Bankman-Fried’s Twitter Interest | Bitcoin And Ether Trading At Fidelity

ZERO-COMMISSION DOESN’T MEAN FREE

Fidelity Investments is preparing to offer bitcoin and ether trading to retail investors, according to the company’s website, which touts the upcoming service as commission-free, but there’s a catch: a 1% fee will be added to each transaction. The company calls the fee a spread and defines it as “the difference between your execution price and the price at which Fidelity Digital Assets fills your order.” Although the 100 basis-point spread is a slim take for conventional retail investment transactions, it is pricey in the digital world, where the weighted average commission for a cryptocurrency trade is just 12 basis points. The website did not identify a start date for the crypto offering. It stated that invitations to access the service will be sent based on factors such as the sign-up timing and state eligibility. Last week, Fidelity Digital Assets, the company’s crypto arm, launched ether trading for institutional clients.      

TAKING TWITTER TO WEB3

Sam Bankman-Fried was interested in taking part in Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, but different visions of the social media platform got in the way. “He’s got a vision for Twitter, and it’s not exactly what my vision would be,” Bankman-Fried said to investors and attendees at the first Forbes Iconoclast Summit on Thursday. He added that he had been interested in integrating the decentralized vision of the internet known as Web3 into Twitter–which Musk purchased last week for $44 billion after months of on-and-off negotiations–with an eye on payment methods. Bankman-Fried ultimately decided that Musk did not have enough of a Web3 focus.

Another crypto exchange billionaire, Binance’s Changpeng Zhao, eventually joined Musk in his purchase, with a $500 million stake. Patrick Hillman, Binance’s chief strategy officer, told CoinDesk this week the company hopes to use the social media platform as a “sandbox” for “Web3 solutions.”

Source: Forbes Digital Assets, powered by Nomics.  Prices as of 4:00 p.m. on November 4, 2022.

COINBASE MISSES Q3 ESTIMATES BUT FED PROVIDES SILVER LINING

Coinbase Global missed analysts’ estimates for third-quarter sales and profit, but there was a silver lining in rising interest income. Revenue came in at $590.3 million, below the Wall Street consensus of $641 million compiled by FactSet, and the company posted a net loss of $544.6 million that was worse than the expected $527 million. Rising interest rates, engineered by the Federal Reserve to reverse the extraordinarily accommodative monetary policy in place after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, gave a significant boost to Coinbase results. Interest jumped to $101.8 million from just $32.5 million in the second quarter and $8.4 million in the third quarter of last year.

CIRCLE’S SPAC PARTNER LOOKS TO DELAY $9 BILLION DEAL

Concord Acquisition Group is planning to delay its already-postponed purchase of Circle Internet Financial, the primary issuer of the USDC stablecoin, until the end of January, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicated. As recently as July, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said the transaction would close in the fourth quarter. The filing said that the reason for the proposed delay is that Concord’s board does not think it will have time to hold a special stockholder meeting to approve the deal. Concord did not respond to a request for comment, but in comments to Forbes, Circle hinted that delays at the SEC could be behind the approval. This is not the first time that the transaction has been postponed. The deal, which was agreed to in July 2021 at $4.5 billion, before getting increased to $9 billion in February 2022, was initially set close by June 10. However, on June 7 the date was pushed back to December 10.

Additionally, Circle said Thursday that it had begun placing a portion of USDC reserves, consisting of cash and short-term U.S. Treasurys, into a new fund managed by BlackRock.

BLOCKCHAIN 50: CALL FOR 2023 NOMINATIONS

For four years, the Forbes Blockchain 50 list has chronicled the institutional adoption of technology popularized by bitcoin. Since the inaugural roundup in 2019 the enterprises on our list—often household names like Walmart and Boeing—have moved beyond test projects and now rely on distributed ledgers in key parts of their businesses to improve efficiency and transparency. Now is your chance to help us find the best possible honorees for next year’s issue. We look for businesses valued at $1 billion or more or those that generate at least $1 billion in annual revenue and have made meaningful use of the technology. Read more here.

ELSEWHERE

Bankruptcy Top Of Mind As Miners Confront Market Downturn [The Block]

Divisions In Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Empire Blur On His Trading Titan Alameda’s Balance Sheet [CoinDesk]

Crypto Winter ‘Only Going To Get Worse,’ Cofounder Of Tezos Blockchain Says [CNBC] 

Nina Bambysheva
Reporter
Forbes Money & Markets

Steven Ehrlich
Editor 
Forbes CryptoAsset & Blockchain Advisor

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