Executive Summary:
- The overall market was down this week (BTC L: $3,793.71, H: $4210) | (ETH: L: $135.48, H:$165.55) | (XRP: L: $0.299331, H:$0.341581)
- XRP lists on Coinbase but faces accusations of violating listing rules.
- India’s Supreme Court sets deadline for cryptocurrency regulation.
- Apple’s co-founder, Steve Wozniak, says Bitcoin will become the world’s reserve currency.
- London Stock Exchange leads seed funding in a blockchain platform, Nivaura.
Price News
The crypto markets continued their upward trend over the weekend but experienced a relatively sharp sell-off on Sunday after reaching their highest levels since December 2018. Contrary to the rest of the crypto market, XRP bounced straight back on Monday after their official launch on Coinbase. However, the blockchain research firm, Diar, released a report on 26 February accusing XRP of breaking Coinbase’s listing requirement which states that the ownership stake retained by the team should be a minority stake. According to Diar, Ripple holds around 60 percent of the supply in escrow with a release schedule.
Hyperion News
The next Hyperion update report will be published next week and will cover Lightstreams.
Regulatory News
India’s Supreme Court has set a four-week deadline for the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to conclude their cryptocurrency regulation. This comes after the RBI announced a ban on the processing of cryptocurrency purchases for entities regulated by the RBI in April 2018. If they fail to develop a set of regulations within the time frame, the Court will rule on the cases in regard to the constitutional rights of cryptocurrency enthusiasts in India.
Adoption News
During an interview with Bloomberg’s Yousef Gamal El-Din on 26 February 2019, Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple), reiterated his prior comments about Bitcoin becoming the world’s reserve currency. He believes that blockchain technology is fundamentally changing the financial industry. Wozniak has also previously described Bitcoin as “pure” and stated,
“Bitcoin is mathematically defined, there is a certain quantity of bitcoin, there’s a way it’s distributed… and it’s pure and there’s no human running, there’s no company running and it’s just… growing and growing… and surviving, that to me says something that is natural and nature is more important than all our human conventions.”
Development News
Nivaura, a blockchain based fintech startup, has just received $20 million in seed round funding. The round was led by the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday 26 February 2019. The fintech startup aims to utilize blockchain technology to lessen friction in financial markets by letting investors deal directly with each other and also allow for self-custody of assets.
The CEO of Nivaura, Avtar Sehra, believes that the implementation of such technologies could reduce the time to market for the issuance of bonds, loans and equity by at least 60%. The disintermediation and the time saved with this process could lead to drastic benefits for investors.
Kind regards,
JP Britz & the Invictus team
Junior Investment Analyst at Invictus Capital
