Coinbase Custody Targets $10 Billion in Institutional Funds for Bitcoin Investment
Last Thursday, Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong, officially introduced Coinbase Custody, a platform targeted at institutional investors. The new product is intended to be ultra-secure. According to Armstrong, Coinbase currently holds $9 billion in user funds in various cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin. Coinbase Custody is exclusively for institutional investors with at least $10 mln on deposit.
Armstrong further emphasized that the finance market currently has over $10 billion in institutional money that has been sitting on the sidelines. Coinbase believes these investors want to purchase digital currency but have been waiting for a safe way to buy and hold it. Armstrong wrote:
“Over 100 hedge funds have been created in the past year exclusively to trade digital currency. An even greater number of traditional institutional investors are starting to look at trading digital assets (including family offices, sovereign wealth funds, traditional hedge funds, and more). By some estimates there is $10B of institutional money waiting on the sidelines to invest in digital currency today.”
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European Central Bank Considering Bitcoin Regulation
According to Reuters, the European Central Bank (ECB) is considering regulating the use of cryptocurrencies. Governing council member Ewald Nowotny commented:
“We’re asking ourselves if legislators or central banks should intervene, as happened in China where they banned (the use of cryptocurrencies) because they consider them fraudulent.”
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Ethereum Could Soon Launch Its First Casper Testnet
During a core developer meeting last week, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin said that not only is Casper ready to be tested, but that it could provide a security boost when testing code across clients.
And while Casper itself isn't ready for widespread adoption, let alone integration on the main Ethereum chain, it might be the prime time to start testing it out, some suggested in the meeting. Developer Peter Szilagyi stated:
"If we realistically want to roll out Casper in whatever hard fork, then eventually people need to start implementing it."
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Mark Karpeles Floats Token Sale to Revive Mt Gox
In a blog post published last week, Mark Karpeles detailed possible avenues for reviving Mt Gox, the once-dominant Japanese Bitcoin exchange that collapsed amid allegations of fraud and mismanagement in early 2014. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin were feared lost, though ultimately 202,000 BTC were retained as assets, under the custody of a trustee.
One possible avenue around the issue: reviving Mt Gox, with a price tag of $245 million. This could be accomplished either through a recapitalization by way of an equity sale or an ICO, according to Karpeles. He wrote:
"Launch an ICO to raise money to hypothetically revive MtGox. This sounds more challenging, both legally and because there is no guarantee of raising enough to revive MtGox. In case there is not enough raised it could still be locked to be distributed to creditors, which would be better than nothing."
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