Big News for Insto Bitcoin Adoption

Last week we reported the news of Goldman Sachs opening their own Bitcoin Trading Operation as further evidence of ‘big money’ adoption of Bitcoin.

Now we learn of reports that ICE (Intercontinental Exchange) who own a little exchange you may have heard of, the New York Stock Exchange, are moving toward a Bitcoin Swap Contract platform that will settle in Bitcoin itself.  The distinction here from the current futures exchanges launched last year by CME and CBOE (which we reported here and here) is that, just as they do for gold and silver, they settle in fiat (dollars) not Bitcoin itself.  In an interview with CNBC analyst Robert Kelly pointed out:

“[The] physical delivery of Bitcoin…means that ICE has a custody solution. That has been the big hurdle. How do you hold onto these assets? These are generally bearer instruments…and so you have to have a third-party custody person. That’s the big deal, they have come up with a custody solution for institutional holders.”

Two of the main hurdles for institutional take up of Bitcoin has been liquidity and secure storage or custody.  Whilst our Ainslie Crypto Wallets are the coldest most unhackable solution you can get, to be fair they probably wouldn’t work at the scale the ICE would participate… The good news is they appear to have found a solution for their scale of business.  We’ve written previously of the massive advances in play around the speed and liquidity issues previously plaguing Bitcoin, and this news goes a long way to proving the solution is there.

The other big news on institutional scale Bitcoin platforms is the Winklevoss twins have moved on from last year’s SEC rejection of their proposed Bitcoin ETF, and have just successfully won a patent for settlement of exchange-traded products (ETPs) using cryptocurrencies not long after their February patent for a system to enhance the security of digital transactions.  This takes them to 5 patents this year clearly working toward a launch of an ETP (of which an ETF is one such ‘product’) overcoming the SEC’s previous concerns.

Finally, whilst most look to coinmarketcap.com as the defacto source of pricing, there has been no institutionally accepted benchmark for the large cap cryptos.  Well that changed last night when we learned of Bloomberg teaming up with Mike Novogratz’s crypto merchant bank Galaxy Digital Management launching the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index (BGCI) tracking ten large cap cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, EOS, Litecoin, Dash, Monero, Ethereum Classic, and Zcash).  Bloomberg’s press release described it as the “first institutional benchmark for the cryptocurrency market.”

We’d respectfully suggest that all the FUD calling this a ‘fraud’, a fad, a bubble, etc is starting to look a little silly….