Byte Me

Facebook has announced more details of its planned cryptocurrency payments system, GlobalCoin, and they are not likely to please the crypto community

Bitfinex, the often and rightly criticised cryptocurrency exchange, is in a standoff with the New York Attorney General’s office (NYAG), which has accused it of a $850m fraud.

One of the fondest hopes of the cryptocurrency true believers looks set to come true this year. Real decentralised value transfer systems could be on their way both to retail and institutional banking. But, in a cruelly ironic twist, they will be delivered by the blackest names in individual privacy and financial libertarianism.

Jamie Dimon, long known to be among the mouthiest of the titans of investment banking and the loudest bitcoin sceptic of all, now presides over the first ever cryptocurrency from a major bank.

A few years ago, artificial intelligence was only the hipster’s choice for ‘most important tech innovation in finance’. But AI is fast supplanting blockchain as The Next Big Thing in capital markets. There is a theory that cool things are no longer cool once finance types start to like them. So, in that spirit here’s ByteMe’s guide to the perils of an AI dystopia.

It was never going to last. Bitcoin has ended its three month holiday from volatility and begun to crash once more. The cryptocurrency market is looking for a new floor.

Bitcoin has its birthday on Halloween. Make of that what you will. The shadowy phantom (or cabal of phantoms) known as Satoshi Nakamoto published the bitcoin whitepaper 10 years ago.

Stablecoins are a curiosity unique to the cryptocurrency market and, despite the placid sounding name, have been embroiled in some of the hairiest controversies in the market. And they aren’t even stable.

If you were to accost a capital markets professional in the street and ask them to give examples of commodities, they might name oil, gold, copper, or, if they are also a film buff, frozen orange juice concentrate. Bitcoin might not make that list, but the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is trying to change attitudes to increase its remit over cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrencies have not had a great year. Total market capitalisation of the sector is down 75% from the highs of January, falling roughly in line with what the bears predicted. But that hasn’t seemed to slow institutions’ attempts to get involved.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. For hardcore blockchain enthusiasts there is no end to the list of things that can be tokenised, although capital markets bankers might feel the process is less revolutionary than the techies seem to think.

Venezuela's petro seems destined to hang around like a bad smell rather than drifting into obscurity, as it deserves to. The country's president Nicolás Maduro has made it the basis of his country’s economy. It is an utter farce.

Surprising exactly no one, big beast exchange ICE has joined its peers and entered the cryptocurrency market in earnest. More than eight months after competitors Cboe and CME launched cash-settled bitcoin futures contracts, this month ICE revealed Bakkt, a “global platform and ecosystem for digital assets”.

FCoin, a huge new cryptocurrency exchange by volume, is only two months old and was virtually unknown up until it brought the network of the second largest cryptocurrency in the world to a standstill and made a lot of people very angry.

When bitcoin futures were launched in December last year, there was excitement, fear and outrage all at once. Critics, including the Futures Industry Association, piled pressure on to US derivatives regulator the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission, demanding better safeguards for such products. Cheerleaders may see the asset class as a great way to earn big in markets dogged by low yields but the doubters, of which Byte Me is one, may yet be proven right.

Cryptocurrencies had an incredible run last year, but for them to really hit the mainstream, their advocates should study the sort of old money institutions many of them oppose: central banks.

The minefield of what a cryptocurrency is might have been able to remain comfortably in the realms of the philosophical, if it were not for the relentlessly grounded and literal approach of the US Internal Revenue Service.

Welcome to ByteMe, GlobalCapital’s new column, providing an informed, critical and irreverent take on the newest and biggest issues in technology — specifically the bits of it involved in moving money around.