Hey everyone,

You may have seen me before through Stratis, Medium or Twitter.

In my Weekly Crypto Overview, I will assemble the important news of the last week and make a summary of it. This way you will have one place to go for all the significant events that happened the week before in crypto. I hope you enjoy it and that it saves you a lot of time searching for all the news. I know not everyone has the privilege to be full-time in crypto, so I hope this is a solution for many of you.

So let’s dig in… What kept the crypto world at hands last week?

Nasdaq / Van Eck Bitcoin Futures 2.0

Coinbase Launches OTC Crypto Trading

SEC charges Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled

Abu Dhabi Bank Settles $500 Million Bond on a Blockchain

Birks Group Partners with Bitpay to Power Bitcoin Payment

Tether Reopens

Amazon Launches Service for Building Blockchains

Nasdaq / Van Eck Bitcoin Futures 2.0

Nasdaq is partnering with investment management firm VanEck to bring new cryptocurrency financial products to the market. At CoinDesk’s Consensus VanEck’s director of digital asset strategy Gaboc Gurbacs announced to bring a regulated crypto 2.0 futures-type contract to the market.

We believe that 2018 was the year of regulation and 2019 will be the year of implementation.

You can read CoinDesks article over here.

Coinbase Launches OTC Crypto Trading

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase opened its over-the-counter (OTC) crypto trading desk earlier this month. In an OTC transaction, a trade takes place between two parties directly, unlike on an exchange where orders are matched between third-party buyers and sellers.

Coinbase head of sales Christine Sandler:

We felt this was a huge benefit to our clients to actually leverage both our exchange and our OTC business.

Read the full story on Coindesk.

SEC charges Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled

Pro boxer Floyd Mayweather and music producer DJ Khaled pumped up ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) without telling investors they were getting paid a promotional fee.

The SEC’s orders found that Mayweather failed to disclose promotional payments from three ICO issuers, including $100,000 from Centra Tech Inc., and that Khaled failed to disclose a $50,000 payment from Centra Tech, which he touted on his social media accounts as a “Game changer.”

Mayweather’s promotions included a message to his Twitter followers that Centra’s ICO “starts in a few hours. Get yours before they sell out, I got mine…”

A post on Mayweather’s Instagram account predicted he would make a large amount of money on another ICO and a post to Twitter said: “You can call me Floyd Crypto Mayweather from now on.” The SEC order found that Mayweather failed to disclose that he was paid $200,000 to promote the other two ICOs.

You can find the SEC announcement over here.

With the SEC going after ICO promoters we should see the crypto space become more transparent in the future.

Abu Dhabi Bank Settles $500 Million Bond on a Blockchain

Al Hilal Bank is the first Islamic bank in the world to leverage Blockchain technology for the resale and settlement of an Islamic Sukuk (Islamic Bond). Blockchain was used to transact a secondary market deal in Al Hilal Bank’s USD500m Senior Sukuk maturing in September 2023. This was the first time that Blockchain has been used worldwide to execute a Sukuk transaction.

Read Al Hilal’s announcement over here.

Birks Group Partners with Bitpay to Power Bitcoin Payment

Birks Group, Canada’s leading luxury fine jewelry brand since 1879 is pleased to announce that they will now accept bitcoin at selective stores across Canada. Birks Group partnered with BitPay to offer its customers new payment options which launched late November 2018, allowing for faster, easier and more secure purchases. Birks Group is the first luxury retailer in Canada to accept bitcoin.

Read Birks Group announcement over here.

Tether Reopens

Last week marked an important step in Tether’s journey, as they launch a redesigned platform allowing for the verification of new customers and direct redemption of Tether to fiat.

Designed with Tether’s professional investor audience in mind, from 27th November 2018, all accounts will have new minimal issuance and redemption requirements equal to 100,000 USD and $100,000 USD₮, respectively.

Read Tether’s announcement over here.

Amazon Launches Service for Building Blockchains

Amazon is launching a blockchain service to help clients develop blockchain networks without incurring the costs of creating their own platform, which is called Amazon Managed Blockchain.

Amazon Managed Blockchain is a fully managed service that makes it easy to create and manage scalable blockchain networks using the popular open source frameworks Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum.

You can read Amazon’s announcement over here.

I want to thank all of you for reading this article and spreading the word. This new world we are in keeps evolving, and there is a place for everyone that wants to be a part of it. See you next week.

Cheers,

Khilone