Monday Links 02/26/18
Well, I barely managed to get a story out on Friday before the next wave of Goldman Sachs related news hit the cryptosphere. Circle, a Goldman Sachs investment, will move forward with an acquisition of Poloniex, one of the larger crypto exchanges available worldwide.
Circle is the go-to OTC resource for large and institutional-scale purchase/sale of Bitcoin to/from Fiat. Circle recently stopped buys/sells for Crypto at the retail level, but the move to purchase Poloniex may signal a return to retail business. $400 million seems inexpensive for a top-20 crypto trading platform, but the company has recently been plagued by shrinking market-share and complaints about unresponsive support. Considering the relatively low price paid, and Poloniex reputation, it would stand to reason that Circle didn’t just make this move to be a passive investor. Nor is Poloniex a big enough whale amongst crypto exchanges that buying it just to “kill it” would make a dent in the trading markets either. The Circle co-founders explain further in a blog post:
“We expect to grow the Poloniex platform beyond its current incarnation as an exchange for only crypto assets…We envision a robust multi-sided distributed marketplace that can host tokens which represent everything of value: physical goods, fundraising and equity, real estate, creative productions such as works of art, music and literature, service leases and time-based rentals, credit, futures, and more.”
By mentioning equity and real estate, it does seem that the goal would be to expand Poloniex to host Security Tokens as well, but it seems their ideas go beyond that into licensing for creative ventures as well.
The goal then, it seems is to use Poloniex as a platform from which Circle can be a crypto financial services provider in such a way that it is “everything to everyone.” That is a lofty goal, that brings the Goldman backing of circle into focus. It looks like a further step by Wall Street to get into the crypto space. That idea may be a turn-off to many, but as I’ve written in this space before, institutional investment from Wall Street is the catalyst by which cryptomarkets continue their meteoric rise upwards. HODL on…
As for the other links:
