Today on Altcoins This Week we comment on Coinbase hinting about the possibility of trading securities, we review altcoins prices and more.
Stellar Price Soars As IBM Backs New Stablecoin
IBM has lent its support to the latest attempt to create a cryptocurrency pegged to the US Dollar. USD Anchor will be launched by Stronghold, a startup exchange service that operates on the Stellar Blockchain. The new coin will be backed by reserves of dollars, which will be placed in a trust fund, this will in turn deposit funds in accounts insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
IBM’s support has sent Stellar’s price soaring, with the currency overtaking Litecoin on Wednesday to become the fifth largest Altcoin by market cap. While the new Altcoin is bound to be compared to Tether (USDT), the involvement of IBM along with USD Anchor’s robust system for quantifying its assets, may set it apart. Tether has struggled to assure the crypto public that it holds in reserve the fiat equivalent of all the Tether that has been issued to date. Anchor’s association with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has obviously piqued the interest of investors, with trading at its highest volume since February.
First Bank-Owned Crypto Exchange Arrives In Japan
After lengthy delays to conform to Japan’s strict legal regulatory requirements, SBI Holdings, one of Japan’s largest financial companies, has finally opened its crypto exchange to the domestic market. VCTrade, as the exchange is known, offers exchange services to residents of Japan between the ages of 20 and 70. It is thought that VCTrade is the first fully regulated, bank-owned crypto exchange in the world. The exchange offers Yen to XRP, Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and is not currently available to corporate investors. However, with large companies such as Yahoo and Coinbase thought to enter the Japanese market in the coming months, VCTrade has the advantage of an established holding company in the domestic market.
Meanwhile, the head of the Swiss Stock Exchange, which recently announced a digital platform for trading securities, has said that he is open to offering cryptocurrency trading services at some point in the future. Speaking to Swiss Info, Stephan Meier took a pragmatic approach to what he termed “new digital assets”, stating that any such inclusion on the platform would have to satisfy a due diligence process before making the cut.
Coinbase Can’t Decide If It Has Approval To Trade Securities
There was some good news and some bad news for Coinbase this week, with the US Exchange platform confirming that it had secured regulatory approval for the acquisition of three US-based securities companies. Keystone Capital Corp., Venovate Marketplace and Digital Wealth LLC are the firms that Coinbase intends to purchase. Approval of this move by the Securities and Exchange Commission would be the first step towards Coinbase offering securities trading to its large customer base.
So, what was the bad news? Well, a day after making this announcement, Coinbase had to admit that it had not, after all, received any such approval. They had instead just chatted about the proposed acquisition with some SEC staffers.
Altcoins Market Showing Green Again
It’s been a very encouraging start to the week with most of the Top 100 coins in the green. Ether opened on Monday at $450 but had reached $500 by close of Tuesday before achieving a high of $513 on Wednesday. XRP saw its price gain too, with a Monday opening of $0.446 quickly giving way to $0.50 trades by Tuesday with a Wednesday high just shy of $0.52. Bitcoin Cash gained more than $120 over three days; it opened at a modest $724, but was up to $880 by Wednesday, before settling at $829 by close of business that day. EOS was no different, opening at $7.40 on Monday before rocketing to a high of $9.21 by Wednesday. Stellar, as reported, overtook Litecoin this week, gaining close to 50% over three days. Its Monday opening of $0.219 all but forgotten with a huge surge in trading on Wednesday seeing the currency hit $0.318.
There were gains across the board in a frantic early week’s trading. Stellar’s gains were the most noteworthy but Cardano also had an early week to remember, it’s Wednesday high of $0.19 its top price since early June. To see current prices click here.
