The month of August has seen a focus on digital currencies at The Fintech Times. With the industry constantly changing and innovating, within this article you can find some of the most recent developments within the digital currencies vertical. From a high-profile Twitter bitcoin scam to Commercial Card Tokenisation, we have the latest news below.
DeFi Start-Up, Orion Protocol, Raises $3.45m in the World’s First Dynamic Coin Offering (DYCO)
Orion Protocol, the DeFi platform building B2B and B2C solutions on the most advanced liquidity aggregator ever developed, has announced the closure of one of the most oversubscribed sales in 2020.
Orion Protocol raised $3.45 million in the world’s first Dynamic Coin Offering (DYCO). Designed to greatly reduce the risks of token sales without sacrificing results, a DYCO requires a team to be fully committed to development, transparency, and project performance. If project milestones are not met, or token participants are not satisfied with project deliverables, they will be able to penalize the team by claiming a refund.
Orion Protocol offers participants the ability to refund up to 80% of ORN tokens, no matter if participants held tokens or previously sold them at a profit. Every ORN token that will be refunded will be removed from circulation, while other efforts are in place to reduce supply of the non-inflationary and supply-capped token.
Orion’s ambitious roadmap includes revolutionary trading solution Orion Terminal, aggregating the liquidity of the entire crypto market on one decentralized platform, as well as a suite of enterprise solutions for blockchains, exchanges, and crypto projects built on the Elrond blockchain.
Orion’s private sale closed in June 2020, raising a total of $3,410,000 in under two weeks while being oversubscribed by 300%.
CEO Alexey Koloskov explains, “Orion was born out of the need for an intermediate solution that bridges the gap between the centralized and decentralized worlds of crypto, a mission that has been widely received across the industry judging by Orion’s hugely-oversubscribed raise and extensive partnerships to date. Our ambitions for Orion have always been to push beyond what was currently possible: in what we’ve built to date and in our roadmap I believe we’ve done that, having built a protocol that will change the future of finance for the better.”
The Profit-Sharing Token Republic Note Surpasses $10 Million in 5 Days
Last month, more than $10 million in total direct investment and reservations of interest into the Republic Note have been made by over 6,000 participants, surpassing the initial $8 million target in 5 days, making it the most successful offering in Republics history.
The Republic Note profit-sharing token, created by leading private investment firm Republic Core, allows investors to earn proceeds when start-up’s and private equities that raise with Republic get acquired or go public.
Kendrick Nguyen, Co-Founder of Republic said “We are delighted with the public response and record demand for Republic Note. Republic Note is the first digital security of its kind that will reshape the future of private investing. This brings us one step closer to our mission to make venture capital accessible for all.”
Republic has facilitated more than $150 million in investments into 200+ start-ups and private equities. The Republic ecosystem has already raised more than $10 million for the Republic Note from leaders in blockchain and cryptocurrency such as Binance Labs, the Algorand Foundation, Blockchain.com Ventures, ZhenFund, Passport Capital, Yuobi Capital, SNZ and many more.
Due to the exceptionally high demand, the offering cap has been increased to a total maximum of $16 million for both direct investments and reservations of interest.
J.P. Morgan To Deliver Commercial Card Tokenisation and Instant Virtual Card Issuing, Powered by Marqeta
J.P Morgan, a financial services firm, will utilize the card-issuing platform Marqeta for its virtual card programme – leveraging their unique card tokenization capabilities and expanding its card payment options for its commercial clients.
This new functionality is anticipated to be available in early 2021 and will integrate with J.P. Morgan’s existing systems and enable instant issuance of virtual cards into mobile wallets for their Commercial Card clients.
“We’re excited to work with J.P. Morgan, helping them layer card tokenization capabilities into their existing Commercial Card programs,” said Omri Dahan, Chief Revenue Officer at Marqeta. “Our card tokenization technology powers instant issuance into mobile wallets and can now be integrated with existing card processing capabilities. This opens huge new possibilities for companies looking to streamline payments and provide innovative services to their people. To bring this product to a company of J.P. Morgan’s scale and have it utilized in a new way is tremendously validating of its market potential.”
Virtual card use is a more than $200 billion market, projected to grow by 20 percent annually through 2021, and instant tokenization into mobile wallets promises to change how these cards are issued. More than one billion people are expected to make a payment using a mobile wallet in 2020 as people become increasingly accustomed to this new way to pay.
Twitter Bitcoin Scam Reached Over 37% of Twitter’s Userbase
Multiple high profile Twitter accounts were hacked in an attempt to promote a bitcoin scam. Cyber criminals tweeted from these accounts asking people to send cryptocurrencies to a specified wallet with a promise that the sent amount would be doubled and returned to the sender.
Amount the accounts hacked was former US President Barack Obama, who’s account is followed by more than one-third of Twitters users, as well as American media Personality Kim Kardashian with 66 million followers.
As a result of this scam, over US$110,000 in Bitcoin was sent to the hackers’ wallet, with the scam reaching 382.6 million followers according to data analysed by the Atlas VPN research team.
Rachel Welch, COO of Atlas VPN, said “It became ever-so apparent that any social media platform can get hacked. No matter how many security measures users have in place to protect their social media account, insider threats can still cause a cybersecurity incident.”
Several cryptocurrency exchange companies were also compromised. Binance (1.1 million followers), Coinbase (1.1 million followers), CoinDesk (849 thousand followers), and multiple other cryptocurrency-related company’s accounts were affected by the hack.
Digital Asset Fintech Company the Bayesian Group Launches
The Bayesian Group announced its launch at the beginning of July; a collective of companies operating in the Fintech and Digital Asset Investment market.
The Toronto based group is made up of a collection of strategically aligned businesses with the singular goal of moving the world into a frictionless, digital-first financial future as part of their fintech initiative.
The Group currently operates with two distinctive pillars. The Baysian fund, headed by Kamya Hazaveh, and its Bayesian Markets, a service uses proprietary trading bots to place multiple orders for particular digital assets across multiple exchanges, to boost overall liquidity.
The CEO of the Group, Roy Bernhard, said: “We have been open for business for a very short period of time so, to be already working with some household names in the digital currency world, shows me that we must be doing something right. We will roll out more details on how our services are truly unique in the coming weeks, we believe we have some algorithms and features that are game-changers in trading digital assets.”
The Beaxy and Prime Trust Partnership Creates a Two Way Fiat Ramp for Cryptocurrency Customers
In response to difficulties moving move USD, CAD, AUD, EUR, JPY or GBP in and out of cryptocurrency, The Beaxy and Prime Trust partnership allows you to use bank wires, and eventually ACH, to move fiat directly into the Beaxy Exchange and purchase popular cryptocurrencies with your money. Beaxy will be one of three major exchanges in the world to offer this level of multi(fiat)currency access to cryptocurrency markets.
When any fiat currencies listed are sent to Beaxy Exchange, the funds will be stored with Prime Trust, a United States Trust company.
While Kevin Lehtiniitty, CPO at Prime Trust said, “Prime Trust is excited to welcome Beaxy into our ecosystem. Beaxy is bringing some very impressive transaction scaling ability as well as other state-of-the-art features that will be valuable for its users and the industry. Our partnership supports our mutual vision for the digital asset space as well as the PrimeX ecosystem.”
Prime Trust in tandem with Beaxy Exchange brings the speed and accessibility of cryptocurrencies to the traditional banking process. The process from start to finish is a few easy steps and you’ll be given access to the most popular digital assets.
John “Jackson” Mueller Joins Securrency in Cryptocurrency Move
John “Jackson” Mueller has taken on the position of Director of Policy and government affairs at Securrency, a leading developer of blockchain-based financial and regulatory technology,
Mueller previously managed and lead the Fintech Program at the Milken Institute for 6 years.
This appointment is particularly relevant in the current climate of the cryptocurrency industry, and Mueller’s expertise in global fintech, public policy, and government advocacy represents the shift in the ever-growing and legitimizing cryptocurrency industry.
