Ep. 67. The CEO of Binance is [so] hot right now

Oct 11, 2018

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Simon's in the studio with Joon Ian Wong, Managing Director for Europe and Asia at Coindesk, Claire Wells, Director of Legal & Business Affairs EMEA at Circle, and Aman Kohli, CTO of Financial Services and Insurance Practice at Microsoft.

First up, Circle eyes crypto securities bid with crowdfunding site acquisition. Circle is reportedly moving to acquire SeedInvest, a crowdfunding platform for startups. Their acquisition will – if approved by regulators – open to the door to allowing startups to raise funds by selling digital tokens via its platform.

Yale Invests in Crypto Fund That Raised $400 Million. The Ivy League school is getting into the market for cryptocurrencies. $30 billion endowment is headed by David Swensen. Under Swensen’s leadership, Yale has returned 11.8 percent on average for the past 20 years. Ninety-six percent of endowments and foundations responding to a survey by consulting firm NEPC in February said they don’t invest in digital currencies.

SEC, CFTC charge bitcoin futures firm 1Broker with securities law violations. The SEC announced in a press release that it filed charges against 1pool Ltd., also known as 1Broker, as well as its CEO Patrick Brunner for selling security-based swaps to U.S. and international investors without following proper "discretionary investment thresholds." Notably, investors could only purchase these swaps with bitcoin, according to the claims. The SEC is further claiming that 1Broker was not registered a "security-based swaps dealer" and "failed to transact its security-based swaps on a registered national exchange."

Marco Polo blockchain platform for trade finance released. Marco Polo is an initiative to develop an open account trade finance platform powered by blockchain technology. The platform is built by TradeIX, R3 and a group of banks on the Corda blockchain framework, using TradeIX’s open-source tools to test, pilot and manage open account trade finance transactions. The announcement was made at the CordaCon London event on September 13, where Rob Barnes, co-founder and CEO of TradeIX, gave the audience new insights into the project’s timeline.

TD Ameritrade all-in with crypto, invests in exchange. Announced this week a strategic investment in ErisX, the cryptocurrency spot and futures exchange.

We also have a Tweet of the Week on Iconomi discontinuing their ICN token.

Tying up the show we have a great interview with Adi Ben-Ari, Founder of Applied Blockchain (he was supposed to be on this week but he was sick).

All this and so much more on this week's episode of Blockchain Insider. And if you enjoyed our tweet of the week why not send us your best tweets? See if you can get a shout out on the show!

We hope you enjoy the show and, as ever, don't forget to subscribe!

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This week's episode of Blockchain Insider was produced by Laura Watkins and Petrit Berisha. Edited by Michael Bailey.

Special Guests: Adi Ben-Ari, Aman Kohli, Claire Wells, and Joon Ian Wong.

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