Cryptocurrencies

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is weighing a new trading operation dedicated to bitcoin and other digital currencies, the first blue-chip Wall Street firm preparing to deal directly in this burgeoning yet controversial market, according to people familiar with the matter. Literally, why not? Banks — Goldman especially — trade things. If there is a thing that trades — and, particularly, if it is a purely financial asset that trades…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Wall Street’s top regulator has a warning for mom-and-pop investors who are rushing into the booming market for initial coin offerings: the space is probably full of fraud. “It would shock me if you don’t see pump-and-dump schemes in the initial coin offering space,” U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton said on Thursday in Washington. “This is an area where I’m concerned about what’s going to happen to retail…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Michael Oved helped Virtu Financial Incorporation become the most consistently profitable market maker in the history of electronic trading. Now he has his sights set on revolutionizing how digital currency exchanges operate. The new company he cofounded, AirSwap, sounds like a contradiction in terms: A decentralized exchange. Made possible by the nascent technology of the ethereum blockchain, there’s no central authority around which buyers and sellers gather. Instead, a computer program known as…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Few technologies have the ability to stir passionate online debate and baffle the vast majority of the population as bitcoin. The virtual currency has been a constant source of interest and confusion since it thrust itself into the mainstream more than five years ago. But interest in bitcoin is now greater than ever. Its value has soared to above $4,000, a new high point, turning some people who hoarded…