French tobacconists are getting another chance to sell Bitcoin coupons after the scheme had to be suspended earlier this year.
Local media has reported that the scheme will restart today, allowing 5,200 tobacconists to sell coupons that can be redeemed for Bitcoin. This time round, the company behind the scheme, Keplerk, will not sell coupons for Ethereum like it did previously.
The company behind the idea, Keplerk, will sell coupons valued at €50 ($55), €100 ($110), and €250 ($175) in stores across the country.
It launched at the start of 2019, but Keplerk had to pull the plug in February.
The company says it took the decision after some users experienced delays when redeeming their cryptocurrency. “Some people took up to eight hours to receive their Bitcoin,” Keplerk CEO Adil Zkhar said.
Since February, confirmation times have fallen, but it won’t stay this way forever. If this is Keplerk’s reasoning, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the service suspended again, if confirmation times start to increase.
While confirmation times were prohibitively high, so were Bitcoin transaction fees. However, according to the report, fees have dropped from 7 percent to 5.5 percent for the €250 coupon. So it’s a little more attractive than it once was. But that doesn’t make it a good idea.
It should be noted that each coupon has a 7 percent commission that goes to Keplerk.
The scheme was announced last November, and was met with criticism from French financial regulator Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), as you might expect.
The AMF, Bank of France, and the French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority issued a statement after the scheme’s initial announcement that stated the acts of purchasing, selling, and investing in Bitcoin are currently carried out outside any regulated market.
French regulators also rightly pointed out that it made no sense to buy a digital asset from a physical store. Anyone can buy cryptocurrency from an exchange desk, and while the transfer fees might be similar, users won’t have to front the additional 7 percent commission.
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New Ethereum token is backed by gold reserves guaranteed by Australian government
Australia‘s Perth Mint, one of the world’s largest refineries , is today launching a gold-backed Ethereum token guaranteed by the government of Western Australia.
Marketing materials shared with Hard Fork claim the Perth Mint Gold Token (PMGT) is the first gold token on a public blockchain backed and guaranteed by government reserves.
“It offers institutional investors a competitive alternative to traditional gold products such as gold ETFs, with the additional benefits of real-time trading and settlement enabled by blockchain technology,” reads a press release.
Ethereum blockchain used to digitize government gold
The token is part of a wider campaign to digitize the Perth Mint‘s inventory . The Mint is wholly owned by the Western Australian government.
The endeavour began in late 2018 when it launched GoldPass in collaboration with local fintech startup InfiniGold — a mobile app that allows investors to instantly buy, sell, and transfer physical gold via digital certificates.
Physical Perth Mint gold backs each of those certificates, and the government guarantees that gold. It is these certificates that will be tokenized in the form of an ERC-20 cryptocurrency, also issued by InfiniGold.
“The digitization of gold via a public ledger is a natural progression for the global commodity markets,” said Perth Mint CEO Richard Hayes. “It will promote gold as a mainstream asset, enhance its accessibility, and offer greater liquidity, transparency and auditability of the real assets backing this type of digital token.”
Marketing materials further state PMGT’s liquidity is to be provided by “market makers” and enabled via the GoldPass platform.
Many of these kinds of stablecoins have failed before
The firm is angling PMGT as an alternative to USD-backed stablecoins. It hopes the tokens will be one day tradable with traditional products like gold ETFs and CME gold futures.
It’s certainly cool that a sovereign government appears confident enough to deploy a token on a public blockchain like Ethereum, but those involved should remain cautious.
Back in June, Hard Fork reported that two-thirds of failed stablecoin projects launched since 2017 were backed by physical gold .
Update 16:30, October 10: The headline of this article has been updated to properly reflect that it is the gold backing the Perth Mint’s token that is guaranteed by the Western Australian government, rather than the token itself.
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Cryptocurrency exchange Blockport goes bankrupt after failed STO
An Amsterdam-based cryptocurrency exchange is facing an uncertain future. Blockport has declared bankruptcy after its security token offering (STO) failed to meet its minimum expectations last month.
Blockport’s STO failed to reach its soft cap of € 1 million ($1.13 million) in May. Shortly after, the company filed for and was declared bankrupt, according to recently found bankruptcy records .
“Since our first equity fundraising (STO) round was unsuccessful, we can’t uphold our planned growth trajectory and therefore have to significantly scale down our operations and team,” Blockport founder Sebastiaan Lichter told Hard Fork.
The Blockport STO launched on April 16 and ran until May 15. It offered investors the opportunity to purchase BPS (Blockport Securities) in exchange for a minimum of € 500 investment.
The exchange’s STO differed from an initial coin offering (ICO) as investors were offered more than just tokens. The exchange also promised investors a share in the company’s profits, and access to annual meetings with Blockport’s board and management team as part of the STO.
However, it all came to no avail. After running the STO for a month, Blockport announced that it had failed , promising to refund investors.
In the 24 hours after making the announcement, Blockport’s native token, BPT, dropped in value by over 88 percent. Back in January 2018, Blockport raised over $15 million in its ICO, according to ICObench .
Credit: CoinMarketCap
It’s become a bit of a trope that STOs will become the industry’s preferred token-based fundraising method. Numerous industry folk believe STOs address a number of the regulatory challenges that surround ICOs.
In Blockport’s case, the STO seemed like a last resort to fund the ongoing development of its platform. It’ll be interesting to see if this strategy becomes a bigger trend for the industry in years to come.
It seems Blockport’s STO wasn’t alluring enough for investors to part with their cash, though.
Blockport claims to be “drastically” scaling back its business in order to continue development, it said in an announcement . The exchange also stated that it would be taking the platform offline at the end of May. At the time of writing, Blockport is still live.
“The platform is still online so that we can properly take it offline and assist users with withdrawing their funds,” Lichter told Hard Fork. “We will communicate an exact date and time when the platform will go offline.”
Despite the bankruptcy filing, the trading platform says it will continue to develop its products in “stealth mode.” Lichter confirmed to Hard Fork that Blockport is in talks with “several parties for a potential relaunch,” but was unable to provide any further details.
That said, the company is under no legal obligation to restart operations, and whether it does depends heavily on finding new partners and investors. The company has said it will issue a further update in Q3 of this year.
Until then, it seems all BPT holders can do is wait.
