Appold Market Watch - Week 20 to 24 November 2023
Market Update & Industry News - Week ending 24 November 2023
The founder of global crypto exchange, Binance, resigned as CEO after agreeing to plead guilty to money laundering violations which allegedly violated sanctions with Iran, Cuba, and Syria. In the alleged agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, Changpeng Zhao will pay a $50m fine and resign. Binance, which also pled guilty will pay a $4.3b fine, the SEC charged Binance with various securities law violations in June 2023.
Appold View: A new Binance era begins under new management and faces sizeable market challenges, having already lost market share to rival exchanges. US regulators are far from done as they focus on US-based Kraken Digital Asset Exchange whilst Coinbase fights the SEC forcing digital asset exchanges and issuers into securities law.
UK trade body, The Investment Association, released a statement in collaboration with the UK HM Treasury and the UK Financial Conduct Authority giving the green light for tokenised investment funds. The model allows FCA-authorised funds to adopt tokenisation for redemption and sales in an effort from the UK Government to leverage blockchain technology to improve efficiency, transparency, and international competitiveness.
Appold View: A significant step forward for the British investment industry to develop tokenised mainstream funds and assets. The demand isn’t strong (yet), but this is a forward-thinking move and will allow for some great innovation under the levels of compliance, governance and investor protection expected in traditional markets.
Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International AG announced it would roll out crypto trading to its retail customers by the end of January 2024. The 97-year-old bank partnered up with crypto exchange Bitpanda and will start the rollout in Vienna, customers will be able to access Bitpanda through their Raiffeisen app.
Appold View: Better late than never. Interestingly, where other banks have generally rolled this out to institutional clients, they have reportedly decided to focus on their retail clients first. Santander also reported digital asset offerings, but their focus is on their Swiss private banking clients.
The Belgian Secretary of State for Digitisation stated that Belgium plans to accelerate the development of a European blockchain infrastructure. The development of a public blockchain across the EU is among the four priorities of Belgium’s imminent presidency. The European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) was established back in 2018 by the European Blockchain Partnership in collaboration with 27 EU member states.
Appold View: It is encouraging to see blockchain adoption not only increasing but also coming front and centre of institutional policy priorities. This won’t happen overnight, as it’s not just a matter of having other countries approve the strategy.
