Since the turn of the millennium, China’s economy has grown 10 times to become the largest economy in the world, making up 19% of the global total. China is also the world’s largest trading nation and its bond market is worth $15tn, about one half of the global total. Despite its economic might, China’s national currency, the RMB, accounts for only 2% of global currency reserves and 1.8% of global trade volume. In contrast, the US economy only makes up 15% of the global total and the USD (and USD denominated assets) accounts for as much as 61% of global currency reserves and 41% of global trade volume. …
Executive Summary
- Due to fear of uncertainty, traditional markets declined since their peak this year: S&P500 -27% and Gold -11%, as investors took out cash.
- Bitcoin declined by -50% due to emotional market reaction and forced liquidations of $1.3bn on BitMEX (largest derivatives exchange), which was temporarily shut down.
- Bitcoin caused a decline of the entire market capitalization of cryptocurrencies by -54% from $300bn to $140bn
- The Ethereum price decline of -60% caused liquidations on major lending platforms and revealed a design error in MakerDAO, causing a $4.5m loss.
- The market drop can be mainly attributed to fear and speculation, rather than to a change in fundamentals. In the current context, we see the following challenges and opportunities…
The purpose of this article is to propose an Optimal Portfolio of Digital Assets, i.e. a portfolio that would have given us the best risk adjusted return in the course of the last >2 years. I used Python’s NumPy and Pandas, and >2 years of daily close price data of selected Digital Assets. This is not financial advice and more thorough research should be done before making an investment decision of any kind. It is also not a coding how-to guide.
“To reduce risk it is necessary to avoid a portfolio whose securities are all highly correlated with each other.”
Harry Markowitz, author of the Modern Portfolio…
Despite a drop in digital asset and equities prices, the digital asset industry itself remains healthy, but the narrative that digital assets serve as a hedge against the traditional financial system has been shaken.
Summary
On December 31 2019, China alerted WHO to several cases of unusual pneumonia in Wuhan, a (river) port city of 11 million people in the central Hubei province. The virus was unknown, today marked as COVID19. Since 1st of January 2020:
- 126,550 new cases were identified across 126 countries (including USA and the Eurozone), which resulted in 4,640 deaths and 68,325 recovered patients
- 10-year US treasury yield fell by -71%, S&P 500 fell by…
The period from 2017 to 2019 has seen a boom in ICO (Initial Coin Offering) financing. The 2,100+ ICOs collectively raised ca. $18 billion, but gradually disappeared from the Digital Assets ecosystem. On the contrary, the number of STOs (Security Token Offerings) is rising. We have seen 95 finished STOs, most of them in the US, that collectively raised almost $1 billion from 2017 to 2019. The first half of 2018 was a particularly good time for STOs. Nexo, a digital asset loan platform, raised $52M, and tZero, a security tokens exchange, raised as much as $134M. …
Blockchain division of a Czech investment group Rockaway Capital decided to acquire a stake in Vega Protocol and joined a group of VC investors led by Pantera Capital.
[GIBRALTAR, PRAGUE, 2nd of October 2019] — Rockaway Blockchain acquires a stake in Vega, a project working on development of technologies suitable for decentralized trading of derivatives, in a seed round of $5M. Rockaway Blockchain focuses on investments in finance, as that is where it sees traction and added value of these new technologies.
Apart from Rockaway Blockchain, the global group of strategic supporters includes Pantera Capital, Xpring (Ripple), Hashed, NGC Ventures, gumi Cryptos Capital, KR1, Eden Block, Focus Labs, Greenfield One, Monday Capital and RSK Ecosystem Fund. …
Rockaway Blockchain launched preliminary registration for the Hack to the Moon event, the first event of its kind in Prague. Teams of hackers will work at Paralelní Polis on the weekend of 28–29 September on overcoming challenges that have been prepared by globally renowned companies: cryptocurrency exchange BINANCE, cloud platform developer OASIS LABS, communication network TOP NETWORK and MATIC, an Ethereum transaction scalability platform.
“Blockchain involves a lot of exciting things, one of which is that it is an area in which you can have a truly global impact and that’s what matters to us at Rockaway. Therefore, we wanted to bring to our first hackathon representatives of global companies and to mediate valuable contacts for the local community,” says VIKTOR FISCHER, head of the blockchain division at Rockaway Capital. Throughout the event, hackers will have access to the representatives of all of the aforementioned companies in the role of mentors. The ten experts on hand will include, for example, TECK CHIA and FLORA SUN of Binance. …
Agoric is a blockchain startup bringing secure smart contract capabilities to a widespread developer audience. The 3 main reasons why Rockaway Blockchain invested in Agoric:
- Agoric improves the safety of smart contracts by redesigning the underlying security model: Shifting from Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) to Agoric’s object capability execution environment greatly reduces the risk of cyber-security attacks.
- Outstanding team with a proven ability to deliver: Agoric’s team is composed of pioneers in smart contract programming. Mark S. Miller, its Chief Scientist, produced his first related research paper in year 1988. …
TOP is a high-performance blockchain with a powerful array of service-level infrastructures, including the world’s first decentralized cloud communication services. The 4 main reasons why Rockaway Blockchain invested in TOP:
TOP is a Blockchain Project with 50M Users Potential
The 3 existing communication apps Dingtone, CoverMe and SkyVPN, combining 50M users, are planned to be migrated to the TOP decentralized networking platform upon its launch.
Very Attractive Value Proposition
- Privacy — No one can access the private communication on the network
- Trustlessness — No central authority controls the data, no one can shut down the service
- Good Monetization Opportunities — Users provide nodes/servers to the network and in turn earn…
Many people in the space believe that capital formation is the next killer app of the blockchain and that Security Token Offerings will soon see similar levels of enthusiasm exhibited in ICO markets. We have noticed that Europe has been particularly active in building the necessary regulatory infrastructure.
Overview of Regulations for Security Tokens in the EU
Security tokens are regulated as securities under MIFID II — Financial Instruments Directive (2014/65/EU). This is the most important piece of relevant European legislation defining what a security is. Security tokens will be probably treated as “transferable securities”. These are the most common form of securities, but they could also come in other forms, e.g. derivatives. The law regarding issuing and trading securities in the EU is currently being harmonized and in the process of gradual unification. …
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