Weekly Summary - Standard Kepler
26 Nov 2018 - 2 Dec 2018

【Regulated BTC Futures Important Gateways to Adoption】

WEEKLY RECAP
Total market cap. reached $135bn (a 11.8% increase), and 7 day trading volume slumped 4.2% for top 100 crypto

WEEK AHEAD
5 Dec: XRP at FinTech Connect in London
6 Dec: ADA to release roadmap update

~THOUGHTS OF THE WEEK~

The first two regulated BTC futures were issued by CME and Cboe in December 2017, and more are currently being proposed by Bakkt and Nasdaq. We consider regulated BTC futures important gateways towards increased BTC adoption, as they bring about a number of improvements to BTC’s market quality when listed on their respective exchanges.

Firstly, regulated futures provide a trusted path for traditional investors to invest into BTC. Preventing fraud and price manipulation are CFTC’s publicly stated goals in regulating BTC futures. They hence tightened the BTC futures self-certification process in February 2018, one example being the requirement for higher initial margins. The initial margin of CME and Cboe BTC futures are currently set at 47% and 44% respectively, which is at least 10x higher than for CME corn futures.

Secondly, this regulatory pressure forces issuers to improve their business processes. We believe that Nasdaq will be able to satisfy CFTC’s market surveillance requirements via SMARTS, a stock market surveillance system which correlates real-time and historical data of BTC. This aids in the detection and prevention of spoofing and wash trading. Apart from SMARTS, VanEck’s MVIS facilitates price transparency by tracking three major OTC BTC liquidity providers, thus mitigate the possibility of BTC price manipulation.

Thirdly, the physical settlement of futures creates a need for a robust supporting ecosystem. Bakkt’s proposed physically-settled BTC future is currently being reviewed by the CFTC. It is however worth noting that the CFTC has not yet approved any BTC futures with physical settlement, as these are consider more susceptible to price manipulation (compared to cash settlement futures). We further believe the protection of physically-delivered BTC against thefts and hacks to be of concern to the CFTC. The chance of approval for physically-settled futures will be significantly higher if qualified custodian solutions exist in the market to support future offerings.

We thus believe that regulated BTC futures may improved the BTC market quality via enhanced market transparency, liquidity, and trust. As noted in our chart of the week, the demand for BTC futures has remained relatively strong despite the bearish 2018 market. Regulated BTC futures may provide a trusted gateway for more investors to join this market.

© 2018 Standard Kepler

 The post has definitely mentioned the basic research and understanding but you should be aware of the advertisement or promotion, be super careful and do not let yourself fall into the trap easily whenever you see some advertisement or attractive posts  with any reward.

you should first understand what is the use of cryptocurrencies and blockchain. You may download some useful apps providing you updated news or reliable market sharing and thoughts from these sites, since there are overwhelming of information at the moment. Cointelegraph is the first news update site I used and it is very helpful because you can simply click into some key terms to check out its' meaning in the news.

Developing a useful blockchain platform which can bring more benefits to the society as a whole no matter on application, cryptocurrencies or any ideas which is possible to apply on blockchain, like how people concerns about the blockchain technology applying on supply chain or healthcare etc.

Although this is a responsible business method but definitely difficult to gain investors insights as profit might not be foreseeable in a short period or the profit rate may not be high

Thank you, i think this is definitely a good comparison and would give new comers understand more about blockchain.
But also note that, not every case is good to use blockchain, even if the blockchain system can be public, private or hybrid.

P.S. IBM has different use cases of blockchain technology and application with animation explanation, if you are a newbie, you should probably go and watch to gain more insight!

Risk is unavoidable, so do not invest into a particular thing at the same time, we cannot guarantee when it grows, it is very risky and dangerous.

不行，谷歌翻译完全不靠谱，只能在新闻里面找一下正确的名字

那国内目前有什么值得参考的网站可以看加密货币发展或者是有没有什么网红在讲呢

it was due to popularity first coz people surround often discuss about this topic, afterwards was finding it investment ability and appreciate the blockchain technology introduced in such a digital world which we can see it can also bring quite a great number of benefits to the world

You may have a look on this post which is exactly answering your questions.
Meanwhile as you are newbie, I think this site's post on tag: blockchain / cryptocurrencies are kinda useful

http://startupmanagement.org/2016/08/15/the-relationship-between-cryptocurrency-tokens-value-and-work/

The team could try to hire community managers with different timezones, like one in Asia Timezone one in US, this can keep the group 24/7 being active thus understanding and knowing different timezone's investors more

humble teammate, also a team to gather knowledge to be comprehensive

There isn't a definite site but i think icodrops is relatively quite a comprehensive ico information platform, but for reviews I just often see different bloggers posting their views and comments on particular projects coz on different aspects different professionals would give out some vulnerable opinions.

you may, as the purchase amount may not be as a unit or whole number, while you should also know that it is not a must and necessary, just that bitcoin is the first and most common-known cryptocurrency in this industry. but if you trying to trade on other like ETH or EOS, they are actually more or like the same, just similar to how do you trust in the real world
stock market

This is bring much convenience and reduce the time lapse to handle each legal issue

We cannot guarantee the purpose and outcome of every airdrops would be the same. Yes it might be risk like how we purchase token in crowdsale

Different kinds of developments might require different platforms to deploy, depends on your ideas and ability to handle.

Take a look on different frameworks on blockchain in this post, I think this may give you a new idea.
https://medium.com/@philippsandner/comparison-of-ethereum-hyperledger-fabric-and-corda-21c1bb9442f6

Reading news in order to let myself keep in touch with the field. There are a number of official accounts in wechat, these accounts often share different analysis and opinions in different angles. Most importantly you have to be active and willing to learn the things you do not know what is it about from the news. There is not such a guide or syllabus in this field at the moment. Research on unknown terms and reading others review can definitely give you the biggest insight.

Examples like copyright license information sharing on music platform

1. whitepaper (check if similar ideas & whether the project is feasible to use under blockchain technology_
2. team, partner background and activeness
3. Github