South Korea’s Central Bank Downplays Crypto Investment Risk for Domestic Banks

A new report by the Bank of Korea has poured cold water on the perception of cryptocurrencies as a significant share of the deposits held by South Korean banks.

The report, which was released on Friday July 6 placed the December 2017 total outstanding balance of crypto assets in South Korean banks at 2 trillion won (US$1.79 billion), according to local publication Yonhap.

The total share held by crypto assets within the 26 trillion won (US$23.39 billion) total deposit value of South Korean brokerage houses thus comes to 8 percent. The data thus indicates that in spite of vast amounts of market interest in cryptocurrency trading and investment, the actual level of crypto investment being carried out by major financial institutions is still relatively low.

An excerpt from the report reads:

“The amount of crypto-asset investment is not really big, compared with other equity markets, and local financial institutions’ exposure to possible risks of digital assets is insignificant. Against this backdrop, we expect crypto-assets to have a limited impact on the South Korean financial market.”

Price Watch:
Bitcoin rose nearly 7% during the week. The price surged from $6,300 to $6,600 on Monday morning, but dropped back down to $6,500 late on Tuesday night. The price then surged to almost $6,800 on Wednesday (also “Independence Day” in the US). The price failed to break $7,000 on Friday staying around the $6,500 mark before jumping up to $6,800 on Sunday. Despite the failure to hit critical support levels, analysts have remained bullish. Even the bulls seem to be having some doubts with Fundstrat‘s Tom Lee lowering his end of year prediction to $22,000 from $25,000.
Ethereum gained almost 9% after inching up less than 2% last week. Despite the losses, the currency remains up almost 100% since the same period last year. The move comes after a 5% price surge on Sunday. The lack of price movement until now has largely been blamed on a lack of volume.
The entire market cap rose 6% after increasing by about $13 billion last week. The market has remained mostly flat over the past few weeks at the $270 billion mark. Bitcoin dominance has also been increasing all year going from 35% to 42% in just two months.
Business:

Facebooks Blockchain Division Adds Director of Engineering Evan Cheng to its staff. The addition of Mr. Cheng comes to a rock star team led by David Marcus, who is on the board of Coinbase.
Expedia Stops Accepting Bitcoin which has led to an exodus of users to other sites. The likely culprit appears to be the new platform rollout of CoinbaseCommerce which also caused Reddit to stop accepting Bitcoin earlier this year. Other sites, such as Cheapair.com have switched to BitPay to avoid further issues with Coinbase. We have a list of other sites accepting cryptocurrency in this post.
Search Giant Baidu to Launch Blockchain Based Rewards Platform called Totem to stop infringement of original works. The reward platform is designed to incentivize user uploads and “initiate rights protections online”
Exchanges:

Binance donates $1 million towards Japanese Flood Relief efforts. The flood has already reportedly killed 60 people and 2 million people have been evacuated. Binance has also asked that their partners donate as well. Additionally, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has promised “bonus points” for future listing requests to projects who donate. He further stated that Binance may count donations towards listing fees
Gemini poaches NYSE Executive to serve as CTO. Robert Cornish previously served as the CIO of the New York Stock Exchange and has held executive positions across the financial services industry.
Binance expects $1 billion profit in 2018. The exchange only completed its ICO in July of 2017 and now has 10 million registered traders. If the bear market continues, the goal may be unachievable but Binance is certainly on the right track having reported $200 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2018.
Coinbase Added 10 clients to Custody Service this week after debuting last week. Coinbase hopes to have 100 large institutional customers by the end of the year and $5 billion assets under management.
Bloomberg and Kraken Face Off over a Bloomberg article accusing Tether of wash trading and claiming that Kraken is manipulating the price. Tether shot back with accusations that Bloomberg’s article was so illogical it must’ve been an attempt to manipulate the price.
Governments;

Kenyan Parliament to Treasury: Decide Whether Bitcoin is Legal Tender-Kenyan MPs have issued a 2-week deadline for the Treasury to rule whether or not Bitcoin is legal tender in the country. Kenya has had a mixed relationship with crypto in the past warning against the use of cryptocurrencies despite adoption throughout the country.
Israeli Exchange to Share Customer Info with Tax Authority. The agreement is voluntary on behalf of the exchange and the exchange will only share information on users who have made transactions exceeding $50,000 over the past 12 months.
Thai Regulators Approve 7 Cryptocurrencies for ICOs that can be used by investors. The currencies include BTC, BCH, ETH, ETC, XLM, and LTC. Retail investors will have to stay under the token cap of 300,000 baht (or about $9,050).