The Daily: Bitfinex Launches Tether Margin Trading, Zebpay Resumes BCH Transactions

In today’s edition of The Daily, we feature a number of recent developments from influential cryptocurrency exchanges including Bitfinex, Coinbase and Zebpay. We also cover the latest investment in the field by Paypal co-founder, Peter Thiel.



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Bitfinex Launches Tether Margin Trading

Bitfinex, the exchange linked to the controversial Tether stablecoin, has introduced trading on margin for the USDT/USD pair. As strange as it may sound, offering leveraged trading on an instrument against the fiat base it is supposed to be matching can have some uses. And above all, it signals that the company is confidant about being able to maintain the 1:1 backing, even under new pressure from leveraged traders.

Bitfinex claims that adding margin trading on USDT/USD “will not only allow for more efficient price discovery, but in an important move for risk management, unlock the ability to hedge the exposure taken on stablecoins. Along with a dedicated lending market, USDT will be available as collateral for margin positions.”

The exchange further claims that while stablecoin margin trading is limited to USDT/USD for now, Bitfinex has plans to introduce margin trading for other stablecoin pairings, as part of its “commitment to providing a coin agnostic platform, when sufficient liquidity is reached.”

Coinbase Expands to Six European Markets

Coinbase has announced the rollout of its basic service to six additional European regions, encompassing about three and a half million people. This means that customers in Andorra, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Iceland, Isle of Man, and Lithuania will be able to use the website and mobile apps to buy and sell cryptocurrencies on the platform. And the company also hopes to make Coinbase Pro and Prime available in these regions over time.

“Cryptocurrencies are global by their very nature and we believe that they should exist without borders. To realize our mission means making crypto easily available to everyone, irrespective of their geographical location,” the team stated. “Next year we will continue expanding rapidly into new regions and adding assets to the Coinbase platform to meet customer demand.”

Zebpay Resumes Bitcoin Cash Transactions

Zebpay, formerly one of India’s largest exchanges which recently launched in Europe, has notified clients on Friday that it is now reenabling BCH deposits and withdrawals paused since the recent hard fork. The exchange will also restart BCH trading for supported fiat and crypto pairs in supported countries over a couple of days.

“We have closely monitored the BCH network, it is now stable and safe to resume BCH wallet transactions. You can perform Bitcoin Cash sends and receives from your Zebpay wallet,” the team explained. “We are providing support for the Bitcoin ABC network which is identified on the Zebpay platform as Bitcoin Cash with ticker BCH. ABC chain is leading in blocks, hash rate, total chain difficulty. In your Zebpay wallet, BCHABC will be called BCH, balances will be credited in 1:1 from fork time.”

Peter Thiel Invests in New Crypto Platform

San Francisco-based crypto investment platform Layer1 has announced the closing of $2.1 million in seed funding. The round was backed by notable investors such as Peter Thiel, Digital Currency Group, Jeffrey Tarrant, and others.

The company’s stated mode of operation is to take a long-term position in crypto assets it believes represent promising technologies with network effects, then deploy capital and resources in order to improve their fundamental value and support market adoption. It is said to have a heavy focus on programmable money and store-of-value applications.

Layer1 is led by co-founder, Alexander Liegl, and the team comes with experience from both big tech companies, such as Google and Facebook, and major investment funds such as Protégé Partners and Stanford Management.

“We believe that the crypto investment company of the future will look radically different to status quo, with a clear focus on an engineering-first and pro-activist investment approach,” said Liegl. “Cryptocurrencies, as open-source protocols, offer the unprecedented opportunity for companies like Layer1 to meaningfully add value. This is fundamentally different from the possibilities available in traditional asset classes.”

What do you think about today’s news tidbits? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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