This week brought more announcements related to stablecoins, with a major Japanese technology firm announcing plans to launch a yen-pegged cryptocurrency in 2019. Additionally, in a recent press release, a Big Four accounting and consulting firm announced a joint business relationship with startup Cred, seeking to "provide valuable perspective on how standards can be enhanced to facilitate a more transparent set of reserve functions, stablecoins and deposit and yield products." According to Reuters, "Tiberius Technology Ventures has called a temporary halt to sales of its metals-backed digital currency and will refund $1 million to investors."
Recently, an asset management company successfully closed an $18 million tokenized real estate offering made through Templum Markets, an SEC-registered alternative trading system (ATS). In a similar development, Propellr Securities, a FINRA-registered broker-dealer, recently assisted in a Reg D offering of tokenized securities on Ethereum for a luxury Manhattan condo development. And blockchain firm Circle signed an agreement to acquire an SEC-registered broker-dealer to move forward with intentions to launch a regulated token marketplace. New research was released this week on ICOs, citing a total of $20 billion raised in ICOs since the start of 2017. Among other statistics, the study reported that 20 percent of ICOs involved fraud and more than 50 percent failed to raise funds.
In Switzerland, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) recently issued Switzerland's first cryptocurrency asset management license, which allows the recipient firm to offer blockchain-based asset management services to institutional clients, similar to a traditional asset manager. According to a recent Bloomberg report, bitcoin's price volatility has hit a 17-month low, while a recent report from bitcoin analytics firm Chainalysis found that contrary to some claims, the trading activity of the largest bitcoin holders has contributed to price stability, rather than exacerbating it.
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