A rising number of central banks are likely to issue their own digital currencies in the next few years, research by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) showed on Thursday (Jan 23), as interest in the technology heats up.
Some 20% of 66 central banks surveyed by the BIS said they were likely to issue a digital currency within the next six years, up from around 10% a year earlier. One in 10 said they were likely to do so within the next three years.
In all, 80% of central banks said they were looking at the technology, up from seven in 10 surveyed last year.

Stablecoin issuer Tether is launching a new token backed by physical gold.
Tether Gold "represents ownership of one troy fine ounce of physical gold on a specific gold bar," a press release said Thursday (Jan 23). The new stablecoins, with the XAU₮ ticker, will be issued on Ethereum and TRON as ERC-20 and TRC20 tokens.

According to figures from CryptoCompare's December 2019 Exchange Review, the trading volume of cryptocurrency exchanges using the controversial transactions-fee mining (TFM) revenue model dropped by 30% in December.
Other statistics from the report show that TFM exchanges traded a total of $108.87 billion in December, representing 25% of the total volume from all exchanges.
The largest TFM exchange, Bitforex, saw its volume rise roughly 5% and was responsible for $35.65 billion in trading volume. The other two biggest TFM exchanges weren't as fortunate, as CoinBene traded $27.3 billion but was down 11.6%, while Bibox traded $18.26 billion and saw its trading volume drop a drastic 38.9%.

According to figures from CryptoCompare's December 2019 Exchange Review, the trading volume of cryptocurrency exchanges using the controversial transactions-fee mining (TFM) revenue model dropped by 30% in December.
Other statistics from the report show that TFM exchanges traded a total of $108.87 billion in December, representing 25% of the total volume from all exchanges.
The largest TFM exchange, Bitforex, saw its volume rise roughly 5% and was responsible for $35.65 billion in trading volume. The other two biggest TFM exchanges weren't as fortunate, as CoinBene traded $27.3 billion but was down 11.6%, while Bibox traded $18.26 billion and saw its trading volume drop a drastic 38.9%.

The promise of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) is that it could make cross-border movement of money easier and improve traceability to fight corruption or money laundering, according to Henri Arslanian, global crypto leader at PwC.
"The potential traceability features of CBDCs could, for the first time, give us a good fighting change against corruption and money laundering. CBDCs also could allow policymakers to measure the impact of certain policies accurately and immediately," Arslanian told CNBC at Davos.

The Digital Asset Human Capital Trends Report was commissioned by the Blockchain Association, an association of industry leaders advocating for the innovation and collaboration necessary to support American leadership of the digital assets industry. According to the Report, 85% of professionals in the digital assets industry are employed by exchanges, development firms, or mining businesses. Huobi is the largest employer, followed by Coinbase and OKEx. 67% of the largest employers are domiciled outside of the U.S. Singapore increased its market share and became the jurisdiction of choice for companies with utility tokens with nearly 40% of launches based there in 2019.
Click 'Read More' for the Report.

SUN Lijun, president of Alibaba Foundation, a private charity fund established by Alibaba Group, stated at the Annual Conference of Philanthropy China that Alibaba Foundation adopts blockchain to achieve the poverty alleviation in a healthy way. Within two years, 4.6 million family-registered households were covered and the organization filed for one of 67 state-level poor counties. The Foundation also provides insurance for all the families in this county via Alipay. More than 50% of treatment at their own expense will be reimbursed.

Users of crypto derivatives platform ErisX are getting access to institutional-grade data and trading solutions, thanks to a new partnership with software provider Etale.
ErisX announced Thursday (Jan 23) that members will be able to view Etale's real-time market data and execute orders leveraging the company's machine learning-based quantitative models.

Monitored by Whale Alert, at 14:35:02 UTC on Jan 23, 5,000,000 USDT (4,940,562 USD) were transferred from an unknown address starting with 0x93be to Binance.
The transaction hash is 0xb11314240007822798853b808c19a107560f4c2f4c5cbeeaad23144168b91a51.

According to Whale Alert, at 11:17:17 UTC on Jan 23, 5,666,866 USDT (5,642,406 USD) were transferred from an unknown address starting with 0xa181 to Bitfinex.
The transaction hash is 0x37382c2a52aa06e15c73211b278960cbc7b2043ab030aaa2382c989198a08fa0.

Malta-based sports blockchain venture Chiliz is launching a cryptocurrency exchange for sports and entertainment tokens.
In a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Jan. 23, Chiliz detailed that the new exchange — Chiliz.net — will roll out in February after the beginning of Fan Token Offerings for all of the Socios.com​partner teams. Socios.com is a tokenized fan-voting platform for sports powered by Chiliz tokens (CHZ).

Digital asset storage provider Ledger is partnering with FLETA, a South Korea-based blockchain platform for decentralized applications (DApps) to provide custodian services compliant with local laws.
The French startup has been trying to extend the reach of its institutional-level services with Ledger Vault, building on the success of its nano wallets which primarily targeted retail crypto holders.

Digital asset storage provider Ledger is partnering with FLETA, a South Korea-based blockchain platform for decentralized applications (DApps) to provide custodian services compliant with local laws.
The French startup has been trying to extend the reach of its institutional-level services with Ledger Vault, building on the success of its nano wallets which primarily targeted retail crypto holders.

Peter Schiff just tweeted in response to people’s jokes on his mistaking pin for password, “A lot of people are making fun of me for confusing my pin with my password. I made a mistake and it cost me my #Bitcoin. But confusing Bitcoin for money is a much larger mistake and those who are making it will lose far more than I did!”

Leading cryptocurrency exchange, Gemini announced the completion of its independent SOC 2 Type 2 examination. With this development, Gemini became the first crypto platform and custodian to complete a SOC 2 Type 2. SOC 2 Type 2 examination essentially covers the security compliance of the platform and Gemini Custody.

BitMEX, the popular cryptocurrency derivatives exchange, announced the launch of a new Ripple USD (XRPUSD) quanto swap, set to be listed on Wednesday, February, 5th 2020. 
Moreover, the exchange company informed that effective Friday, January 31st, 2020 at 12:00 UTC, all BitMEX UP & DOWN contracts will be delisted. All existing BitMEX UP and BitMEX DOWN contracts will be settled at that time and no new contracts will be listed from that time onwards.

Major cryptocurrency exchange Binance has invested an undisclosed sum in blockchain data monetization startup Numbers. Numbers aims to create an open, transparent and traceable data sharing, verification and management system. The firm’s open source application reportedly allows individuals to own and monetize their personal data.

According to CoinNess, BTC breaks above $8,400, now reading $8,420.50 on Binance.
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BitMEX just tweeted in response to BCH block reward proposal, “This is a bit like Burger King saying they plan to close 12.5% of their stores, yet McDonald’s workers will bear most of the costs, since wages will be driven down. This is true from a certain perspective, but the key point is fewer Burger King stores.”

According to CoinNess, BTC breaks below $8,400, now reading $8,355.81 on Boboo.com.
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In a series of recent tweets, Vitalik Buterin expressed his views on the BCH block reward proposal. He said, “12.5% of the BCH block reward is being redirected from miners to “a Hong Kong corporation”. The article bills this as voluntary, but in reality it is of course a compulsory soft fork.” He also added, “It’s worth noting the irony here: BCH, a chain that was born as a reaction to an ideology that claims that soft forks are the only legitimate way to make changes because they are “voluntary” is.... making a controversial soft fork and insinuating that it’s voluntary.”

The World Economic Forum (WEF) — together with some of the world’s major central banks — has created a central bank digital currency (CBDC) policymaker toolkit. According to an announcement on Jan. 22, the toolkit is the WEF’s attempt to help policy-makers understand whether deploying a CBDC would be advantageous and guide them through its design.

When asked if a merger of Ethereum (ETH) and  Ethereum Classic (ETC) would be possible using the Beacon Chain ETH 2.0, Buterin responded with a clear “yes.” Buterin explained that Ethereum Classic, at least technically, could easily be integrated into an Ethereum 2.0 Shard, just like the current ETH Proof of Work (PoW) blockchain. As Buterin describes, the price of ETC could be linked to that of ETH. For example, an ETC could be worth 0.1 ETH.

As of 11:00 (UTC) on Jan 23, the global price index of Bitcoin (BTC) has been trading above the $8,400 level. At present, the coin marks $8,444.16 with a decrease of 2.64% in the past 24 hours.
The CoinNess.com Bullish vs. Bearish Indicator shows our four-hour technical bias on BTC is “Sell” with 12 indicators sending out selling signals, two showing neutral signals, and four indicating buying signals.
The broad market remains downward momentum, with 14 out of Top 100 cryptos by market cap rising.
The global market cap reads $233.13 billion, and the 24-hour trading volume is $86.27 billion.
Major Coins
1. BTC quotes show $8,446.58 on Binance, $8,429.90 on Bitfinex, $8,412.20 on Coinbase Pro and $8,390.44 on Boboo.com;
2. CoinNess.com Market Index presents quotes for major cryptocurrencies besides BTC as following: ETH marks $162.90 (-3.04%); XRP marks $0.2272 (-3.28%); BCH marks $336.68 (-2.74%); LTC marks $56.11 (-3.09%); EOS marks $3.55 (-2.40%); ETC marks $8.88 (-4.09%).
Top 3 Gainers and Losers in Cryptocurrencies
1. Top 3 gainers among Top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap: BRC (+9.96%), LEND (+6.73%), and ENJ (+5.96%);
2. Top 3 losers among Top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap: BSV (-8.93%), LINK (-8.80%), and BTG (-8.30%).
Cap Flows of Coins/Exchanges
1. Top 3 capital inflows within the last 24 hours: ETH (+$37.88 mln), PAX (+$24.57 mln), and SEELE (+$24.46 mln);
2. Top 3 capital outflows within the last 24 hours: BTC (-$44.53 mln), BSV (-$16.42 mln), and MOF (-$6.78 mln);
3. Net inflows/outflows of exchanges: Binance (-$29.94 mln), Bitfinex (-$15.31 mln), and Coinbase Pro (-$6.19 mln).

On Jan. 8, Delegate Hala Ayala (D-51) offered two bills to the House of Delegates: the first calling for Virginia’s Department of Elections to investigate blockchain as a means to secure elections, and the second requesting that the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) research blockchain’s current and coming role in the state economy. Together, they comprise Ayala’s political drive to embrace – or at least consider – integrating distributed ledger technology in Virginian life. 

Private bank Julius Baer announced the extended offering of digital asset-based services to its Swiss-based clients. The bank will provide access to various solutions for digital asset storage and transactions to meet increasing demand from its client base. It will also offer consolidated portfolio overviews across both conventional and digital assets.

Bahrain’s Central Bank is to pilot a new toolkit developed by the World Economic Forum to evaluate the impact of digital currencies on the economy.
Blockchain and academic experts from around the world have contributed to the design and content of the toolkit to help policy-makers within central banks confidently evaluate whether central bank digital currency (CBDC) is the right fit for their economy and guide them through the evaluation, design and deployment process. “We will pilot the new toolkit developed by the World Economic Forum,” said Rasheed Al Maraj, governor, Central Bank of Bahrain.

The AARGOS Global Real Estate Fund was approved as an alternative investment fund (AIF) by Liechtenstein’s Financial Market Authority (FMA), the company announced. The fund provides exposure to a global real estate portfolio through AARGO security tokens – built on the Ethereum blockchain – with each token representing one share in the fund.
The fund was created by Ahead Wealth Solutions, a financial services provider based in the nation’s capital Vaduz, in collaboration with Bank Frick and blockchain technology provider Token Factory. The fund’s tokenization will also create “greater efficiency and a higher degree of automation in the transmission process,” said Bank Frick head of fund and capital markets Raphael Haldner in a statement.

Monitored by CoinNess.com, from 00:00 to 10:00 (UTC) on Jan 23, BTC registered a net outflow of $106.00 million in the past 10 hours.
1. The Top 3 net cap inflows in the crypto market are: AMO (+$4.53 mln), BCH (+$836.87 k), and MOF (+$726.36 k);
2. The Top 3 net cap outflows in the crypto market are: BTC (-$106.00 mln), XRP (-$19.46 mln), and BSV (-$16.40 mln).
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In a recent interview, VanEck Associates CEO Jan van Eck said he believes that Bitcoin ETF will be approved finally, yet not in any time soon.