Shinhan Bank, South Korea’s largest financial institution by total assets, has joined the governance council overseeing the Hedera network.

In an April 14 announcement, Shinhan announced it had become the latest member of the Hedera Governing Council to expand its efforts in the field of “digital transformation.” Hedera touts its hashgraph as an enterprise-grade blockchain platform capable of processing thousands of transactions per second.

Shinhan representatives emphasized growing client demand for enhanced efficiency and security in financial services, stating:

“Hedera’s public distributed ledger in particular is uniquely suited to meet the needs of a widely-used fintech service that must be fast, fair, secure, and enable the controls and visibility required by service providers.”

The bank will now begin integrating Hedera into its systems to “increase the efficiency of its internal processes.”

Shinhan, which ranked as the world’s 61st-largest bank with $478.5 billion in assets as of August 2020, is no stranger to distributed ledger technology, having built a variety of services on Hyperledger Fabric since 2017, including policy loan, interest rate swaps, and pension fund deals.

In March, Shinhan announced it had developed a blockchain-based pilot platform for testing a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, in partnership with LG Corporation’s IT services wing. The platform seeks to allow local banks to act as intermediaries for a CBDC.

Shinhan also invested in the local crypto custody consortium, Korea Digital Asset Trust, at the start of the year.

Hedera Hashgraph co-founder and CEO Mance Harmon, noted “increased interest from financial institutions and governments worldwide in DLT-based financial services” for payment systems and global settlement services.

“We are thrilled that Shinhan Bank has joined the Hedera Governing Council, and look forward to working with them to be on the leading edge of the future of finance,” Harmon added.

Hedera has expanded its global reach in recent months, with French utility giant Électricité de France joining its governing council in March, Standard Bank Group becoming its first African node operator in February, and Australia’s top debit infrastructure provider Eftpos joining the council after completing micropayments trials with Hedera last year.

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Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/south-korea-s-largest-bank-joins-hedera-governing-council

Overview

• Total spot trading volume at $2.63 billion, 88% above the 30-day average of $1.4 billion as Bitcoin hit all-time highs.
• Total futures notional at $783.1 million.
• The top five traded coins were, respectively, Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, Tether, and Cardano.
• Strong returns from Dogecoin (+30%) and Ripple (+23%).

#####################. Trading Volume by Asset. ##########################################

Trading Volume by Asset

The figures below break down the trading volume of the largest, mid-size, and smallest assets. Cryptos are in purple, fiats are in blue. For each asset, the chart contains the daily trading volume in USD, and the percentage of the total trading volume. The percentages for fiats and cryptos are treated separately, so that they both add up to 100%.

Figure 1: Largest trading assets: trading volume (measured in USD) and its percentage of the total trading volume (April 13 2021)



Figure 2: Mid-size trading assets: (measured in USD) (April 13 2021)



Figure 3: Smallest trading assets: (measured in USD) (April 13 2021)

#####################. Spread %. ##########################################

Spread %

Spread percentage is the width of the bid/ask spread divided by the bid/ask midpoint. The values are generated by taking the median spread percentage over each minute, then the average of the medians over the day.

Figure 4: Average spread % by pair (April 13 2021)



.

#########. Returns and Volume ############################################

Returns and Volume

Figure 5: Returns of the four highest volume pairs (April 13 2021)

Figure 6: Volume of the major currencies and an average line that fits the data to a sinusoidal curve to show the daily volume highs and lows (April 13 2021)

###########. Daily Returns. #################################################

Daily Returns %

Figure 7: Returns over USD and XBT. Relative volume and return size is indicated by the size of the font. (April 13 2021)

###########. Disclaimer #################################################

The values generated in this report are from public market data distributed from Kraken WebSockets api. The total volumes and returns are calculated over the reporting day using UTC time.

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Source: https://blog.kraken.com/post/8636/kraken-daily-market-report-for-april-13-2021/

Major U.S. exchange Coinbase’s COIN stock has received a reference price at $250 from Nasdaq, ahead of the much-anticipated direct listing on the stock exchange just hours from now.

The price is far below the current FTX pre-trading price of $600, albeit on thin 24-hour volume of under $4 million.

The exchange is going public via a direct listing instead of an IPO, meaning the reference price is not a direct indicator of the company’s market cap. It simply implies a valuation of $65 billion, which is below other estimates ranging between $68 billion and $120 billion.

The Nasdaq announcement stated that the reference price, which reflects past transactions but was established by consultation with Coinbase’s financial advisors, was created due to the fact “COIN has not had recent sustained trading in a private placement market.”

The reference price does not reflect the opening price, the announcement made clear:

“Please note that the reference price is NOT an offering price and nobody has purchased or sold shares at that price. The opening public price will be determined based on buy and sell orders in the opening auction on Nasdaq.”

This is the first significant direct listing on the Nasdaq. According to CNBC, across “the five significant direct listings that have taken place on the New York Stock Exchange — Spotify, Slack, Palantir, Asana, and Roblox — the opening price was on average about 37% above the reference price.” Following this trend, it would put Coinbase’s opening price above $340, with a valuation of around $90 billion.

The trading price could surge even higher with the Coinbase pre-listing contract CBSE currently trading around $600 on the FTX exchange, representing a 140% premium above the reference price. Another indicator suggesting a strong first day was the Q1 2021 financial statement suggesting revenue spiked to $1.8 billion bringing in net income up to $800 million, which is up from the $32 million recorded during the same period last year.

In the lead-up to the Nasdaq listing, Coinbase surprised all 1,700 full-time employees by giving them 100 shares each, worth $25,000 at the current reference price. The March 25 “thank you” gift is a no-strings-attached grant, meaning they could sell them immediately after the listing goes public tomorrow.

These shares are in addition to the 105,510 share options handed out to employees of Coinbase’s Irish arm in recent years.

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Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-s-coin-stock-reference-price-set-at-just-250-as-1-700-staff-get-free-shares