This Week in Cryptocurrency — #010
Fidelity positive on blockchain industry, Bitmain priming IPO and plans for a Pound-backed Stablecoin
Overview
This week, the Cryptocurrency-space has seen many positive developments ranging from the financial giant Fidelity showing strong interest in the Blockchain industry, to Bitmain reporting it’s IPO plans and more. Crypto in September has been quite exciting and has seen positive growth, even during a time where the price of the crypto market has cratered since it’s highs at the beginning of the year.
Week @ Matchpool
Our team has released a formal development roadmap, aiming to highlight the project direction from a technical perspective. The roadmap details planned features, bug fixes and platform improvements for 7 weeks. This will give the community development details all the way up until November 5th. Our first weekly development update came on Friday and can be viewed here. Our hope is that by keeping our community in the loop with the direction of the platform have allowed everyone to better understand where we’re heading at a project and our aim to grow the platform in a positive way.
Fidelity expresses positive interest in Crypto
Fidelity, a colossal financial services giant with trillions of assets currently under management, has once again expressed interest in the cryptocurrency space. The financial firm has a reputation for risk taking and betting on new and emerging technologies. The firm has been leading the pack in terms of technological adoption among financial services companies. From being one of the first firms to sell investments through toll-free lines to utilizing AI in their voice-activated voice-answering systems. Fidelity developed an R&D branch “Fidelity Center for Applied Technology” which focused on new technologies with great potential, which have allowed them to stay ahead of their competitors when it comes to finding opportunities in new technologies. Blockchain technology emerged as one of the more important technologies of the 21st century, so it’s no surprise that Fidelity would be interested in incorporating it’s technology in some way or another. For more, see the original story below:
Bitmain divulges IPO plans and profits
Bitmain, one of the largest names in cryptocurrency, has officially released it’s plans to IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company, which specializing in mining cryptocurrency, has generated nearly 750mm USD in profit in the first half of 2018, capitalizing on the crypto craze. Bitmain’s profits are even more impressive when you consider the fact that the company’s assets are roughly 30% cryptocurrencies, which have lost enormous amounts of value since their highs at the beginning of the calendar year. Bitmain has come out as big supporters of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a fork of Bitcoin (BTC) that occurred last year. According to Sanford C. Bernstein analysts, Bitmain still dominates the market for mining chips, claiming 85% of the entire market in 2017. Bitmain’s resilience in holding cryptos and their domination of the mining chip market make them a company worth keeping an eye on as they’re listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange next year.
Pound-backed stablecoin
Stablecoins have been a very hot topic in the crypto space over the past couple of months, from the launch of the USDC, many other Stablecoins have come into the fold. Most recently, London Block Exchange is planning to release a new crypto asset that is 1:1 pegged to the UK Pound. The currency will be a ERC-621 token officially called “LBXPeg” and has already been confirmed by a yet-to-be-known banking partner of the exchange. This is very exciting news for the space. Stablecoins have seen a rise in popularity from crypto-enthusiasts because it is a way to avoid accruing a capital gains tax when trading crypto assets. On the outside, many skeptics claim that cryptocurrencies aren’t backed by anything with intrinsic value. The introduction of Stablecoins, both for US Dollars and British Pounds, will have a very positive impact on the optics of the industry for those who may still have lingering concerns about the apparent lack of intrinsic value of crypto assets.
Conclusion
This week, the cryptocurrency industry has seen many positive developments. From the launch a pound-backed stablecoin, to Bitmain’s release of it’s IPO plans, many new and exciting news has been released in the space. Here at Matchpool, we’ve released our Fall Development Roadmap to forecast our plans to add apply new features and bug fixes to our platform. Thanks for reading this weekend in cryptocurrency, be sure to check out next week’s issue for more news and details about the exciting world of Cryptocurrency!
Interesting links
- 88mm USD worth of illicit funds pass through crypto exchanges
- How Binance’s DEX will affect the market in 2019
- Monero squares off with malware
Thanks for Reading,
The Matchpool Team
