Cryptocurrency Daily News Bulletin: March 20, 2019

General News

Avnet, a world leader in distributing electronic components and services, is now accepting crypto payments through a partnership with BitPay. The Fortune 500 company accepts BTC and BCH and claims they have already closed “several multi-million-dollar” transactions within the first month – becoming the third largest tech company to accept crypto. 

BlockFi’s interest-yielding deposit accounts, which went fully live this month, has brought in more than $35 million in crypto in just two weeks – most of it being lent to institutional borrowers attracted to the advertised 6.2 percent annual return on deposits.

Blockchain Capital’s new ERC-20 security token, BCAP, has gained support from BitGo. 

Caspian, an institutional trading and portfolio management platform backed by Galaxy Capital, is launching trading for futures and options in crypto assets after integrating its platform with Deribit exchange.

Cryptopia has resumed trading on 40 crypto pairs following its January 2019 hack.

Silvergate Bank, one of the few U.S. financial institutions that actively serve crypto businesses, added 59 such clients in Q4, but its deposits from the industry shrank 8 percent. This shrinkage came mainly from exchanges, while crypto investors and other startups’ balances grew – according to their IPO prospectus filed with the SEC.

U.S. SEC Chairman Jay Clayton says Bitcoin and crypto have a lot of potential, adding there “may be a case where a Bitcoin ETF could satisfy our rules,” when discussing the latest proposed rule change for the VanEck/SolidX Bitcoin ETF. However, other comments have been more negative with six out of the seven comments filed thus far strongly urging the regulator not to approve the proposal – citing market manipulation as a key risk.  

Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin $4,046.47 USD (-0.18 percent) can now be purchased in Australia through a network of 1,300-plus supported newsagents across the country. Binance announced a new gateway, called Binance Lite Australia, which is a cash-to-bitcoin brokerage service. The platform currently offers the option to buy only bitcoin using AUD, but the exchange plans to support more crypto’s and fiat options in the future. This comes as Bitcoin’s dominance is on the verge of falling below 50 percent for the first time in over seven months.

IOTA $0.295037 USD (-0.56 percent) assisted the U.K. Parliament in presenting demonstrations of real-world blockchain applications designed to educate policymakers. Organized by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Blockchain (APPG Blockchain), the event also hosted the likes of Oracle, Everledger and Lloyd’s of London. 

Polymath $0.102313 USD (0.67 percent) has partnered with digital securities fundraising platform seriesOne to offer an “end-to-end” solution for security token issuance. The new product will enable issuers to create and manage security tokens that are “compliant throughout their entire lifecycle” – from initial offering to trading on a secondary exchange.

XRP $0.315128 USD (-0.92 percent) has been added to the Canadian crypto exchange Coinberry – only the fourth crypto to be added to the platform after Bitc.

– WN.com, Jamie Saarloos