#cryptoequityanalysis

According to the announcement the Bakkt Bitcoin Options settle into the underlying BTC monthly futures contract two days prior to expiry. Galaxy Digital Trading and XBTO executed the inaugural trade. A block trade is defined as a privately negotiated trade with a certain minimum size threshold.

The primary difference between futures and options is that the contract holder is obligated to sell a futures contract on the expiry date. With options there is no obligation to sell the contract on expiry, giving greater flexibility which may impact market prices.

The report added that price discovery is completely regulated and has no exposure to unregulated bitcoin spot markets which can vary greatly from exchange to exchange during times of peak volatility.

President of ICE Futures US, Trabue Bland, stated;

“Based on our benchmark physically delivered bitcoin futures, these options contracts offer our customers a capital-efficient new tool for trading and for managing volatility, price risk and income generation,”

Online investment platform BnkToTheFuture will expand its security token offering (STOs) business to the U.S with an investment in a Securities and Exchange Commission-licensed broker dealer.

Announced in a Nov. 7 statement to investors, BnkToTheFuture acquired an undisclosed stake in BMI Capital International’s holding company, which enables the lending platform to offer STOs to the U.S. market.

In an email to CoinDesk, BnkToTheFuture CEO Simon Dixon said:

“We forecast by 2020 up to 50 percent will opt for an innovative security token that improves the potential for returns for investors over traditional equity. We are aiming to build a new industry and asset class.”

Launched in 2010, BnkToTheFuture is a Cayman Islands-based platform that allows accredited investors to raise equity for financial technology and crypto companies.

Since opening STO investments in 2019, it’s launched two security tokens, including the Bitfinex hack recovery token convertible to Bitfinex equity, and the Lottery.com revenue share token. Dixon said three more offerings are scheduled for 2020 and the platform has brought 450 individuals to invest in STOs.

All three strategic investments or acquisitions BnkToTheFuture made this year were to expand its STO business, Dixon said, including an investment in Altcoin.io, which will support a security token exchange to launch in 2020.

Dan Matuszewski remembers the early days of cryptocurrency trading, just a handful of years ago. It wasn’t the possibility of a market correction that worried him. It was the risk that the whole business might disappear.

“There was always a non-zero chance that bitcoin would gap down, die, and never come back,” Matuszewski, 31, said in a phone interview.

Matuszewski, who previously oversaw trading at the cryptocurrency-focused financial company Circle, says he’s now confident enough in the market’s future that he’s teamed up with two partners to pool more than $10 million to start a proprietary-trading firm. They are Bobby Cho, 35, former head of trading at brokerage firm DRW’s Cumberland crypto unit, and Julien Collard-Seguin, 31, a former technology executive at Circle.

According to Cho, the new company, called CMS Holdings, started trading in October. The business is registered in the Cayman Islands and doesn’t manage money from outside investors, he said.

“We deploy strategies much like a hedge fund in the market, except that we’re not structured as such,” Cho said.

The plan is to put 30 percent of the firm’s money into highly liquid cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum and 40 percent to 50 percent into less-frequently traded tokens and digital assets, Cho said. The rest would likely go into long-term equity investments in the crypto industry, he said.

Ember Fund, makers of an AI-managed cryptocurrency portfolio app, is seeking to raise up to $1 million through a Securities and Exchange Commission-registered securities sale.

The year-old company revealed their intention in today’s filing with the SEC, detailing their sale of “Crowd SAFE” securities that will occur through the end of January 2020 on Republic, an online startup investment platform. SAFE stands for “simple agreement for future equity;” it is an investment contract entitling holders to equity if and when Ember Fund is acquired or goes public. Investors must post a $100 minimum buy-in.

Ember Fund markets itself as an app-based equivalent to crypto hedge fund, with an automated AI system re-balancing a portfolio of cryptocurrencies. Ember is not itself a hedge fund, however; as a non-custodial service Ember Fund never actually touches or transmits crypto – all coins remain on users’ phones.

In May, Ember Fund CEO Alex Wang told CoinDesk that the service, that he and two others bootstrapped in 2018, saw nearly $2 million in transactions in April 2019.

Telegram has released an early desktop wallet for its “gram” token, allowing users to download the test app for MacOS, Windows and Linux 64 bit.

“Now you have a wallet only you control – directly, without middlemen or bankers,” the app says, according to CoinDesk.

The company had planned to release its blockchain project, TON, until the company was sued by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which declared grams were unregistered securities. As a result, Telegram has agreed not to launch its TON blockchain project and gram issuance until April 30, 2020, with its hearing with the SEC pushed back until February.

In other news, one year-old Ember Fund, creator of an AI-managed crypto portfolio app, wants to raise as much as $1 million through an SEC-registered securities sale.

SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell said last Friday that the spacecraft manufacturer wants to land its Starship on the moon within three years, and carry out a manned mission soon after. This would mark the first major launch from a privately owned space company. The private spaceflight industry is growing fast; estimated to be worth $1 trillion by 2040. But as it grows, some see an opportunity for blockchain technology to shake up a status quo that’s dominated by nation states and large companies.

Just this month, Consensys (which funds an editorially independent Decrypt) announced plans to track space debris using the Ethereum blockchain. And last month, SpaceChain received funding from the European Space Agency to build a blockchain-based satellite network. Their claims are as ambitious—and vague—as here on Earth: blockchain will “decentralize space endeavors” (Consensys), or build a ‘‘community-based space platform.

"Tokenized money is essentially implementing regulated money in a bank or electronic money transfer industry or a central bank... but doing that on top of smart contracts on a blockchain construct," he said. "There's also the possibility to put that money on hold...while you do a financial process such as clearance of payments like paying for securities.

"It's just a bank using another technology to issue money," Faura added. "And, we don't need a new regulatory framework to do that."

The Token Taxonomy Initiative (TTI) was first announced in April.

The participants sought to create a non-technical, standard definition of what a token is, and to establish a common set of terms and definitions for cross-industry business use without employing industry jargon or coding.

“In practical terms, a business user or consortium can select a base type of token and choose from contributed lists of behaviors and properties and assign them to the token, just as you might drag and drop icons on a screen," said Marley Gray, Microsoft's principal architect for Azure blockchain engineering and a member of the EEA's board of directors. "The framework enables a business person to create a token visually using a design tool without writing any code whatsoever and allows them to tell developers, ‘I want one of these."