Head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, has called on central banks to explore the use of digital currencies in the future. Read more Markets pieces here. Christine Lagarde, Chairwoman of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has called on central banks to explore the possible use of digital currencies in the near future in a speech at the Singapore Fintech Festival. The speech marks a large turning point in the crypto world. Lagarde asked that central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) be considered as a means of decreasing overall cash demand and overall market preference for using digital money. In her speech, Lagarde explained how these CBDCs would be able to work stating that: “A state-backed token, or perhaps an account held directly at the central bank, available … [Read More...]

Amazon is set to collaborate with ConsenSys Kaleido to bring an Ethereum marketplace for enterprise-level blockchain. Read more Technology pieces here. ConsenSys subsidiary, Kaleido, is set to launch a “plug-and-play” set of services to help Ethereum blockchain projects from the initial proof-of-concept stage to the production level of their business. The announcement came at the Lisbon Web Summit, where Kaleido revealed that they would be collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS), as well as other third-party developers, in order to create an enterprise blockchain platform. The aim of the marketplace is to help companies and projects fill the gap when finding skilled workers to help complete their projects. As the industry is still relatively new, resources and access to skilled developers … [Read More...]

The Monetary Authority of Singapore has joined forces with the Singapore Exchanges to develop a Delivery versus Payment system for tokenised securities. Read more Security Token pieces here. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is set to develop a Delivery versus Payment (DvP) platform with the Singapore Exchange (SGX) to allow settlements for tokenised securities across varying blockchain platforms. The announcement came from both the MAS and SGX over the weekend which is set to “help simplify post-trade processes and further shorten settlement cycles” as revealed in a press release. The project has been created alongside some notable partners including Deloitte and the Nasdaq with prototypes of the DvP showing that settlements can be made with varying digital tokens on multiple blockchain platforms. The DvP is … [Read More...]

The news that the SEC fined EtherDelta founder, Mr. Zack Coburn for running an unlicensed securities exchange has come as no surprise to many in the crypto community. EtherDelta was a former decentralised exchange which ran on the Ethereum blockchain for trading tokens. The SEC has been seen by many in the community as “picking an easy target” before going after larger cryptocurrency and token exchanges. However, this blog post is not about legal action. Controversially, we see that EtherDelta was accomplishing some of the virtues the SEC itself hopes to pursue in its securities trading regulation. If look we look at EtherDelta beyond the obvious lack of controls, you will see the true potential power of tokenisation and decentralisation. If you are new to tokens please … [Read More...]

Spanish banking giants Santander and BBVA are to join the EU Blockchain Platform in 2019. Read more Technology pieces here. Two of Spain’s largest banking groups, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) and Banco Santander, are set to join the latest European blockchain platform according to an article published in Spanish economic newspaper Expansion. According to a press release from BBVA, the Spanish banking group were invited to the European Commission’s International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (IATBA) held in Brussels. Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, Mariya Gabriel, and Director of the E.U. Department of Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Roberto Viola, invited both BBVA and Santander to the conference to join the IATBA with has “the goal of promoting innovation and the exploitation of this technology … [Read More...]

DOVU partners with TokenMarket November 20, 2018 – London, United Kingdom – TokenMarket, the award winning token advisory service, announces its partnership with DOVU for its first security token offering. TokenMarket was accepted into the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) Regulatory Sandbox earlier this year for the purpose of carrying out security token offerings. DOVU, the unified token, wallet and marketplace for earning and spending mobility related rewards, held a token sale in October 2017 raising $6.2 million. DOVU has this month announced a sale of 5% equity for a crowdfunding sale to commence in Q1 2019. This will allow DOVU users to now have both utility and equity in DOVU, allowing for a more transparent, democratised and accountable relationship for the investors, contributors and business. DOVU has previously received seed funding from Jaguar-… [Read More...]

Rigoblock has announced that it will be launching a referral program and offering users additional tokens. Read more ICO News here. Rigoblock, the decentralized asset management protocol, is pleased to announce that is has launched its referral program for all participants who successfully complete the whitelisting process. The program, which will be carried out by TokenMarket, will give all those who successfully refer a contributor, additional GRG tokens as a reward for their efforts. Having recently announced its ICO which will see the GRG Token Sale begin on December 18th 2018 Rigoblock are looking to carry the project’s momentum forward with the referral program. Rigoblock founder, Gabriele Rigo, said: “We want everybody to have the opportunity to participate in Rigoblock and get a real feel for the functionality … [Read More...]

Vice President of Business Development at TokenMarket, Ryan Hanley, is to speak at the Verasity and WiV blockchain meet-up in London. Read more TokenMarket Update pieces here. TokenMarket’s Vice President of Business Development, Ryan Hanley, is set to speak at the Verasity and WiV Blockchain meet-up on December 6th 2018. The meet-up, which is designed to bring together a mix of businesses and individuals in order to discuss the current state of the blockchain industry as a whole. The event, which is taking place at WeWork in Kings Cross, London, will give attendees the opportunity to share industry news as well taste some fantastic wine, provided by WiV. Each individual speaker is set to cover an interesting topic pertinent to the current state of the … [Read More...]

This is a guest author post, provided by the team at Civic, for information about Civic visit https://www.civic.com/ The latest in our Life After the ICO series is Civic; the network that gives everyone control of their personal identity. Vinny Lingham, Civic Founder and CEO, gives his account of life after the projects token sale. Read more Opinion pieces here. While the hype around ICOs and token sales continue to fluctuate, the scepticism around these token-related events continues to be a concern both for the industry and for regulators. The scepticism isn’t unwarranted. According to CoinDesk, the majority of ICOs fail within four months, and according to TechCrunch, scam ICOs and token sales raised $1 billion in 2017. But these numbers are not the … [Read More...]

December 18, 2018, Lugano, Switzerland – RigoBlock, the decentralized asset management protocol, has today launched its highly anticipated token sale. RigoBlock is offering participants GRG tokens in exchange for ETH which can be used to create, interact and participate in Ethereum based token pools on the RigoBlock platform. The GRG token is designed to become easily accessible and more cost-effective for traders to use, which aims to reshape the $63 trillion asset management industry. RigoBlock’s hard cap for the ICO is set at $10m for 30% of the total token supply. Based on the market conditions the team have decided to peg the price of ETH at $180 for the public token sale. With the current price of ETH being $90, pegging the price of the GRG token … [Read More...]

In an industry-first Ethfinex and Rigoblock collaborate to provide access to Ethereum-based fund management tools Lugano, Switzerland – December 13, 2018 – Ethfinex, a hybrid trading platform based on Ethereum technology, today announces the complete integration of Rigoblock asset management tools. The industry-first partnership enables all Ethfinex customers to deploy, manage and trade decentralized token pools in a reinvention of the traditional asset trading model. The Rigoblock asset management tools are now available on Ethfinex Trustless – a high-liquidity trading portal built on Ethereum, developed by the Ethfinex team. Ethfinex Trustless adopts an innovative approach to decentralized exchange by combining an off-chain order book with on-chain settlement to ensure a secure and transparent trading experience. Rigoblock is a blockchain protocol that makes it possible for … [Read More...]

Rigoblock has begun to distribute its GRG Tokens via an airdrop with the first wave of whitelisted participants successfully receiving their free tokens. Read more ICO News pieces here. Rigoblock, the decentralized asset management protocol, is pleased to announce that the first round of its airdrop release has begun to be distributed to those who passed the whitelisting process. The airdrop saw an initial selection of successful whitelisted participants in the Rigoblock protocol given a free GRG Token, with the distribution of these tokens being taken from the ‘bounties’ pool of the total token supply. The initiative came as a reward to some of the Rigoblock projects earliest followers. Gabriele Rigo, Rigoblock Founder, said that: “The GRG Token airdrop gave users the chance to have a real … [Read More...]

Facebook is said to be developing its own cryptocurrency stablecoin for transfers within WhatsApp for the Indian remittances market. Read more Market pieces here. Mark Zuckerberg’s social media behemoth, Facebook, is rumoured to be developing its own cryptocurrency for transfers within WhatsApp, sources have reported. Facebook’s token will reportedly allow users to send and receive money, mainly capitalising on the current trend WhatsApp has seen in India’s remittance market. The $541.5 billion giant is set to be launching the stablecoin pegged to the U.S Dollar at some point in the near future, although a date is yet to be set. Facebook’s coin is not expected to be launching any time soon as it works on the custody assets strategy. Facebook’s primary reason for focussing on the … [Read More...]

With Security Token Offerings (STOs) becoming one of the most discussed topics of the year, TokenMarket looks at what lessons can be learned from the ICO market in order to ensure the STOs success. Read more Secuity Token pieces here. Security Token Offerings (or STOs) has become a popular term in the crypto space over the last year. With the ICO market facing a tough time, many projects are turning to the world of STOs in order to progress and keep up with the ever-changing landscape that is cryptocurrency. Whilst some are welcoming the innovation, others are more sceptical citing that the lack of decentralisation is exactly what crypto was designed to combat. TokenMarket has been working tirelessly to set a precedent in shaping the nascent … [Read More...]

TokenMarket is to host a second UK meet-up titled ‘The Evolution of Security Token Offerings’ designed to further educate attendees on the STO market in January of 2019. Read more on the news here. Read more TokenMarket Update pieces here. TokenMarket has announced that it will be hosting the second of its security token offering meet-ups in the UK, titled ‘The Evolution of Security Token Offerings’. After two highly successful meet-ups in both London and Singapore which outlined what security token offerings (STOs) are, the award-winning advisory and token issuance platform have now sought to explain how these offerings will evolve in the future. The event will see TokenMarket Vice President of Business Development, Ryan Hanley, host a panel of industry professionals discuss where … [Read More...]

Two Congressman for the United States have introduced a bill to exclude digital assets from being classified as securities. Read more Regulation pieces here. On December 20th 2018, two United States congressman introduced a bill to the House of Representatives which wants to disregard digital assets as being defined as securities. Representatives Warren Davidson (R) and Darren Soto (D) introduced the “Token Taxonomy Act of 2018” which seeks to exclude digital currencies being classified as securities. In order to do this, Reps. Davidson and Soto ask that Congress: “…amend the Securities Act of 1933 and the SecuritiesExchange Act of 1934 to exclude digital tokens from the definition of a security, to direct the Securities andExchange Commission to enact certain regulatory changes regarding digital units secured through publickey cryptography, to … [Read More...]

SharesPost has successfully traded security tokens on a blockchain using a regulated alternative trading system, an industry first. Read more Security Token pieces here. In an industry first, SharesPost has completed a secondary trade of security tokens on its alternative trading system (ATS), with the transaction being registered on the blockchain. The registered broker-dealer in the U.S revealed that on the 9th January 2019 it had successfully carried out a secondary trade of its BCAP tokens, issued by Blockchain Capital. These tokens represent shares in the Blockchain Capital III Digital Liquid Venture Fund and run on top of the Ethereum blockchain. In a comment to Coindesk, John Wu, Digital Asset Group CEO told the publication that the trade was a “small test” in order to make … [Read More...]

Devvio to Showcase the Devv Blockchain, Designed for Enterprise Use, at CES 2019 Albuquerque, New Mexico USA – January 8, 2019 – Las Vegas, NV – Devvio announced its presence at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) showcasing its Devv blockchain technology, a high-performance next-gen blockchain protocol that solves blockchain’s biggest challenges, such as cost, scalability, stability, privacy, and fraud/theft/loss, all in a single solution. CES expects 4,500 exhibiting technology companies with over 180,000 people in attendance from over 155 countries. Devvio will be showing the Devv Blockchain in highly secure enterprise use cases, such as financial services, data management, privacy, logistics, and identity. Devvio’s ultra-efficient blockchain can process over 8 million on-chain transactions per second, on a global public blockchain, and can process transactions at 1/100,000th the cost … [Read More...]

January 8, 2019 – Lugano, Switzerland – RigoBlock, the pioneering decentralized asset management platform, has today announced that it will be launching a new API to allow developers to build on top of the already functioning protocol. The news comes as an added incentive to ensure developers create on the Ethereum based blockchain network. Having recently launched its token sale and successfully airdropping GRG Tokens to participants, RigoBlock is looking to give developers the opportunity to build on top of their platform. Gabriele Rigo, RigoBlock Founder, commented on the announcement, saying that: “Having developers create their own platforms on top of our protocol has been a major goal of ours since the RigoBlock project began. We feel that having an open source, free and completely decentralized network is more of an … [Read More...]

This is a guest author post, provided by On Yavin founder and CEO of Cointelligence. On has a law degree (LLB) and is also a certified Advocate by the Israeli Bar Association. If 2017 was the year of the ICO, 2018 was definitely the year of reckoning. After too many high-profile scams and projects that simply failed to deliver, investors became wary and regulators became concerned. Such scams will be a whole lot harder to pull off in a fully regulated space such as security offerings. It’s looking very likely that 2019 will be the year of the security token offering (STO). Let’s consider the reasons for this. ICOs vs. STOs: What is the Difference? If you have even a passing familiarity with the crypto economy, you’ve surely heard … [Read More...]