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The Bank of Russia – the central bank of Russia – said it’s exploring the possibilities of issuing the central bank digital currency (CBDC) – the digital ruble.

• In an advisory report, the Russian central bank said it doesn’t see the digital ruble as a replacement for cash or non-cash rubles, but as a supplement.
• The central bank, saying it hasn’t yet decided to issue a CBDC, will hold a public consultation period on the matter, saying it considers it vital to discuss key aspects, advantages, possible risks, stages and timing of the project “with the financial sector, the expert community, as well as with all stakeholders.”

Read also: Putin Signs Russian Crypto Bill Into Law

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Enterprise-based fintech platform COTI has rolled out a decentralized crypto market volatility index (cVIX) to help investors assess and quantify risks.

• Launched Tuesday, the cVIX is explicitly designed for the decentralized finance (DeFi) market.
• The index is created by computing a decentralized volatility index from cryptocurrency option prices and utilizes the Ethereum-based oracle network Chainlink as a source for required financial data.
• The cVIX is similar to the stock market’s VIX index, which indicates the level of implied volatility, or investors’ expectations of how volatile the equities would be over a specific period.
• Such indexes are sometimes referred to as “fear indexes” because they often reflect the market’s worries about the underlying asset.
• The index will initially support trades and deposits in ether (ETH) and stablecoin tether (USDT) and add other tokens shortly.
• Traders can hedge themselves against a potential rise in market volatility by taking a long position in the cVIX.
• Similarly, traders positioned for a spike in volatility by employing option strategies such as straddles (a simultaneous long position in both a call and a put with the same strike prices) can hedge against market stagnation or low-volatility period by taking short positions in the CVIX.
• Extreme readings on cVIX could be considered as contrary indicators. In traditional markets, a bull run often ends with record-low readings on VIX indicators.
• “cVIX can be used by liquidity providers who play the role of the insurance company and earn fees in the process. In the event of a trader buying a long or short on cVIX and losing the trade, liquidity providers are the ones to recoup the lost trade,” the press release said.

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The outcome of next month’s U.S. presidential election may not matter much for bitcoin’s price: Economic stimulus in the trillions of dollars is likely no matter who wins, bolstering the largest cryptocurrency’s appeal as a hedge against inflation. 

President Donald Trump over the past week has reversed his opposition to a new government-spending bill following April’s $2 trillion coronavirus-aid package. He signaled his eagerness to strike a deal with leaders of the opposition Democratic party, who have proposed a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill. According to Axios, he told senior lawmakers in his own Republican party that he wants “a big deal.” 

If Trump wins in November, he’s likely to continue supporting stimulus spending or easy monetary policy from the Federal Reserve, given his four-year track record of jawboning the U.S. central bank to cut interest rates whenever signs of weakness appear, while boasting about U.S. jobs growth and stock market increases. He also could push for a new round of tax cuts. 

Related: Bitcoin Eyes $12K Price After 6-Day Streak of Gains

Trump’s Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, has already rolled out his own $5.4 trillion agenda that includes increased budget allocations for education, housing, health care, paid leave and fixing crumbling infrastructure, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Biden campaign has pledged to cancel a substantial portion of Americans’ $1.5 trillion in federal student debt.  

Such expenses would come on top of what already seems like an unending sea of red ink: The U.S. government’s budget deficit for the 2020 fiscal year tripled to $3.1 trillion. And economists say the Federal Reserve is likely to keep printing money in coming years to help finance the budget gap. 

“Because the economy’s hands are tied and policymakers’ hands are tied, the wiggle room that any party in power is going to have is limited,” said Chris Wallis, chief investment officer of Vaughan Nelson Investment Management, a division of the French financial firm Natixis, told First Mover in a Zoom interview. “There’s no atheists in a foxhole. Nobody is going to worry about deficits.”

Wall Street analysts have debated in recent weeks whether a Trump or Biden victory would be better for stocks. What’s good for bitcoin might be easier to pinpoint, since most digital-asset market analysts say the Federal Reserve’s $3 trillion of freshly printed money this year has helped to push up prices for the largest cryptocurrency. 

Related: Bitcoiners Have Trillions and Trillions of Reasons to Ignore US Election

The upshot? For voters, it’s a choice between Trump and Biden. But bitcoin might be a winner either way.   

Read More: Bitcoiners Have Trillions and Trillions of Reasons to Ignore US Election

Bitcoin Watch

Bitcoin bulls are taking a breather, having powered gains for the sixth consecutive day on Monday. That’s the longest daily winning run since August 2019.

The momentum is likely to continue as the growing institutional participation highlighted by the payment company Square’s recent $50 million investment in bitcoin has bolstered investor confidence in the cryptocurrency’s long-term prospects.

Technical charts have turned bullish with the cryptocurrency’s convincing move above the Sept. 18 high of $11,200.

Last, open interest in futures listed on major exchanges across the globe has increased by 20% alongside a rally in prices. Futures trading volume also doubled to $14 billion on Monday.

A rise in open interest and volumes alongside an increase in prices is said to validate the uptrend. In other words, the latest bullish move has legs.

“The probability of bitcoin rising to $14,000 from current levels is stronger than the odds of a decline to $10,500,” Patrick Heusser, a senior cryptocurrency trader at Zurich-based Crypto Broker AG told CoinDesk in a Twitter chat.

– Omkar Godbole

Read More: Bitcoin Eyes $12K After 6-Day Streak of Gains

Token Watch

Ether (ETH): Cryptocurrency rallies after Grayscale (owned by CoinDesk parent Digital Currency Group) announces that Ethereum Trust has become SEC reporting company.  

Zcash (ZEC): Token’s developer, Electric Coin Company, shifts to non-profit status following stockholder vote.

Dai (DAI): MakerDAO’s gambit to restore DeFi stablecoin’s value to $1 peg appears to have worked. 

Ethereum Classic (ETC): Developers on frequently-targeted blockchain attempts “modified exponential subjective scoring” as latest solution for warding off 51% attacks.  

Filecoin (FIL): Trading in decentralized file-storage service’s tokens begins on Kraken Oct. 15, exchange says.  

What’s Hot

Coinbase announces customers can now use government-issued cash to buy cryptocurrencies directly from within their wallets (CoinDesk)

Former CFTC Chair Giancarlo’s Digital Dollar Project proposes scenarios for testing a central bank digital currency, all of which involve distribution “through the existing two-tier banking system and regulated intermediaries” (CoinDesk)

International financial authorities and 20 of the world’s largest economies are establishing official standards for regulating and issuing sovereign digital currencies (CoinDesk)

Analogs The latest on the economy and traditional finance

Harvard research paper co-authored by former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers estimates that costs of lingering health effects could double economic toll of coronavirus over next decade to $16T (Journal of the American Medical Association) 

Chinese exports rose for the fourth straight month in September while imports also rose sharply, signaling robust bounce-back from Covid crunch (Bloomberg)

India has “weak economic outlook,” Scotiabank says (CNBC)

German finance minister Scholz reckons EU economy can recover by 2022 if European leaders work together (CNBC)

Financial and tech stocks buoyed the Australian share market on Tuesday netting 7-day winning streak on signs of economic recovery (Reuters)

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Tennis superstar and investor Serena Williams may have shed her stake in popular U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.

As reported by Business Insider late on Monday, the website of Williams’ venture firm no longer displays Coinbase among its portfolio firms.

Serena Ventures – a company launched in secret in 2014 – first listed the investment in Coinbase in April of last year. Williams also tweeted about the investment at the time.

Related: Coinbase Wallet Users Can Now Purchase Crypto Inside the App

“Serena Ventures invests in companies that embrace diverse leadership, individual empowerment, creativity and opportunity,” the tweet read.

If indeed her VC firm has divested its stake in Coinbase, it may come as the result of a recent statement from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who effectively banned employee activism at the exchange and said the firm would focus solely on its financial mission.

As CoinDesk reported, Armstrong started planning the company’s non-activist position after several Coinbase engineers protested this summer after the CEO refused to publicly say that “Black lives matter,” though he did tweet that (in all caps) soon after. Polarizing political conversations in company chat rooms were also said to have influenced the decision.

Armstrong saw a mix of support and criticism for his apolitical stance following the announcement.

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

Staff unhappy to stay on that basis were offered severance packages by Coinbase, and perhaps 5% of employees have taken that offer in recent weeks.

It’s not clear how much money Serena Ventures had invested in the exchange.

Also read: Coinbase’s New Policy: Anti-Woke or Just a Joke?

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Spain’s cryptocurrency users may soon have to disclose their holdings to country’s tax agency.

• According to government spokeswoman Maria Jesus Montero on Tuesday, the Spanish government is drafting legislation that would force cryptocurrency holders to disclose their holdings and any profits if passed.
• The planned bill comes as part of broader legislation aimed at cracking down on tax fraud, Montero said, according to a Reuters report.

Also read: OECD Preparing Crypto Tax Reporting Framework for World’s Largest Economies

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Bitcoin’s six-day run of gains has shifted the focus to the psychological hurdle of $12,000. Some analysts are looking even higher.

• Bitcoin closed up for the sixth consecutive day on Monday, confirming its longest daily winning trend since August 2019, CoinDesk data shows.
• The cryptocurrency has rallied from $10,500 to $11,700 since last Wednesday.
• According to eToro market analyst Simon Peters, the upward move is likely to continue.
• Payment company Square's foray into bitcoin has boosted investor confidence in the cryptocurrency’s long-term prospects and got the community wondering which other companies could potentially be next, he said.
• Technical bias, too, has turned bullish with the cryptocurrency’s convincing move above resistance at $11,250.
• Peters, however, warned that some consolidation may be seen before a move to $12,000, as the cryptocurrency looks overbought in the short-term.
• “There is every chance we could see a little dip (hopefully staying above $11,000). But the best case is for range play at current levels followed by a run to $12K in the coming days/weeks,” Peters told CoinDesk.

• Bitcoin has come under pressure in the past 12 hours, falling from $11,723 to $11,450.
• With the pullback, the hourly chart relative strength index (RSI) has fallen back into underbought (bullish) territory below 70.
• Patrick Heusser, a senior cryptocurrency trader at Zurich-based Crypto Broker AG, believes there is scope for a bigger bullish move in the near term.
• “The probability of bitcoin rising to $14,000 from current levels is stronger than the odds of a decline to $10,500,” Heusser told CoinDesk in a Twitter message.
• Supporting the bullish case is the pick up in open interest and trading volumes for futures listed on major exchanges.

• Global open positions or open interest increased to $4.3 billion on Monday – the highest level since Sept. 2, according to data source Skew.
• Open interest has risen by nearly 20% so far in October.
• Meanwhile, futures trading volume doubled to $14 billion on Monday to hit the highest level since Sept. 21.
• A rise in open interest and trading volumes alongside a rise in price is said to confirm an uptrend.
• However, upside may be capped near $12,000, as there are large sell orders placed around that level on the U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and some Asian platforms, according to Heusser.

Also read: Bitcoin and Ether Rally After Grayscale’s ETH Trust Becomes SEC-Reporting

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An IBM division is launching a blockchain-based health verification system designed to help individuals safely return to shared physical spaces like work, school, flights or stadiums.

• IBM Watson Health, a data, analytics and technology company working within the health industry, announced Monday its Digital Health Pass would allow organizations to establish their own criteria for COVID-19 health verification.
• These include test results and temperature scans that can be generated for an individual’s pass, and recorded and shared using the IBM Blockchain network.
• Organizations are seeking solutions to aid the return to public spaces, according to general manager of IBM Watson Health Paul Roma, yet they also need to protect users’ privacy.
• The digital pass will use “sophisticated cryptographic techniques” in order to verify individuals’ health statuses while ensuring the underlying data does not become public, the company said.
• Users can manage their information through an encrypted smartphone wallet app, according to the project’s website.
• They can load health results, like COVID-19 tests, by scanning a QR code into the app, which can then be viewed by parties with access to the user’s data.

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The outcome of next month’s U.S. presidential election may not matter much for bitcoin’s price: Economic stimulus in the trillions of dollars is likely no matter who wins, bolstering the largest cryptocurrency’s appeal as a hedge against inflation. 

President Donald Trump over the past week has reversed his opposition to a new government-spending bill following April’s $2 trillion coronavirus-aid package. He signaled his eagerness to strike a deal with leaders of the opposition Democratic party, who have proposed a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill. According to Axios, he told senior lawmakers in his own Republican party that he wants “a big deal.” 

If Trump wins in November, he’s likely to continue supporting stimulus spending or easy monetary policy from the Federal Reserve, given his four-year track record of jawboning the U.S. central bank to cut interest rates whenever signs of weakness appear, while boasting about U.S. jobs growth and stock-market increases. He also could push for a new round of tax cuts. 

Related: Bitcoin Eyes $12K Price After 6-Day Streak of Gains

Trump’s Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, has already rolled out his own $5.4 trillion agenda that includes increased budget allocations for education, housing, health care, paid leave and fixing crumbling infrastructure, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Biden campaign has pledged to cancel a substantial portion of Americans’ $1.5 trillion in federal student debt.  

Such expenses would come on top of what already seems like an unending sea of red ink: The U.S. government’s budget deficit for the 2020 fiscal year tripled to $3.1 trillion. And economists say the Federal Reserve is likely to keep printing money in coming years to help finance the budget gap. 

“Because the economy’s hands are tied and policymakers’ hands are tied, the wiggle room that any party in power is going to have is limited,” said Chris Wallis, chief investment officer of Vaughan Nelson Investment Management, a division of the French financial firm Natixis, told First Mover in a Zoom interview. “There’s no atheists in a foxhole. Nobody is going to worry about deficits.”

Wall Street analysts have debated in recent weeks whether a Trump or Biden victory would be better for stocks. What’s good for bitcoin might be easier to pinpoint, since most digital-asset market analysts say the Federal Reserve’s $3 trillion of freshly printed money this year has helped to push up prices for the largest cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is up 63% year-to-date, versus 9.4% for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of U.S. stocks.  

Related: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Bumps Close to $11.6K; Ether Options Open Interest Dips

Mike Wilson, chief U.S. equity strategist for the Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley, told CNBC on Monday that “no matter who wins the election, by the first quarter we’ll have an additional stimulus that’s probably still required to make sure that the recovery continues.” 

Pantheon Macroeconomics’ Ian Shepherdson wrote Monday in a report that the next relief bill isn’t likely to come until early February, but “stimulus is coming, and the longer it is delayed, the bigger it will be,” and the more likely the Fed finances the extra costs.  

“It almost seems like the market doesn’t really care who wins at all,” Mati Greenspan, founder of the foreign-exchange and cryptocurrency research firm Quantum Economics, wrote last week in a note to clients. “All investors care about is stimulus, which both parties seem willing to provide amply.”

There’s a long way to go before the economy recovers. Some 12.6 million Americans were unemployed at the end of September, more than double the number early this year, prior to the pandemic. And now some health experts are warning of a new wave of coronavirus cases, which could dampen consumer confidence or result in new lockdown measures that might crimp output.

Any costs to jolt the economy out of its doldrums might be separate from the ever-growing list of investments needed to address nagging environmental and social concerns.

According to a report last month by the Climate-Related Market Risk Subcommittee of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, some $110 trillion of investments could be needed by 2050 to wean energy production off of carbon-intensive fuels. That works out to about $3.7 trillion a year.   

There’s also the prospect of costs to reduce racial injustices. Aside from the basic unfairness of practices like redlining, voter suppression and profiling by police, institutionalized racism hurts U.S. economic potential by limiting opportunities “for a large number of Americans,” Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Raphael Bostic argued in a speech last month. A study cited by Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson put the estimated cost of slavery reparations at $14 trillion. 

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has made no secret of his stance that the government needs to ramp up spending to fuel the recovery from the coronavirus-induced recession. In a speech last week,  Powell said that without more aid, households and businesses would experience rising “insolvencies,” which could harm “the productive capacity of the economy.”  

Fitch, the bond-rating firm, wrote Monday in a report that voters consider the economy to be the top issue in the 2020 election, and that a stimulus package of about $1 trillion or more is likely whoever wins.   

If the federal government doesn’t ply the economy with trillions of dollars of spending, traditional stock and bond markets could quickly sell off. And such a dry-up in market “liquidity” might force the Fed to increase its monthly asset purchases or provide new forms of emergency lending. Currently, the Fed is buying $120 billion of U.S. Treasury bonds and mortgage securities a month, a pace that works out to $1.44 trillion a year.     

“This cycle has needed central bank liquidity support on an unprecedented scale, and will need substantial additional liquidity support, if for whatever reason the global recovery is knocked off course,” Deutsche Bank Chief International Strategist Alan Ruskin wrote last week in a report.

The upshot? For voters, it’s a choice between Trump and Biden. But bitcoin might be a winner either way. 

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Almost two million people living in the Chinese city of Shenzhen signed up for a 10 million (US$1.48 million) digital yuan giveaway over the weekend.

• According to reports by AsiaOne, of the 1.91 million residents that put their hands up for the latest test of China’s sovereign digital currency, only 2.3% of applicants won their free money.
• Around 50,000 digital “red envelopes,” reminiscent of the traditional gifts doled out in China for special occasions and each containing 200 digital yuan ($29.60), were handed out Monday.
• The free digital currency is destined to be spent at 3,389 stores set up to handle the electronic means of payment as part of China’s latest test, and promotion, of its national digital currency.
• The Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP), as it is known, has been given no definitive timeline for its launch but giveaway in Shenzhen may signify efforts by China’s central bank to ratchet up its plans.
• One obstacle for obtaining the nation’s digital yuan requires users to open a digital wallet which has raised concerns over how children and the elderly can participate.
• As cited in AsiaOne’s report, an unidentified user said the digital currency was a “litmus test” for the “new economy” with the potential to unseat the U.S. dollar’s role as the dominant global currency.

See also: Chinese Ex-Banker Says Digital Currency Should Replace Fiat Money

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Canada’s second largest railway – a firm founded in 1881 – has become a member of blockchain logistics platform TradeLens in a bid to improve its supply-chain efficiency.

• As announced in a press statement last Thursday, Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) aims to use the platform to create, share and amend documents with other supply-chain participants to reduce complexities in its shipping processes.
• TradeLens will assist CP’s intermodal shippers to share documents with other participants in the supply chain including consignees, beneficial cargo owners, customs agencies, dray operators, and shipping lines.
• “Global shipping is a profoundly complex business and TradeLens is improving the information-sharing processes that support the industry,” CP vice-president and chief information officer Mike Redeker said in the announcement.
• TradeLens was jointly founded by IBM and Maersk in 2018 and is said to have more than 700 million events and six million individual documents processed annually.
• In effect, the platform attempts to reduce the time it takes to process normally manual administrative tasks by deferring those tasks to automated digital procedures supported by blockchain tech.
• Canadian Pacific is publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange.

See also: Oman’s Largest Port Joins Blockchain Shipping Platform TradeLens

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International financial authorities and 20 of the world’s largest economies are establishing official standards for regulating and issuing sovereign digital currencies.

The Group of Twenty (G20) — an international forum for the governments and central bank governors from 19 countries and the European Union — said in a report today that it is working with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) to formalize the use of central bank digital currencies (CBDC) in banking systems.

According to the report, by the end of 2022, the G20 members, the IMF, the World Bank and the BIS will have completed regulatory stablecoin frameworks and research and selection of CBDC designs, technologies and experiments. 

Related: BOJ’s Kuroda Says Central Bank Will Start CBDC Experiments in Spring: Report

Stablecoins are digital currencies that are often linked to physical currencies like the U.S. dollar. The IMF and the World Bank will have the technical capabilities to facilitate CBDC transactions between the countries by the end of 2025, the report said.

The countries will “examine the scope for new multilateral platforms, global stablecoin arrangements and central bank digital currencies to address the challenges that cross-border payments face without compromising on minimum supervisory and regulatory standards to control risks to monetary and financial stability,” the G20 Financial Stability Board (FSB), a body formed after the 2008 financial crisis, said.

Multinational alliances

The G20 roadmap about stablecoins follows a joint report released by seven central banks last week through the BIS in sketching out a transnational front around nationalized digital currencies.

Related: Federal Reserve, 6 Other Central Banks Set Out Core Digital Currency Principles

Last week’s report, authored by the United States Federal Reserve, the Bank of Canada, the European Central Bank (ECB), the Bank of England (BOE), the Swiss National Bank, Sweden’s Sveriges Riksbank and the Bank of Japan (BOJ), outlined properties the central banks would require from CBDCs in their countries.

The North American, European and Japanese banks said CBDCs would need to be interchangeable with existing money forms and resemble cash in its ease of use in a swathe of payment types at little or no cost.

CBDC systems should also connect to legacy financial technologies, settle high volumes of transactions instantaneously around the clock, be impervious to cyberattacks and outages, and comply with regulations and monitoring that apply to money already in circulation and that retain central bank power, the report said. 

CBDCs could improve cross-border payments, counter Facebook Libra-like corporate digital currencies and transfer emergency fund payments to consumers during the coronavirus pandemic, the report said. But CBDCs would not be anonymous and self-running, the report said, diverging from the virtual currencies whose distributed ledger technology they would borrow. 

Bitcoin transactions run on a blockchain network that masks and silos personal data from central actors, while central banks would maintain access and visibility into CBDC payments and identities.

The ECB and the BOJ also stated this month that they were looking into issuing CBDCs. An ECB report said that a decision to issue a digital euro would be announced in April next year. BOJ officials have said digital yen experiments are starting in the spring and called for a concerted effort to match China’s digital yuan, the most expansive central bank digital currency being trialed yet.

CORRECT: 01:50 UTC Changes to G20 from G7 throughout.

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Blockchain technology stands to boost the global economy by $1.7 trillion in the next decade with Asia seeing the most economic benefit, according to a new report by consulting company PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

• PwC economists forecast a tipping point in 2025 if blockchain technologies are adopted at scale across the world, and expect blockchain applications to boost global gross domestic product (GDP) by $1.76 trillion, (1.4% of global GDP) by 2030.  
• According to the report, blockchain will make the biggest impact on Asia’s economy with China, India and Japan driving adoption in the region.
• China stands to gain the highest potential net benefit at $440 billion, with the U.S. following at $407 billion. 
• Germany, Japan, U.K., India and France are each estimated to benefit by more than $50 billion in the same period.
• The report identified five key application areas of blockchain with potential to generate economic value: product tracking and tracing ($962 billion), financial services and payments ($433 billion), identity security and credentials ($224 billion), contracts and dispute resolution ($73 billion), customer engagement and reward programs ($54 billion). 
• Public administration, education and health care sectors will benefit the most ($574 billion increase by 2030) by “capitalizing on the efficiencies blockchain brings to the world of identity and credentials,” the report said.
• A survey conducted as part of the report revealed 61% of CEOs across the world are placing digital transformation of core business operations and processes among their top three priorities.
• “Serious activity around blockchain is cutting through every industry across the globe right now,” Steve Davies, global Blockchain leader at PwC, said in the report. In a press statement he added that the acceleration of disruptive trends in the business world is driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

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Peer-to-peer crypto marketplace Paxful said it’s partnering with BiLira, the group behind the Turkish lira-backed stablecoin bilira (TYRB), and crypto trading platform Cointral as part of a push to trade cryptocurrencies in Eastern Europe. 

Paxful said the move follows strong growth in trading registrations by Turkish users over the past year. Both BiLira and Cointral are based in Turkey. 

In an emailed statement, Paxful said it recorded an average monthly trading volume of over $65,000 in Turkey.

• Paxful said under the partnership with BiLira, users will be able to and sell bitcoin (BTC) and tether (USDT) using the bilira stablecoin. “Bitcoin can be used to preserve wealth against instability surrounding the Turkish lira,” said Ray Youssef, CEO of Paxful, in an emailed statement. 
• Through its partnership with Cointral, Paxful said its web-based kiosk would be integrated with Cointral’s trading platform, allowing users to make payments with bank transfers and gift cards, among others.

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Bitcoin bounced close to $11,600 before retreating a bit while ether options traders are less active than they were in September.

• Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $11,552 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Gaining 1.7% over the previous 24 hours.
• Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $11,186-$11,598
• BTC is above its 10-day and 50-day moving averages, a bullish signal for market technicians.

After a flat weekend that saw the world’s oldest cryptocurrency stick to a tight $11,300-$11,400 range, bitcoin’s price jumped Monday as high as $11,598 before settling to $11,552 as of press time. 

Read More: Bitcoin and Ether Rally After Grayscale’s ETH Trust Becomes SEC-Reporting

Related: Monero Leads Rally in Privacy Coins, Rising to Two-Year Highs

In its weekly investor note, quant trading firm QCP Capital put bitcoin’s technical support at $10,500, with any point above positive for the overall market due to payments firm Square buying $50 million in bitcoin. It has stayed above that level comfortably since Oct. 2.

”Last week Square’s purchase put a nice floor in BTC right at the key trendline and 10,500 level, with their average purchase price being $10,617 for 4,709 BTC,” the QCP note read. “Square’s purchase and effective lobbying of other corporate treasury desks through their white paper will give people confidence that a five-digit BTC price will be sustainable.”

On the macroeconomic front, global stock markets are anxiously awaiting further economic stimulus in the face of an increasing number of coronavirus cases, said Rupert Douglas, head of institutional sales for broker Koine. Equities traders want another round of stimulus as well as a weaker dollar, which supports gold, silver and bitcoin, too, he added. 

Indeed, since Sept. 25, the U.S. Dollar Index, a measure of a basket of fiat currencies versus the greenback, has been flat, in the red 0.01% Monday at press time.

Related: Bitcoin and Ether Rally After Grayscale’s ETH Trust Becomes SEC-Reporting

“Macroeconomic news and markets have been mostly positive across the globe, with equities up 2%-3% last week,” said Jason Lau, chief operating officer for cryptocurrency exchange OKCoin. He also noted that funding rates have been mostly positive the past three days, indicating traders are mostly paying for margin to go long in the bitcoin market.

“Positive funding rates in the BTC futures markets and recent large corporate purchases, for example Square, have also increased short term bullish sentiment in line with traditional markets leading into year end,” Lau added. 

Ether options open interest lower in October

Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was up Monday trading around $387 and climbing 4% in 24 hours as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET). 

Prices jumped nearly 4% several hours after digital currency asset manager Grayscale announced its Ethereum Trust has become a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)-reporting company. Grayscale is owned by CoinDesk’s parent company, Digital Currency Group

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

In the options market, after a record September for open interest on derivatives venue Deribit, October’s volume is much lower. In the first 10 days of September, ether options open interest averaged $425 million. For the first 10 days of October, that average was down 18% to $346 million.

Despite a mostly bullish run for ether to start October, options traders are less interested in placing bets on Deribit, which is the largest ether options venue. Vishal Shah, an options trader and founder of derivatives exchange Alpha5, says a decline in DeFi interest this month may be the culprit for open interest dipping. “I think, without over-analyzing it, DeFi has fizzled a touch, naturally reducing the need for ETH optionality on the margin,” he said.

Other markets

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

• chainlink (LINK) + 8.4%
• monero (XMR) + 7.2%
• tezos (XTZ) + 4.1%

One notable loser as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):

• bitcoin sv (BSV) – 0.20%

Read More: UK Crypto Derivatives Ban Seen Having Limited Effect on Small Market

Equities:

• Asia’s Nikkei 225 closed in the red 0.26% as the People’s Bank of China announced rule changes making it more cost effective to short the renminbi. 
• Europe’s FTSE 100 ended the day slipping 0.25% as the U.K. government announced fresh coronavirus-relation restrictions Monday.
• In the United States the S&P 500 climbed 1.7% as investors were optimistic for a stimulus deal and tech stocks pushed higher.

Commodities:

• Oil was down 2.6%. Price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $39.49.
• Gold was in the red 0.32% and at $1,923 as of press time.

Treasurys:

• U.S. Treasury bond yields were flat or slightly in the red Monday. Yields, which move in the opposite direction as price, were down most on the 10-year, dipping to 0.775 and slipping 0.63%.

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For Coinbase users who don’t want to keep their funds on an exchange, the buying and storing crypto just became a lot easier. 

On Monday afternoon, the company announced Coinbase Wallet users would now have a fiat on-ramp within the wallet itself. 

Previously, users holding their crypto in the self-custodial wallet would have to buy crypto on the Coinbase app (or elsewhere) and then send funds to Coinbase Wallet. This meant people trying to use, say, a DeFi protocol would have to install two separate apps to get started.

Related: Securitize Is Taking Ethereum-Based Securities Into the DeFi Realm

Now users can buy crypto from within Coinbase Wallet without directly touching the Coinbase.com exchange. Users will now see a “buy or transfer” option on their Wallet home screen:

“Wallet allows users in every part of the world to store their own crypto and use popular dapps like Compound and Uniswap,” Coinbase wrote in a blog post. “However, until now, anyone new to crypto had to buy their first cryptocurrency from an exchange, and then transfer it over manually to their Wallet apps.”

For decentralized app creators, the development means they “can build dapps with just one easy app install for their users,” Coinbase wrote.

Read more: Coinbase Now Allows You to Access Dapps on Desktop Browsers

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The Digital Dollar Project ratcheted up its calls for the U.S. to get serious about a central bank digital currency (CBDC) Monday with the release of nine “pilot” scenarios that it said would put a CBDC to the test.

• Accounting for wide swaths of fundamentally different potential digital currency end users (from the rural unbanked to Wall Street’s financial giants), the proposal seeks to game out every use case for a U.S. CBDC.
• For example, one pilot envisions the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, which oversees the trillion-dollar plumbing undergirding U.S capital markets, testing atomic settlement procedures for tokenized cash and tokenized securities.
• Another proposal would seek to “technologically” prove that mobile wallets could comply with stringent federal banking laws even in rural and unbanked communities. Additionally, it would attempt to “functionally” prove that digital wallets are better alternatives to those communities’ existing financial infrastructure.
• Each situation gets a “current state,” a hypothetical “future state” and an accompanying CBDC pilot proposal to highlight specific considerations.
• None of the proposals are actually in motion yet. Such a move would come from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Stakeholders there have made clear that while a digital dollar is being discussed, it is far from a done deal.
• Nonetheless, digital dollar proponents said the CBDC pilots will help prompt more nuanced discussions about digital currency’s specific challenges.
• Christopher Giancarlo, former head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, leads the project, a collaboration of his Digital Dollar Foundation and the U.S. consultancy Accenture.

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Dozens of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are exploring the next phase of decentralized technologies in a bid to put Black students at the forefront of new blockchain protocols. 

“These schools see it as a way to participate in Web 3.0,” said Tonya Evans, chairperson of the MakerDAO Foundation and visiting professor at Penn State’s Dickinson Law School. “We were not participating in the dot-com era. Most of the Black community didn’t know about it at the time.”

This story is part of the CoinDesk U series about blockchain at universities. See our ranking of U.S. universities here.

Related: Looking for a Job in Crypto? Here Are 5 Skills You Need

With many programs being only a couple years old, few schools have dedicated blockchain courses, even as students from blockchain groups have started to teach themselves. But efforts are mounting, according to educators contacted by CoinDesk, with many universities looking to deepen their relationships with the crypto industry.

“On the East Coast, certain majority-white colleges do this with their spare time anyway,” said Ryan Cooper, a graduate of Bowie State University who started the blockchain group at Bowie. “At HBCUs, you have to incentivize this.”

For instance, blockchain will likely remain just a part of courses at Howard University and not become a full-blown major “until there is a killer research rationale for doing so,” said Todd Shurn, a professor of computer science at Howard University. 

Read more: Looking for a Job in Crypto? Here Are 5 Skills You Need

Related: Blockchain Goes to College

Morgan State’s FinTech Center started a blockchain group in 2019 and had a multimillion-dollar investment from Ripple in February of that year. The school teaches a blockchain fundamentals course but is still a few years away from a certification program, said Judith Schnidman, the FinTech Center’s program coordinator. Morgan State has taught the course three times, and students at the end of the course have to create a decentralized application on Ethereum.

“We’d like every university to have a blockchain major,” Schnidman said. “We want students to graduate with enough skills to break into this field.” The university is also in the process of creating a post-secondary certification, which can be done as a minor or a focus in the school’s MBA program.

Inter-campus efforts

Several universities are talking about collaborating to create a major, Schnidman added.

“The whole world is different because of online,” she said. “Even before the whole COVID thing, we were talking about doing a multi-university, multi-disciplinary blockchain major.”

Last year at the HBCU Blockchain Curriculum Development Institute, Morgan State brought 45 faculty from roughly 30 universities who had to submit course proposals to teach new courses or modify a course to include blockchain education. The winners were invited to New Orleans for a three-day working conference to turn their proposals into courses, one of whom was a genetics professor who wanted to incorporate blockchain into his genome projects, Schnidman said. 

While Morgan State already offers a class, the university would have to make many decisions about which blockchains to include before creating a blockchain major, said Ali Emdad, associate dean of the Graves Business School at Morgan State. At the moment, the market is fragmented. 

Corporate engagement

Morgan State’s most recent endeavor is a partnership with Binance US, enrolling 42 students in a crypto trading program where the exchange gave each student $200 in crypto to trade. The students started the challenge on Sept. 14 and it will end on Nov. 8, and the student who makes the most from trading will give a presentation at the end of the challenge about his or her strategies.  

“You can be anywhere you want and work at any hour you want,” Emdad said. “The goal is to inform and educate our students on an area of fintech that is changing very fast.”

Emdad said he sees the project serving as a focus group for Binance US and an opportunity for students to learn crypto trading and maybe join a crypto exchange or crypto startup in the future. Since the trading resembles what goes on in traditional markets, Emdad also said the challenge may be wrapped into future finance courses at Morgan State.

Blockchain, cyber or robotics? 

One of the current barriers to creating blockchain programs at HBCUs is a lack of funding. 

“There are so many technologies that have the potential for impact and they’re competing for space in these student’s heads,” said Shurn, the professor at Howard. “It’s tough particularly in COVID times because budgets are even tighter than they were. … Do you add a blockchain course or a cybersecurity course?”

At Howard, blockchain plays a large role in the intro to engineering class and is a part of the senior project for computer science majors at the school, Shurn said. The program is split between computer science and business at Howard, with the computer science department focusing more on coding and consensus algorithms while the business department focuses more on blockchain workflows and crypto trading.

Read more: The Best Blockchain University Programs Actually Pay Students to Learn

“We’re more interested in blockchain and blockchain applications then we are in crypto,” Shurn said. “That isn’t as relevant to us as writing code behind a smart contract.”

Howard was in the middle of applying for grants from fintech companies and fintech accelerators before the pandemic hit, Shurn said, and the university was going to put on a blockchain event that would have involved stakeholders who could have helped fund the blockchain program at the school.

“Momentum for blockchain at Howard won’t really occur until there is some investment by a third party in a collaborative project,” Shurn said. “It could be IBM, it could be a startup, but it would have to be some major collaboration between some funded source and the university.”

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Despite the markets for both secondary cryptocurrencies and conventional assets buckling under various market upheavals in October, the price of BTC has remained remarkably steady and actually risen in price relative to the U.S. dollar.

Hedge fund Numerai is offering $50 million of its numeraire (NMR) token to quants, researchers and even fellow funds that provide original stock market “signals” into its data clearinghouse, Numerai Signals.

• The startup said its new system will allow anyone to monetize novel market intelligence by sharing it with Numerai, whose data scientists have long crowdsourced trading strategies.
• This can yield higher returns than if the individual personally traded on the stock market signals, Numerai claims.
• One caveat: While anyone can input signals, only those who stake NMR can earn the payout.
• That’s not a risk-free endeavor. A Numerai representative told CoinDesk that up to 25% of staked tokens can be earned or burned per round.
• NMR was trading 8% higher on Monday, according to CoinGecko, however the day’s largest pop preceded the public unveiling of Numerai Signals.

UPDATE (10/12/20 19:32 UTC): This article has been updated to reflect who can utilize Numerai and how the payout mechanism works.

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In the seven months since India’s top court allowed banks to legally service crypto platforms, users and trade volumes at local exchanges have increased. But regulators have said little about the rules for crypto trading. 

Confusion can be detrimental to market growth. So to introduce more clarity, some in the Indian crypto community are pitching a way to let platforms stay active but in a cordoned part of the market, supervised by the regulators – otherwise known as a sandbox approach.

Initiated by crypto exchange BuyUCoin, the sandbox proposes a regulatory framework to bring crypto assets under existing regulations while also setting up a supervised space for startups to develop in the sector. The proposal also involves developing  an open-source interface to track crypto transactions and manage anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) compliance.

Related: Crypto Long & Short: A UK Ban on Crypto Derivatives Will Hurt, Not Protect, Investors

The proposed interface would pool information from exchanges and providers, and funnel it to regulators and governing councils via an application programming interface, or API.   

The draft policy and API white paper released on Oct. 10 draws parallels to approaches used by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the U.K. and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). The framework document notes that even though the Indian central bank has operational sandboxes for retail payments and fintech platforms, cryptocurrencies have been kept off the playground. 

Roller-coaster regulations

India’s crypto regulation has been a bit of a roller coaster. Amid a fledgling market in 2018, the central bank, Reserve Bank of India, banned banks from servicing crypto businesses. After almost two years of restrictions and protracted legal  proceedings, the nation’s Supreme Court overturned the restriction in March this year. 

Rumors of another crypto trading ban made the rounds in September, but no such policy was announced. 

Related: Tim Draper Leads Targeted $5M Series A for India Crypto Exchange Unocoin

Shivam Thakral, CEO of BuyUCoin, said the idea for a sandbox became relevant after the RBI ban was overturned. According to Thakral, regulations are crucial for the Indian crypto market to protect users from recurring instances of fraudulent activity. 

Read more: Investors Flock to India’s DeFi Scene Months After Central Bank Ban Overturned

Compared to the international market, Indian users “still lack in data security as well as personal wallet security,” said Thakral. BuyUCoin’s document also notes that a missing regulatory framework keeps users from reporting legitimate crypto earnings for tax purposes and limits investor protections, discouraging money from flowing into the market. 

The proposed regulations hope to address this by involving banks in the customer vetting process, creating a supervised sandbox for startups in the sector and convincing the government to create a dedicated regulatory body for digital assets. 

‘Helping guide’

Ashish Bansal, director of global application and development tech at GSK, is one of the contributors to the proposal.  

“Though the government is still quite skeptical about all these technologies, they need some organization, some private players or some association to kind of come up with these kinds of documents,” such as research reports or forums,  he said. 

The proposed sandbox approach could help bring some clarity to India’s regulatory space. The transaction-reporting framework proposed in the white paper also said that crypto exchanges and service providers could use the API to examine and report suspicious transactions to authorities in real-time. 

Even though most crypto exchanges claim to follow KYC guidelines similar to the banks, blockchain analytics and tracing services like Chainalaysis and Elliptic have not yet gained traction. 

Read more: India May Be Starting Its Biggest Bitcoin Bull Run Yet

“They are not popular among the Indian crypto industry, and also among the regulators on the other side,” said Sathvik Vishwanath, CEO of UnoCoin, a crypto exchange based in Bengaluru. 

While he expects these services to grow in popularity in the coming years, he said the requests exchanges currently receive from law enforcement haven’t yet required the use of sophisticated blockchain tracing. 

Even though UnoCoin, among other exchanges, reported a jump in users and trade volumes after the banking restrictions were relaxed, Vishwanath said a comparison of leading global exchanges and Indian exchanges shows local volumes remain small overall.

“Uncertainty is … actually the reason why we see [less volume] from India,” said Vishwanath, alluding to the lack of a clear regulatory roadmap from the authorities. 

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