E-commerce giant from Japan Rakuten announced in a press release published a day ago that they launched their own cryptocurrency exchange for the public to use as we are reading today in the coming altcoin news. As confirmed in the press release, Rakuten marked a positive step in the infrastructure of the growing industry. The e-commerce giant made a huge crypto boom in 2018 when it acquired Everybody’s Bitcoin and spent more than $2.4 million on the crypto exchange. The deal has led to a lot of speculation about Rakuten’s involvement in the industry but later the rumors were shut down when the company revealed that it would be launching a crypto exchange later this year. Rakuten unveiled its new subsidiary wallet on Monday. As we can read from the release, the new application which will first be listed on the Google Play Store before the App Store will only support trading of three cryptocurrencies. The digital assets include Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum:

 “The app also features many useful functions that allow customers to effectively manage their crypto assets, such as confirmation of assets deposited in Rakuten Wallet, the purchase and sale of crypto assets, and real-time chart rate confirmation.”

According to the company, all of the wallets will be separating the crypto assets from the investors and from the company itself via trust accounts provided by the Rakuten Trust. With the crypto industry hack overload in Japan, this represents a good move to satisfy the financial services agency of the country. Rakuten Wallet is expected to make a boom on the market and according to the analyst Joseph Young, the company has a customer base of more than 1.2 billion individuals making it among the most important companies. The Rakuten Wallet is only expected to operate in Japan with a population of more than 130 million. The Japanese Yen accounts for more than 10% of all global bitcoin trading volume so as according to Young, the actual share that the Yen has of the crypto market is much larger because the Japanese exchanges are known for not inflating their volumes. As noted in the latest cryptocurrency news, the country’s companies have long been known as adopters of new technologies and Rakuten wallet will only boost the adoption of cryptocurrency in the country.

Silvergate bank will expand its services which will include cryptocurrency lending according to the latest IPO filing which we are reading more about in the latest cryptocurrency news below. The Silvergate bank provides financial services to some of the top companies in the industry such as BitStamp, Xapo, and Coinbase and according to the recent IPO filing from the company they saw increased demand for the crypto-backed loans from other companies that operate with Bitcoin. As a response to that, the company is now looking to offer fiat loans to the clients using cryptocurrencies as the collateral. Silvergate bank uses the Silvergate Exchange network which is a system designed to facilitate transactions between the crypto exchanges and clients. On top of the loans, Silvergate has also expressed a lot of interest in adding stablecoins to its systems since they are not working with them at the moment but according to the document they are holding USD deposits backing several stablecoins. The Silvergate bank is also considering getting a NY State BitLicense in the previous filings because they want to launch trust companies and become a custodian for institutional crypto funds. One of the most important things for investors is the lack of infrastructure that surrounds the cryptocurrency industry. The custodianship issues and regulatory uncertainties are among the main reasons that make the investors understandably cautious. Once these issues are resolved in a robust manner, we could expect to see some much more money flowing in the bitcoin space. Silvergate wants to solve these issues that are not up to the government to solve by providing a framework for legacy institutions to maintain and purchase securely cryptocurrency funds. Despite Silvergate bank as we read in the altcoin news there is another leader in the industry-Coinbase with their new Coinbase Custody service. The CEO of the company has talked on Twitter about how the new service will work and stated that more than $200 million is invested from institutional investors on a weekly basis. The crypto-backed loans could be something that will convince the institutional investors who have been sitting outside of the game that Bitcoin is here to stay but more importantly is a safe alternative investment class.

Telegram open network, the long-awaited blockchain of Telegram will finally launch at the end of October according to the reports in the coming altcoin news we have today. The gram tokens of the network are still yet-to-be issued and are now trading in an unauthorized secondary market. The company still has to publicly acknowledge the project but the investors in the last year’s $1.7 billion token offerings are now seemingly selling their gram allocations via the OTC desks, exchanges and similar. Buying tokens this way could be very risky according to investors as Telegram prohibited investors from re-selling their allocations under a penalty when terminating the contract. The secondary market has improved for the future token of the Telegram open network and between the OTC desks, sales on small crypto exchanges and investments funds, the opportunity to buy tokens before launch date are hard to find. The investors who bought into the Telegram’s $1.7 billion offerings back in February and March are now not allowed to pledge or sell their tokens in any way before the launch. The original purchase agreement says that if some investors dispose of their future tokens before the Telegram Open Network or TON is life and the allocation can be canceled. One of the investors stated:

 “Telegram was the first big project that legally prohibited investors from selling their allocation. Investors usually just share their allocations with friends, without signing documents.’’

The purchase agreement which was written for Telegram by the US legal powerhouse Skadden, Slate, Meagher, and Glom LLP according to one investor stipulates that the buyers of grams may not offer pledge, swap, sell and encumber or dispose of their tokens directly and indirectly. The investors may sell any securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for the investment contract between an investor and the company. The issuance of the tokens is conditional upon the investors’ compliance with the rule. One investor stated for the latest cryptocurrency news:

The future issuance of tokens is conditional upon the investor’s compliance with this rule. If Telegram learns the investor broke the agreement, it can cancel the allocation.

Blockchain CEOs are tired of the South Korean regulations since the blockchain projects are now leaving the market because of the headaches from the regulators according to the coming altcoin news reports we have today here on DC Forecasts. According to some industry experts, the local news outlet Business Korea noted that there is an increasing tendency for Blockchain projects born in South Korea to find easier funding across the world. Major international exchange is now the focus of the Blockchain CEOs looking to raise cash and mainly those with high volume residing in a pro-crypto jurisdiction. The reason lies in south Korea’s problems with the implementation of the controversial cryptocurrency regulations and it says:

‘’Experts point out that domestic blockchain projects are flocking to foreign exchanges largely due to tougher domestic cryptocurrency exchange market conditions. Investors cannot make or withdraw deposits in the Korean currency at Korean exchanges’’

If we don’t include the nation’s four largest exchanges, some of the 200 smaller exchanges cannot even open real-name virtual accounts and this is one of the reasons why crypto investors cannot benefit from the protection systems. The international players such as China’s BW.com, Bitholic and Binance Labs sense the demand from South Korea hence they are either opening Korean won markets or in this case, Binance Labs is only sponsoring the blockchain efforts. Only this week, Japan as one of the governments that openly claim to foster crypto exchange innovation while still has a strict licensing scheme added another platform to its domestic economy in the form of Rakuten Wallet. These moves are also impacting other exchanges and market players' share of the market. As a result the South Korean exchanges are less appealing in 2019 because of the low volume and out of the top one hundred in the world, there are only a few exchanges that are located under the jurisdiction in Seoul. Other issues faced by the local include added responsibility for loss or theft of the customers’ funds. Earlier this month, the commentators warned that the existing restrictions on cryptocurrency by the regulators will throttle attempts to foster blockchain innovation as read in the latest cryptocurrency news:

 “It is no exaggeration to say that 97 percent of domestic exchanges are in danger of going bankrupt due to their low volume of transactions’’