Are ‘no fee’ exchanges becoming a trend?

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Bitcoin, BlockchainLeave a comment

An article in yesterday’s Fortune magazine alerted me to what may be an emerging trend. I’m talking about ‘no fee ‘ exchanges. The latest one to arrive on the scene is Voyager and it’s bringing the competition to RobinHood, which is the best-known exchange to day that doesn’t charge commission fees.

It is Uber-funded

Voyager has some big names behind it that are bound to give it plenty of publicity and create trust as well, unless you really dislike Uber, for example, because Oscar Salazar, the co-founder of Uber, and Philip Eytan, one of Uber’s biggest investors are Voyager’s founders. And you see what they did — they called it ‘Voyager’, this connecting the exchange with transport. The CEO is Stephen Ehrlich who came from his position as CEO and founder at Lightspeed Financial, a retail brokerage.

Will Voyager have the same power as Uber?

So, the focus is on no fee trading, and it’s interesting that Voyager has opted to join RobinHood in this niche market sector that aims to reduce the cost of trading cryptocurrencies. However, given the business background of Voyager’s investors it makes perfect sense. Uber disrupted the global taxi market (well, almost globally) and once it opened that market up there has been no going back. ‘Uber’ is so popular, it is probably a verb by now, as in “Are you Ubering tonight?” — just like “Google it!”

What is Voyager offering?

Initially, Voyager will list 15 cryptocurrencies, drawn from the list of the 25 best-performing networks, including bitcoin, ethereum and bitcoin cash, among others. The new CEO also told Fortune that it is considering listing tokens like XRP and Stellar’s lumens, because those aren’t listed on any major U.S. exchange. He also said, “If you see it being traded today by some of the most prominent players, we will definitely have those plus some.”

How will it make money if there are no fees? Ehrlich explained, “In lieu of trading fees, Voyager will make up the difference in revenue by beating the average price of the coins at the point in time we execute the trade.” Basically, Voyager believes it can consistently execute buy and sell orders at better prices than customers would often get by just visiting one exchange, such as Coinbase or Binance.

The platform goes into beta testing this week and an app should be available by late October and it also intends to add crypto news and analysis to help its customers make buy/sell decisions, as well as additional tools for the institutional investor segment to its platform.

Currently the team is hard at work securing licenses in a number of U.S. states including California, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire and Montana. Its goal is to operate in at least 40 U.S. states. Could this be the start of a ‘no fee’ exchange trend, or will Voyager simply make the space its own — just like Uber?

Is U.S. Congress clueless about crypto?

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Bitcoin, Blockchain, EthereumLeave a comment

Last week the folks on Capitol Hill made a few headlines and stirred up a Twitter storm. Well, at least Congressman Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California did that with his statement that all crypto and mining should be banned, thus provoking the crypto community into meeting his remark with total outrage online. This was a unique event in itself as the crypto sphere is known for its sniping and clashes. However, Sherman brought them all together.

Whilst Brad Sherman’s message tended to dominate the press reports, for obvious reasons as it makes a good story, other headlines didn’t do much to instil any sense that Congress has finally understood what cryptocurrency and the blockchain world is all about. In fact, to some onlookers it appears as to be the case that Congress is more hostile to crypto now than it was five years ago. For

example, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said cryptocurrencies are “great if you’re trying to hide or launder money,” at a separate hearing on the same day Sherman made his astonishing statement. Perhaps he didn’t notice that the FBI had indicted 12 Russians for trying to tamper with the U.S. elections and that the FBI achieved this by tracing the conspirators bitcoin transactions. So much for that argument Mr Powell!

Were things better in 2013?

Let’s remember that when Congress discussed crypto towards the end of 2013, Jennifer Shasky Calvery, then-director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), told bitcoin exchanges and wallets to register with FinCEN and people took this a positive sign. In fact, as Coindesk points out, Calvery’s invitation boosted bitcoin’s price in December 2013 to just over $1,100.

Beyond the big headlines

Of course there is danger in focusing too much on big headlines from the Congress hearings and not looking into the progress that has been made. For instance, regulatory understanding has moved forward even if it hasn’t arrived at an end point that everyone is happy with. Law firms are heavily engaged with it and some staff at the SEC, the Commodity Futures Exchange Commission and other agencies are much more comfortable with the crypto industry than five years ago. In a massive bureaucracy things were never going to move at lightning speed.

And things will keep moving forward. Why? Because there are too many people and too much money engaged and invested in this industry for anyone in politics and policymaking to ignore it completely. In the end those who understand crypto and its potential will outnumber people like Sherman and Powell and we’ll have a Congress that isn’t so clueless.

Crypto is the people’s currency

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Bitcoin, BlockchainLeave a comment

There are a lot of people out there who are convinced that cryptocurrencies can never replace fiat money. However, I beg to differ and I see that serial entrepreneur Jeffrey Wernick is also more positive about crypto challenging fiat and has a few theories about why the world’s legacy finance system is faulty.

Wernick, who has invested in Airbnb and Uber, was talking to Business Insiderabout why he started investing in Bitcoin in 2009 and is somebody who can be considered as a leading investor in the crypto market. He believes that the fact that cryptocurrency is “people-oriented” and its decentralised nature, which “affords people equal access to operate under unanimously consented guidelines,” gives it a major advantage over the way fiat money is structured in the world.

He said:”So it’s a people’s currency, it’s defined by the people, and it’s defined by rules and a protocol that people trust. So it’s not like somebody says, if I need to have economic growth, I’m going to give this institution money, and they’re going to transmit it to a certain universe of people.”

It is vital to remember that when we look at ‘legacy finance’ and then to the developing economies where so many people are ‘unbanked’ that in the majority of cases politicians control the central bank of that country. What is the problem with this situation? Well, those politicians use the central bank as their personal bank account and have been known to embezzle huge amounts of money from their own nation, and nobody dares to stop them. There are countries that are vastly rich in natural resources, like Nigeria, yet the majority of its people live in unnecessary poverty. That’s one big problem with legacy finance and central banks.

The cryptocurrency ecosystem has the potential to reverse that situation. In the crypto sphere it is almost impossible for any one entity to control more than 50 percent of the network. Wernick explained his view of it: “Everybody has the same access to it at any point in time, just different units of it according to whatever their own personal budget constraints are. But nobody has privileged access to it, except, you could say, maybe the miners who pay to produce it and they take a business risk associated with it and anybody could choose to get into the mining business.”

Wernick has for some time supported the idea that the central banks should be accountable to the people, not to politicians, and it is easy to see why — the old ways do not benefit the many, they favour the few.

AI creates jobs for real people

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn AI, Big Data, FintechLeave a comment

Since the idea of robots doing jobs that a human can do there has been a widespread fear of what this might mean for the working population in the more advanced economies, where they are more likely to appear in greater numbers first. However, a new report by PricewaterhouseCooper in the UK has brought hope, because it claims that AI will actually create more jobs and compensate for those lost to automation.

The PwC report actually sticks a number on new employment opportunities. It says AI will deliver 7.2 million new jobs in healthcare, science and education by 2037. Of course, one has to balance this against the 7 million jobs lost to automation, but as PwC points out, AI is the winner and will boost economic growth.

It also estimates that around 20% of jobs in the UK will be automated over the next 20 years and that every economic sector will be affected. PwC said: “AI and related technologies such as robotics, drones and driverless vehicles will replace human workers in some areas, but it will also create many additional jobs as productivity and real incomes rise and new and better products are developed.”

AI can boost number of healthcare jobs

Fears among employees have already been raised by the use of robots like Pepper, made by Japanese firm Softbank Robotics. Pepper is already in use in banks, shops and social care, the latter being a major concern for Britain at the moment, as endless reports indicate the system is failing. However, the good news for all those healthcare and social workers is that PwcC claims that AI could make these two sectors amongst the biggest winners and generate one million new jobs, which is 20% more than the existing number of jobs in the sector.

Manufacturing, transport and logistics may lose out

On the other hand, as more driverless vehicles arrive and factories and warehouses become more automated, this employment sector could see a reduction in job opportunities, perhaps as much as 22%, or 400,000. The report also says clerical tasks in the public sector are likely to be replaced by algorithms while in the defence industry humans will increasingly be replaced by drones and other technologies.

Does AI offer hope post-Brexit?

This report may lift some spirits at a moment in British politics where things have never looked more unstable for the UK economy, if only for the reason that the business of exiting the European Union has raised more questions marks about the future of British trade and industry than it has been able to answer. However, if AI can create new jobs for working people and at least match the loss of jobs to automation, there’s a hope that the fallout from whatever the negotiations bring over the next few months will not hurt as much as many in business fear.