It has been a rough year for cryptocurrencies. Valuations are down 80% and more in some quarters, and critics are claiming that a funeral may be in order. But not everyone has these same feelings. CEOs of many large concerns, both within and without the crypto universe, have spoken out about the long-term viability of…
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For the second time in the past few months, stock values have plummeted, while values for Bitcoin and its altcoin brethren have surged. There has been an ongoing debate among analysts and investors as to whether movements in the stock market can be correlated with those for cryptocurrencies. The possibility of such a “tethering” may…
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Cryptocurrencies, virtual money, or digital coinage, a rose by any other name, still smells as sweet. The latest amusing sideshows of government officials not knowing how to corral the new digital age come to you from Japan and Russia. The Financial Services Agency (FSA) in Japan, the local regulator, is considering the classification of all…
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Investors do not like Bear Markets, unless they are professional traders that love nothing better than to short an overbought sector of the market. For institutional investors, however, traders are always on the lookout for the sector that has the most “up” potential, while discarding anything that feels the pull of gravity downwards. During what…
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Cryptocurrencies have been labeled the most volatile asset class in history, and for that reason, many of the monitoring services employed by traditional stock exchanges to ferret out price manipulation or pump-and-dump schemes just do not work in the crypto world. Jay Clayton, the chairman of the SEC, has continually castigated exchanges in the crypto…
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As 2018 draws to a close, economists, bankers, and major hedge fund managers dust off their respective crystal balls and begin to contemplate the future. These exercises will go into high gear over the prevailing weeks, as new predictions for major index funds, commodities, and currencies twelve months down the road will proliferate the Internet.…
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Major payment system providers like Visa (NYSE:V) and MasterCard (NYSE:MA) may be having nightmares lately and for good reason. The word on the street is that Facebook is aggressively moving forward with plans to create an internal payment system that connects overnight its 2.3 billion active customer base. How do you do this feat without…
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The financial services industry has never been as exciting as other technology-driven genres. Things, however, changed a few years back, when blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies seized the imagination of the public, and more importantly, the imagination of entrepreneurs, investors, and the venture funding establishment. The new buzzword around town became “FinTech”, a bit sexier than…
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The SEC is determined to eradicate the rampant fraud that persists within the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) space. Steven Peikin, co-director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division, recently delivered a speech to the Harvard Law School’s Program on International Financial Systems in which he made known his agency’s desire to clean up the…
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When we think of regulators, we normally envision government officials auditing financial service firms, incarcerating fraudsters, and generally being a pain in the neck for all those within their purview, but one key part of their mission statement is also to educate the investing public and keep them aware of important trends. In that latter…
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