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'HELPFUL' WINTER: Crypto winter has been beneficial for pending bitcoin futures exchange Bakkt, said Jeffrey Sprecher, CEO of the Intercontinental Exchange, Bakkt’s parent firm. He said during a Q1 earnings call that the slowdown in the market gave Bakkt some more time to work on securing regulatory approvals, while also letting it acquire other companies in the space at lower valuations than may have been possible at the peak of the bubble. Bakkt most recently announced it had acquired the Digital Asset Custody Company. Full Story
APP EARNINGS: Payments company Square has disclosed $65.5 million in bitcoin revenue from its Cash App for the first quarter of 2019. Bitcoin costs are listed at $64.7 million in the unaudited quarterly report, for a bitcoin profit of roughly $832,000. Those figures top previous all-time highs for Square. The fourth quarter of 2018 saw $52.4 million in bitcoin revenue and $490,000 in profit. Still, bitcoin remains a niche product for Square, with all transaction-based revenue in Q1 topping $656 million. Full Story
CENTRAL BANK FIRST: The central banks of Canada and Singapore have concluded a trial of cross-border payments using blockchain technology and central bank digital currencies. The Bank of Canada (BoC) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) jointly said that the successful trial – the first of its kind between two central banks – showed “great potential to increase efficiencies and reduce risks for cross-border payments.” The effort saw the authorities linking up their respective projects, Jasper and Ubin, which are built on two different blockchain networks: R3’s Corda and JPMorgan’s Quorum, respectively. Full Story
CRYPTO ‘EXPLOSION’: The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) expects to see more companies apply to become federally-regulated clearinghouses as a result of growing interest in cryptocurrencies. Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo, testifying on “the state of the CFTC” before the U.S. House Agriculture Committee on Wednesday, said, “The Commission anticipates new applications for clearinghouse registration resulting from the explosion of interest in cryptocurrencies; an area in which protection of the cryptocurrencies will be one of the highest risks.” Full Story
XRP TIPS: Coil, the San Francisco-based startup founded by former Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas, has opened the public beta of its platform designed to help bloggers earn XRP. Since August, roughly 1,000 test users have been paying in-browser subscriptions for a flat monthly rate of $5. Coil then automatically pays content creators in XRP based on usage. The firm told CoinDesk it’s working with digital wallet provider Stronghold for dollar cash-out options in addition to XRP. Initially, the goal is to allow free access with tipping and payment options for bonus content. Full Story |
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| DOWN AGAIN? With the short duration charts reporting a bearish divergence, bitcoin's recent bounce from the crucial 30-day moving average (MA) could be short-lived. As a result, a re-test of that average, currently at $5,199, could be in the offing. A close below that level would neutralize the short-term bullish outlook and open the doors to deeper pullback below $5,000. Full Story |
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BEST OF THE BEST
LIQUID TRADING: California is sinking due to overuse of its water aquifers, according to a piece from Wired. To help tackle the issue, new rules are set to come in soon that would allow landowners to sell unused groundwater to neighbors. But for that to work, farmers will need a market and a way to actually trade the increasingly precious resource. An initiative from the Freshwater Trust, IBM and SweetSense aims to address that shortfall using sensors to measure water extraction and allow that data to support trades on a blockchain platform.
THE REST
CHEESE CHAIN: Supermarket giant Carrefour is expanding its blockchain tracking operation to include Rocamadour goat cheese, reports European Supermarket Magazine. By scanning a QR code on the packaging, customers will be able to access data on the product's origin, its production and its journey from dairy to supermarket. The service offers granular information such as who made the cheese, how long they have been producing the product and even the number of goats in the herd.
LIMITED USE: De Nederlandsche Bank, the central bank for the Netherlands, trialed four different blockchain platforms over the course of three years, but found that it hasn’t been all that useful, according to The Next Web. The bank apparently found only one use case where blockchain is more efficient than existing payment rails: cross-border transactions. DNB director of payments and market infrastructure Petra Hielkema explained that the bank slowly built prototypes to test how DLT could benefit their systems.
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