Major derivatives marketplace Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group intends to launch options trading for its Ether futures products. In a Thursday announcement, the CME Group said that subject to regulatory review, it plans to launch options contracts for its Ether (ETH) futures, sized at 50 ETH per contract. The futures options, expected to start trading on Sept. 12, will follow the firm launching micro-sized Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether options in March 2022, BTC options trading products in January 2020, and a BTC futures contract in December 2017. CME Group’s global head of equity and FX products Tim McCourt cited the Ethereum …

Typically a lagging indicator of the sector’s health, the explosion of venture funding in the blockchain sector in 2021 and the first half of 2022 appears to be cooling off after seven consecutive sectors of growth. According to Cointelegraph Research, inflows in the blockchain venture capital market have declined by 43% month-on-month in July 2022. The Web3 sector, including GameFi and the Metaverse, continues to command the lion’s share of investor interest. But, the decline in capital inflows should be viewed in context as the numbers are close to the same period in 2021 when the crypto market was in …

According to a recent study conducted by the University of Technology Sydney, researchers estimated that insider trading occurs in 10% to 25% of cryptocurrency listings. In deriving the conclusion, researchers first sampled 146 token listing announcements on cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase between September 25, 2018, to May 1, 2022. Afterwards, researchers examined the price movements of the sampled tokens in the time interval of 300 hours before Coinbase listing announcements up until 100 hours after the announcement, on various exchanges. The hypothesis was that if insider trading was involved, tokens that are also available to trade on decentralized exchanges, or DEXs, …

John Haar, a former asset manager at financial institution Goldman Sachs believes the lack of support from “legacy finance” for Bitcoin stems from a poor understanding of the cryptocurrency. Haar’s views were expressed in an essay on Aug. 14, which was originally sent to private clients of Bitcoin brokerage platform Swan Bitcoin. Haar previously spent 13 years at Wall Street asset management giant Goldman Sachs, before joining Swan Bitcoin as managing director of Private Client Services in April 2022. The essay explains that not only do people in “legacy finance” fail to understand what he considers one of Bitcoin’s (BTC) …

Google parent company Alphabet poured the most amount of capital into the blockchain industry compared to any other public company, investing $1.5 billion between Sep. 2021 and Jun. 2022, a new report shows. In an updated blog published by Blockdata on Aug. 17, Alphabet (Google) was revealed as the investor with the deepest pockets compared to the top 40 public corporations investing in blockchain and crypto companies during the period. The company invested $1.5 billion into the space, concentrating on four blockchain companies including digital asset custody platform Fireblocks, Web3 gaming company Dapper Labs, Bitcoin infrastructure tool Voltage, and venture …

Around the world, personal financial stress is peaking. A recent study in America found that more than three in four people feel anxious about their financial situation. This is seeding anti-risk mentalities and prompting fears around the safety of long-term savings, including retirement funds. However, that shouldn’t mean hiding money under the floorboards. Nor should it necessarily mean handing over the reins to a low-growth pension fund, which at current rates of inflation, are likely to be losing value. It means being smarter about assessing all options and diversifying. And that requires freedom. That’s what Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R) …

Amid the rising cryptocurrency adoption in the Philippines, the country’s central bank is seeking measures to better protect investors through elevating local crypto awareness. The Philippine central bank, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), wants to promote crypto education as the authority sees a lot of benefits associated with crypto and blockchain, a BSP representative said in an interview with Cointelegraph. “The BSP’s focus is on virtual assets’ capacity to improve the delivery of financial services, particularly payments and remittances services, as it has potential to provide faster and economical transfer of funds, both for domestic and international setting,” the BSP …

Clamping down on crypto applications that “mess with the primal forces of regulation” is necessary, says Shark Tank host and millionaire venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary, who argued that Tornado Cash and similar services are preventing real institutional capital from coming into the space. In a discussion on Crypto Banter on Saturday, O’Leary, also known as Mr. Wonderful, suggested that applications like Ethereum-based crypto mixer Tornado Cash are a part of a “crypto cowboy” culture that shouldn’t have a place in the industry. Instead, O’Leary is of the view that crypto needs a “rules-based environment” in order to attract real institutional …

The chief of Australia’s financial services regulator Joe Longo has raised the alarm over the sheer amount of people that invested in “unregulated, volatile” crypto assets during the pandemic. Longo, chairman of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) made the comments in an Aug. 11 media release for its research conducted in November 2021, which looked into investment behavior following the onset of t COVID-19 pandemic, stating: "We are concerned about the number of people surveyed who reported investing in unregulated, volatile crypto-asset products” The survey found that crypto was the second most common investment product, with 44% of …

According to a new blog post on Thursday, BlackRock, the world's largest asset management overseeing $10 trillion+ in total assets, launched a new private spot Bitcoin (BTC) trust. The fund is only available to U.S. institutional investors and seeks to track the performance of Bitcoin, less the expenses and liabilities of the trust. In explaining the decision, BlackRock said: "Despite the steep downturn in the digital asset market, we are still seeing substantial interest from some institutional clients in how to efficiently and cost-effectively access these assets using our technology and product capabilities. Bitcoin is the oldest, largest, and most …

Two executives at Wave Financial, an asset management firm providing bespoke strategies to high-net-worth individuals and entities, have reported seeing increased institutional demand for crypto products amid the bear market. Speaking to Cointelegraph at the Blockchain Futurist Conference in Toronto on Wednesday, Wave Financial’s head of business development Mike Jones said institutional investment in crypto could be driven by the high end of wealth management firms including Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs looking for ways to allow their clients to get exposure to the space. Jones cited the example of BlackRock partnering with Coinbase on Aug. 4, a …

Despite a massive wave of liquidations on the cryptocurrency market, some companies that sold their crypto over the past few months are not bearish on Bitcoin (BTC) at all. Canada-based investment firm Cypherpunk Holdings was one of the companies that opted to sell crypto amid the crypto winter of 2022, liquidating 100% of its Bitcoin and Ether (ETH) by June. One of the first public companies in the world to ever invest in Bitcoin, Cypherpunk said at the time that it maintained its long-term “bullish outlook on crypto” despite selling all its digital coins. One may find Cypherpunk’s crypto liquidation …