Alpaca Finance Institutional Newsletter #12
Regulation continues to take form with crypto-favorable jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the UAE beginning to apply more stringent requirements on operating a crypto business. Switzerland, the ICO location of choice for serious companies during the 2017 bull run, will require increased AML reporting for anyone transacting more than $1k CHF. The regulator cited most of the “troubled” transactions ranged between $1k-5k . In Dubai, the free trade zones will get fresh guidance from the DFSA in its second round of crypto regulation which will require investment tokens, which sit outside of utility tokens, to go through a formal registration over a six-month transition period. Tracking the shifting regulatory landscape, this is a clear push toward normalizing digital assets in the preparation for mainstream adoption.
On the point of mainstream adoption, JP Morgan and DBS in Singapore made headlines for their joint running of a private version of Aave’s smart contract code on Polygon. Public permissioned DeFi such as Aave Arc, announced last year, could offer interbank trading venues with known participants that can be spun up or down based on demand. It is not yet clear whether these types of venues will hit the right chord, but one could imagine a future system where large players have unbound access to new financial products and opportunities through whitelisted Web3 wallets, mirroring what retail has been exposed to since the growth of DeFi in 2020.
News
- Canada to examine crypto, stablecoins and CBDCs in new budget
- Reserve Bank of India to reportedly launch digital rupee pilot in November
- Singapore bank DBS uses DeFi to trade FX and state securities
- JP Morgan executes first DeFi trade on public blockchain
Regulation
- Hong Kong financial regulator issues guidelines for crypto futures ETFs
- SEC chair highlights crypto enforcement cases to legal experts
- New ‘crypto token regime’ instituted at the Dubai International Financial Centre
- Switzerland’s financial regulator extends reporting requirements for crypto transactions
Products
- Fidelity offers retail investors commission-free BTC and ETH trading
- Goldman Sachs creates digital asset taxonomy system for subscribing investors
- Union Bank of the Philippines launches Bitcoin and Ethereum trading
- Singapore’s MAS says no urgent case for retail CBDC, but launches 4 fast trials of it
Funding
- Twitter monetization and free speech drove Binance’s $500M injection: CZ
- Digital asset platform Bakkt set to acquire Apex Crypto for $200M
- Crypto VC Firm CoinFund Looks to Raise $250M Seed Fund
- Circle Begins Putting Reserves Into New BlackRock Fund
