Bitcoin Falls Under $7,000 

Goldman Sachs And NYSE Drop Huge News

The market continued its downward march as Bitcoin once again fell under $7,000.

Despite a painful market, we still saw several interesting and exciting developments today.

Perhaps the most compelling involved Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s largest investment banks. We already knew they would be offering OTC services to customers, and launched Bitcoin Futures earlier this year. Additionally, their new CEO is particularly keen on cryptocurrency.

So it was little surprise that they were revealed to be devising a cryptocurrency custody service. It seems they didn’t want to be outdone by the NYSE’s recent announcement of crypto custodial services through their platform Bakkt.

The offering would open Goldman Sachs custodial services to multiple cryptocurrency funds, providing them an institutional-backed avenue through which to manage their assets. Of course, this would outfit the funds with security, insurance, and other investment measures that help to give peace of mind and security to large players who don’t want to have to manage private keys or wallets.

This is certainly not the first custodial offering we’ve seen, as we mentioned the NYSE will be offering similar services and Coinbase’s custodial program went live earlier this year. Still, this is an indicator that there is legitimate demand for these services, and that the demand is rising.

After all, one of the biggest criticisms the SEC raised in the recent rejection of the Winklevoss ETF was that there wasn’t adequate services to meet the demand.

Furthermore, as we’ve pointed out before with Coinbase, custodial services are not limited to just Goldman’s clients. They could extend their services to other banks who would then sell secured and insured cryptocurrency investment to their customers.

If the services gain popularity and use, they may even encourage skeptical or unenthused investors to get into the game. Still, as we mentioned, they’re in the conceptualization of these services.

“In response to client interest in various digital products we are exploring how best to serve them in this space,” a Goldman Sachs spokesperson commented on the matter. “At this point, we have not reached a conclusion on the scope of our digital asset offering.”

It is exciting to see one of the largest banks in the world openly talking about their digital asset offerings, even if they are just exploring it currently. Not to be outdone, Intercontinental Exchange, the trading titan that owns the New York Stock Exchange and other global marketplaces, added on to their announcement of their new crypto trading platform, Bakkt.

Once custodial services and Bitcoin futures are added, they plan to allow investors to add Bitcoin to their 401(k), a popular retirement vehicle that has historically been excluded from cryptocurrency investment. The next step after that could be using Bitcoin to replace your credit card.

“Bakkt is designed to serve as a scalable on-ramp for institutional, merchant, and consumer participation in digital assets by promoting greater efficiency, security, and utility,” said Kelly Loeffler, ICE’s head of digital assets, who will serve as CEO of Bakkt, in the press release announcing the launch. “We are collaborating to build an open platform that helps unlock the transformative potential of digital assets across global markets and commerce.”

Moving into the 401(k) and IRA market for cryptocurrency would be a massive win for Bakkt. But their ambition doesn’t stop there: They want to use Bitcoin to streamline and disrupt the world of retail payments by transitioning consumers from swiping credit cards to scanning their Bitcoin apps. The market opportunity is colossal: Consumers worldwide are paying lofty credit card or online-shopping fees on $25 trillion a year in annual retail purchases.

Bakkt is the brainchild of Jeff Sprecher, the founder, chairman, and CEO of ICE, whose expertise is modernizing the world’s exchanges in recent years from pits into super-efficient electronic marketplaces.

Any way you shake it, it’s an extremely exciting venture to see forming around cryptocurrency, and should give investors hope that more volume is coming.

Meanwhile, on the regulatory front, the SEC is boosting its scrutiny of brokerages that deal in cryptocurrencies. Brokerages have been recently riddled with questions from SEC examiners about their business practices and how they deal with clients. The examiners seem to be seeking specific information about fees generated from trading, brokerage financing, and ICOs.

The review, being led by the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, follows recent requests to hedge funds about how they price digital investments.

It seems they’re trying to understand the whole ecosystem, and trying to determine how to make this a more efficient and organized marketplace. After all, their inquiries have only been targeted towards smaller brokerage firms that deal with digital currencies. No Wall Street banks currently trade cryptocurrencies, which is what they’re liking preparing for.

They want to better understand how things operate at the small scale so that when it’s time for the big players to enter the space, they’re better prepared to adapt and enforce marketplace restrictions.

Overall, we want the SEC to be as participatory as possible. The last thing we want is for them to make a knee-jerk reaction that will hurt crypto for years to come. We want them to take their time, evaluate the circumstances, and enact proper regulatory procedures that work with crypto and not against it.

We think that’s how they plan to operate, and if it takes until 2019 or 2020 for them to open the floodgates with an ETF and other regulatory approvals, it will be worth the wait as it will positively affect crypto for many years to come.

It may be tough to wait for such an uncertain date, but you’ll be glad you were in before and not after like the majority of investors.

If you were not able to join us for the recent webinar “Ten Steps to Building Your Portfolio” webinar, the replay is available here.

We’ve started to produce episodes for The ReadySetCrypto Podcast; all of our episodes are posted on our blog (and on iTunes) and episode eight is now available. Episode Eight is an interview with Andrei Polgar, the author of the book “Age of Anomaly” which speaks to anticipating negative market events. Look for more episodes shortly as we comb the crypto space for valuable interviews, and create valuable content to keep you in the loop!

See you tomorrow!

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Defensive Actions for the next trading day: 

• None.