Digital cash not on RBA agenda
The Reserve Bank has poured cold water on the idea of a digital Australian dollar, with head of payments policy Tony Richards declaring the demand isn’t there. A group of Australian fintech start-ups through industry body FinTech Australia last year wrote a letter to the RBA calling for a new digital currency, known as the ‘DAD’ or Digital Australian Dollar. “A centrally issued Digital Australian Dollar, backed by fiat [physical] currency, would enable payments to be made between participants in real time and 24/7 along the supply chain,” AgriDigital co-founder Emma Weston said last year. Meanwhile Othera CEO John Pellew said in the letter a ‘DAD’ would help his company […]
How real is the competition to Bitcoin?
Cryptocurrencies continue to take the world by storm, with values increasing and new products entering the market all the time. While Bitcoin is still the world’s biggest digital currency, it faces serious competition from Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Ripple just to name a few. The rise of cryptocurrencies has been called the biggest evolution of the financial system in history, as decentralised exchanges and blockchain technology continue to change how the world views money. While no-one knows exactly what’s in store for the crypto market for the remainder of 2018, the trending markets seen in 2017 seem to be consolidating into trading ranges across time scales. The entire cryptocurrency market […]
The crypto community isn’t happy with a negative report by the ‘bank for central banks’
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has weighed in on the crypto debate, and it was less than positive. The aim of the BIS is to foster global financial stability, and it’s owned by 60 central banks across the world. In that sense, the BIS also describes itself as the bank for central banks. Given that one of the stated aims of crypto is to disrupt the status quo of centrally controlled currencies, it’s perhaps not surprising that the BIS was critical. The report said crypto networks get less efficient the bigger they get. Along with scaling issues, they’re also volatile and subject to stability threats due to forks. […]
Bitcoin futures could be hurting bitcoin’s price
A Wall Street analyst known for his bullish stance on bitcoin has flagged the possibility that bitcoin futures contracts could be hurting the cryptocurrency’s price. Bloomberg reports that Tom Lee, the cofounder of the research firm Fundstrat, said in a note last week that bitcoin futures contracts could be behind bitcoin’s recent “gut-wrenching” price declines. Lee said in his report that there was “significant volatility” in bitcoin’s price around the expiration date of CME Group and Cboe futures contracts. Both CME Group and Cboe launched bitcoin futures products in December, when bitcoin was trading close to record highs of about $US20,000. Bitcoin has tumbled since then. Bitcoin was down 0.35% […]
Loyalty survey finds millennials more keen for crypto than loyalty points
The sixth annual ‘For Love or Money’ study revealed that Millennial consumers are more interested in cryptocurrency than loyalty points. Commissioned by The Point of Loyalty, this year’s instalment of the report found that 36% of loyalty program members would rather be rewarded in cryptocurrency over traditional points systems. This sentiment was represented even stronger among Millennial consumers, with over half (55%) expressing their enthusiasm for blockchain technology to replace conventional reward systems. “With cryptocurency being a topic of intense conversation these days, I was keen to understand consumers’ and specifically loyalty program members’ attitude towards being rewarded in these digital currencies,” says CEO of The Point of Loyalty, Adam […]
SendGold signs major platform deal for Gold-as-a-Service
Sydney-based SendGold have digitised gold to enable their customer network to buy, sell, and exchange gold instantly as peer-to-peer money across 8 countries in the Asia-Pac region. Now the company have announced they have signed an agreement to enter the rewards market with the world’s largest cloud-based loyalty platform. Toronto-based Global Rewards Solutions (GRS) provide a loyalty platform that is used by millions of members globally, including employees of a number of Fortune 500 companies. The deal announced with SendGold will let their loyalty program members instantly exchange their points for gold bullion directly inside the GRS application. The capability went live in Australia this week and a phased rollout […]
CoinJar opens the trading floor with Australia’s fastest digital currency exchange
Australian cryptocurrency company CoinJar, has launched its new high-speed digital currency trading platform, CoinJar Exchange. The exchange is the fastest in Australia, and will allow cryptocurrency traders to trade Bitcoin and Australian Dollars against popular cryptocurrencies Ethereum, Litecoin and Ripple. CoinJar Exchange boasts a superior trading engine which processes and fills orders faster than any of its competitors in Australia. This reduces latency and provides sophisticated and retail traders with a faster experience when trading using the CoinJar Exchange. Integration with buy and sell orders from other exchanges will provide greater market liquidity, allowing CoinJar traders to enter and exit with ease. The exchange also has an open trading application […]
Virtual currency sales jump in 2018
But results skewed by two big token sales. Virtual currency sales ballooned to US$9.1 billion ($11.9 billion) so far this year, exceeding the US$6.6 billion total for all of 2017, new numbers show. But the monthly trend actually showed a slowdown if the two biggest offerings are excluded. Digital technology startups around the world have raised funds by selling cryptocurrencies, or tokens, that sidestep banks or venture capital firms as intermediaries. Financial technology provider Autonomous NEXT reported the US$9.1 billion figure, noting that the total includes token sale offerings of Telegram, a messaging service founded by Russia-born entrepreneurs Pavel and Nikolai Durov in 2013, and Block.one’s EOS currency. Telegram raised […]
