CryptoCompare Publishes Exchange Review for April 2019
London, 20th May 2019: CryptoCompare today released its April 2019 Exchange Review, offering investors, analysts and regulators analysis of key developments in the cryptocurrency exchange market.
As with previous reviews, it covers exchange rankings by volume; country analysis and predominant fee type model; derivatives and institutional products; fiat, bitcoin and stablecoin volumes. It is also focused on how volumes have developed historically for the top trans-fee mining and decentralised exchanges.
Key highlights:
- Top crypto-to-crypto exchanges: Monthly volumes increased by 57%. Fcoin topped the rankings at USD 37.1bn (up 300%), followed by OKEx and ZB at USD 35.1bn (up 12.4%) and USD 32.4bn (up 18.8%) respectively.
- Transaction fee mining exchanges: There was a sharp increase in TFM volumes, led by FCoin at USD 37.1bn (up 300%), followed by CoinBene at USD 27bn (up 51.5%) and ZBG at USD 16bn (up 37.2%).
- Institutional bitcoin derivatives: CME continues to dominate with average daily volumes of USD 256m (up 263%), followed by Grayscale’s bitcoin trust product (GBTC) at USD 29.7m (up 239%). Despite having chosen to cease listing additional bitcoin futures products, CBOE’s bitcoin futures traded a daily average of USD 9.9m (up 109%).
See all highlights & full report »
Facebook Registers ‘Libra’ Cryptocurrency Firm in Switzerland
According to a Reuters report, Facebook registered a new company, Libra Networks, in Geneva on May 2. Facebook Global Holdings is a stockholder in the new company and it will, according to Reuters, “provide financial and technology services and develop related hardware and software, plans submitted on the Swiss register reveal.”
Facebook’s march towards crypto has been slow and steady. The company’s latest move, the hiring of two Coinbase compliance managers, happened on May 14. The Libra project has ruffled some feathers in Congress, as well. US lawmakers sent an open letter to the company seeking clarification on the currency’s purpose and implications. They wrote:
"The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Facebook is recruiting dozens of financial firms and online merchants to help launch a cryptocurrency-based payments system using its social network. Last year, Facebook asked U.S. banks to share detailed financial information about consumers. In addition, privacy experts have raised questions about Facebook’s extensive data collection practices and whether any of the data collected by Facebook is being used for purposes that do, or should subject Facebook to the Fair Credit Reporting Act."
Read more here
Circle Releases Attestation Report on USDC’s USD Reserves
Goldman Sachs-backed crypto finance startup Circle has published the latest third-party audit of its USD-pegged stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC). The company reported the update in a blog post published on May 17 and stated that the audit of the coin’s fiat reserves was conducted by major Chicago-based accounting firm Grant Thornton LLP.
The report released by the firm states that as of April 30, 2019, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time there were 293,184,174 USDC issued, and that there were $293,351,374 in the firm’s reserves. Lastly, the auditing firm claims that, at the time specified above, the issued and outstanding USDC tokens did not exceed the balance of the U.S. dollars held in custody.
Read more here
