending regulatory approval.
• Bakkt has opened its custody services for all institutional clients, not just its customers who trade its bitcoin futures contracts.

TECHNOLOGY
• White label exchange software provider AlphaPoint is offering support for margin trading.
• In collaboration with Nervos Network, Huobi has open sourced its own native blockchain dubbed “Huobi Chain”. A testnet launch is scheduled to happen in Q1 of 2020, with a mainnet launch to following shortly after.

TWITTER
• @cryptunez – “just hit one full bitcoin anyone can do this, i’m not special. all it took was 2 years, 5,000 hours of screen time and a starting balance of 10 BTC”
• @jimmysong – “A centralized Blockchain is just a database that everyone can see. The amount of mental gymnastics necessary to justify such a nothingburger into a technological panacea is Olympic level.”
• @BTC_Macro – “The greatest risk isn’t owning crypto and it going to zero. The greatest risk is owning no crypto and it changing the world. Don’t get left behind.”