Blockchain Press Releases
MyntExchange: Why Securities Need to Be on the Blockchain
From the desk of Myntfund
REYKJAVÍK, Iceland., Aug. 8, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — One of the fundamental benefits of blockchain technology is its ability to record transactions transparently in a tamper-proof ledger.
This level of openness is unprecedented in a financial sector where obscurity, complicated acronyms, and manipulation benefit only the most powerful players. Specifically, blockchain technology can shine a light on unethical tactics like the use of dark pools-private exchanges where large trades happen, hidden from the public eye. In short, these pools allow hedge funds to influence prices undetected by dumping stocks en masse.
But only a few at the top of the securities hierarchy benefit from “taking a dip” into these pools.
In 2016, Barclays and Credit Suisse were fined more than $150 million by the SEC for operating dark pools.
In the words of the famous David Fincher film “The Social Network” about Facebook’s meteoric rise:
“In the grand scheme of things, that’s a speeding ticket.”
In other words, those fines mean nothing to these firms, and the SEC is nothing but a highway patrolman catching them in the act every once in a while.
To level the investing playing field, larger technological changes are necessary.
Blockchain’s transparency permits regulators to monitor markets continually instead of relying on sporadic inspections. While the SEC changed laws recently to inspect hedge funds unannounced, their oversight remains limited. Blockchain provides constant surveillance of all network activity and assets.
This visibility deters foul play and benefits retail investors.
The inefficiencies and obfuscation of legacy financial systems ultimately stem from high costs and outdated processes. For example, the systemic practice of “beautifying” balance sheets uses significant resources to polish company images before listing publicly.
There’s another word for this process:
Fraud.
But hey, we’re not the SEC-what do we know?
Then there’s the substantial administrative overhead of managing securities through decades-old infrastructure.
For example, simply listing a stock on an exchange requires tens of millions of dollars (depending on the number of stocks issued) and over a year of jumping through hoops. The costs and complexities of issuance and trading continue to plague processes long after the initial hurdles.
This bureaucratic bottleneck contradicts the swift pace of modern business.
Let’s face it: despite the many (valid) complaints about cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology could bring securities into the 21st century.
Blockchain technology allows assets like stocks to be issued and traded in a direct peer-to-peer manner, sans middlemen. Intermediaries and gatekeepers have traditionally cream-skimmed value while saddling processes with exorbitant costs.
Not so on-chain.
Blockchain also enables fractional ownership, letting retail investors participate in opportunities otherwise accessible only to the wealthy, such as real estate or investment funds. By opening doors to diverse investors, blockchain also promotes financial inclusion in capital markets.
For issuers and companies, listing securities on the blockchain dramatically cuts down costs compared to traditional routes. Startups in particular can benefit from this affordability and lower their barriers to entry. Ongoing costs are also slashed through process automation and reduced paperwork.
Beyond listing, blockchain tech also reduces the overhead of compliance, tracking ownership, and shareholder communications. These activities typically take tremendous manual effort and expense in legacy frameworks.
Blockchain’s ability to embed rules and automate workflows via smart contracts also smooths operations throughout the security’s lifecycle.
Specialized blockchain exchanges have already emerged to solve some of these endemic industry problems. For example, MyntExchange implements an innovative fee model where transactions incur a small charge in company stock instead of cash.
Moreover, it uses smart contract technology to protect users from so-called “pump and dumps” where company leaders dump all of their stock at the highest point, leaving their investors “holding the bag” of now-worthless company stocks. (Unfortunately, this happens a lot in the crypto world.)
In a blockchain-enabled investing environment like the one we’re describing-with a unique “pay in shares” fee model-holding shares aligns the exchange’s incentives with listed firms, as well as the investors, thus avoiding conflicts of interest.
Don’t forget:
In the traditional, legacy financial system, “conflict of interest” is a synonym for “business as usual.”
Let’s say we change that, eh?
Of course, while blockchain technology improves security through encryption and resilience, risks like hacking remain. Exchanges must utilize impenetrable infrastructure and smart contract code to thwart exploits.
Users also need to manage their private keys responsibly to prevent theft. Ultimately, like all things cybersecurity, blockchain technology is only as secure as its underlying implementation.
For securities in particular, blockchain must be layered with protections against fraud. MyntExchange, for example, achieves this by isolating its ecosystem to render stolen assets worthless. In other words, the exchange also uses its native currency MintPay to enable trading between assets. This liquidity pool acts as a protective moat by only allowing whitelisted tokens.
BROADER POTENTIAL OF BLOCKCHAIN
Beyond trading, blockchain technology opens doors the doors to all kinds of other benefits for retail investors, including:
- Embedded governance
- Secure voting
- Compliance
- Automated regulatory filings
In short, shareholders can participate in transparent decision-making while companies save costs and effort.
Overall, blockchain technology presents a monumental opportunity to fix foundational flaws in the securities industry plaguing both issuers and traders. By enhancing transparency, promoting fair access, reducing costs, and enabling innovation, blockchain can propel securities into the 21st century.
The next generation of securities rests on a foundation of openness, efficiency, and equal opportunity.
To get your asset on-chain, [email protected]
CONTACT:
The following files are available for download:
https://news.cision.com/myntfund-ehf-/i/why-myntexchange-is-born-out-of-necessity,c3204270 – Why MyntExchange is born out of necessity
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Blockchain Press Releases
HTX Ventures: Bitcoin Scripting Advances Unlock Potential for Secure and Scalable BTCFI
SINGAPORE, Sept. 12, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — HTX Ventures, the global investment division of HTX, today released its latest research analysing Bitcoin’s potential and challenges in the field of Bitcoin decentralized finance (BTCFI). The report, titled Exploring the BTCFI Rabbit Hole from the Perspective of Bitcoin’s Programmability, aims to help readers understand the BTCFI sector better, by exploring the evolutionary path of Bitcoin programming, delving into how Bitcoin programming can support various BTCFI applications, showcasing the current real-world BTCFI implementation scenarios, and explaining the underlying logic of BTCFI’s future growth and adoption.
HTX Ventures has been contributing to BTCFI for a long time. As stated in its 2024 Half-Year Investment Report, BTCFI is highlighted as one of HTX Ventures’ six key investment directions in 2024. Some of HTX Ventures’ portfolio companies in the BTCFI sector include Babylon, BounceBit, COREx, and more.
The new report once again shows HTX Ventures’ interest in BTCFI. It begins with the foundations of the Bitcoin contracts, which were laid fourteen years ago by Satoshi. Understanding the basics of Bitcoin programming involves several concepts, including Transaction Outputs (TXO), Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO), scriptSig, and Opcodes. “Bitcoin script programming is about programming money and enabling a specific amount of money to respond to particular input data. By designing the scriptPubKey, opcodes, and the interaction process between users, we can offer cryptographic guarantees for the key state transitions of Bitcoin contracts, ensuring the contracts’ proper execution,” the report points out.
There are some mechanisms to be used to enable the implementation of different types of transactions, including MultiSig, Timelocks, Hashlocks, Flow Control, and SIGHASH. The report explains, “the basic model of Bitcoin programming is where UTXO locking scripts specify verification conditions, unlocking scripts provide data, and opcodes in locking scripts indicate the verification program. The funds can be spent once the verification program is passed.”
There are some core limitations, however, such as only a few verification programs being available, Bitcoin scripts having no computational power, and UTXO unlocking conditions being completely independent.
Unlike the computation-based Ethereum contracts, Bitcoin contracts are verification-based, which has brought many challenges in developing BTCFI products. Despite the difficulties, “over the ten years of developing Bitcoin contracts, the ingenious use of cryptographic algorithms and signatures has significantly enhanced privacy, efficiency, and decentralization, making BTCFI products possible,” the report states, and starts introducing Bitcoin programming milestones. Innovative tools, such as the Discreet Log Contract (DLC), Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions (PSBT), and MuSig2 bring new solutions to the problems in Bitcoin programming, driving the development of BTCFI.
The Taproot upgrade activated in November 2021 was revolutionary for the Bitcoin ecosystem, allowing Bitcoin to hold in custody large-scale smart contracts with tens of thousands of signatories while concealing all participants and maintaining the size of a single-signature transaction. This makes more complex on-chain BTCFI operations possible and significantly improves privacy and transaction efficiency.
Such technological innovations pave the way for BTCFI’s further development. Then in January 2023, Ordinals were proposed, which aimed to assign each sat a unique identifier and attribute, so as to transform it into a unique NFT. The creation and trading of Bitcoin NFTs were realized, not only expanding the uses of Bitcoin but also allowing users to directly create and trade digital assets on the Bitcoin blockchain. This led to the introduction of BRC-20, a token system for on-chain recording and off-chain processing that uses JSON data’s ordinal inscriptions to deploy token contracts, mint tokens, and transfer them.
The naissance of Ordinals and BRC-20 created trading demand and blue-chip assets for BTCFI. More importantly, they offered many BTCFI projects new ideas based on indexer programming that enhanced Bitcoin’s contract capabilities.
Bitcoin’s programmability has come a long way and made great progress, forming a thriving BTCFI ecosystem with more and more application scenarios of BTCFI arising. The report lastly lists some notable BTCFI implementations, including BTC staking provider Babylon, asset issuance platforms Unisat and Magic Eden, lending protocol Liquidium, BTCFI scaling solution Fractal Bitcoin, and more.
The emergence of BTCFI applications indicates that its market potential is becoming evident. With Bitcoin becoming more and more mainstream, the market demand for BTCFI use cases will also increase, fostering a new financial ecosystem centered around Bitcoin. “The formation of this ecosystem will propel Bitcoin further beyond the ‘digital gold’ narrative, establishing it as an indispensable decentralized financial infrastructure in the global economic system,” the report concludes.
To read the full report, please visit: https://square.htx.com/htx-ventures-exploring-the-btcfi-rabbit-hole-from-the-perspective-of-bitcoins-programmability/
About HTX Ventures
HTX Ventures, the global investment division of HTX, integrates investment, incubation, and research to identify the best and brightest teams worldwide. With more than a decade-long history as an industry pioneer, HTX Ventures excels at identifying cutting-edge technologies and emerging business models within the sector. To foster growth within the blockchain ecosystem, we provide comprehensive support to projects, including financing, resources, and strategic advice.
HTX Ventures currently backs over 300 projects spanning multiple blockchain sectors, with select high-quality initiatives already trading on the HTX exchange. Furthermore, as one of the most active FOF (Fund of Funds) funds, HTX Ventures invests in 30 top global funds and collaborates with leading blockchain funds such as Polychain, Dragonfly, Bankless, Gitcoin, Figment, Nomad, Animoca, and Hack VC to jointly build a blockchain ecosystem. Visit us here.
Feel free to contact us for investment and collaboration at [email protected]
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Blockchain Press Releases
HTX Announces Strategic Partnership with IBEX to Jointly Promote Global Bitcoin and Lightning Network Applications
SINGAPORE, Sept. 12, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — HTX, a global leading platform for digital assets, recently announced a strategic partnership with IBEX, a Fintech at the forefront of Bitcoin Lightning Network innovation that leverages the Bitcoin and Lightning Network protocols to offer global settlement solutions. Through the deep integration of Lightning Network technology, this collaboration aims to enhance the payments efficiency, reduce transaction costs on the HTX platform, explore emerging markets together and provide users with more diverse financial services.
IBEX Has Become a Key Advocate in Bitcoin Transactions
As a company dedicated to providing fintech solutions on the Bitcoin Lightning Network, IBEX focuses on reshaping the global payment ecosystem with its innovative crossborder instant settlement capabilities. Founded in 2018, IBEX aims to offer fast, secure, and low-cost settlement solutions through the technological advantages of the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Its platform provides modular API, helping enterprises easily integrate Bitcoin and Lightning Network functions to connect to the global financial network.
Its core advantages include:
- Instant settlement: IBEX’s Lightning settlement system allows global transactions to be completed within seconds, significantly reducing the confirmation time compared with tradfi and defi transactions. For this reason, it is particularly suitable for scenarios requiring instant payments, such as online shopping and international remittances.
- Low transaction fees: Through the Lightning Network, IBEX can substantially lower transaction costs, thus avoiding the high fees associated with traditional blockchain networks. This saves costs for both merchants and consumers.
- High security: IBEX employs advanced encryption technology and multi-factor authentication measures in its system to ensure transaction security and protect user data.
IBEX pays utmost attention to security, reliability, and compliance, offering one-stop solutions for companies operating under various legal frameworks. As the Lightning Network continues to evolve, IBEX has become a key partner for crossborder settlement solutions.
Lightning Network Integration: A New Upgrade for the HTX Platform
As part of the partnership, HTX will integrate IBEX’s Lightning Network technology into its platform, which has entered the testing phase. The Lightning Network is a second-layer protocol designed for Bitcoin, aiming to increase the speed and scalability of Bitcoin transactions. Through this integration, users on the HTX platform will enjoy faster transaction confirmations and lower fees, so user experience and platform competitiveness will be remarkably enhanced.
Apart from technical collaboration, HTX and IBEX will jointly explore various application scenarios, including payments, transfers, and settlements. They also plan to offer deposit/withdrawal services for IBEX on the HTX platform. Both parties will gradually expand into other business areas, thus deepening and broadening their collaboration.
Both parties will also work closely in brand building, social media, campaigns, and marketing. In the future, HTX and IBEX will co-host various marketing campaigns, such as AMA events, press conferences, and other promotional activities to increase brand awareness and attract more users. The two parties will support each other in their respective advantageous markets, thus expanding their market influence globally.
Forge Powerful Alliance to Jointly Explore Emerging Markets
HTX and IBEX will jointly expand global markets, especially the Asian Latin American, and African markets which promise great potential. HTX will leverage its market penetration in these regions and combine it with IBEX’s Lightning settlement system so as to popularize cryptocurrency payments among local merchants and consumers. This will benefit both merchants and consumers with more convenient payment solutions and lower transaction costs.
Strategically, this collaboration between HTX and IBEX will focus on the application of the Lightning Network within HTX and its ecosystem. IBEX will support HTX in exploring the potential of the Latin American and African markets, particularly in areas like deposit/withdrawal channels, local exchange partners, and Opinion Leaders. In addition, HTX will assist IBEX in brand and business expansion in the Asian market, further increasing its global influence.
An HTX spokesperson stated, “Through this strategic partnership, HTX and IBEX will jointly promote the application and popularization of Bitcoin and Lightning Network technology worldwide, providing users with more efficient, secure, and convenient digital asset trading services.”
Ry Sterling, Head of New Markets, EMEA for IBEX also said “The partnership between HTX and IBEX is the first step to connecting the Global South and Asia via the Lightning Network. We look forward to expanding HTX’s LN features as well as opening channels to new markets and to local IBEX LN partners across Asia, Latin America and Africa.”
About IBEX
IBEX offers fintech solutions on the Bitcoin Lightning Network, focusing on real-time global settlement, scalability and regulatory compliance. Their platform provides modular APIs for integrating Bitcoin and Lightning functionalities, allowing businesses to connect to a global financial network. They emphasize security, reliability, and regulatory features, making their services suitable for companies operating under various legal frameworks. The site also highlights the growing adoption and capacity of the Lightning Network, reflecting its increasing role in Bitcoin transactions.
For more details, visit IBEX
About HTX
Founded in 2013, HTX has evolved over a decade from a simple cryptocurrency exchange to a comprehensive blockchain business ecosystem. This expansion covers a wide range of services including digital asset trading, financial derivatives, wallets, research, investments, incubation, and more. As a world-leading portal to Web 3.0, HTX is committed to a growth strategy focused on global expansion, ecological prosperity, wealth effect, and safety and compliance. This approach enables us to offer comprehensive, safe, and reliable services and value to virtual currency enthusiasts around the world, reinforcing our position as a global gateway to Web3.
Contact Details
Ruder Finn Asia
[email protected]
Company Website
https://www.htx.com
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Blockchain Press Releases
Nomic Announces Support for Ethereum, Bringing Decentralized BTC to the Biggest DeFi Markets
New expansion to Nomic is the first step to building a decentralized onramp for moving Bitcoin onto new blockchain networks
GRAND CAYMAN, Cayman Islands, Sept. 12, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — The Nomic DAO Foundation announced today the launch of Ethereum support on Nomic’s decentralized custody engine for Bitcoin. This will enable seamless BTC on-and-off-ramping into Ethereum, bringing Bitcoin to the largest ecosystem in decentralized finance (DeFi). Starting with a testnet released today, Nomic will facilitate native Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals on Ethereum, without relying on centralized custodians.
Traditionally, to use BTC on Ethereum, users have had to obtain wrapped bitcoin (WBTC), an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain that is pegged to real Bitcoin. Each WBTC is backed 1:1 with Bitcoin, which is held in reserve by a centralized custodian. Recently, amid centralization concerns with custodians holding all the keys to the multisig for WBTC worth $9.2 billion, the broader DeFi community has pushed for users to consider new decentralized alternatives.
“Bitcoin is the highest-value crypto asset, and Ethereum is the highest-value DeFi ecosystem. I’m excited to see Nomic bring its products to Ethereum, including the native and decentralized nBTC asset, and seamless one-step BTC deposits,” said Matt Bell, CEO of Turbofish, Nomic’s founders and core contributors. “It’s time to move beyond the current centralized and clunky BTC-on-Ethereum offerings, and start truly bringing Bitcoin into DeFi.”
In addition to bringing Bitcoin into Ethereum through nBTC, this upgrade introduces a new framework for protocols to leverage Nomic’s decentralized custody engine. Previously, to build Bitcoin DeFi solutions, protocol developers had to rely on centralized MPC providers or basic multisig setups to hold BTC, which presented trust and decentralization challenges. Now, with Nomic’s decentralized custody engine, protocols can easily create Bitcoin-backed assets at a lower cost, providing a trust-minimized solution to accelerate Bitcoin DeFi growth on Ethereum and other EVM chains.
This upgrade also paves the way for future bridging to other EVM-based chains, expanding the reach and utility of nBTC across ecosystems that represent more than $46 billion in total value locked (TVL).
To learn more, visit https://www.nomic.io/.
About the Nomic DAO Foundation
The Nomic DAO Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to the growth and integration of the Nomic ecosystem. The Foundation supports the goals and objectives of the Nomic DAO (decentralized autonomous organization), is the initial steward of the Nomic blockchain, and will support and grow the Nomic DAO until it becomes self-sufficient.
View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/nomic-announces-support-for-ethereum-bringing-decentralized-btc-to-the-biggest-defi-markets-302246585.html
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