breaking institutional barriers

Your daily newsletter for August 2, 2018

Fighting the good fight

"Most institutions demand unqualified faith;
but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue."

- Robert K. Merton

When crypto mainstream

With institutions testing the waters and ETFs and blockchain pilots, word on the street is "crypto will go mainstream when more of them enter". There's still a lot of skepticism, but that's good – let's all show them why crypto is really valuable, and not just because when 🌝

Such struggle, not much wow

BTC is experiencing a slight rebound today after the -5% dip yesterday, crawling up to $7,668.96 (as of 05:00 ET) with a 0.52% change in 24 hours. The 3-month RSI reading has now increased to a more normal reading of ~50, so BTC might soon be testing the ~$7,700 resistance level – or if a dip is to come, fall back down and test the ~$7,500 support level seen today. BTC is the only green in the Top 9 crypto today (10th is Tether).

Is volume the enemy?

Just back in May, average daily trading volume of the overall market was around ~$25 billion. In recent days, however, the overall market daily trading volume hovers around ~$15 billion. Compare this to the December-January bull run, where there were days with more than $50 billion daily volume. Not enough volume = not enough to break resistance, unless...

An institution enters the fray

Northern Trust, a financial services giant with US$10.3 trillion assets under custody and administration, has opened fund administration services (aka helping people to account for their crypto properly) to select hedge funds interested in BTC and ETH.

It's big news because now funds can feel safer with someone recording and valuing their crypto investments – and because Northern Trust has been investing in blockchain so much, since they think fiat could be issued on the blockchain in the future... well, 👌

Someone say fiat?

Coinbase now supports deposits and withdrawals denominated in British Pound (GBP). Same-day sterling deposits and withdrawals are now a possibility, allowing users (especially those residing in the UK) to more fluidly enter and exit their positions. It's currently only live for a few people, but will be fully rolled out in a couple weeks.

Money flows

In the “Pulse of Fintech 2018” report by KPMG, it's stated that the US is "particularly active on the blockchain front, with total investment in the first half of the year already exceeding the total seen in 2017." The report also added that ICOs remain a popular choice among investors, despite some countries banning the practice. DYOR, guys!

(Don't know DYOR? See our glossary, son 😉)

Clear hearts, clear minds

SBI Holdings, a major financial services firm in Japan, invested in an institutional-grade crypto derivatives platform, Clear Markets.
Square, the mobile payment provider, made US$37 million in Bitcoin revenue last quarter.
Credit Suisse's "Bitcoin expert" Andrew Peel was poached by Morgan Stanley to head up their digital asset markets efforts.
Walltime, a Brazilian crypto exchange, beat out a local bank that was freezing their funds. They won a preliminary injunction, allowing them to use their funds and keep serving clients.
It's unclear if Telegram's new identity management tool Passport is immune to brute force attacks – researchers at Virgil Security have stated that the SHA-512 algorithm used is not suitable for hashing passwords.

Poll of the Day

How likely are we to see a MASSIVE influx of institutional money before the end of 2018?

I'm super curious about what you wonderful people think about this. Is it good, bad, ugly in your opinion? Tap a number 👆 and share your analysis with us!

Happening at CMC

You guys, you made us sob in happiness with your feedback on this newsletter yesterday. Thank you so much for your support, we are right here with you in this 😱 crypto world!

A few of you asked about how to get more historical data from CMC with the launch of the API. Please head over here or reply to this newsletter, and we can continue the conversation!