Fintech Daily Digest

Introducing the Bitcoin Difficulty Ribbon. When the ribbon compresses, or flips negative, these are the best time to buy in and get exposure to Bitcoin. The ribbon consists of simple moving averages on mining difficulty so we can easily see the rate of change in difficulty.

Tokenizing real estate is akin to creating a REIT. A company acquires real estate and then sells it as fractional shares in an exchange. The shares change in price with the underlying assets and rents are distributed as dividends, after subtracting an amount for the company that holds and manages the assets.

Ripple and Mastercard are the investors in Ripple-powered global remittance startup, SendFriend. Another Ripple partner Earthport, an automated clearing house for payments received bids from Mastercard and Visa, a round won by the latter. Now, Mastercard is buying a Denmark-based payments platform Nets for EUR 2.85B.

Mu Changchun, Deputy Chief in the Payment and Settlement Division of the People's Bank of China, has announced that the country will soon roll out its central bank digital currency.

Donald J. Trump tweeted Thursday that he is "not a fan" of cryptocurrencies, saying they were "not money" and referencing their price volatility relative to the dollar in his first public comments on crypto since becoming president of the United States

Telegram might not be the hero we expected - or even the one we wanted - but it may be our last, best hope for a future that doesn't turn into a dystopian nightmare of panopticoins.

The U.S. IRS has begun to focus on cryptos in general, potentially noncompliant taxpayers, and the perceived lack of proper reporting by taxpayers.

"Libra is an opportunity for the American financial industry to leapfrog Alipay and other Chinese fintech, provide much of the world with sorely needed reliable banking and simply make doing business in America less expensive. "

The correlation between Bitcoin and gold over the past year is 0.496. In the past three months, that shot up to 0.827, according to our analysis as evidence grows that investors - rightly or wrongly - see Bitcoin as a refuge in times of turbulence.

Seychelles' stock exchange has just listed a tokenized security for trading, becoming the first in the world to do so.

If the likes of Western Union or Ria Financial Services, or MoneyGram intend to make a fist of this fight and not get swept away in the Facebook tidal wave, then it's on them to do something that they probably haven't had to do in quite some time... Win over their audience.

Most credit card issuers prohibit crypto purchases by defining them as a "cash advance" or "cash equivalent" possibly as a matter of safety, but also to prevent consumers from gaming the cards' reward systems.

GlobexUS Holdings has signed an MOU with the Antigua and Barbuda Ministry of Finance, in partnership with Julius Capital Bank, to launch an Ethereum platform-based digital securities issuance and secondary trading platform.

Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty is developing a "token-based" ecosystem, utilizing blockchain, to simplify and accelerate cross-border insurance payments for its corporate customers.

"Dalio believes that in this new era of currency devaluation, cash and bonds will not be reliable stores of value. Historically, scarce real assets such as real estate, gold, commodities and-we'd point out-bitcoin are safe havens for wealth and a source of returns in these environments."

"The U.S. private sector has a long history of providing efficient payment solutions to consumers and businesses. The public sector should provide its own capacity only when the evidence of market failure is clear and alternative means to achieve public goals are not feasible," Quarles said in a statement. "In this case, I do not see a strong justification for the Federal Reserve to move into this area and crowd out innovation when viable private-sector alternatives are available."

Cryptocurrency custody firm Prime Trust is strengthening its solution to protect digital assets it holds in custody from potential hacks and thefts. Prime Trust has partnered with Fidelity-backed crypto security firm Fireblocks for the initiative.

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce says countries should develop individual regulatory frameworks for crypto assets and not rely on a global framework for all jurisdictions.

Blockstream has announced two massive data centers for enterprise class co-location services. The service is currently geared towards enterprise and institutional customers, and Fidelity Center for Applied Technology was revealed as an early customer.

The handful of U.S. banks willing to serve the crypto sector includes Silvergate in California and Signature and Metropolitan Commercial in New York. Like those institutions, Quontic is a relative pipsqueak in the banking industry