Nearly Half of Millennials Have More Faith in Crypto Than Stock Market
They are also enthusiastic about the prospect of traditional financial institutions offering crypto assets. That’s according to a new survey which shows a “generational shift” where millennials “place their faith in the power of technology and open networks.” The survey interviewed 1,000 millennials. It found that 43 percent of millennial trust crypto exchanges more than they do U.S. stock exchanges. 93 percent of millennials surveyed also said that they would invest more money in crypto if it were offered by traditional financial institutions such as TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, or Charles Schwab. Even among millennials who don’t trade crypto, one third said they would trust crypto over the stock market. We’re seeing the beginning of a generational shift in trust from traditional stock exchanges to crypto exchanges. At the heart of this change are the asset classes themselves. Younger investors’ experience with the stock market has seen a great deal of loss of trust, with the fall of Lehman Brothers because of irresponsible practices followed by the worst recession since the Great Depression and Goldman Sachs stealing billions from the Malaysian government. Trust further eroded when Americans saw how hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money are funneled to the largest financial institutions while their savings evaporated and how banks get free money through quantitative easing while their cost of living continued to rise. The survey also showed that two thirds of millennials say they have more faith in crypto as a whole than the stock market. Of millennials who don’t trade crypto, one third said they would trust crypto over the stock market.
University of Michigan Boosts Investment in Crypto Fund
University of Michigan’s $12 billion endowment plans to add money to a cryptonetwork technology fund managed by Andreessen Horowitz as more institutional investors begin to explore the market for cryptocurrencies. Andreessen Horowitz, a Menlo Park, California-based venture capital firm, would receive an additional investment from the endowment to its CNK Fund I. The endowment committed $3 million in June. CNK invests in “cryptonetwork technology companies across the spectrum of seed, venture and growth stage opportunities,” Kevin Hegarty, chief financial officer at the public university, wrote in the agenda. Two Virginia pension funds committed to crypto investments last week, adding to a list of institutions dipping into the asset class, including Yale University’s $29.4 billion endowment. While the crypto space presents challenges, it’s worthwhile for institutional investors to begin exploring the area for the long term, according to a research report on pension and endowments adviser Cambridge Associates.
Reuters: Swiss exchange SIX to launch blockchain exchange in 2019
Swiss exchange SIX plans to launch its new SDX trading platform using blockchain technology to speed up trading in the second half of this year, Chairman Romeo Lacher. The new SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) will initially run parallel to the existing SIX platform, which involves three steps to complete a trade, often over several days. Two of those steps vanish in a blockchain distributed ledger, meaning a transaction can be completed in fractions of a second. Other exchanges are eyeing similar approaches, but SIX sees itself in the lead and intends to show off the technology by raising money itself via the new platform in the second half of the year. “We want to start with our own Security Token Offering,” Lacher said.
Like an initial public offering (IPO) of stock or an initial coin offering (ICO), an STO raises capital. But while an ICO places a voucher for future products or services, an STO offers a stake in a company. SDX is likely to offer trading in selected stocks, followed by other stocks and later bonds and possibly exchange-traded funds, officials have said. Even assets that are not securities — such as paintings or vintage cars — could one day change hands on SDX. Although stock and bond dealing on SIX and most other exchanges is now fully electronic, the underlying processing steps are often based on slow protocols of paper and post.
Reuters: HSBC Exec Says Using Blockchain Slashed Forex Trading Costs by 25%
An HSBC executive has said that the bank’s blockchain-based system has helped it cut the costs of settling foreign exchange trades. Mark Williamson, chief operating officer of FX cash trading and risk management, who oversees the blockchain project, said that its HSBC FX Everywhere platform saved it 25 percent as compared with traditional methods. Last month, the bank announced it had settled more than $250 billion in transactions using its HSBC FX Everywhere platform. It said then that it had settled 3 million foreign exchange transactions and made a further 150,000 payments over the digital ledger system, which it has been using over the last year “to orchestrate payments across HSBC’s internal balance sheets.”
Reuters: Goldman Sachs backs U.S. construction finance tech startup Rabbet
Goldman Sachs Group Inc has backed Rabbet, a U.S. startup that develops software to help make construction finance more efficient. Other investors in the $8 million round include QED Investors and Camber Creek. Rabbet, formerly known as Contract Simply, will use the funding to further develop its platform and grow its software engineering and sales team.
Rabbet’s platform helps companies involved in construction finance — such as banks, developers, and contractors — digitize and view documents relevant to a deal. The process is currently heavily manual and paper-based, making it time consuming and prone to errors.