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June 1st, 2021
At Incyub8 Inc, Rojin is focusing on nurturing and guiding various national and international start-[...]
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Balance celebrates turning five and surpasses $500M of assets under custody
Balance | George Bordianu | Jun 28, 2022
Balance celebrates turning five and surpasses $500M of assets under custody
TORONTO - June 28, 2022 - Balance is proud to celebrate five years in business serving Canadians as the country's top digital asset custodian.
Founded in June 2017, the company introduced its custody services in a closed pilot in August 2018. The public launch followed one year later, the first of its kind in Canada. Having surpassed $500M of assets under custody (over $2.5B ahead of the recent market pullback), this makes Balance not only the oldest Canadian digital asset custodian, but also the largest.
“Our focus since day one has been to build a world-class solution for Canadian businesses. To compete with established giants such as Coinbase and Gemini, we eschewed vending ready-made solutions and instead built our offline and warm infrastructure in-house. It wasn’t an easy challenge. It took us over one year of building and one year of polishing before our public launch. We’re grateful to our early backers at Techstars and Bicameral Ventures for sharing the vision and taking bet on us. The Canadian ecosystem is better off as a result.” - George Bordianu, Chief Executive Officer
See: Crypto Custody: Our Shared Journey Towards Mass Adoption
Since its August 2019 public launch, Balance has grown its client base to include companies that span Canada, certain US states, as well as BVI and Cayman Islands. Balance successfully serves crypto exchanges, OTC and prop. trading desks, neobanks, ATM networks, private funds, market makers, liquidity providers, foundation treasuries, and more.
“The fact that we built our infrastructure in-house allows us to charge 10-25 bps/year and offer free unlimited withdrawals while maintaining positive unit economics. Typical market rates are 30-50 bps/year with an additional 1-5 bps/transfer. Our prospects sometimes have a hard time believing that a small Canadian company built a solution that’s 2-3x more cost effective than what the industry giants offer. Yet we prove it every day.” - Dustin Plett, Chief Sales Officer
To celebrate these milestones and better showcase its product offering, Balance has launched a new online presence at www.balance.ca.
Contact:
Dustin Donley Plett
dustin@balance.ca
+1 (833) 225-7030
View: Original release
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Podcast: Bitcoin Privacy Interview with Matt Odell
Spotify Podcast | Matt Odell | Jun 24, 2022
Our privacy is continuously being eroded. Current best estimates are that 2.5 million terabytes of data are produced every day. A material amount of that information has extremely lax privacy protection: 98% of Internet of Things data is unencrypted; 83% of companies encrypt less than half the data they store on the cloud; 25% of websites are visited without encryption.
See: Will The ECASH Act be the Answer to Privacy and Virtual Currency in the U.S.?
Vast amounts of the data we freely shed are stored, analysed and triangulated for commercial reasons. These tactics are so sophisticated that it’s not uncommon for people to think companies are listening to their conversations.
We are being squeezed for our data in almost all aspects of our lives while cash, traditionally the only semi-private way of transacting, is being removed from society, and CBDCs inch closer to reality. Imagine if companies or governments could access and track your income, store of wealth and all those with whom you transacted. What is currently unnerving behaviour by those who track our data could rapidly become something much more maligned and coercive.
Perfect privacy, whether with bitcoin or not, is a pipedream. The goal is to continually improve in protecting a fundamental human right, privacy.
See: How Unadjusted Currency Transaction Reporting Leads to Invasion of Privacy and More Compliance costs
Matt Odell is host of the Citadel Dispatch and venture partner at Ten31. In this interview, we discuss why each additional positive act of privacy protection improves Bitcoin's resilience and value. Perfecting privacy is not the goal; making a start is, as we don’t know what the future holds.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Research: Ownership of Top 10 Web3 DAOs is Surprisingly Concentrated
Chainanalysis | Team | Jun 27, 2022
Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are a staple of web3. Internet-native and blockchain-based, DAOs are intended to provide a new, democratized management structure for businesses, projects, and communities, in which any member can vote on organizational decisions just by buying into the project.
At a high level, this is how DAOs work:
- DAO founders create a new cryptocurrency, known as a governance token;
- They distribute these tokens to users, backers, and other stakeholders;
- Each token corresponds to a set amount of voting power within the organization. Each token also corresponds to a price on the secondary market, where it can be bought and sold at will.
See: Sounds like a DAO, Looks like a DAO: Introducing the Modern Digital Organization
While this process is often described as a way to decentralize power, governance token data suggests that DAO ownership is highly concentrated.
The concentration of governance token holdings
By analyzing the distribution of ten major DAOs’ governance tokens, we find that, across several major DAOs, less than 1% of all holders have 90% of voting power.
This has meaningful implications for DAO governance:
- For example, if just a small portion of the top 1% of holders worked together, they could theoretically outvote the remaining 99% on any decision. This has obvious practical implications and, in terms of investor sentiment, likely affects whether small holders feel that they can meaningfully contribute to the proposal process.
- Overly concentrated voting power in DAOs can result in decision-making that seemingly contradicts the tenets of decentralization on which web3 is built.
See: Blockchain-based replacement for traditional crowdfunding: DAOs
- For instance, in June 2022, the DAO governing the Solana-based lending protocol Solend faced a problem: Solana’s price was dropping, and if it fell much further, the protocol’s biggest whale user would face a margin call that could render Solend insolvent and send roughly $20 million worth of Solana onto the market, potentially tanking the asset’s price and upending the entire Solana ecosystem. The DAO called a vote to take control of the whale’s account and liquidate its position through OTC desks, rather than the open market.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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FTX Is Not in Active Talks to Buy Robinood but is Impressed With Their Business
TechCrunch | Jacquelyn Melinek | Jun 27, 2022
Crypto exchange FTX is open to partnering with Robinhood Markets, its CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said in a statement shared with TechCrunch.
Bloomberg News reported earlier that people familiar with the matter said FTX was exploring opportunities to acquire Robinhood, but Bankman-Fried denied those claims.
“We are excited about Robinhood’s business prospects and potential ways we could partner with them, and I have always been impressed by the business that Vlad and his team have built,” Bankman-Fried said. “That being said there are no active M&A conversations with Robinhood.”
See: US FTX Crypto Exchange Acquires Alberta-based Bitvo and Plans to Officially Launch in Canada
In a comment to TechCrunch, a Robinhood spokesperson pointed to its dual-class shareholder setup, in which the company’s founders control more than half of its voting power. As such, no deal can be struck to purchase the company without their explicit approval. Given the tenor of the note, TechCrunch doubts that Robinhood’s founding duo are salivating at a chance to sell their business.
After the news broke earlier today on the possibility of an acquisition, Robinhood shares spiked 14% before falling nearly 3% in after-hours trading. Last month, Bankman-Fried shared that he bought a 7.6% stake in Robinhood Markets.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Osom partners with Solana to launch OV1, a blockchain-focused smartphone
GSMArena | Ricky | Jun 24, 2022
Osom is a privacy-focused tech company that was expected to launch the OV1 smartphone from the team of engineers that built the Essential PH-1. In a turn of events, the OV1 will now be a new blockchain-focused smartphone by Solana Mobile called the "Saga" and it will still be manufactured by Osom.
The Solana Saga will be tightly integrated with Solana’s blockchain, capable of making transaction in web3 and will support holding digital assets including tokens and NFTs.
At an event in New York, the company also introduced the Solana Mobile Stack. This is “a framework for Android allowing developers to create rich mobile experiences for wallets and apps on Solana.” The Solana Mobile Stack SDK is already available for developers.
See: Multiple Payment Methods – Why is it Fundamental to E-Commerce Success?
Interestingly, prospective buyers can pre-order a Solana Saga starting today for a refundable deposit of $100. The Saga will retail for $1000 and those who pre-order may receive a Saga Pass that includes an accompanying NFT and “the first ticket to influencing the direction of the SMS platform. The device is expected to arrive in early 2023 and will initially launch in the US, Canada, EU, and UK.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Andrew Kriegler to lead Canada’s new SRO once formed (IIROC and MFDA)
CSA | Jun 27, 2022
Vancouver and Toronto – The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) announced today that the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) and the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada (MFDA) have approved Andrew J. Kriegler as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the new self-regulatory organization (SRO) when it is formed.
Louis Morisset, CSA Chair and President and CEO of the Autorité des marchés financiers:
The appointment of a CEO is an important milestone in the creation of the New SRO. Mr. Kriegler can now work with the boards and staff of each of the MFDA and IIROC to ensure a smooth transition that is responsive to the interests of their stakeholders.
See: IIROC to continue Client-Focused Reforms review with focus on KYC and suitability
As announced in 2021, the New SRO will consolidate and enhance the functions of IIROC and the MFDA. In addition, a new investor protection fund (IPF) will consolidate the Canadian Investor Protection Fund and the MFDA Investor Protection Corporation into a single fund that will be independent from the new SRO.
Mr. Kriegler, whose appointment was approved by the boards of the existing SROs, has led IIROC since 2014. Before joining IIROC, he served as Deputy Superintendent of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, where he was responsible for supervision of Canada’s federally regulated financial institutions. He also has 25 years of experience in the private sector including roles at a Canadian financial institution and at an international credit rating agency. Mr. Kriegler’s full bio can be found here.
I am honoured to have been selected by the Special Joint Committee and approved by the Boards of both SROs to lead this new organization. The CSA has led a thoughtful and deliberate consultation on the appropriate framework for self-regulation. This work is important to Canadians and their financial futures. I look forward to working with the CSA and my colleagues at the MFDA and IIROC to ensure a smooth transition and a New SRO that will benefit all stakeholders.
Continue to the original release --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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English Court Decision Sheds Light on Software Developers Legal Relationship and Duties Owed to Cryptoasset Owners
Linklaters | Ben Packer, Richard Hay, Michael Munk, Sophia Le Vesconte, Bonnie Yeung | Jun 27, 2022
The judgment in Tulip Trading Ltd v Bitcoin Association for BSV and Others sheds light on the legal relationship between the software developers behind various bitcoin networks and their participants. Notably, the court found that there was no case to be made that the developers had a duty to take action to undo the effects of an alleged theft. At the same time, the possibility of other legal duties falling on developers in the future was left open. Players in the crypto markets should be cognisant of this position, amid ongoing market turmoil.
The decision
Earlier this year, the High Court denied a prominent bitcoin holder, whose private keys to substantial holdings were allegedly taken in a cyber-attack, the right to serve a legal claim on a group of developers for failing to take action to restore the lost value into the claimant’s hands.
See: Code is Law Case: A Hamilton teen ‘hacked’ US$16 million in crypto (while he may not be in the wrong)
The case was brought by Tulip Trading Ltd (“Tulip”), which claimed that the defendants were the core developers behind various bitcoin networks and/or otherwise controlled the relevant software, and that they owed the claimant fiduciary and/or tortious duties to rectify the “theft” of private keys by writing and implementing a software “patch” that would restore Tulip’s access to the bitcoin assets. In setting aside permission to serve the claim out of the jurisdiction, Mrs Justice Falk held that there was no serious issue to be tried on the merits of the claim. Last month, Falk J also declined Tulip leave to appeal.
No fiduciary and tortious duties – for now
Falk J rejected the argument that the software developers owed the claimant a fiduciary duty. In particular, she noted that the defining characteristic of a fiduciary relationship is the obligation of undivided loyalty, and if the claimant’s argument were accepted, the steps that the defendants would have to take would be for the claimant’s benefit alone, to the exclusion of other users, to whom the defendants would also owe the same duty and who would have a legitimate complaint against the defendants.
Bitcoin networks are not financial institutions
Tulip argued that bitcoin networks “could be equated with financial institutions”, in the sense that “[f]unds were being entrusted to controllers of the Networks, who profited from their activities, and public policy required the imposition of a corresponding duty of care”, and therefore a duty of care similar to the duty of care on banks established in Barclays Bank v Quincecare [1992] 4 All ER 363 should be imposed on bitcoin networks.
See: tbDEX: Square Releases White Paper Detailing Protocol for a Decentralized Bitcoin Exchange
Falk J was not persuaded by the argument: in particular, she noted that the starting point for the Quincecare duty of care is the relationship of contract and agency between the bank and its customer. It is interesting that such arguments seen in the more traditional financial sphere were being deployed in the context of a decentralised network with no contractual framework, and the court’s rejection of the direct analogy should be welcomed.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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