GCR

Top Asia News Tuesday Through Friday

Binance CZ: “some of the ERC20 tokens may convert to the Binance chain tokens and we already have confirmation on a number of large projects.” http://bit.ly/2HrT9hM

Apparently BitMEX can hold so much Bitcoins in their Insurance Fund, that they can potentially initiate several 51 percent attacks against many top coins in the market at present. http://bit.ly/2HxsekC

Binance has launched a crypto OTC desk providing additional liquidity to our exchange users. http://bit.ly/2HEBmUW

OKEx Expands OTC Trading Desk With Thai Baht (THB) And British Pound (GBP). https://prn.to/2HznTNY

Share with Friends

Most Clicked on From Last Newsletter

How Chinese cryptocurrency exchange Huobi is weathering the prolonged bitcoin bearmarket. http://bit.ly/2REcFfL

Japanese blockchain development company Crypto Garage announced it had gained regulatory permission to trial its settlement system using Blockstream’s Liquid Sidechain, using Liquid as part of an arrangement allowing exchanges to issue yen-pegged stablecoins and trade against Liquid Bitcoin (L-BTC), Blockstream’s sidechain.:http://bit.ly/2RZA7U9

In a company blog post, Bitmain reflects on its 2018 performance of miners, AI, BCH Hash War and American Expansion: http://bit.ly/2REcZuS

Deals

Filing confirms that OKEx buys 60% of Hong Kong-based company, LEAP Holdings Group, and making it possible for the company to make their own company,OKcoin, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. 

Report: Reverse Merger Could Take Bithumb Crypto Exchange Public in the US. http://bit.ly/2HuctLy

Coins and mining

Binance release research paper on BitTorrent Coin (BTT). http://bit.ly/2HvPrUh

Crypto Exchange Huobi to ‘Likely Launch Its Own Stablecoin in 2019,’ Says CFO. http://bit.ly/2HvIJxD

Exchange News

Huobi Global Lowers Fees For Institutional & High Volume Traders- to be as low as 0.015% for makers and 0.025% for takers for high volume transactions.https://prn.to/2HxRJ5z

A commodity specialist in the Chinese virtual money market claims that Huobi earned 545.2 billion won ($483.9 million) in commission income last year, surpassing both Binance ($463.9 million) and OKEx ($293.4 million). http://bit.ly/2HxDLR8

Regulation News 

Hong Kong exchange head clarifies listing rules as IPO hopes dim for cryptocurrency giant Bitmain. http://bit.ly/2HuxXYo

A Koreans cryptographic investment company notes that the Japanese government is expected to publish a guideline for a cryptocurrency-based payment system before the Tokyo Olympics to increase payments by cryptocurrencies: http://bit.ly/2HxLKO9

Business News

South Korea’s leading blockchain research center have cited STOs as the major talking point this year in their reports released recently, but with mixed opinions:http://bit.ly/2HvLcYR

Antminer strikes back at hAnt virus locking up bitcoin miners in China: http://bit.ly/2S8jlSP

DON’T MISS IT

This past weekend, we highlighted the most important developments in the rest of the Asian countries, specifically, Japan, Korea and Thailand. 

THE QUICK TAKE

Since December, general Crypto market slowdown has affected the primary businesses making up the Korea and Japan crypto ecosystems- the exchanges. Korea seems to have been hit the most, while Japan’s cautious stance towards exchanges in the last year has helped with damage control. Mining businesses have been hit across the board in Asia, and we are seeing a consolidation in the Japanese mining business as they move their operations to China in an attempt to stay afloat.

Separately, in Southeast Asia, we see Thailand regulators continuing to be aggressive about building a crypto-trading infrastructure, and we are potentially going to see the first kind of stock exchange/crypto exchange hybrid there. Thailand will be an ongoing interesting area to focus on in 2019 for ICOs, along with Singapore and the rest of Southeast Asia market. Read the entire post here

Does Chinese New Year really have an impact on Bitcoin Prices? We examine the scale of Chinese New Year’s impact on stock market and crypto markets.

Subscribe