Meet Matthew Najar and some of his achievements? Governments in major economies are encouraging financial technology (fintech) innovation with regulatory and advisory initiatives designed to accelerate the availability of online payment solutions and other financial services for businesses. The initiatives generally aim to attract innovative fintech companies and help them operate in the regulated financial sector, while ensuring adequate financial protection for customers.
Matthew Najar believes without new FinTech initiatives, we will stall: “FinTech, blockchain certainly included, is critical for our generation to solve inherent financial system issues and progress forward”.
The U.K. has also been encouraging fintechs in other ways, and other countries including Australia and the U.S. are adopting some of the same approaches. For example, the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) operates an “innovation hub” designed to help new and established businesses from the U.K and other countries introduce innovative financial services. The hub provides a dedicated team that helps fintechs understand the regulatory regime and apply for authorization to offer financial services; its role also includes identifying areas where the regulatory framework needs to be adapted to enable further innovation.
Among the efforts are new licensing and regulatory approaches that help fintechs offer new or broader services, including banking. Other moves include advisory services that guide new companies through financial regulations, and “regulatory sandboxes” that let firms test new services with customers before obtaining full regulatory approval. Najar, who has been in the fintech space since 2014, has been one of the loudest voices in support of increased spending in the financial technology space, having provided continuous leadership services for AMEX Group as well as external consulting for smaller start-up Blockchain firms.
Cryptocurrency wallets are software programs that store your public and private keys and interface with various blockchains so users can monitor their balance, send money and conduct other operations. When a person sends you bitcoins or any other type of digital currency, they are essentially signing off ownership of the coins to your wallet’s address. To be able to spend those coins and unlock the funds, the private key stored in your wallet must match the public address the currency is assigned to. If the public and private keys match, the balance in your digital wallet will increase, and the senders will decrease accordingly. There is no actual exchange of real coins. The transaction is signified merely by a transaction record on the blockchain and a change in balance in your cryptocurrency wallet.
The U.S., which is home to some of the world’s biggest fintech companies, is also kicking off innovation initiatives similar in concept to those already up and running in other countries. The OCC plans to establish an Office of Innovation in 2017 to help the agency ensure that financial institutions operate in a regulatory framework that is responsive to financial innovation; its roles will include an outreach and technical assistance program for banks and nonbanks developing financial services. In addition, a bill to introduce a regulatory sandbox was introduced in the U.S. Congress in 2016, with the goal of passing enabling legislation in 2017.
We could say that cryptocurrencies were born in 2008 when the domain name bitcoin.org was registered on August 18. Then, on October 31, the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, who designed Bitcoin, publishes an article that launches the ball: “Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.” The first Bitcoin transaction occurs when Nakamoto sends Hal Finney, a computer programmer, 10 Bitcoin (BTC) on January 12. Bitcoin is the first digital currency created without the intervention of any government, central bank or organization. Under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto, a person or a group of people proposed and created a completely free digital currency, supported by its users through a P2P network. Until today the identity of its creator remains a mystery.
Exchanges accept a variety of payment options based on what they are willing to use. This is sort of a sore point for many exchanges, since some payment methods have been used to scam sellers for a quick buck in the past. Coinbase allows both bank account and credit or debit card transfers for payments and one payment solution must be linked to your account before you can make the trade. Paypal is not supported by Coinbase and with good reason.
The prices of most altcoins depend on the current market price of Bitcoin. It is vital to understand that Bitcoin is relative to fiat currencies and is quite volatile. The simpler version of this is that when the value of Bitcoin goes up, the value of altcoins goes down and vice versa. The market is normally foggy when the Bitcoin price is volatile and, as you would imagine, this prevents most traders from gaining a clear understanding of what goes on in the market. At this point, it is advisable to either have close targets for our trades or simply not trade at all.
At least in the United States and Canada. Most people think that they only owe taxes on profits that were sold back to USD/CAD, when in fact, you owe taxes on every single trade you make – even crypto to crypto. The IRS and CRA view every trade as a realized gain or loss. Put simply, if you buy Ether with Bitcoin, they consider this a taxable event on a realized gain or loss. They assume that you sold Ethereum to USD, then purchased Bitcoin with USD, even though this is not what happened. Ignoring both tax implications and exchange fees will severely impact your overall cryptocurrency investment strategy.