Bitcoin Surges Over $9,500 After Korea's 2nd Biggest Bank Tests Crypto Wallet For Customers

Update: Bitcoin's surge continues as Asia re-opens, pushing the cryptocurrency above $9500 as Korea's second largest bank tests Bitcoin vault and wallet services for its clients.

As Coinivore reports, Shinhan, the second largest commercial bank in South Korea by market valuation in the country is testing a Bitcoin vault and wallet service for its customers that is expected to be released by mid-2018.

A representative of Shinhan Bank told Naver News, a media publication in South Korea in an interview that the bank will launch a Bitcoin vault and wallet platform in response to recent hacking attacks of leading South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges including Bithumb.

“Shinhan is testing a virtual bitcoin vault platform wherein the private keys of bitcoin addresses and wallets are managed and issued by the bank. The bank intends to provide the vault service for free and charge a fee for withdrawals,” the representative said.

In 2016 the bank reported a total of US $192 billion in assets and over 13,000 employees according to News Bitcoin. The bank stated that the service wouldn’t be ready until the second quarter of 2018 but has begun testing the network for the services.

The service will incur zero fees to deposit Bitcoin to store in their cold storage instead a slight fee will be taken during the withdrawal process. They will also be rolling out a mobile app that will contain a dashboard for viewing stats and deposit information for their customers.

 

It’s unclear whether or not Shinhan will offer Bitcoin brokerage and trading services to enable their existing clients and customers to purchase or sell Bitcoin.

South Korea has been a hub for cryptocurrency and somewhat of a safe haven for established digital currencies since, unlike other countries, they have embraced digital currency as a means for change. Earlier this month, Choe Heung-sik, chief of the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), stated that the South Korean government would not impose strict regulations on cryptocurrency exchanges in the foreseeable future.

“Though we are monitoring the practice of cryptocurrency trading, we don’t have plans right now to directly supervise exchanges. Supervision will come only after the legal recognition of digital tokens as a legitimate currency,” Choe said.

Truly allowing the growth of Bitcoin, as of this writing, South Korea holds the largest markets in Bitcoin exchange Bithumb with a volume traded of $356,126,000 today at the time of this writing.

*  *  *

Update: Bitcoin has continued to soar intraday - now topping $9,300 - with a total market cap over $156 billion, leaving the cryptocurrency worth more than Merck, Disney, and GE.

Coinivore notes that the digital currency, once a toy for computer nerds, is now soaring in price, triggering a new gold rush. Is it just another bubble, or a glimpse into a radically different financial future?

As Rick Falkvinge, CEO of BitCoin Cash and founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, warns “bitcoin is an extinction-level event for banks” and probably governments too...

*  *  *

As we detailed earlier, less than 24 hours ago, we noted that Bitcoin had broken above the recent resistance level around $8,300 and hit a fresh all time high of $8,650, observing that the world's biggest cryptocurrency by market cap is now rising at a pace that has put the $10,000 price target by both Mike Novogratz (and Jose Canseco) firmly in its sights. It didn't take long however for bitcoin to find a new round of eager buyers, and in early Asian trading, a burst of buying out of Korea's Bithumb exchange, has sent bitcoin surging another several hundred dollars higher, and around midnight ET bitcoin had surpassed $9,000, sending its market cap to $150 billion, making it more valuable than corporations like Siemens, Mastercard or McDonald’s.

The sharp gains come as the combined market capitalization for all cryptocurrencies also peaks at new highs – currently standing at just shy of $300 billion.

At this rate of appreciation, the crypto may hit the key psychological level of $10,000 in under a week. Needless to say, the long term chart is about as exponential as it gets, so as usual, buyer beware.

Bitcoin started the year just above $1,000, and the YTD gain is now over 900%, which however pales in comparison to Ether's nearly 5,000% YTD return and Litecoin's 20x.

However, it's not just Asian demand as CoinTelegraph reports that in a sign of growing mainstream acceptance, digital currency exchange Coinbase now boasts more accounts than brokerage firm Charles Schwab.

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

According to its website, Coinbase has 13 mln users while the number of Schwab brokerage accounts stood at 10.6 mln as of the end of 2016. These numbers don’t paint a complete picture, since the amount of assets controlled by Schwab certainly vastly exceeds those of Coinbase users. Nevertheless, the actual number of users indicates a massive volume of adoption, as the public begins to dabble in cryptocurrencies. Coinbase user numbers have grown by 167% this year.

One month ago, Mike Novogratz was the first to predict a $10,000 price in 6 to 10 months. It may come in that many weeks instead.  As a store of value, Novogratz likened bitcoin to digital gold, and said the technology is beginning to make "more and more sense" as we move increasingly into the digital. Novogratz continued to say that, while bitcoin is a bubble, the mania is justified, because it is a technological advancement that promises to fundamentally alter our lives.

"I can hear the herd coming" Novogratz said.

And bubble or not, Novogratz concluded eloquently on the extreme nature of cryptocurrencies' potential...

“Remember, bubbles happen around things that fundamentally change the way we live,” he said. “The railroad bubble. Railroads really fundamentally changed the way we lived. The internet bubble changed the way we live. When I look forward five, 10 years, the possibilities really get your animal spirits going.”

Bitcoin is set to become "the biggest bubble of our time," he added, and could reach $10,000 very soon due to fast-building interest. In retrospect, he may be right much faster than even he anticipated.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-26/bitcoin-soars-above-9000-hits-new-all-time-high-burst-asian-buying 

Cultivating Good FX Strategies

(FXBOT.MARKET) -- 11/21/2017 -- FXBOT.MARKET is interested in cultivating high quality, consistent FX strategies based on honesty and transparency.  Every system has a bad day, a bad month - we are traders we get it.  But deleting history or not reporting a big loss ruins the reputation of the entire industry, not only the scam providers.

That means we want all systems- which are honest and profitable.  If the strategy only makes 10% a year, OK - sign up!

Until the new year we are waiving all seller fees, so register your FX product today.  It doesn't matter if you are a money manager, signals provider, or EA seller - we have a robust model that will work in conjunction with your existing business model.  We aren't exclusive.  All you have to do is connect your master trading account in MT4 or CTrader and link it into our FX Trade Bot product.

See the full instructions here: First, register for an account at FXBOT.MARKET.  Then register as a seller here - be sure to register your product and connect your master account.

We are waiving all seller fees for 2017 - that means there is NO COST for you to sign on.

2018 is going to be the year of the bot - algorithmic trading is taking over the markets.  Get your product in on the ground floor.  Sign up today.

We are a non-regulated business, but we are set to be a real single source for high quality systems.  Get your brand out there on the market place, it can only help for your global branding and recognition.

www.forexbotmarket.com

Everyone is announcing Bitcoin but no one is doing – it’s all vapor

(GLOBALINTELHUB.COM) — 11/10/2017 We’d just like to note here that amidst Bitcoin’s historic rise there’s been a flurry of announcements with few ‘releases’ of finished products.  In fact only one company in the US, TZero, has a real regulated product that’s ready to go (which we noted as early as March 2016, but who was listening back then?).  Only one major Forex Broker, IC Markets, is offering 5 Crypto pairs in the MT4/5 platform.

Let’s take a look at what Bitcoin in Meta Trader 5 looks like:

Amazing, when you put it like that, it looks like FX!  That’s because Bitcoin and Ethereum are Currencies, no different from the Euro and Yen from a trading / investment perspective.  Obviously, there are the fundamental differences that Crypto is not backed by a Government, but that can change soon.  Traders can sign up free to see this screen above by clicking here: Open an account with IC Markets

So we all know someone who bought Bitcoin in 2011 or several years ago – so what?  Today BTCUSD is down.  So what?  Like is the fashion with many bubbles, it seems that traders have become irrational.  The big question that we have at Elite E Services is that – why jump into something completely risky and unknown when there are proven systems with a long track record that are independent of market movement, like Magic FX.  The point is that it will take time for such algos to be developed for Bitcoin, the market is just starting to mature and evolve.

We did something, we didn’t just announce that we have plans to get into Bitcoin – we wrote a book.  A sequel to our Splitting Pennies it’s logically called Splitting Bits – your user guide for the regulated side of Bitcoin and Blockchain which are posed to cannibalize half of the world’s banking industry.

Calling all traders – this is a traders market!  Now is the time to start building your bots!  The real wave of the Crypto market is going to be the investment grade products, such as the Bitgos (Bit-Algos).  We’re launching a marketplace for them, stay tuned..

EES teams up with IC Markets

Elite E Services has teamed up with IC Markets to provide non-US and US-QEP Forex clients with the ability to trade BTC/USD in MT4.  For those of you who are not familiar with Bitcoin or MT4 you can read our books Splitting Pennies and the sequel Splitting Bits.

Open an account with IC Markets

Federal Prosecutors Are Investigating Wells Fargo's FX Business

Last week, WSJ stoked fears that the Feds might be ramping up another probe into abuse and manipulation in the foreign exchange market when it reported that Wells Fargo had abruptly terminated four bankers from its FX business and transferred another. Now, Wall Street’s paper of record is reporting that Federal prosecutors are investigating Wells for abuses in its FX shop - but the scope of the investigated is limited to one disputed trade.

According to WSJ, prosecutors have subpoenaed information from Wells and from the recently fired bankers as they investigate a trade and ensuing dispute between Wells and one of its clients, Restaurant Brands International Inc.

RBI owns several fast-food franchises, including Burger King, Tim Hortons and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen. In an amusing twist, both companies count Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway as one of their largest shareholders.

In a statement, Wells Fargo said it “learned of an issue associated with a foreign exchange transaction for a single client. The matter was reviewed, the client was promptly notified regarding the issue, and Wells Fargo leadership took steps to hold accountable the individuals who were involved. Wells Fargo remains committed to our foreign exchange business, meeting our clients’ financial needs in an ethical way, and ensuring ongoing review of this and all business operations.”

The foreign-exchange issue revolves around a trade made within the past three years that included positions running into the billions of dollars, the people said. The trade resulted in a loss to Restaurant Brands, the people added, which led to a dispute between it and the bank. WSJ pointed out that the investigation into Wells Fargo’s foreign-exchange business, which is housed within its investment bank, are separate from sales-practices issues that rocked the bank more than a year ago. Wells Fargo is planning to refund Restaurant Brands hundreds of thousands of dollars related to the trading loss, WSJ's sources said.  The Federal Reserve is also looking into the issue. Specifically, Federal prosecutors are looking into the sequencing of the trade in question and whether it could have involved so-called front-running, some of the people familiar with the matter said. That should send a chill down the spine of the fired bankers, as earlier this week a US jury found a former HSBC currency trader guilty of fraud related to front-running a large trade that netted the bank some $8 million in profits. The US is also in the process of extraditing another UK-based FX trader to face front-running related charges in the US.

Last year, a wide-ranging investigation into abuse and front-running in the global foreign-exchange market led to a rash of settlements worth billions of dollars involving Barclays and a handful of other global banks. 

While probes like this are never convenient, the investigation comes at a particularly trying time for the bank and its management. Earlier this month, WFC CEO Tim Sloan received a widely publicized tounge lashing from Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren during Congressional testimony (Sloan became the second straight Wells CEO whom Warren said should resign during a public hearing). He has also participated in a handful of media interviews lately as he tries to burnish the bank's once-wholesome reputation and bolster its lagging share price, which has never quite recovered from last year's cross-selling scandal.

However, as WSJ explains, front-running is often difficult to gauge given the ambiguity around pre-hedging strategies in currency trading. Typically a bank must purchase currency as part of a trade and price it differently than it would price a stock. Wells Fargo’s investment-banking, securities and markets division, known as Wells Fargo Securities, is a fraction of the size of its U.S. big-bank peers, as is its foreign-exchange business. The bank doesn’t break out financial results or metrics for that group or its foreign-exchange business.

And while the investigation is the latest embarassment for the bank, which over the summer disclosed that it had overcharged mortgage and auto-loan borrowers, there is, at least, one mitigating factor: Unlike the retail banking scandal, which stoked widespread public outrage, few Americans understand how the foreign-exchange market works - indeed, many don't even realize that such a market exists. This means that even in the worst-case scenario, Wells's brand should remain untarnished from this latest scandal.

The US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California is leading the investigation.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-27/federal-prosecutors-are-investigating-wells-fargos-fx-business 

Ex-HSBC Trader Involved In Front-Running Scandal To Be Extradited To U.S.

It's not shaping up to be a great week for a group of former HSBC FX traders who decided to front-run a massive $3.5 billion currency trade placed by one of their clients and net their bank some $8 million in illicit profits in the process.  Earlier this week, Ex-HSBC currency trader Mark Johnson, who was unwittingly captured on an audio recording saying "I think we got away with it," was convicted by a jury in New York of fraud. 

Now we learn that Johnson's partner in crime (allegedly, of course), Stuart Scott, has lost his court battle in the U.K. and will be extradited to the U.S. to face charges.

Not surprisingly, Scott expressed some "disappointment" with the ruling shortly after being dismissed from court.

*SCOTT SAYS HE IS DISAPPOINTED BY EXTRADITION RULING

*SCOTT SAYS U.S. CASE IS FLAWED, INACCURATE

As we've noted previously, Mark Johnson was arrested at New York’s Kennedy Airport in 2016 before he could return to the U.K. but Stuart Scott has remained free at his home in the London suburbs...until now.  Per Bloomberg:

Mark Johnson, HSBC’s global head of foreign exchange cash trading in London, was taken into custody at John F. Kennedy International Airport Tuesday and is scheduled to appear before a judge in federal court in Brooklyn Wednesday morning, said the people, who asked not to be named because the case hasn’t been made public. He’s charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, the people said.

According to Bloomberg, Johnson’s arrest comes more than a year after five global banks pleaded guilty to charges related to the rigging of currency benchmarks. HSBC, which wasn’t part of those criminal cases, in November 2014 agreed to pay $618 million in penalties to U.S. and British regulators to resolve currency manipulation allegations. HSBC, which still faces investigations by the Justice Department and other authorities for the conduct, has set aside $1.3 billion for possible settlements, according to an August filing.

Rob Sherman, an HSBC spokesman, and Peter Carr, a Justice Department spokesman, declined to comment.

A few weeks ago, details of court filings began to leak from Scott's British extradition case which allowed us to learn exactly how much each HSBC trader made for his trading book in the illicit scheme that netted a total of $8 million in profits...Scott took second place with a total profit of $585,105.  Per Bloomberg:

"The defendant personally obtained over $500,000 profit," the U.S. Justice Department, represented by British lawyer Mark Summers, said in written arguments prepared for the hearing. "The offenses of which he is accused are highly serious. They involve a systematic and organized conspiracy to defraud, committed in breach of trust."

Scott was charged, along with his ex-boss Mark Johnson, by the Justice Department in July 2016 with using insider knowledge to front-run a $3.5 billion currency deal by Cairn Energy Plc that made the bank $8 million. Johnson is on trial in New York and a jury there could begin deliberations this week.

Here's how everyone else made out per the DOJ:

For those who haven't followed the story closely, according to the original DOJ complaint, HSBC was selected by Cairn Energy Plc to execute a foreign exchange transaction – which was going to require converting approximately $3.5 billion in sales proceeds into British Pound Sterling – in October 2011.  But, before executing that trade, he tipped off a bunch of HSBC traders who loaded up their proprietary accounts with Pounds just before the massive trade sent the currency higher.

“As alleged, the defendants placed personal and company profits ahead of their duties of trust and confidentiality owed to their client, and in doing so, defrauded their client of millions of dollars,” stated United States Attorney Capers.  “When questioned by their client about the higher price paid for their significant transaction, the defendants wove a web of lies designed to conceal the truth and divert attention away from their fraudulent trades.  The charges and arrest announced today reflect our steadfast commitment to hold accountable corporate executives and licensed professionals who use their positions to fraudulently enrich themselves.”

“The defendants allegedly betrayed their client’s confidence, and corruptly manipulated the foreign exchange market to benefit themselves and their bank,” said Assistant Attorney General Caldwell.  “This case demonstrates the Criminal Division’s commitment to hold corporate executives, including at the world’s largest and most sophisticated institutions, responsible for their crimes.”

Of course, we're sure this is all just an effort to "criminalize behavior that is normal"...at least on Wall Street. 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-26/ex-hsbc-trader-involved-front-running-scandal-be-extradited-us