News & insights

SPACs have become a preferred way for some companies to go public without the difficulties of a traditional IPO, and without the strong market presence that direct listing requires.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development is based in Paris, and has 38 member countries. Because those counties are the world’s economic powerhouses, the OECD often leads the way, forming the nucleus of larger alliances.

Decentralized finance, or DeFi, is a young industry.

Polkadot first came to the attention of the wider world when it leapt into the top five most valuable digital assets in the world in April this year.

In marketing and sales, a common phrase is ‘sell the sizzle, not the steak.’ In other words, sell the appetizing aspects of the product, not what it actually is.

Altcoins are ‘Alternative coins’ — that is, alternatives to the dominant Bitcoin, still in the running to become the Hoover of digital assets.

Classical economics presupposes that we’re all rational, individualistic entities, making economic choices that maximally benefit us; homo economicus.

Adoption curves show us the stages in which uptake of a new technology grows.

We’ve looked at how we can understand the health of a national economy. But what about individual industries and sectors, like farming, manufacturing, or construction?

Supply and demand is a basic economic concept, so basic that we usually talk about these things without defining them.

Economic and financial news and analysis often talks as if we can know for sure how well an economy is doing.

Securitization is a way to package the cashflow from assets, including obligations, and sell them on to investors.

Bitcoin, the leading digital asset with 46% of the sector’s total market value, has had an unusually volatile week — even for this unusually volatile asset.

Commingling assets can give brokers, investors large and small, and the whole financial system significant advantages. It does come with risks, though they can be mitigated; and it might have application for digital assets.

Following a consultation last year, the Hong Kong FSTB has released a proposal paper indicating the changes it thinks should be made to Hong Kong law as it applies to companies that deal with digital assets.

The business environment is more unpredictable than ever before, with innovation competing with the unprecedented nature of the pandemic.

The greater fool theory states that as an investor, you can buy stocks or other investment targets that are clearly over-valued, and still make money.

Rehypothecation is a way of generating credit from assets, and allows multiple financial transactions to be collateralized by the same asset. How this works is a little counter-intuitive, though, and there are systemic risks involved too.

A return to normality was the dominant theme of the first year of the Coronavirus pandemic. Announcements by politicians, columns by pundits and conversations between friends and colleagues made constant reference to it.

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is a quasi-Turing complete, distributed computational network; a blockchain cloud computer. What does all this mean, how does the EVM work and what are its limitations?

DeFi is the most rapidly-growing use for blockchain technology.

The principal-agent problem arises when a principal has an agent who is able to make decisions on their behalf. That’s the principal-agent relationship.

EIPs are in the news, with the publicity around EIP-1559 drawing attention from non-technical Ethereum users, curious investors and observers alike.

Coinbase, the largest digital asset exchange in the US, has announced plans to go public on April 14.

Asset tokenization creates a digital representation of an asset on a blockchain, meaning they can be freely traded and securely stored.

The Financial Action Task Force, the global Anti-Money Laundering (AML) authority, issued new guidance on Decentralized Finance (DeFi).

Polkadot’s (DOT) increased in price by 73% in just over two weeks.

The Cantillon effect describes the velocity of money through the economy, and the uneven effect its diffusion has on prices, wages and inflation.

Game theory is a way of creating a simplified interactive environment — a “game” — that lets us model how people and entities will respond.

Ethereum is the blockchain of choice for tokens, and for the increasingly large number of DeFi projects that use the network to generate returns for their investors and themselves.

Just a few short years ago, ICOs promised to change the way investment was done.

Ethereum gas prices are in the news, but what is gas, why do you have to pay for it to use Ethereum, and why are gas prices so high right now?

Metcalfe’s Law is a way of describing the usefulness of networks. Roughly put, Metcalfe’s Law states that the more users a network has, the more valuable it is to each individual user.

One of the biggest selling points for tokenization on the blockchain is the fungibility of tokens.

Investment in the digital assets space increasingly comes from institutional investors.

Nations, cities and corporations all keep currency and assets in reserve, to preserve their value and to use for transactions with other similar entities.

Adam Smith is the founder of modern economics. Before him, there was little effort to discover exactly how some countries became wealthier, some people more prosperous, than others. And in part this is because there was little need.

GameStop is a computer games retail store, facing an uphill struggle in the days of lockdowns and downloadable games.

John Maynard Keynes built on the ideas of Irving Fisher to propose a solution to the shortcomings of free markets that left the markets themselves mostly intact.

2020 was the year when states around the world got serious about digital assets. Some regulated them, some banned them, and some set about creating their own; many created clearer regulatory frameworks.

Sweden is considering switching from its national currency, the Krona (Crown) to a digital equivalent: a stablecoin backed by the state’s fiat currency, referred to as a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

The Austrian school of economics gave us concepts like opportunity cost, and called for a currency immune to inflation and central bank control.

Gresham’s law states that bad money drives out good. But how can that happen, and what does it mean for modern economics and for digital assets investors?

Whether retail or commercial, bank customers have their expectations shaped by a world of always-available, instantly-actioned tech. Payment apps and social media, communications and productivity, are all now non-local, device-agnostic and semi-automated.

ERC 721 Tokens is a technical standard used for non-fungible tokens, also known as deeds.

ERC 20 Tokens is a technical standard used for smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain for implementing tokens.

Cash money, once the self-evident standard of reliable exchange, is difficult to come by now. Where has it gone and what does the future hold?

Today’s banking system operates on a system called Fractional Reserve Banking. It’s the same interlocking system all over the world, and you might be surprised when you look under the hood and see how it actually works.

DeFi is the hottest newcomer to the burgeoning digital assets economy. With enormous growth in assets tied up in the system, it offers a tantalizing glimpse of high-reward investment.

Fiat money is money that government has decided is legal tender. Unlike a currency based on assets, fiat money is backed by a country’s whole economy.

On Blockchain, there is no central entity validating and verifying the transactions, yet every transaction on Blockchain is considered to be trusted and verified. What makes this possible?

Picking a crypto safekeeping platform can be an arduous task. In this post, we’ll look over the best technologies currently available for digital asset custody.

Securities can and are being issued on blockchain. What are the relevant touch-points with the regulation?

Digital assets storage, custody and transactions require different approaches from traditional assets.

On July 22, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced that it would let all chartered banks in the USA custody digital assets.

An equity investment is any investment in a company that is made by purchasing shares of that company in the stock market.

Hong Kong is introducing a Limited Partnership for Funds (LPF) regime to support funds operators in the region and meet rising demand as previously available offshore solutions lose their appeal.

Digital assets payment systems work by transferring digital tokens between accounts on a blockchain. At its most basic, this is how Bitcoin works.

Digital assets are increasingly coming to the attention of regulators and legislators at the national and supranational levels.

The market for digital assets has undergone several profound transformations since the 2009 release of the Bitcoin white paper.

On March 27, 2020, Hong Kong’s Inland Revenue Department (IRD) issued its revised Departmental Interpretation and Practice Notes (DIPN) No. 39, laying out how the department was to treat various actors in Hong Kong’s tech and financial sectors.

An airdrop is a distribution of free digital assets to multiple addresses/accounts. The term comes from computer games and from there to the military, meaning supplies dropped from an aircraft.

An alternative investment is one that isn’t a stock or bond. Traditionally, ownership in companies was the most valuable asset with ownership of their debt a close second.

Custody for the digital assets space relies on progress and integration in two key areas: structure and technology.

Tokenization Asset tokenization is the process of creating tokens that stand in for a specific fraction of the value of an asset.

When you read a headline saying that a company has “burned” half its coins, as Stellar recently did, what actually happens? Why would a company destroy its assets in this way, and how does the process work technically?

Digital asset custody is a relatively young industry, yet it’s bootstrapping its way into maturity fast, based on increasing investment from institutional investors and the model of the extant traditional custody and trust world.