CoinDesk Crypto

The path of least resistance for bitcoin is on the higher side, and the cryptocurrency could more than double from its current value in 2021, according to Bloomberg analysts. 

“Bitcoin will maintain its propensity to advance in price into 2021, in our view, with macroeconomic, technical and demand vs. supply indicators supportive of $50,000 target resistance, implying about a $1 trillion market cap,” noted Bloomberg Crypto in a monthly report.

The demand-supply mechanics are currently skewed bullish, as only 900 new coins mined each day vs. 1,800 in 2017, and institutional participation is increasing. 

Related: OMG Rallies as Genesis Block Ventures Acquires OMG Network

Notably, assets under management at Grayscale Bitcoin Trust has recently breached the $10 billion level, having begun the year at $2 billion. The trust has bought nearly 70% of new bitcoins mined since May 11, when the cryptocurrency underwent its third reward halving. Grayscale is owned by Digital Currency Group, which is also the parent company of CoinDesk.

Open interest in the bitcoin futures listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has risen above $1 billion for the first time on record vs. closer to $120 million in 2019, as per data source Skew. 

Bloomberg analysts said they expect these trends to continue in 2021, as major central banks and governments are unlikely to scale back or halt their inflation-boosting stimulus programs anytime soon. The unconventional policies adopted by authorities to counter the coronavirus-induced slowdown have boosted demand for bitcoin and gold this year. 

Past data also favors a rally to $50,000, according to Bloomberg. “The 2017 advance followed a 2016 supply reduction to 1,800 coins a day, and similar occurred in 2012-13,” Bloomberg analysts noted.

Related: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Lingers Around $19.4K While ETH/BTC Pairing Hits Bull Mode

History looks to be repeating itself as bitcoin’s recent move to a new record high of $19,920 has happened roughly seven months following the May 11 reward halving. Similar price action had unfolded following the July 2016 supply reduction. 

While the odds appear stacked in favor of the bulls, the cryptocurrency remains vulnerable to a March-like panic sell-off in the global equity markets, according to Bloomberg analysts. However, they do not see prices falling below $10,000. 

“The $10,000 mark has shifted to a critical support level after serving as the crypto’s resistance mark since 2017,” the report says. 

Bitcoin fell sharply to $3,867 in March, as global stock markets collapsed on fears of coronavirus-led recession, boosting demand for cash. Prices quickly recovered to $10,000 ahead of the May 11 reward halving.

The top cryptocurrency by market value reached a record high of $19,920 earlier this week, surpassing the previous all-time high of $19,783 reached in December 2017. Prices have more than doubled in the past three months alone.

• First Mover: Ether Eyed as Value Play With Bitcoin Pressing $20K
• Bitcoin’s Price Is a Poor Proxy for Its Utility

Russian cryptocurrency and blockchain association (RAKIB) warned the country’s central bank against making its future CBDC too centralized.

RAKIB sent a letter to the Bank of Russia Chairwoman Elvira Nabiullina saying that the potential design for digital ruble that the regulator seems to favor, will return the Russian economy to the Soviet model, when all the financial activities were managed in a centralized way, the Russian newspaper Kommersant wrote on Friday.

RAKIB said that even the China’s DCEP model, where the banks are in charge of individual digital yuan accounts, is more market-friendly and stimulates the competition between banks. The Bank of Russia, on the contrary, seems to lean toward the model in which it will be a unique issuer of the digital rubles, with all the accounts in a centralized system, on which banks will offer products.

Related: Ruble or Rubble? Russian Institutions Have Concerns About Proposed CBDC

In such case, the retail banks will not be able to add the digital ruble accounts of their clients to the existing balance sheets, and there is a chance that retail users will flee from banks for a centralized digital ruble platform, RAKIB’s advisory board member Vladislav Martynov told Kommersant.

According to the Bank of Russia’s concept, the digital ruble will not be a replacement to bank accounts or physical cash but a third form of money in Russia, which will exist in parallel with the other two.

The letter by RAKIB echoed the sentiment expressed earlier by some of Russia’s banks and financial market players concerned that if the Bank of Russia chooses the centralized model that will put retail banks at disadvantage. They will have to compete with the regulator for clients’ deposits while also having to spend their own resources on the digital ruble integration into the economy, experts said.

• Bank of Russia Fields Banking Industry Concerns Over Digital Ruble Proposal
• Russian Prime Minister Pledges to ‘Civilize’ Crypto Market and Prevent Scams
• Russian Hospitalized After Bitcoin Mining Farm Sets Apartment on Fire

Ripple Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz tweeted the community could force the burning of billions of the protocol’s XRP native tokens held in escrow to prevent the drop in price that would likely occur should those billions in frozen tokens ever flood the market.

• On Dec.2, a Twitter user asked the CTO, “If Nodes, validators and the community at large got together and we agree that it’s better for the community to burn the 50 billion XRP ripple has in escrows would that be possible?”
• Responding to the tweet, David Schwartz implied that majority rule would win in such a decision. “Yes. There would be nothing Ripple could do to stop that from happening. Public blockchains are very democratic. If the majority wants a rules change, there is nothing the minority can do to stop them,” Schwartz commented in response.
• Ripple’s XRP sales have been declining after Ripple stopped selling tokens to exchanges. The escrow account held approximately 48.9 billion tokens at the start of 2020.
• As there are currently 45.3 billion tokens in circulation, a sudden release of a sizable portion of those escrowed tokens could cause the price of XRP to plunge.
• XRP was trading at 60 cents during the time of publication on Friday. The price of the token has risen more than 160% in the past 12 months.

• Ripple CEO Walks Back Threat to Leave US
• Bitcoin News Roundup for Dec. 2, 2020
• First Mover: Short Shrift for XRP Token’s 169% Price Surge as Traders Obsess Over Bitcoin
• XRP Led November’s Crypto Bull Run With 169% Gain

The U.S. Department of the Treasury wants state and federal regulators to keep a vigilant watch on digital asset innovation.

According to a report released on Thursday by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, digital assets are a “particularly good example” of both benefits and potential risks associated with innovation.

The report highlighted the ambitions by nations around the world in their experiments with central bank digital currencies (CBDC) as a way to “enhance the global standing of their own currencies and enable faster payments.”

Related: Why Stablecoins Are the First Battleground of the Coming Crypto Regulation Wars

“Financial Innovation offers considerable benefits to consumers,” the report reads. However, the report also noted should stablecoins become widely adopted as a form of payment then it could upset the balance of the current financial system, warranting “greater regulatory scrutiny.”

The Council is charged with identifying risks to the financial stability of the U.S. and encourages market discipline while responding to threats facing the U.S.’s financial system. The council is comprised of 10 voting members and five nonvoting members which amalgamate expertise of federal financial regulators, state regulators and an independent insurance expert appointed by the U.S. president, according to the department’s website.

E-commerce companies providing financial services, such as Square and Paypal, could increasingly seek to compete directly with incumbent financial service providers. “Their market presence could grow significantly,” according to the report. That these companies are not regulated in the same way “incumbent financial service providers are required to comply” is a matter of concern, the council said.

It also noted that financial stability could be upset if financial institutions outsourced “critical services” from third-party providers where operational failures may disrupt the activities of “multiple financial institutions or financial markets.”

Related: US Lawmakers Introduce Bill That Would Require Stablecoin Issuers to Obtain Bank Charters

As such, the council recommended regulators kept a “proactive” approach in identifying new financial products and services as well as encouraging “relevent authorities” to evaluate the effects those services could have on the status quo.

“The Council encourages continued coordination among federal and state regulators….to identify and address potential risks that arise from such innovation,” the report reads.

See also: ‘It’s Something We’re Studying’: Deputy Treasury Secretary Discusses US CBDC Plans

• USDC Stablecoin Issuer Centre Hires Wall Street Veteran David Puth as CEO
• Libra Rebrands to ‘Diem’ in Anticipation of 2021 Launch

Genesis Block Ventures (GBV) announced the acquisition of OMG Network, which helps speed transactions and lower fees on the Ethereum blockchain by handling transactions off-chain, triggering a double-digit rally in the network’s OMG token.

“Through this acquisition, GBV is dedicated to leverage its network strength, to promote the accelerated growth of OMG Network, and further enhance the adoption of OMG blockchain in Asia and beyond,” GBV, an investment branch of the Hong Kong-based OTC trading firm Genesis Block, said in its Friday announcement.

GBV said that it has been an active participant in this year’s decentralized finance revolution and has partnered with major exchanges such as Binance and FTX. The OTC trading firm aims to facilitate a smooth transition of OMG Network’s team and business from SYNQA (OMG Network was established as a SYNQA subsidiary in 2017) to GBV, in a bid to minimize the impact of the acquisition on the token’s price.

Related: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Lingers Around $19.4K While ETH/BTC Pairing Hits Bull Mode

Regardless, OMG’s price jumped on the news, rising over 18% from $3.74 to $4.41 during the Asian trading hours.

“OMG surged higher overnight in reaction to the news that Hong-Kong based OTC trading firm is to acquire OMG Network.” Denis Vinokourov, head of research at the London-based prime Brokerage Bequant told CoinDesk in a Telegram chat. “This is particularly notable development given the recent launch of Ethereum‘s 2.0 Beacon chain, which aims to solve various scaling problems, while Optimistic and ZK-Rollup have also been gaining traction.”

OMG rallied by over 200% in August as the DeFi-led congestion on Ethereum’s blockchain boded well for OMG network.

• First Mover: Ether Eyed as Value Play With Bitcoin Pressing $20K
• Worsening US Dollar, Inflation Metrics Bode Well for Bitcoin’s Continued Rally
• XRP Led November’s Crypto Bull Run With 169% Gain

Payments processor Stripe is teaming up with banks like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Barclays to provide checking accounts and other banking services, reports the Wall Street Journal.

• Stripe, which processes payments for online businesses and e-commerce platforms, will soon allow its customers to offer insured, interest-bearing bank accounts, debit cards and other cash-management services.
• Stripe’s offerings are designed for the merchants and vendors that do business with Stripe’s customers, and are not retail focused.
• With its new offerings, Stripe is following other digital banks such as Square Inc.’s Cash App and Chime Financial, which have become popular by offering alternatives to checking accounts. Citigroup has also partnered with Google which will allow its users to open checking and savings accounts through the Google Pay app.
• Stripe, however, is focusing on automating business banking, specifically for platforms that have ties to other businesses, the WSJ said.
• “If you are a Goldman Sachs or a Citi or one of these firms, you are watching the fact that new businesses live their lives online,” said John Collison, Stripe’s co-founder and president told the WSJ.
• Canadian e-commerce company, Shopify is an early adopter and already uses Stripe’s banking services for its Shopify Balance. Starting early next year, will offer Shopify Balance accounts to thousands of merchants that use its software.

See also: Stripe to Pay $120,000 in PlexCoin ICO Settlement With Massachusetts Attorney General

• Stripe to Pay $120,000 in PlexCoin ICO Settlement With Massachusetts Attorney General
• US Lawmakers Call on Payment Giants to Exit ‘Chilling’ Libra Project
• Stripe-Backed Payments Firm Raises $100 Million to Compete Against Stablecoins
• Payment Processor Stripe to End Support for Bitcoin

The world’s largest music streaming service is on the hunt for a new associate director to lead its activity within the Libra stablecoin project, recently rebranded to Diem.

According to an announcement, Spotify is looking for an associate director to join its Payment Strategy and Innovation team.

The successful candidate will be responsible for defining the streaming giant’s global payment strategy where they will “assess the payments landscape” and “lead its day-to-day engagement with the Libra Association,” per the announcement.

Related: Libra Rebrands to ‘Diem’ in Anticipation of 2021 Launch

The candidate will also drive “new opportunities and innovation” in distributed ledger technology, blockchains, cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, central bank digital currencies and other digital assets, per the announcement.

In addition, the person assuming the role will also be responsible for Spotify’s global footprint where it will seek innovation in the payments domain worldwide as well as emerging regulatory and market trends.

Spotify is a member of the 27-strong Diem Association (formerly Libra) and sits alongside big names such as Uber, Coinbase and Shopify.

The hiring plans builds on the company’s foray into the industry stretching as far back as 2017 when the music streaming giant acquired blockchain startup Mediachain Labs enabling creators to attach information to projects.

Related: Libra Plans Dollar-Pegged Stablecoin Launch in January 2021: Report

The role will be based in the streaming giant’s London or Stockholm offices and other company locations “when practical,” per the announcement.

See also: Audius Has Big Numbers by Crypto Standards but Can It Take On SoundCloud?

• German Finance Minister Says He Does Not Support Private Cryptos: Report
• From PayPal to Libra: Big Tech Has Forced Central Banks to Wake Up to CBDCs, Says Benoit Coeure

The price of bitcoin is trending up in a low-volume environment. Meanwhile, some rebalancing from bitcoin into ether has been occurring on exchanges since late November.

• Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $19,363 as of 21:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Gaining 1.4% over the previous 24 hours.
• Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $18,809-$19,607
• BTC above its 10-day and 50-day moving averages, a bullish signal for market technicians.

The bitcoin market is back to trending towards bullish territory after a flat Wednesday made it clear traders were taking a bit of a breather. The price was able to go as high as $19,607 but lost steam at $19,363, as of press time. 

Thursday’s even tighter range than the previous 24 hours is a symptom of lower-than-average volume. According to exchange data from the CoinDesk 20, daily volume was at $990 million as of press time, lower than Wednesday’s $1.3 billion daily volume and the past month’s $1.5 billion average.

Related: First Mover: Ether Eyed as Value Play With Bitcoin Pressing $20K

Optimism abounds that more fundamentally positive news combined with market dynamics will lead the world’s oldest cryptocurrency higher. 

“I was explaining to my non-crypto colleagues today that the supply and demand imbalance is just incredible,” said Chris Thomas, head of digital assets for Swissquote Bank. “We’re seeing some institutional buyers pick up large amounts fairly frequently, so the others will also be seeing that [and asking] where are they getting the coins from?”

The dry powder is out there in the form of miner wallets. Their balances have increased over the course of 2020, with Lubian.com, F2Pool, BinancePool and Poolin collectively holding over 33,000 BTC, according to data aggregator Glassnode.

“Miners need to cover their operating costs,” Thomas added. “So for me, it’s clear we’re going to continue going higher in a fairly convincing way for quite some time yet.” 

Related: Bitcoin’s Price Is a Poor Proxy for Its Utility

“I am totally convinced we are a couple of weeks into a bull market surge of as big proportions as the last one,” said Henrik Kugelberg, a crypto over-the-counter trader. “Bitcoin will fly past the all-time high very soon and I would be surprised if we don’t see a $30,000 bitcoin before summer.”

That’s a hyperbullish statement from a hardcore bitcoiner, but Kugelberg also cautioned that wild gyrations are likely in the days ahead for the crypto market. “It will be a very bumpy ride with drops of 20% to 30% every now and then,” Kugelberg added. “It’s bitcoin and the [amplifier volume] knob goes to 11. If I had time I’d try to surf the waves as a day trader, but I leave that to others.” 

Bitcoin’s overall volatility has been creeping upward since October and traders will continue to keep an eye on that metric in this overall bull market. 

While attention seems to be on bitcoin in this market atmosphere, it’s not the only story in the crypto markets, noted Denis Vinokourov, head of research at crypto brokerage BeQuant. 

Read More: Ether Eyed as Value Play With Bitcoin Pressing $20K

“The focus may be on bitcoin and its seemingly inevitable run up to $20,000, but ETH looks to be well-positioned for further upside,” Vinokourov told CoinDesk.

Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was up Wednesday, trading around $611 and climbing 2.3% in 24 hours as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET).

Read More: Why Ethereum and Bitcoin Are Very Different Investments

The ETH/BTC pair, which is offered on most major cryptocurrency exchanges, has been trending bullish on the daily charts by technical analysis standards. Since late November its price has been above major moving averages. This suggests investors are willing to spend some bitcoin to scoop up ether.

Michael Rabkin, head of institutional sales for crypto trading firm DV Chain, says bitcoin is and will remain the crypto bellwether no matter what happens to ether and that this pattern likely reflects bitcoiners will continue to offload profits into ETH during this bull run.

“With regards to ETH and BTC, we strongly believe that BTC is the overall market driver,” Rabkin told CoinDesk. “You will have outlier days for sure where BTC is down and ETH is up but mostly BTC drives the price of the overall crypto market, ether included.”

Digital assets on the CoinDesk 20 are mixed Thursday, mostly green. Notable winners as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):

• ethereum classic (ETC) + 4%
• cardano (ADA) + 3.3%
• orchid (OXT) + 2.2%

Notable losers:

• omg network (OMG) – 3%
• chainlink (LINK) – 1.2%
• kyber network (KNC) – 1%

Read More: Ripple CEO Walks Back Threat to Leave US

Equities:

• Asia’s Nikkei 225 closed flat, in the green 0.03% as investors participated in some profit taking amid gains in the real estate, consumer and industrial sectors.
• The FTSE 100 in Europe ended the day up 0.42% as optimism about a coronavirus vaccine mixed in with uncertainty regarding ongoing Brexit negotiations.
• In the United States the S&P 500 was flat, closing in the red 0.06% as drug maker Pfizer announced it is scaling back its deployment of its coronavirus vaccine, which caused investor uncertainty.

Commodities:

• Oil was up 1.5%. Price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $45.63.
• Gold was in the green 0.62% and at $1,841 as of press time.

Treasurys:

• The 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield fell Thursday, dipping to 0.911 and in the red 2.8%.

• Worsening US Dollar, Inflation Metrics Bode Well for Bitcoin’s Continued Rally
• Swiss Firm Launches ‘No-Fee’ Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Product on Nordic Growth Market

Investors are hoping bitcoin becomes a “store of value” but the largest cryptocurrency is still very volatile, Tom Jessop, head of Fidelity Digital Assets (FDAS), said during the Reuters Global Investment Outlook Summit 2020 on Thursday. 

“We use the words ‘potential store of value’ as bitcoin is still extremely volatile, and by any standard perhaps would not achieve the mantle of a true store of value,” said Jessop, whose company, a unit of Fidelity Investments, offers cryptocurrency trading and custody services for financial firms and corporations. His remarks were reported by Reuters. 

Jessop added that while bitcoin’s volatility prevents it from acting as a reliable way to store value, “aspirationally” it could be one, and “that’s one of the reasons why so many investors are now thinking about this space constructively.”

Related: Traders Brace for Major Volatility as Bitcoin Price Nears Record Highs

Currently, low trading volumes seem to have kept bitcoin hovering around $19,000 after touching its all-time high of $19,850 last week.

While sharp price movements in a market can often scare investors because volatility gets conflated with risk, what’s unique about bitcoin’s volatility is that unlike the volatility index (VIX) for the S&P 500, bitcoin’s VIX  tends to be positively correlated with the asset’s price. 

Read more: Worsening US Dollar, Inflation Metrics Bode Well for Bitcoin’s Continued Rally

In an October report regarding bitcoin’s market cap, FDAS noted that due to bitcoin’s uncorrelated nature the crypto’s market cap has ample space to grow. 

Related: Fidelity’s Crypto Arm Responds to 6 Common Bitcoin Criticisms

“In a world where benchmark interest rates globally are near, at or below zero, the opportunity cost of not allocating to bitcoin is higher,” the report noted. 

• Fidelity Digital Assets Is Hiring More Crypto Engineers
• Fidelity Digital Assets Expands Crypto Custody Service to Asia

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) fintech hub is getting an upgrade.

Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology, or FinHub for short, will become a stand-alone office with Senior Advisor for Digital Assets Valerie A. Szczepanik continuing at the helm. Szczepanik will now report directly to the SEC commissioner under a reorganization announced Thursday.

FinHub has played prominently in the SEC’s crypto strategy since its 2018 formation. Now a permanent fixture of the regulator’s hierarchy, FinHub is poised to take on an even more expansive role. SEC said the shift “strengthens” its ability to adapt to ever-changing financial markets.

Related: Ripple Is Cashing Out a Third of Its Stake in Surging MoneyGram

“Our action to establish FinHub as stand-alone office furthers our commitment to facilitate the introduction of new technologies for the benefit of investors and the efficiency and resiliency of our markets,” said Commissioner Jay Clayton in a press statement.

• US Intelligence Chief Raises Concerns With SEC Over China’s Crypto Dominance: Report
• Pantera Raises Additional $5M for Its Bitcoin Fund, Bringing Total to $134M
• SEC Grants Digital Avatar Firm IMVU Permission to Sell Crypto Tokens

Wrapped bitcoin, the bitcoin-backed token on Ethereum now worth over $2 billion, has seen an increase in burns (or “unwrappings”) by some of its largest users as the Ethereum-based decentralized finance sector continues to cool.

BitGo clients including Three Arrows Capital and Alameda Research are exchanging an increasing amount of their tokenized bitcoins minted earlier this year for real bitcoins as the bullish cryptocurrency market continues to center on bitcoin and Ethereum’s decentralized finance takes a back seat for now. 

“In general, the yield has dipped in DeFi and the increased trading on centralized exchanges directed our needs to do so,” said Lan Gu, quantitative trader at Alameda Research, in a direct message with CoinDesk. 

Related: Ethereum Classic Gets DeFi Treatment With Wrapped ETC

In the months following DeFi’s red-hot summer when bitcoins were wrapped faster than they were mined, the sector has cooled significantly and yields across various Ethereum-based protocols have subsequently dropped. 

Alameda’s WBTC burns are also partially the result of shifts in their OTC order flow and internal capital base readjustment as the price of bitcoin continues to climb, the firm told CoinDesk. 

Another catalyst for the increase in burns could be the sunsetting of liquidity rewards program for leading decentralized exchange Uniswap on Nov. 17, giving users less of an incentive to keep funds on the platform, according to Kiarash Mosayeri, wrapped bitcoin product manager at BitGo. Talking to CoinDesk, Mosayeri said the recent WBTC burns “were expected.”

To date, nearly 120,000 WBTC are still in circulation with over 8,000 WBTC minted in November. A record 4,300 WBTC were burned over the same period, however. Nearly 2,000 more were also burned in the first few days of December with no new minting. 

Related: Traders Brace for Major Volatility as Bitcoin Price Nears Record Highs

Three Arrows Capital, another prominent wrapped bitcoin merchant that burned over 4,000 WBTC in the past two weeks, declined to comment on why they “unwrapped” these coins. The Singapore-based trading firm has not minted new WBTC since mid-October, per BitGo’s wrapped bitcoin order book. 

The market capitalization of wrapped bitcoin is above $2.3 billion at last check.

• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Fails to Reach $16.5K; Wrapped BTC Hits $2 Billion
• Nearly $360M in Bitcoin Moved to Ethereum in October Despite DeFi Cool-Off

The creators of stablecoin platform Terra announced the launch of the Mirror Protocol Thursday, a way to mint crypto assets that mimic the value of shares in publicly traded companies like Apple or Tesla.

“We were motivated to create a way for retail investors around the globe to more easily participate in the U.S. equities market,” Do Kwon, CEO of Terraform Labs, the company behind Terra, said in a press release. 

The new protocol will also bring a new liquidity mining opportunity to Terra’s Tendermint-based blockchain. Terra previously announced a savings account with a yield farming spin. 

Related: Valuing Open Source: Principles for Acquiring DeFi Projects

Known as mAssets, these tokens will track the price of U.S.-based equities in the real stock market, using an oracle system that’s able to check prices every six minutes. Much like MakerDAO, if a stock price were to go up against its underlying collateral, that could trigger a slashing event for a given crypto asset (unless the collateral depositor increases their stake). But U.S. equities also don’t tend to move as quickly as crypto. 

Arrington XRP Capital has invested in Terra and all its related projects. The firm shared an advance draft of a report on the opportunity Terra has entered with Mirror called “The Standard For Synthetic Assets: Mirror, DeFi’s 1-To-N Opportunity.” 

The report notes that in uncertain times there’s global demand for dollar-denominated assets like those created by Mirror. 

“It represents a unique alternative to centralized exchanges and e-brokerage platforms, with 24/7, on-chain, capital-efficient minting, settlement and trading of U.S. equities,” the report contends.

Related: Aave Launches V2 in Bid to Make Borrowing Against Volatile Assets Less Risky

The synthetic exchange Synthetix pioneered synthetic asset creation in crypto. To mint a synthetic on Synthetix however requires a 750% collateralization ratio in SNX tokens, due to the fact that its token is prone to the same volatility as most cryptocurrencies. 

Minting a synthetic equity on Mirror, however, only requires users staking 150% of its value in one of Terra’s various stablecoins, thanks to the low-volatility of these assets. (These assets can also be minted using other mAssets as a stake, but they then require a 200% stake.) 

Those lower collateralization rates make Mirror more capital-efficient, though of course if a creator expects an equity’s value to rise they will want to over-collateralize.

Better capital efficiency goes hand-in-hand with another advantage Mirror creates: decentralized options against U.S. equities. A permissionless platform for options against U.S. equities should be attractive for crypto’s growing retail market.

“The retail investor is at the center of this growing demand for U.S. equities and global equity derivatives. The stock market is no longer the exclusive purview of Wall Street’s suits, whether in New York, London or Tokyo,” Arrington XRP argues in its report.

While there’s no direct benefit to the Terra team from this new protocol, its design should drive additional demand for its stablecoins. 

To govern the Mirror Protocol, Terra has also announced a fair launch of a governance token called MIR. 

MIR will be distributed at a constant rate over a four-year period to users who contribute liquidity to automated market makers (AMMs) trading mAssets or trading MIR itself on Terra’s Terraswap or on Ethereum’s Uniswap. Mirror has specific interfaces for providing liquidity to pools either on Ethereum or Terra’s own chain. Only pools that pair the assets with TerraUSD will be eligible for MIR.  

MIR will have a fixed supply of 360 million. 

Of that 9.15 million will be distributed to UNI holders in an initial airdrop, with the same amount to LUNA holders (the token that enables Terra stablecoins to maintain their peg). There will also be an ongoing staking reward to LUNA holders, as well as a set aside for a development fund for MIR governance to spend as it sees fit. 

Over the next four years, interested users can farm MIR by contributing to liquidity pools for MIR and mAssets on Uniswap and Terraswap. 

Since Mirror runs on Terra’s blockchain, users will need to bridge with Ethereum to earn rewards there. “Initially we are using a centralized bridge of our creation to bridge (called Shuttle) but we should be migrating to a more decentralized bridge called Wormhole early next year,” Kwon told CoinDesk in an email.  

MIR holders will earn a fee when users retire mAssets to reclaim underlying collateral; 1% of the collateral will be redistributed to MIR. 

Holders of tokens with airdrop rights will need to visit the Mirror site to claim rewards. Institutional investors that want to farm MIR can do so through FalconX. 

“The Mirror protocol provides a foundation for people around the world to have greater access to attractive financial assets,” Joey Krug of Pantera Capital, which invested in Terra in September 2020 as a token investor, said in a press release.

• $10.8M Stolen, Developers Implicated in Alleged Smart Contract ‘Rug Pull’
• 1inch Raises $12M to Keep Up With DeFi’s Growing Crop of DEX Aggregators

Storied hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones is betting on bitcoin as the “brand name” cryptocurrency.

• Speaking in a Thursday interview with Yahoo Finance, Tudor Jones said “$500 billion is the wrong market cap [for bitcoin] in a world where you’ve got $90 trillion equity market cap and God knows how many trillions in fiat currency.” Bitcoin‘s current market cap is $359 billion.
• Tudor Jones said he is certain that sovereign digital currencies will dominate economies and finance in 20 years. “Cash may be gone,” he said, “and so in that world where does bitcoin fit in?”
• “I’m going to assume that it’s at the wrong price for the possibilities that [bitcoin] has and I’m going to assume that the path forward from here is north,” who compared the difficulty in valuing bitcoin to the difficulty of valuing internet stocks in that sector’s early days.
• He also compared alternative cryptocurrencies to “industrial metals” that may well have market value in the future. But he’s personally sticking with the “brand name” crypto, bitcoin.
• Tudor Jones revealed in May that bitcoin comprises 1% to 2% of his multi-billion-dollar portfolio.

• Coinbase Has Raked in $14B in New Institutional Assets Since April
• Billionaire Hedge Fund Manager Paul Tudor Jones: A Bet on Bitcoin Is a Bet on Human Ingenuity
• Hedge Fund Billionaire Tudor Jones Says Bitcoin Rally Only in ‘First Inning’: Report
• Coinbase Buys Tagomi as ‘Foundation’ of Institutional Trading Arm

Human Protocol, the backbone for anti-bot system hCaptcha, announced Thursday it will be expanding beyond Ethereum to a future Polkadot parachain, Moonbeam. 

The move also prepares for the addition of a new distributed job marketplace on Intel’s open-source Computer Vision Annotation Tool (CVAT) for data labeling that better serves machine learning.

hCaptcha currently operates on 15% of the internet whereas Google’s reCAPTCHA dominates the majority. 

Related: Kraken Exchange to Offer First Grants for Open-Source Ethereum Projects

“With reCAPTCHA, all that data, all that labeling and work flows within the company versus being an open ecosystem,” Human Protocol Head of Operations Lonnie Kurlander told CoinDesk in an interview.

“Look at Cloudflare to see why some customers chose to transition to us,” she said, referring to the web-security company’s decision to leave Google’s system earlier this year for better privacy. Cloudflare also cited high costs on Google as a major reason for the move. 

Human Protocol is currently live and active on a private Ethereum network, which Kurlander tells CoinDesk interacts with hundreds of millions of people. Each time anyone solves a hCaptcha on their computer, they are unknowingly interacting with the blockchain. A recent Outlier Ventures podcast dubbed it the most used dapp on the planet.

“The [Ethereum] mainnet simply could not support our customer requirements and the volume of transactions that already take place daily,” Kurlander said.

Related: First Mover: Ether Eyed as Value Play With Bitcoin Pressing $20K

Coming to Polkadot allows the protocol to break jobs up into smaller tasks and decentralize the labor markets to anyone around the globe, Kurlander said. Moonbeam then becomes a key bridge between two layer 1 blockchains.

“Every base layer in crypto was going after this team,” a source familiar with the deal told CoinDesk.

The initial infrastructure for the CVAT-based decentralized job marketplace will launch on Moonbase Alpha, the public testnet on Moonbeam, until the Polkadot parachain officially launches on mainnet in early 2021. 

Similar to how freelance platform Upwork operates by posting jobs for freelancers anywhere to apply for, Human Protocol’s job interface is the platform and data-labelers are the freelancers with their own rates. 

An example of a task would be to identify and label the bikes in an image, for hCaptcha or a similar application to later recognize that as an accurate image during its anti-bot process. 

“It allows you to post a job spec, post the required accuracy and as long as someone qualifies they can scan the blockchain and complete the job to get paid,” Kurlander said.

• Why Ethereum and Bitcoin Are Very Different Investments
• What Is Sharding?

Destabilizing Act?
Crypto Twitter, like the U.S. Congress, is largely divided between warring factions and in-groups. But for once it looks unified. All it took was a proposed bill to further regulate stablecoin issuers, the so-called STABLE Act.

The Stablecoin Tethering and Bank Licensing Enforcement (STABLE) Act would require stablecoin issuers – like Tether, Centre or Diem (formerly Libra) – to apply for federal banking charters, hold minimum Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation reserves and register with the Federal Reserve. They would also be required to undergo ongoing analysis of any systemic risk.

In essence, the bill is applying a key component of banking regulation to the emergent stablecoin industry. Dollar-backed stablecoins are a small fraction of global financial activity, though it is a rapidly growing sector. As of October, there were some $20 billion in various programmable dollar analogues floating around the cryptoverse.

Related: First Mover: Ether Eyed as Value Play With Bitcoin Pressing $20K

A number of high-profile crypto commenters immediately issued public comments lambasting the proposal, introduced by Rep. Rashida Tlaib and co-sponsored by Reps. Jesús “Chuy” García and Stephen Lynch.

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said the bill “would represent a huge step backwards” by limiting industry innovation.

“An enormous amount of the innovation brought to the underbanked and small businesses has been driven by non-bank fintech companies, and forcing crypto, fintech and blockchain companies into the enormous regulatory burdens of Federal Reserve and FDIC regulation and supervision is inconsistent with the goals of supporting innovation in the fair and inclusive delivery of payments that comes from stablecoins,” he said in a statement emailed to CoinDesk.

For their part, Tlaib, García and Lynch see the rules as leveling the playing field and could be a key part of creating an inclusive financial ecosystem. The idea is to prevent novel financial instruments from falling into the same exclusionary traps of the banking industry.

Related: Blockchain Bites: Record-Breaking ‘Active’ Bitcoin Users as Wall Street Ponders Mass Adoption

Tlaib explained the mission statement in a tweet: “Preventing cryptocurrency providers from repeating the crimes against low- and moderate-income residents of color traditional big banks have is critically important.”

Many in crypto think the proposed law would do just the opposite: By introducing burdensome compliance costs and reifying the power of traditional banks.

The bill overlooks “two core promises of decentralized networks: the chance to put more power in the hands of individual consumers and to catalyze innovation across payments and other financial services,” Blockchain Association Executive Director Kristin Smith said in a statement.

“Cryptocurrencies LOWER the cost of servicing populations that have historically been excluded from the banking sector,” Meltem Demirors, CoinShares’ chief strategy officer, tweeted. “Raising costs and compliance obligations forces companies to cut access for unprofitable clientele.”

Despite the pushback, it might be worth wrestling with some of the ideas in the document. The STABLE Act raises questions around what exactly a deposit is, what sorts of obligations issuers have towards their users and the novel regulatory challenges around an industry just getting started. That’s to say nothing of liquidity and credit risks.

“Any entity that wants to issue something that walks and talks like money or like a deposit should be regulated like a depository institution,” Rohan Grey, an assistant professor at the Willamette University College of Law (and an adviser for the bill), told CoinDesk.

To be sure, not all stablecoin issuers are the same – and many make promises about maintaining full, or partial reserves that are difficult to scrutinize.

“What is not clear, however, is whether the word “tethering” in the legislation’s name is a pun on the largest stablecoin, tether – or USDT – which is not otherwise mentioned in the congressmembers’ press release,” Modern Consensus Editor in Chief Leo Jakobson wrote.

• EARNED RALLY? Jill Carlson: Bitcoin’s price is a poor proxy for its utility – has it earned this rally? (CoinDesk op-ed)
• ETH EXPLAINER: Ethereum is not bitcoin, and that’s a good thing. (CoinDesk)
• ETH SPLIT: Grayscale announced a 9-1 stock split for its Ethereum trust. (CoinDesk)
• BANK BACKED: Hauck & Aufhauser, a private German bank, is launching a cryptocurrency fund in January 2021. (CoinDesk)
• BITMEX CHIEF: In wake of indictments, BitMEX operator appoints former Börse Stuttgart exec as CEO. (Modern Consensus)
• CORPORATE TREASURY: Real Vision invested 10% of its cash holdings in bitcoin. (Decrypt)
• DARK YEAR: Darknet markets face headwinds and consolidation after a year of mixed results. (CoinDesk)

Looking Back, Moving Forward: Crypto’s Most Influential in 2020
Each year since 2014, CoinDesk has identified the crypto community’s “most influential” members. The community needed influencers to spread awareness, build confidence and set precedents for the digital currency industry to reach its full potential.

These evangelists broke through all the white noise and ushered in a new wave of enthusiasts into the space. To recognize their contributions, CoinDesk launched its “Most Influential” franchise to highlight individuals who moved the needle.

Over two days, Dec. 7-8, a special CoinDesk Live series looks back to the first list and takes stock of the industry’s progress, and zooms forward to reveal CoinDesks’ seventh Most Influential list to recognize the latest pioneers who helped take the industry forward.

Watch CoinDesk Live: Most Influential 2020 on CoinDesk.com, YouTube and Twitter, Dec. 7-8.

Hedge, edge
A weakening dollar bodes well for bitcoin. The U.S. 10-year breakeven inflation rate, which represents how the market foresees long-term inflation, rose to its highest levels since May 2019 on Wednesday, CoinDesk’s Omkar Godbole reports. Growing fears of inflation typically drive both institutions and retail investors into store-of-value assets. Traditionally this has been gold, but this year, people are making their hedges with bitcoin. Bitcoin’s price has nearly doubled in the past eight weeks, and this may continue, as hedging demand for the cryptocurrency may now be set to rise further.

Dow’s data
S&P Dow Jones Indices will launch a customizable cryptocurrency indexing service in partnership with crypto tax service Lukka in 2021. In a press release announcing the product on Wednesday, Peter Roffman, global head of innovation and strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices, noted surging institutional interest for decent crypto pricing data. “With digital assets such as cryptocurrencies becoming a rapidly emerging asset class, the time is right for independent, reliable and user-friendly benchmarks,” he said. 

Fee-less ETF
Switzerland-based Valour has launched what it claims is the first bitcoin exchange–traded product (ETP) without management fees. Listed on the Stockholm-based Nordic Growth Market, the Bitcoin Zero ETP brings investors exposure to bitcoin in a similar way to exchange-traded funds and shares. The ETP structure is a type of security with a value derived from other investment vehicles – such as currencies, commodities or, in this case, bitcoin – to which it is benchmarked.

Staying or going?
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse appears to have walked back comments made about relocating his San Francisco-based payments firm. Six weeks ago, Garlinghouse floated the move, citing a lack of clarity about XRP’s legal status, the cryptocurrency at the heart of its payments operation, and a number of private investor lawsuits claiming said crypto is an unregistered security. Other countries, he said, had more favorable regulatory environments. Now he’s waiting to see what impact an in-coming Biden administration would mean for the startup. Ripple is reportedly eyeing an initial public offering. 

Decentralized streaming
Theta Labs is moving forward with its vision of democratizing content delivery with the beta release of its decentralized video streaming platform. Announced Thursday, the Theta Edgecast platform aims to reward its users while lowering cost of video content delivery by using a distributed network. Edgecast is a decentralized application (dapp) built on Theta’s peer-to-peer video blockchain technology, powered by the Theta Edge Network. According to the announcement, the network currently consists of over 2,690 nodes worldwide.

Open development
Kraken will fund open-source Ethereum development through Gitcoin. In a first for the exchange, Kraken will match up to $150,000 in donations made in Gitcoin’s “Ethereum Infrastructure Tech” category in the eighth round of Gitcoin Grants. Gitcoin maintains an Ethereum-based marketplace to connect developers and donors, crowdfund fundraising and provide opportunities for builders to generate relationships and contribute to projects – all in an attempt to advance open-source tech infrastructure.

• First Mover: Short Shrift for XRP Token’s 169% Price Surge as Traders Obsess Over Bitcoin
• Introducing Valid Points: The Risks and Rewards of Staking on Eth 2.0

An under-the-wraps Swiss trial testing how central bank money can be linked to financial markets built on distributed ledger technology (DLT) yielded positive results, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) announced Thursday. 

Launched by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) in collaboration with BIS’ Innovation Hub and Swiss stock exchange operator SIX, the project looked into the feasibility of using a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) to settle digital assets as well as link DLT platforms to existing payment systems. 

According to the BIS report, the project has demonstrated feasibility for both approaches. Titled “Project Helvetia,” BIS said when using a CBDC limited to banks and financial institutions, a wholesale CBDC has potential advantages although it also raises some policy and governance challenges. 

Related: Bilateral Saudi, UAE Digital Currency Experiment Shows Benefits of Distributed Ledgers, Central Banks Say

Read more: Bilateral Saudi, UAE Digital Currency Experiment Shows Benefits of Distributed Ledgers, Central Banks Say

On the flip side, while linking existing payment systems such as the SNB’s inter-bank payment network to digital asset platforms could avoid the hurdles raised by a CBDC, the findings noted it could also scale back the potential benefits of fully integrating distributed ledgers. 

“Overall, having tokenized cash and assets on a single DLT platform simplifies the settlement of transactions and supports a broad variety of use cases. However, issuing a w-CBDC is likely to require significant changes to the processes and operations of a central bank,” according to the BIS report.

The report added that while integrating DLT into existing payment systems would be a relatively simple approach and would resemble the current system, it would also cut back on efficiencies raised by integrated tokenized central bank money and securities because it would function more like a link than a common base. 

Related: Bank of Russia Fields Banking Industry Concerns Over Digital Ruble Proposal

Noting that the experiment is no indication of the SNB’s intentions to issue a wholesale CBDC on SIX Digital Exchange’s (SDX) platform, the announcement said that different design choices to trade off some risks and benefits in issuing a CBDC would also need to be explored. 

SDX had said in a March report it plans to launch its blockchain-based stock exchange at the end of this year. Project Helvetia, said the report, was the first wholesale CBDC experiment by the Swiss central bank and complements the planned launch of of the blockchain-based SDX.

“If DLT can deliver significant improvements in securities trading and settlement, then the SNB will be prepared,” Andréa M Maechler, member of the SNB’s governing board, said in the announcement. 

Read more: Trump’s Security Hawks Call Distributed Ledgers ‘Critical’ in US-China Tech Arms Race

Because the wholesale CBDC model used for this test functions more like swapping cash for tokenized money, it would likely have limited monetary policy implications. But the report also noted this model could potentially “lead to some segmentation of the money market, which could negatively affect [its] efficiency and liquidity.”

The report said the next step would be to better understand the policy and fiscal implications of integrating wholesale CBDCs into core banking systems and explore their functionality across borders.  

• Digital Yen Would Make Crypto Markets ‘More Lively,’ Says CEO of Monex Group
• BIS Paper Says There’s Potential to Embed Regulation Into Stablecoin Systems

Darknet markets are having a rough 2020.

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on all shipping-centric industries, drug sellers included. Criminologist Andréanne Bergeron estimates that only 21% of darknet market transactions resulted in on-time deliveries during the height of pandemic lockdowns in the spring.

But the virus only accounts for part of their pain. According to crypto tracing firm Chainalysis, darknet marketplaces are suffering their largest consolidation in at least five years.

Related: Industry Pros Weigh In on Rumors of New Crypto Wallet Regulations

Only 38 marketplaces for drugs and other illegal goods and services were operational in October 2020, Chainalysis found in a Thursday report. That’s a 37% decline from the industry’s February peak.

Between exit scams, denial-of-service attacks, falling order numbers and “temporary” storefront closures, there are now fewer online places to buy drugs with bitcoin than at any point since November 2017.

Chainalysis cautioned that surviving marketplaces are still making massive profits. With over $1.5 billion in revenue generated so far, darknet markets have already recorded a record-setting 2020.

Some darknet vendors tried to capitalize on this year’s uncertainty. In April, Elliptic, another blockchain intelligence firm, reported that “hundreds of listings” for discount N95 masks were popping up on darknet marketplaces. 

Related: Chainalysis Sees Raising $100M in Venture Capital at $1B Valuation: Report

Other vendors also veered more overtly nefarious. Elliptic spotted a handful of listings for controversial COVID-19 treatment chloroquine and other purported virus “cures.”

Virtually no one bought hand sanitizer, PPE or COVID-19 cures from these anonymous drug marketplaces, however. CipherTrace followed such postings for a month and found no notable sales. 

Read more: US Government Darknet Drug Raids Seize $6.5M in Cash and Crypto

But the pandemic may well have boosted marketplace revenue by prompting customers to buy their stash bulk. Chainalysis said “uncertainty” could have led to casual buyers to “stock up.”

Chainalysis said the marketplaces’ biggest problem going forward maybe an apparently stagnating customer base. Total transfers are down for the year: only 8.4 million, well off last year’s 12 million figure.

• FATF Needs Entirely New Approach to Regulating Crypto, Says V20 Summit
• Chainalysis Wants to Help the Feds Sell Millions in Forfeited Bitcoin

For those still traumatized by March’s Black Thursday crash, Aave is about to make long collateral positions a lot less risky.

The decentralized money market has rolled out its second version, with several features that should make it more flexible and more capital efficient. The most innovative feature, though, is its new collateral swap functionality, powered by a new and improved flash-loan system.

Users who use Aave to borrow against their crypto assets are effectively taking a long position. Decentralized finance (DeFi) got its start here. People who believed in ether but wanted to play in other markets could use MakerDAO to borrow DAI and use it to do whatever they wanted without selling their ETH. This was nice, but it kind of locked a user into that ETH position.

Related: $10.8M Stolen, Developers Implicated in Alleged Smart Contract ‘Rug Pull’

This new version of Aave lets a borrower change their underlying collateral in a very user-friendly, gas-efficient way without ever leaving Aave. 

“You could swap your collateral from LINK to AAVE, from ETH to YFI,” Aave CEO Stani Kulechov explained over Zoom.

This is especially good if a long bet turned out to be a bad one. 

“Collateral swapping can be a useful tool to avoid liquidations,” the company notes in a draft blog post about the updates. “If the price of your collateral starts to fall, for example, you can simply trade it for a stablecoin so you don’t have to worry about price fluctuations and potential liquidation.”

Related: 1inch Raises $12M to Keep Up With DeFi’s Growing Crop of DEX Aggregators

Read more: Aave Becomes Second DeFi Project to Overtake MakerDAO for Most Crypto Deposited

Of course, a user can swap collateral now but with some downsides: it would likely take several blocks which can lead to slippage, require using a couple applications and probably cost more gas. Aave’s new collateral swaps take shortcuts, powered by flash loans, the Ethereum innovation in which a borrower opens and closes a loan within one Ethereum block.

That way, collateral is now liquid. “You could practically trade it on a weekly basis or even a daily basis,” Kulechov said.

Aave will also introduce additional nuance into its governance system and flash loans generally, while optimizing gas costs across the board.

“Every time Tesla launches a new car, the batteries are better. Every time we launch a new protocol, it’s more efficient,” Kulechov said.

Aave has other major updates in this new version but they will take a little more time to prove their worth, as they need other developers to build atop them.

Credit delegation is now native to Aave in version 2, but it will need other developers to come in and build new solutions to make it a real product (or many real products).

Read more: No Collateral Required: How Aave Brought Unsecured Borrowing to DeFi

When credit delegation was first rolled out, it was done in a high-touch, more centralized fashion, managed in house by the Aave team. With this update, Aave’s well-resourced users can now post collateral and distribute their borrowing power to others in the form of tokens.

A debt token makes it possible for one wallet to borrow against another wallet’s collateral.

A collateral owner would be ill-advised to turn those tokens over to anyone else without some kind of assurance that the debt will be repaid, however. That’s why other developers need to build systems that will provide that assurance and entice lenders to turn over their debt tokens.

“It’s basically a call to action for developers,” Kulechov said. “I think over the period of maybe 12 months this is going to create a lot of new products in DeFi.”

Aave will also encourage other DeFi applications to copy it.

“For us, the big picture is that it’s scalable,” Kulechov said. The more activity that happens over Aave, the better able the protocol is to pay for itself to adapt and grow with the times.

Aave proved that it’s possible to create a public market for familiar crypto tokens to be deposited and borrowed against. Now it’s going to enable other protocols to do the same with more unique tokens. For example, Uniswap and Balancer can create markets where liquidity provider (LP) tokens can be deposited in order to borrow other assets, such as stablecoins.

Read more: DeFi Project Aave Raises $25M From Blockchain.com and Other Investors

Aave was launched as ETHLend, with an initial coin offering in 2017 that raised $16.2 million. This year, it migrated its LEND tokens to the AAVE governance token. The governance token controls updates to the protocol and it also controls the Aave reserve, a fund built from a small portion of interest depositors earn on the money market.

With more money markets, Aave will drive more resources into its reserve, so the protocol can keep going over time.

“Private markets are the most interesting,” Jordan Gustave, Aave’s COO told CoinDesk. These would be permissioned markets that enabled loans against tokenized assets representing real-world, regulated assets, such as equities, cash flows or real estate.

“With Aave v2 it will be much easier for anyone to create markets,” he said.

The new version of Aave will run under centralized control during the first month before governance is turned over to all Aave holders, as Aave version 1 is already.

• Yearn Finance Set to Gobble Up SushiSwap for Its Fifth DeFi Merger
• BlockFi Announces Early 2021 Launch for Bitcoin Rewards Credit Card

Private German bank Hauck & Aufhauser is launching a cryptocurrency fund in January 2021.

• According to an announcement on Thursday, the HAIC Digital Asset Fund will be aimed at institutional clients and hold a number of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, ether and stellar. The minimum investment will be €200,000 (US$243,000).
• Frankfurt-headquartered Hauck & Aufhauser said it has seen digital assets and cryptocurrencies become increasingly attractive to institutional investors.
• The fund managers will take a passive investment strategy while the cryptocurrency allocation will be based on the current market capitalization.
• The bank is teaming up with the custody arm of Berlin-based fintech company Kapilendo, which will manage the secure storage of the crypto assets in the fund.
• The crypto fund is one of the first to be launched by a private bank for high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors.

See also: Private Swiss Bank Rolls Out New Premium Crypto Trading Service

• Banks Need to Adopt Crypto, Now
• Parent of Troubled BitMEX Names a Former Stock Exchange Chief Its New CEO
• Pizza Hut Venezuela Now Accepts Crypto Payments
• Huobi-Branded Crypto Exchange Launches for Malaysian Market

S&P Dow Jones Indices, a major financial data provider, said Thursday it will launch a customizable cryptocurrency indexing service in partnership with crypto tax service Lukka in 2021.

The coming product is poised to become a hub for cryptocurrency pricing data at a time when more Wall Street investors than ever are searching. This year’s bull run is said to be driven by institutions angling for exposure to bitcoin.

“With digital assets such as cryptocurrencies becoming a rapidly emerging asset class, the time is right for independent, reliable and user-friendly benchmarks,” said Peter Roffman, global head of innovation and strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices. 

Related: ‘TurboTax’ for Crypto: Accounting Firm Lukka Debuts Tax Tool for Retail Investors

Surging investor interest “reinforced the need for reliable pricing data,” S&P DJI said in a press release.

Those investors already had a

This is a developing story and will be updated.

• WATCH: Lukka CEO Believes in a Future Full of Corporate Tokens
• Former S&P President Leads Seed Round for ICO Compliance Startup
• Huobi Pro Launches New Crypto Market Index