Venture Smart Asia’s blockchain division, Arrano Capital, has confirmed it has met all regulatory requirements and launched Hong Kong’s first officially approved mainstream crypto fund.

According to Bloomberg, Arrano’s Chief Investment Officer, Avaneesh Acquilla, has said it is a tracker fund, buying and selling Bitcoin (BTC), and it is hoped to have $100m under management within 12 months. He also said the firm hopes to launch a second fund, actively managed and dealing with a basket of tokens, later in 2020.

Acquilla, who previously spent nine years with Och-Ziff Capital Management in Asia, and seven years with Goldman Sachs and UBS in London, said the fund was launched in response to market demand from “professional investors who are increasingly focused on Bitcoin as an alternative store of value.”

The Hong Kong SFC first announced formal regulation of the cryptocurrency space in October 2018, when it decided to regulate exchanges. Although some other firms, like Diginex, have since been authorised to offer products to specified professional investors, Arrano’s new crypto fund is the first to be officially approved for a wider mainstream market.

AYO.NEWS says:

Though the scale of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis was not appreciated by markets initially, the unprecedented global economic crash it is now likely to trigger could massively increase the interest in Bitcoin as a ‘safe haven’ store of value. If it does, funds like Arrano’s are going to be well placed to ride the wave.

AYO.NEWS says features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited.

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020.

With governments around the world clearly having no realistic exit strategies for the COVID-19 lockdowns, tech companies are piling in to make a bad situation worse.

After Malta-based Chiliz revealed it is developing a blockchain-based system to allow fans to “prove their immunity” and attend football matches again, Oracle has now partnered with Vottun to release a digital health passport, which it says will allow employees to go back to work.

The “Immunity Passport” developed by Vottun is said to record your immunity status on the blockchain, allowing it to be easily checked by authorities by scanning a QR code.

Spain, which has been one of the countries hardest-hit by COVID-19, is already rolling out the system in partnership with PwC, while Vottun has said is has been talking with authorities in the United States too.

AYO.NEWS says:

This madness needs to stop now. Tech companies are understandably enthusiastic about the technology, but there is far more at stake here, and it seems they are all missing the big picture.

As we have argued previously, this technology will absolutely create a two-tier segregated society in which only those ‘approved’ by authorities are allowed to re-join society. This is opening the door to digital ghettoization or apartheid.

No one can argue the COVID-19 (coronavirus) is not having a terrible impact, but it seems people are losing all perspective and rationality. The lockdowns have already ensured the biggest economic calamity since the Great Depression, and if they go on longer they are sure to lead to mass social issues in many places. This will all lead to FAR more deaths in the long-run, than the virus could have ever inflicted.

But, trying to fix this by creating some sort of 1984 or Gattaca-style dystopia is utter madness. What is the point in fighting this “war” against the virus, if the society we are left with has forsaken everything millions have fought, and died, defending across generations, including World War 2?

Of course, there are a myriad of other reasons why this system is madness too, including the fact tests are not reliable, there is growing evidence that being infected and recovering does not make you immune, the virus is rapidly mutating, and it will obviously cause people to TRY and get infected so they can resume their lives.

Lockdowns could have worked in small areas, if they had been implemented early enough. However, politicians in every country refused to see reality and procrastinated. Now they have implemented them, utterly destroying many millions of lives for the foreseeable future. Now, we have tech companies jumping on the bandwagon, claiming to offer a way out, but actually just opening the doors to an even worse nightmare.

I’m with John McAfee on this one.

AYO.NEWS says features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited.

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020.

Digivault, a subsidiary of Nasdaq-listed crypto company Diginex, has launched a new permanently live warm custody solution.

Called ‘Helios’, the company says the new solution features hardware protection of networks, is operated from ‘military-grade secure locations’ and offers protection against key duplication and theft.

The new solution is seamlessly integrated with Digivault’s Kelvin cold storage solution, which launched in 2019. This offers clients the ability to store digital assets next to gold and silver in real vaults in Asia and Europe. The company says the solution is compliant with the UK government-backed Cyber Essential Plus Certification.

Digivault, describes Helios as a ‘warm custody’ solution – in that it does allow online access to the assets, like a ‘hot custody’ solution, but the keys are stored in a protected hardware device rather than on the server.

Diginex is scheduled to go public through a reverse merger with investment holding firm 8i Enterprises Acquisition Corp, after getting the green light from the United States Securities and Exchanges Commission.

AYO.NEWS says:

In an increasingly insecure and unstable world, top-grade secure custody solutions like this are going to be pivotal to enable widespread institutional adoption of digital assets. With the world now bracing for an unprecedented economic collapse thanks to COVID-19 triggered lockdowns, if cryptocurrencies do prove to be the safe haven assets many expect them to be, Digivault could find itself very busy indeed!

AYO.NEWS says features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited.

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020.

US-based blockchain network Solana has announced a partnership with South Korean payment platform Terra, to introduce stablecoins into its dapp ecosystem.

Terra is supported by a basket of stablecoins pegged to major world currencies, and in partnership with Solana, the company says it is now building a new high-speed token bridge to allow the transfer of Terra stablecoins into Solana’s dapp ecosystem.

According to Solana, they will be the first stablecoins on its network, and should “dramatically expand the design space for developers, opening the door to novel applications that require price-stable payments.”

Solana says two new smart contracts are being built to facilitate the bridge, and should be deployed to both platforms by May 2020 – the mirrored smart contracts will leverage a mint-and-burn model.

It is hoped that by prioritising support for stablecoin, the DeFi ecosystem within Solana can be accelerated.

Terra’s CHAI payment platform is already popular in South Korea, has more than one million active users, and now see daily transaction volumes of around USD $3 million. One of the benefits of the platform is its very low transaction fees of 0.5%, compared to card payments which are normally around 3.5%.

Just last week Solana listed its token on major Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange Binance.

AYO.NEWS says:

The Solana team has been busy recently! Just last week Solana listed its token on major Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange Binance, while a couple of weeks ago we reported the San Francisco-based blockchain company had completed the latest sale of SOL tokens in a “Launch Auction,” hosted by crypto fundraising platform CoinList.

AYO.NEWS says features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited.

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020.

With the IMF now warning of the biggest economic crash for 90 years because of the COVID-19 crisis, Bitcoin (BTC) is facing its ‘moment of truth.’

Lockdowns triggering economic catastrophe

On 14 April the IMF published its quarterly World Economic Outlook report, saying the lockdowns due to COVID-19 (coronavirus) are ushering in the worst economic downturn for 90 years, and predicting a staggering USD $9 trillion of losses within a couple of years.

Meanwhile in the UK, the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) has issued an even scarier warning, saying the country faces the deepest recession for 300 years, with GDP expected to plunge by 35% and 2 million to lose their jobs.

As the true toll of economic damage becomes clear, many are now arguing the actions taken to combat the pandemic are certain to cause far more damage, including mass poverty and millions of deaths, than the virus would have done had it just been left to burn.

Bitcoin’s record correlation with traditional markets

With the world facing an unprecedented economic crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic still raging, and warnings of a possible second wave of infections, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC), is now facing something of a moment of truth.

Prior to the crisis, Bitcoin had been assumed by many to be a ‘safe haven’ for investors – sitting in a separate digital world, less affected by real-world political and economic events. However, over the past few months, Bitcoin has reached a record correlation with traditional markets, including the S&P 500 and gold – with the sudden liquidity crisis in global markets appearing to drive confluence across asset classes.

Bitcoin Halving and moment of truth approaches

Now, with next month’s Bitcoin Halving rapidly approaching, we are about to see if the world’s foremost cryptocurrency will be able to achieve the much-anticipated post-halving bull trend.

Though the halving has long split crypto pundits, with some predicting it to be a non-event, and others convinced it will ignite the fuse to a long bull run, we perhaps shouldn’t read to much into Bitcoin’s current close correlation to stock markets and gold.

Back at the start of the 2008/09 Financial Crisis, the price of gold, the traditional safe haven asset, actually dropped 30% over the first six months, but then went on to gain more than 150% over the following three-and-a-half years.

It could be argued that the reason Bitcoin (BTC) hasn’t so far achieved it’s clear ‘safe haven’ potential, is because until this point most investors have simply failed to appreciate the sheer scale of the global economic crash that is now underway.

The unprecedented nature of the lockdowns, and psychological displacement caused – with many people feeling they are on simply on an unexpected holiday, rather than on the precipice of disaster – has obviously clouded judgement and wrong-footed many. But, as the insane scale of the collapse becomes apparent, it could well send investors fleeing to both gold and Bitcoin (BTC).

One thing is for sure. A couple of years from now, the global economy is going to look very different.

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020.

Iconic game developer Atari has announced it intends to launch Atari Casino, a new online gambling platform that will use the company’s in-house cryptocurrency, the Atari Token.

On its website, Atari says:

“The casino space presents a massive opportunity to leverage the portfolio of Atari properties through a range of social and real money casino opportunities. Our catalog of games includes games of luck, games of skill, and hybrid games combining luck and skill.”

Alongside classic games like roulette, poker, and blackjack, Atari says its new casino will include ““innovative gambling games where your skill increases your chance of winning.”

Players will be able to deposit using the Atari Token, major cryptos including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), plus Skrill and debit cards.

The company says it operates directly and through licensing/partnership agreements, and has granted a license to Gametaco for esports.

AYO.NEWS says:

To anyone of a certain age, the Atari brand will conjour up fond memories of the early days of video games, so its kind of cool to see the developer launching into the crypto casino space. The possibilities for gambling versions of classic titles is intriguing!

AYO.NEWS says features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited.

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020.