Matthew Najar or the climb of a blockchain expert? 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., traditionally a major financial-services centre, has actively encouraged new competition in banking, reducing barriers to entry such as banks’ capital requirements. As a result, several new digital banks are already offering Internet-based banking services, including online payment solutions, without establishing brick-and-mortar locations. Another ongoing U.K. initiative designed to enable competition and fintech innovation is the implementation of an open banking standard by 2018, including an open application programming interface (API) that enables development of new applications to access information in customers’ existing accounts at one or more banks. For example, customers might be able to manage all their bank accounts from a single app.
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.
Online: wallets run on the cloud and are accessible from any computing device in any location. While they are more convenient to access, online wallets store your private keys online and are controlled by a third party which makes them more vulnerable to hacking attacks and theft. Mobile: wallets run on an app on your phone and are useful because they can be used anywhere including retail stores. Mobile wallets are usually much smaller and simpler than desktop wallets because of the limited space available on mobile.
Australia also has set a goal of encouraging fintech innovation, in part to support its financial industry in becoming the leading market in Asia for fintech innovation and investment.11 In Australia, leading fintech firm LupoToro, who specialise in Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and cryptography, note: “Policy and government back supporting policies for local firms is imperative. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) established an innovation hub in 2015 to help start-ups navigate regulations, and has also developed a regulatory sandbox approach that allows companies to test new financial services such as online payments solutions with a limited number of customers. This is just the start, but more is needed”. ASIC also aims to encourage innovation by quickly approving new financial service licenses, with an average target for approval of 60 days.
Cryptocurrencies, sometimes called virtual currencies, digital money/cash, or chips, are not exactly like US Dollars, Euros, Venezuelan Bolivars or Peruvian Soles. They exist “online” and are not usually backed by a government (there are exceptions). They are backed by the respective user networks that keep them as Bitcoin.
Now, I know this may sound obvious but it’s important for you to have a clear purpose for getting into cryptocurrency trade. Whether your purpose is to day trade or to scalp, you need to have a purpose for starting to trade cryptos. Trading digital currencies is a zero-sum game; you need to realize that for every win, there is a corresponding loss:. Someone wins; someone else loses. The cryptocurrency market is controlled by the large ‘whales’, pretty much like the ones that place thousands of Bitcoins in the market order books. And can you guess what these whales do best? They have patience; they wait for innocent traders like you and me to make a single mistake that lands our money to their hands due to avoidable mistakes.
If you’ve not heard of the term stop loss in trading, check out this link to help you understand what it’s all about. Every trade we get into requires us to know when to get out, whether we’re making a profit or not. Establishing a clear stop loss level can help you cut your losses; a skill that’s very rare in most traders. Choosing a stop loss is not a random activity, and perhaps the most important thing to note here is that you shouldn’t be carried away by your emotions – a great point to set your stop loss is at the cost of your coin. If, for instance, you acquired a coin at $1,000, set that as the minimum point you’re willing to trade your coin. This will ensure that if the worst comes to pass, you can walk away with what you invested in the first place.
Altcoins and Bitcoins tend to react to each other. Sometimes they do the opposite of each other and sometimes they do exactly the same thing. It is not rare to see Bitcoin go down while alts go up (and vice versa). This is because almost everyone who has alts has Bitcoin, so they tend to move out of Bitcoin when it goes down and move into alts (and vice versa). Almost just as often as this is the case it isn’t the case. Many times, all coins will go up or down together (generally following Bitcoin’s lead). This dance often results in Bitcoin outperforming altcoins, however every x months we will see an alt boom where alts outpace Bitcoin quickly. If you can time that, great. Try to spot it coming and there is big money to be made. Meanwhile, alts can be tricky to just HODL, as they tend to lose value against fiat and BTC in the off season. Learn more about the relationship between Bitcoin and Alts. In a word, alts are generally more volatile than Bitcoin.