26th October 2021 > > Retail adoption of cryptos.

tl;dr

Merging the buying and storage of cryptos into on-line banking apps will open the crypto world up to a whole new swathe of retail investors.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Big move in perpetual swaps funding rates but frankly it seems hard right now to see a trigger for a sell-off. Risk assets seem to be getting comfortable with the prospect of monetary tightening, which is a welcome if surprising outcome.

On November 14th we will find out if the Van Eck application for a physical, spot based BTC exchange traded fund (ETF) gets the go-ahead from the SEC or not.

Occasional Series – Insulate Britain

I still cannot see any evidence of a diversity policy being implemented.

Why is this organisation uniquely free from well-deserved criticism for being patently non-diverse?

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – BTC investment made easy

Q2 Holdings and New York Digital Investment Group have developed a platform that allows retail investors to buy and sell BTC via their relevant banking app on smartphones or tablets.

This is excellent functionality as it provides both execution and custodial services.

For a retail investor this means there is no need to worry about private keys for own storage, or any need to worry about coins being stolen in a hack of a centralised exchange.

Execution will be as easy as it is now to buy stocks – a big advantage over the trading screens for most exchanges which can look daunting to those unfamiliar with them.

Live, up to date valuations next to your account balances and stock portfolios in the banking app is now just a standard piece of functionality.

An initiative like this can only encourage greater take up amongst retail investors.

…

New York’s Five Star Bank and California’s UNIFY Financial Credit Union are the first out of the block, having already gone live.

Jonathan Price, Q2’s executive vice president had this to say:

"We have a robust pipeline of customers — the interest level is very high. We have several customers now in our early adaptor phase with an additional wave of financial institutions planning to deploy by end of the year."

He added that by early 2022 there will be at least 450 banks and credit unions offering this product to their customer base.

Retail adoption of BTC is about to take another leg up.