Binance gains regulatory approval for New Zealand branch

  • Binance New Zealand will offer customers access to spot trading, NFTs, staking, among other services.

Leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance has officially been granted regulatory approval to enter the New Zealand market, and allowed to launch its local branch Binance New Zealand, Changpeng Zhao, the crypto company’s founder and CEO announced on Friday.

In a video announcement posted on Binance Twitter account, Zhao said the exchange had successfully registered in the country as a financial service provider.

Binance seeks ‘serious’ presence in New Zealand

The regulatory nod from New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) also saw the official launch of Binance New Zealand. General Manager Ben Rose, previously Chief Commercial Officer at tech company CodeHQ, will head the New Zealand team.

According to the Binance founder, New Zealand may be overlooked as a small market. However, the country does boast of a strong history within the fintech innovation space.

“A lot of major tech firms are slow to open a New Zealand office. I guess for some, it’s easy to overlook as it’s a smaller market but we see significant value in having a serious New Zealand presence. The history of fintech innovation in New Zealand is very well known, with one of the earliest and most rapid uptakes of digital transactions in the world,” the Binance chief said in a blog post.

Binance expects to bring the best crypto services to the Kiwis, including spot trading, NFTs, staking, among others. 

Major regulatory push

Binance applied for registration with the MBIE on 10 September, and the latest approval adds to the exchange’s scores amid a global regulatory push. The exchange is increasingly looking to provide the best for consumers, but in compliance with local regulations.

Over the past few months, Binance has acquired licenses and registrations in Italy, Spain, Canada and France among other countries.

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Is Filecoin’s FIL a good buy ahead of the FVM launch?

Filecoin price mirrored that of other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Litecoin. FIL was trading at $6 on Friday, which is slightly above its year-to-date low of $4.9. It has crashed by more than 84% this year, making it one of the worst performers in the cryptocurrency industry.

Filecoin is still growing

Filecoin is a leading blockchain project that seeks to solve some of the biggest challenges in the tech industry. The platform helps to simplify the file storage industry that is now dominated by a few large companies like Microsoft and Google.

Filecoin makes it possible for anyone with a computer or smartphone to share their storage and then receive compensation. These users are paid using FIL, the native token for the ecosystem. 

According to the developers, the number of people using the platform to store files and provide data is increasing. There are now over 20,000 such users who are storing more than 50 million data objects. At the same time, the number of developers using the network has risen to over 7,000. Most of these developers are from the United States, South Korea, and Hong Kong.

The next major catalyst for Filecoin is the upcoming upgrade that will introduce the Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM). The upgrade, which will happen in early next year, will be a virtual computer that developers can use to build their applications.

Still, there are concerns about the future of Filecoin and other similar decentralized storage platforms. For one, most people and companies find using centralized platforms like AWS and Azure being fine. 

Another challenge is that many file storage providers could find it difficult to be paid in FIL. Unlike stablecoins, the cryptocurrency is highly volatile and has lost more than 80% of its value this year.

Filecoin price prediction

The daily chart shows that the FIL price has been in a tight range in the past few days. As a result, it is consolidating at the 25-day and 50-day moving averages. It has formed a head and shoulders pattern whose neckline is at $4.95. 

At the same time, the MACD and the Awesome Oscillator are hovering at their neutral levels. Therefore, there is a likelihood that the coin will have a bearish breakout. This view will be confirmed if the coin manages to move below the important support at $4.95.

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HBAR price prediction: Last chance for Hedera Hashgraph bulls

HBAR price has been in the defensive in the past few months as demand for the coin slips. Hedera Hashgraph dropped to a low of $0.57 on Friday, which is an important support level. This price is about 90% below the all-time high of $0.5800. Its market cap has slipped to more than $1.3 billion.

ServiceNow launches ESG Ledger

Hedera Hashgraph is a leading blockchain project that counts some of the biggest companies in technology as its partners and validators. Some of these firms are Google, IBM, Avery Dennison, and Deutsche Telekom as its partners. Most of these firms have used Hedera’s technology to build some of their blockchain projects.

Servicenow became a Hedera Hashgraph validator a few months ago. And this week, the company unveiled its first project that is built using the technology. The Now Platform is a new ESG Public Ledger. This ledger tracks all the audit logs and orchestrates token-related activities verifiably.

This ledger is important because of the number of entities involved in ensuring that companies meet their ESG goals. For example, there is a marketplace or exchange that allows the matching of demand and supply through a price discovery mechanism. There are also financial intermediaries, the ecological project, and the financial intermediary.

Servicenow selected Hedera because of the significant speeds of its network and the fact that it is one of the greenest blockchains in the world. For example, according to the Center for Blockchain Technology, it uses about 0.04 Wh per transaction.

HBAR price has also lagged even as Hedera’s DeFi ecosystem makes some progress. According to DeFi Llama, the total value locked (TVL) in Hedera has moved from zero to over $17 million. This growth was helped by Stader, a new liquid staking project. 

HBAR price prediction

The daily chart shows that the Hedera Hashgraph price has been under intense pressure in the past few months. This performance was in line with that of other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Litecoin. Indeed, the coin has remained in a tight range at $0.06 just as BTC is hovering at $20,000. 

HBAR remains below all moving averages while the MACD has remained at the neutral level. Therefore, the outlook of this coin is neutral with a bearish bias. A drop below the support at $0.05 will signal that bears have prevailed, which could push it much lower.

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XRP soars by 11% after Ripple score a huge win in its ongoing SEC case

XRP is the best performer amongst the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap today after rallying by more than 10%.

XRP, the native coin of the Ripple ecosystem, is the best performer amongst the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap on Friday. The rally comes after Ripple scored an important win in its ongoing case with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The positive performance coincides with that of the broader cryptocurrency market. The total crypto market cap is close to $950 billion after adding more than 1% to its value in the last 24 hours.

Bitcoin, the world’s number one cryptocurrency, could be heading towards the $20k resistance level after adding more than 1% to its value today. Ether is also up by more than 1% and is trading at $1,345 per coin at press time.

XRP’s rally comes after the United States District Court Judge Analisa Torres overruled the SEC’s second attempt to withhold the documents relating to former Division Director William Hinman.

According to the documents, Hinman said Bitcoin and Ether are not securities. The SEC has now been asked to release the documents, and Ripple believes they contain a key piece of evidence in the case the SEC has brought against it.

Key levels to watch

The XRP/USD 4-hour chart has turned bullish as XRP has been performing well over the last few hours.

XRP/USD Chart By TradingView

The MACD line crossed from the negative zone into the positive region, indicating that the bulls have regained control of the market. 

The 14-day relative strength index of 63 shows that XRP could enter the overbought region if the rally continues.

At press time, XRP is trading at $0.49010 per coin. If the bulls remain in charge, XRP could surge past the $0.5413 resistance level before the end of the day.

Unless there is an extended rally, XRP could find it hard to move past the $0.69440 resistance level over the weekend. 

Where to buy now

eToro

eToro is a global social investment brokerage company which offers over 75 cryptocurrencies to invest in. It offers crypto trading commission-free and users on the platform have the option to manually invest or socially invest. eToro even has a unique CopyTrader system which allows users to automatically copy the trades of popular investors.

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Capital.com

Capital.com is a global broker which offers over 200 cryptocurrencies for its users. It comes with a range of features such as; great security, 24/7 support, demo accounts and a wide variety of assets. On top of that, it also has no inactivity, withdrawal or deposit fees, which makes it stand out from other crypto brands.

Buy XRP with Capital.com today

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Billionaire David Rubenstein says ‘crypto is not going away’

  • The Carlyle co-founder David Rubenstein also believes Congress will not overregulate the crypto industry.

David Rubenstein, co-founder and co-chairman of Carlyle, a global private equity firm, believes crypto is here to stay.

Rubestein, who aired his views on the crypto sector in a recent interview with Bloomberg, however suggests key factors that might drive one to crypto is if they are worried about government intervention or regulation and want to keep their money in something the authorities have no control over.

The billionaire businessman was speaking to fellow billionaire, Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin, during the launch of the Carlyle exec’s book “How to Invest”.

Asked what he thought of cryptocurrencies as part of his views on investing, Rubestein said he previously looked at it as gambling.  But even then, he says those who allocate a percentage of their net worth into gambling or such other ventures, need to only use that which they can afford to lose.

“So with crypto that was my view for some time. If you get pleasure by watching the screens all day and saying you’ve just made a lot of money in crypto and so forth, you know allocate just enough so if you lose it it’s not the end of the earth,” he said.

“I now think that crypto is not going to go away the way some people have thought. And while you can argue it’s worthless, in some respects many things that people buy are maybe worthless,” Rubestein added.

Crypto not the ‘worst thing’ to invest in

The veteran businessman also touched on the aspect of “a libertarian view of life” in crypto, where the need to have assets that the government can’t control is increasingly seeing the industry lobby Congress for certain legislation. 

According to him, this appears to be pretty effective at the moment, and his opinion is that Congress will not overregulate the crypto industry.

And while he thinks crypto might attract people out to keep their money from the government- like Russian oligarchs whose assets were confiscated as part of Western sanctions, or a Chinese investor worried about the same should China invade Taiwan –  he says certain factors make crypto “not the worst thing” to hold.

Why is this so? 

“You can move it anywhere around the world. It’s not going to be devalued by government inflation. It’s not the worst thing to put some of your money in,” he offered.

Rubestein said he has not personally invested in any particular cryptocurrencies. However, he is invested in “companies that service the industry” as he believes the industry as a whole is here to stay.

And like the internet, computers or smartphone trends or such other past trends, the young people are almost always at the forefront. The crypto revolution is no different, he opined.

“People who are in their 70s don’t usually start economic trends really,” he opined.

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