Boerse Stuttgart’s Crypto Arm Aims at New Institutional Investors + More News

Crypto Briefs is your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptocurrency and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.

Adoption news

• Blocknox, a subsidiary of the second-largest German stock exchange Boerse Stuttgart, will offer cryptocurrency custody for institutions. According to the announcement, Blocknox provides custody for crypto assets on an “escrow basis” and now plans to offer custody services for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets for institutional clients such as fintechs, banks, and asset managers. The company claims that thanks to the new legal regulation of crypto custody in Germany more institutional players are likely to enter the crypto market.
• A survey of 1,500 Swiss residents conducted by the market research institute Intervista on behalf of Migros Bank found that 7% of respondents between the ages of 18 and 55 have cryptos in their portfolio. Among the youngest group of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29, 13% said that bitcoin and other cryptos will become even more important for them in the future. 7% of those aged 30 to 55 plan to continue to invest in cryptocurrencies in the future. Only 0.5% of respondents over 55 believe in the long-term growth of digital money, and only 1 in 100 own a cryptocurrency.
• The South Korean central bank, the Bank of Korea, will pilot a blockchain-powered bond issuance platform, reports Fn News. The bank says it is now conducting a Proof-of-Concept (POC) test, and says the project is linked to its latest research on digital currency. The pilot will involve comprehensive bond management conducted on the blockchain platform, which will help conduct the entire process: from issuance to settlement. The bank recently announced that it was forming a CBDC unit, which will look into the potential benefits of issuing a digital fiat.
• The Enjin Platform (ENJ), a game development platform and a suite of tools and services based on a web interface that natively supports Ethereum’s ERC-1155 token standard, is now live on Ethereum mainnet, said Enjin. It added that the platform can be integrated both with new and existing games, while enabling game engineers to take advantage of decentralized inventory, integrate blockchain-based gaming and non-gaming assets, and manage economic gameplay mechanics.
• Decentralized gaming ecosystem The Sandbox said that their second LAND (virtual spaces in the game built on Ethereum) presale round has been sold out in just a couple of hours, with almost 90% LANDS sold in the first hour. 6,192 LANDS (or c. 5% of the total amount of LAND parcels in the entire game world) were sold to 418 users this time for some ETH 800 (USD 211,200), while in the first sale in December 2019, more than 3,000 pieces of LAND were sold in c. four hours.

Regulation news

• The Spanish parliament looks set to approve the Treasury’s sweeping crypto regulation plans. Per La Vanguardia, the Treasury wants to force all citizens to inform the government if they are in possession of or make use of cryptoassets. The Treasury wants to speed up the plan’s progress through parliament. The measures would require Spaniards to report on all of their crypto activities, including acquisition, exchange, transfer, balance and payments-related data.
• The CEO of Cryptobuyer, one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in Venezuela, says that new tax laws could curb crypto industry growth. Caracas has unveiled plans to place 5%-25% VAT on transactions using cryptocurrencies (other than the state-issued Petro) and foreign currencies. But the Cryptobuyer chief says, per El National, that the decision “could boost an increase in tax evasion,” as many businesses would choose “not to register payments made in cryptocurrencies.”
• The leader of the Crimean government has appointed Victoria Bilan, the former regional head of the Russian Association of Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain as its new Deputy Head of the Ministry for Economic Development, reports Russian news agency RIA. Crimean government officials have previously spoken about boosting crypto-related business in the region in a bid to bypass United States sanctions on companies operating in the Crimean Peninsula that was annexed by Russia in 2014.

Exchanges news

• South Korean exchange Korbit will begin a “lecture tour” program intended to inform citizens in the country about the benefits and uses of cryptocurrencies, reports Hanguk Gyungjae. The exchange plans to hold lectures at the Daechi-dong Cultural Center in Seoul’s affluent Gangnam District.
• Binance has announced the launch of Binance Cloud, an infrastructure solution for customers and partners to launch digital asset exchanges in their local markets, leveraging Binance’s technology, with features that include spot market and futures trading, as well as local bank API integrations and peer-to-peer (P2P) fiat-to-cryptocurrency exchange services, says the exchange.
• BTSE,​ a crypto-focused financial technology company​, has ​announced an upgrade to its multi-currency order book. The emailed press release stated that users will be able to freely switch between quote currencies and trade all available trading pairs on the BTSE exchange, meaning that they will no longer have to pick a base currency upon sign-up, while traders will also be able to save on trading fees by side-stepping multiple transactions.