Thrilling market news, CSD explained, SEPA back online, and much more in This Week in Crypto!

Crypto Market News Highlights

1) South Korean parliament passes a historic bill making cryptocurrency trading legal

It was never actually illegal. They want to be able to apply regulation, and to eventually apply tax. So, they wrote it into the law that trading is now basically akin to any other type of financial trading, which would require reporting, regulations, licensing, oversight, and so on.

This isn’t a groundbreaking news story, it’s just South Korea going “they’ve been doing this here for a while, maybe we should actually make sure they are doing it correctly”.

2) BitMEX gets reprimand from UK’s financial regulator

It was bound to happen. Someone was asking “why now” — well, why not? They are promoting a regulated financial product directly into a country without authorization.

They have probably gotten Cease and Desist letters before. Same as the famous 2-3 month period where Binance, BitMEX and others stopped accepting US clients because they received letters from the US governments.

This is a bit more public, but Kevin expects this to continue. 2020 is the year of regulation.

3) Indian Crypto Exchanges Resume Fiat Services 24 Hours After Supreme Court Ruling

Cool. This is actually a ruling that was expected, but has much broader implications on the industry than the South Korea ruling. India had a lot of issues. Now almost 2 billion people have access to what will become a regulated market place.

Check out our Medium post to read more crypto market news!

Live Questions

Marketing team news?

We just had someone here for an interview now. We had a great candidate interviewed yesterday. Four or five candidates for different positions. An announcement next week or the week after on the structuring of the team.

When will the marketing guy(s) actually join?



Notice period in Estonia is 30 days. Most of the time, they will start doing something before the 30 days. At least some planning.

Had some new clients lately?

Yes, new clients come in every day.

Any news on additional currencies?

Kevin expects additional currencies to hit our marketplace over the next 2 months.

Does CoinMetro use any kind of bot to keep the XCM price in a certain range?

No, we do not.

What about using XCM as a collateral in TraMs with a ratio of 3:1?

Still on the table, but not 100% decided yet. We will get there eventually, that’s for sure.

Follow a TraM today using Bitcoin or Euro, as a passive investment!

Have the new devs started developing for CoinMetro? What will they be working on?

Two devs so far, probably moving up to three before the end of the month. Their first task is cleaning up the code base, and they will become familiar with that while doing it. The Dashboard remodel is also being worked on.

Where are the new public TraMs?

They are coming. We have one supposed to go public, and another one in the works. Some TraM updates are waiting to be pushed first.

Interested in making your own TraM public? Contact us for a review process at hello@coinmetro.com.

New IEOs?

We haven’t put as much attention on the IEO scene yet. Our focus is more on issuances in Montenegro with regulated tokens — probably bonds to begin with, and then equities. That will in a way become the new “CoinMetro Direct Platform”, which will be more about getting real companies natively tokenized.

When are you increasing margin to 5x?

As soon as we can. It’s something that we want to do, but we have had other priorities. We will need to look back at the numbers and see what the risk is for us to do that. Kevin thinks that the risk is remedial, and we haven’t seen any real substantial risk in terms of negative balances at the current level.

Trade with up to 3x leverage on CoinMetro’s Margin Platform.

You don’t add coins because no one is trading them, but isn’t it a good thing to have more coins for marketing to attract new people?

Yes and no. We don’t know what people want to trade. Part of what marketing will need to do is get in touch with communities. Like how we got in touch with the Quant community. Getting in touch with communities, and on the back of that, list the token and bringing over the community, is a great way to get new listings. Or when people proactively come to us, which has happened, but we haven’t been able to list them.

A list of CoinMetro’s supported cryptocurrencies.

Overall trading volume isn’t going anywhere.

We haven’t done any marketing. For doing no marketing, and still being here after 2 years, and still pushing product updates and everything, is an achievement in itself. We are definitely on the right path. Looking at volume every day is like watching paint dry.

Kevin is focused on what will get us to the point where we won’t be looking at volume every day.

When would you consider a market liquid?

That’s a good question. It’s relative. If you are buying and selling 1 Bitcoin every weekend, the market is already liquid for you. If you are a pension fund or an endowment that wants to buy $50b worth of Bitcoin, good luck.

If we compare it with the bond market, you need to have a significantly higher capitalization of the market. The bond market in the US alone is $100t. Crypto hasn’t even touched $1t.

How is the Montenegro sandbox coming along?

Coming along great. As of last week, applications are fully in for both companies. We are awaiting feedback. Still on deadline for the 23rd of March for the CSD to be fully ready to go into that sandbox. We are currently working on the first issuances.

For how long can CoinMetro survive before needing more funding/becoming sustainable?

About 7-8 months. We initially had a 5 million target, we raised 1.4 million. So we still have more to raise, on this current round. We will start to push to raise that, which will allow us to expand down many avenues that we need to expand down, licensing being one of them.

What’s the strategy on raising the rest of the 3.6m?

It’s the same as always. Angel investors, possibly some smaller VCs. Our current investors have a bit more appetite. We have some other prospects, and we will start rolling out some documentation of those prospects over the next 6-8 weeks.

Do you think you’ll be profitable this year?

Not the immediate goal to become profitable this year. The goal is to become as self-sustaining as we can be. Could we become profitable? Theoretically, yes. But Kevin expects that we will be in some percentage of self-sustainability before the end of the year.

Are you going to Pakistan this month?



No travel plans, but if Kevin was invited, he would go. The mid-March conference scheduled for mid-March was moved.

How many companies are lined up for issuing the CSD?

In talks with several.

Why is it taking so long to add new assets?

The reason why it’s taking so long is because we stopped submitting new listings, because the bank was supposedly working on the self-assessment guideline. They haven’t finished it yet.

Another reason as to why we stopped submitting is that previously, there was a lot of hype for new assets. We listed them. No one traded them.

So, not much reason to add more assets yet. We are waiting for the bank. It’s not taking longer for approval.

However, Kevin expects that within 60 days, CoinMetro will be able to list new assets at the speed we want to.

“ Kevin Explains Crypto ” Term: CSD

Not crypto related, but we are trying to change that.

CSD is an acronym for “Central Securities Depository”. In crypto, you usually go to an exchange — let’s say CoinMetro. You deposit money or crypto, exchange it on the platform, and then you withdraw. So you are trading. Then you buy a Bitcoin and the other guy gets cash — the act of moving funds between those accounts/ledgers/wallets, is called settlement.

In normal regulated capital markets, trading happens at a trading venue, and settlement happens at a settlement venue. No money is deposited at the trading venue. The money is actually sitting at CSD. The CSD moves the money and the asset, and does the settlement. The actual order book and cute platform with buttons and charts, that happens at the trading venue.

So, a CSD is the place where settlement happens, inside a capital market infrastructure. Simple as that. The reason why capital markets don’t function as they should, is because there is no global infrastructure for settlement. If you had a global settlement infrastructure, then all those connected trading platforms all around the world, could settle in real time.

This is what is missing for a truly streamlined capital infrastructure. Blockchain or no blockchain.

Interested in learning more? Have a look at the video where Kevin explains “CSD”:

Listen to Last Week’s TWiC on the Go

Get the complete scoop by tuning in to our audio version of last week’s TWiC on SoundCloud. Happy listening!

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That’s a wrap for this week’s AMA with CoinMetro Founder Kevin Murcko! Please join us next week on CoinMetro’s Facebook and YouTube Channel at 1 PM (UTC) for another round and make sure you submit your questions to the CoinMetro subReddit!

As always, we’re available to answer any questions you may have on our Telegram Group 24/7. You can also find CoinMetro on other channels: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Medium, Reddit, LinkedIn, and YouTube.