TOGETHER AT LAST: Starting tomorrow Coinbase customers will be able to buy and sell XRP on the exchange's pro trading platform.
The listing on the popular U.S. exchange, long awaited by XRP's rabid fan base, raises the question of how Coinbase got comfortable with a token that many believe should be classified as a security.
An individual familiar with Coinbase’s internal decision-making process said the company “is prepared to support the asset however it’s classified by regulators," and it's worth noting that Coinbase has a broker-dealer license through its acquisition last year of Keystone Capital.
As might be expected, XRP has surged on the news, and is up almost 10 percent in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. While no firm timeline for launching support on Coinbase's retail platforms was given, the exchange typically launches cryptocurrencies for its non-professional users within a few weeks of launching support on Coinbase Pro. Full story
BETTER THAN NOTHING: Bitfinex has announced that a small portion of the bitcoin stolen in a major 2016 hack has been recovered and returned by the U.S. government.
In a blog post published Monday, the exchange said that 27.6 BTC – worth just over $104,000 at time of writing – have been received from the U.S. government, as the result of U.S. law enforcement efforts.
Bitfinex said that, since the hack, it has been collaborating with international law enforcement agencies “to provide intelligence and assist with investigations,” adding: “Bitfinex was alerted in November 2018 that the U.S. government had obtained bitcoins believed to be proceeds from the 2016 hack.”
The August 2016 breach, in which a total of 119,756 BTC were stolen, shocked the crypto market with the largest loss of bitcoins by an exchange since Japan’s Mt. Gox huge hack in early 2014.
The returned funds represent about 0.023 percent of the total taken in the attack.
As pledged in its recovery strategy formulated after the 2016 attack, the returned funds are being converted to U.S. dollars and will be paid to current holders of its RRT (Recovery Right Token) token. Full story
OLD HANDS: A group of central securities depositories (CSDs) in Europe and Asia is taking a serious look at how they might collaborate on infrastructure to custody digital assets.
Still very much in the exploratory phase, the CSDs are planning to present the findings of their working groups at the annual SIBOS conference in London in October. But these organizations, which have been guarding stock certificates for decades, clearly see an opportunity to apply their knowledge and skills to the crypto space, where losing your private keys means losing your coins forever.
Artem Duvanov, head of innovation at the National Settlement Depository (NSD) of the Moscow Exchange Group, told CoinDesk: “A new world of tokenized assets and blockchain is coming. It will probably disrupt our role as CSDs. The whole group decided we will be focusing on tokenized assets, not just blockchain but on real digital assets.”
Since coming together under the auspices of the International Securities Services Association (ISSA) last year, the CSDs' crypto-asset initiative has doubled in size to over 30 participants. Duvanov said the aim right now is to create "a common vision" as opposed to a deadlined platform build. Full story
BUIDLERS REMAIN: Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of social media platform Reddit and a VC investor, has said he believes the hype around cryptocurrency has dropped as speculators have fled the market – and that’s good for the industry.
In an interview with Yahoo Finance published Friday, Ohanian, said: “The hype is gone. The fervor is gone. But I think that’s a good thing.”
Ohanian, citing Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, explained that in the bearish crypto markets only the “true believers” had stayed on. That’s a “great” thing, he added, as these are the people who are now developing the infrastructure of the nascent industry.
"And they're actually builders. They're actually building the infrastructure that it's going to take to really make this happen," he said. Full story
GOING PRIVATE: Security token specialist Templum is shifting from public to private blockchains.
Announced Monday, enterprise software vendor Symbiont is building a private blockchain and smart contracts system that Templum will use for future security token offerings (STOs) by its clients. Previously, the regulated broker-dealer left the choice of blockchain protocol up to the issuers, but this posed problems, Templum CEO Christopher Pallotta told CoinDesk.
Many were choosing ERC-20 tokens that run on top of ethereum. but that network's well-known scaling challenges meant trading could be hampered during periods of high transaction volumes, such as the peak of the CryptoKitties craze.
Pallotta said there were also legal concerns about whether ethereum miners would have to be registered as broker-dealers. All told, he said: “We believe for securities issuance, you need a private, controlled blockchain ... [you] need control of the full lifecycle." Full story | 
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