The repeal of the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) crypto ban has driven a boom in exchanges launching in India, offering hope that the growth of a robust local industry will incentivize lawmakers to maintain India’s permissive regulatory apparatus. In March, India’s Supreme Court repealed the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) ban on financial institutions providing banking service to businesses operating with virtual currencies — legitimizing India’s cryptocurrency firms. In recent weeks, Indian startup Tradehorn became the latest domestic exchange to launch, local derivatives platform Delta Exchange announced strategic funding from New York-based CoinFund to expand operations, and new fiat-to-crypto …

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has launched a new Bitcoin (BTC) futures product despite institutional investors showing fresh uncertainty about the future. In a blog post on June 11, Binance revealed its quarterly futures contracts had gone live, with settlement due in September. Binance quarterly futures go live The move marks Binance’s latest venture into Bitcoin derivatives, a market currently dominated by fellow exchanges OKEx and Huobi. Users will be able to deploy up to 125x leverage, with the rollout first being desktop only before a mobile version comes online. Speaking to Bloomberg, CEO Changpeng Zhao, said that user demand had fuelled …

In a recent interview with Cointelegraph, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, aka CZ, has lent his expertise on how to set up a global cryptocurrency exchange and outlined four key criteria to follow in order to ensure success. ‘Global mindset’ is a must CZ stressed that having a “global mindset” is a must, as cryptocurrency exchanges who claim to be “global” often tend to focus on just one particular region, thereby greatly limiting their international presence. “First, I’d say you need a global mindset. Many crypto exchanges claim they are a global exchange, but if you look at them closely, they …

For reasons of vanity as well as for those of industry health, it’s important to have a good method for ranking crypto exchanges and coins. But as the past few years have shown, no foolproof method has yet been developed. CoinMarketCap has enjoyed the de facto status of being the leading ranking platform, but according to some, a string of controversies has shaken faith in its ability to provide neutral results. CMC’s first flirtation with scandal happened when Bitwise published a report suggesting 95% of the volume reported on the website was fake. The revelation rocked the sector, as many …

The Kava decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol officially launched on the Cosmos (ATOM) network, with an initial onboarding of Binance Coin (BNB) as a collateral form. Kava works in a similar way to MakerDAO (MKR), allowing users to deposit crypto assets and borrow Kava’s stablecoin, USDX. The project focuses on providing interoperability to DeFi, and promises to onboard collateral from other chains including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). The initial collateral form is BNB, which gives Binance’s token a DeFi use case. It is no secret that the exchange sought to introduce its token to DeFi, previously being involved with the …

Crypto derivatives volumes have hit a new record high in May 2020. The early generation of crypto investors mostly worked with a hold-and-sell perspective. With the inevitable evolution of the market and the advent of cryptocurrency derivatives, investors with varied agendas — such as the desire to trade Bitcoin (BTC) volatility in both directions, hedging against major market movements, mitigating risks, etc. — began to flock to this asset class. Derivatives are complex financial instruments that enable these agendas but often prove to be overwhelming for inexperienced and uninitiated investors to manage. As derivatives are pegged to an alternative asset …

Top crypto exchange, Binance, seems to be providing trading services for mainland Chinese customers despite the local ban, a report published yesterday by China National Radio, or CNR, alleges. According to CNR, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, has been promoting a website called “binancezh.com” on his Weibo page. Originally founded in China a few months prior to the local 2017 ban prohibiting cryptocurrency trading, Binance moved overseas soon after the crackdown and is currently headquartered in the Cayman Islands and Seychelles. As noted by 8btc, a local cryptocurrency news outlet, “zh” can be short for the Mandarin …

A report published by CoinMetrics has found extreme wealth centralization among many top stablecoins, with at least 80% of the total capitalization for five top stable tokens being held in less than six accounts. CoinMetrics found that most at least 20% of transfers made using most stablecoins are valued at less than $100, showing significant stable token adoption as a means of payment. The report also found that more than 40% of transactions made using the Paxos Standard Token (PAX) are directly linked to a single multi-level marketing, or MLM, Ponzi scheme. Stablecoins show extreme wealth centralization The report found …

Recently, some of the 120,000 Bitcoin (BTC) that was stolen from Bitfinex in 2016 started moving again. Here is what has been happening with this stash of coins valued at over $1 billion. 2016 Bitfinex hack summary. Source: Crystal. $1 billion in BTC waiting to be dumped Thus far, the hackers have moved less than 3,000 BTC out of almost 120,000 BTC that they managed to steal from the exchange. The highest proportion of coins that have been spent went to darknet marketplaces, with the Russain giant Hydra leading the pack with 736 BTC. This is worrisome, as it would …

Following the latest CoinMarketCap update which introduced the “Confidence factor” to rank exchanges, users are taking issues at perceived injustices against popular platforms. A pseudonymous Twitter user going by the name of Cosmonaut called out CoinMarketCap for placing BitMEX, one of the most popular derivatives exchanges, all the way down at the 175th spot. Such a low position would seem uncharacteristic within CoinMarketCap’s new rankings, where web traffic is one of the primary factors. This update comes after a period of several weeks where exchanges were ranked exclusively by web traffic — which also drew criticism. According to CoinMarketCap, BitMEX …

Crypto-powered privacy-focused web browser Brave has come under fire for automatically filling an affiliate link into its address bar when a user attempts to access the website for leading crypto exchange Binance and its United States-based subsidiary Binance.US. Brave’s co-founder and chief executive, Brendan Eich, has acknowledged the “mistake,” pledging that the error will soon be corrected to remove the automatic completion of its affiliate link after the situation gained traction on crypto Twitter. “Brave default autocompletes verbatim Binance.us in the address bar to add an affiliate code. We are a Binance affiliate, we refer users via the opt-in trading …

Poloniex, a veteran exchange that was recently purchased by a consortium including Tron founder Justin Sun, has launched Binance Coin (BNB) and Binance USD (BUSD) pairings. As of June 6, BNB and BUSD wallets are now live on the exchange, with markets for the corresponding pairings slated to launch in post-only mode to ensure stability before full trading functionality rolls out. Binance tokens listed on Poloniex The listings bring support for six new pairings, with Binance Coin now tradeable against Bitcoin (BTC), Tether (USDT), and Tron (TRX) in addition to BUSD, and Binance USD also supported against USDT and BTC. …