Tag Archives: crypto

By Vanessa Malone Decentralized Finance, or DeFi, refers to financial smart contracts and applications (dApps) deployed on a blockchain, most commonly on Ethereum. The goals of these dApps are to flip traditional financial applications on their heads and “defy” the current infrastructure by developing their decentralized and non-custodial counterparts.  Instead of relying on a central […]Continue Reading

By Vanessa Malone On July 25, 2020, the amount of collateral locked in Decentralized Finance(DeFi) projects reached $4 billion, double what it was just two weeks prior. What is DeFi and where is it headed? What is DeFi? Decentralized Finance, or DeFi, falls deep within the crypto sector of fintech. It refers to digital assets, financial […]Continue Reading

What’s the current state of digital securities exchanges and how to increase adoption By Vanessa Malone Security Token Market recently put out a report discussing the current state of security token trading, also known as digital securities. In their research, they identified 60 digital securities exchanges around the world. Of those 60, only 3 regulated exchanges […]Continue Reading

What is SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce’s safe harbor proposal and the implications surrounding it. By Vanessa Malone In a speech last week, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce announced a proposal for a three-year “safe harbor” for tokens offerings which would exempt the sale of tokens or cryptocurrencies from certain federal securities law requirements. Token project issuers […]Continue Reading

5AMLD- what’s in store for the blockchain community and how fintech can stay ahead of global regulation By Vanessa Malone The U.S. isn’t the only country cracking down on compliance initiatives surrounding blockchain and digital assets in 2020. Globally, anti-money laundering(AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements have continued to increase and become more applicable […]Continue Reading

By Vanessa Malone The blockchain community has hit some incredible milestones in the past year. And while its important for these conversations to continue among current community members in order to share new ideas, developments, and implications regarding the technology; at times it seems the community remains in an echo chamber where only the people […]Continue Reading

By Vanessa Malone This week we announced that our client Piemonte Holding, an A-rated Brazilian bank which develops and manages tailor-made investment products, has closed its R$ 66m (US$ 16.2m) private bond issuance and successfully completed the launch of a secondary market for the Piemonte “Smart Bond” on Ethereum using Horizon’s compliance, custody, and blockchain […]Continue Reading

We are happy to announce that Dialogue with the Regulators: Navigating Blockchain & Fintech was a great success. A big thank you to everyone who made it.  We welcomed senior regulators from the SEC, FINRA, CFPB, and Texas State Securities Board; blockchain trailblazers including Gemini, Paxful, Coinbase and financial service heavyweights such as Blackrock, UBS, […]Continue Reading

By Vanessa Malone Key Points: Blockchain technology may not eliminate third-parties from a digital securities offering, but it will definitely evolve them Regulators have hinted that the blockchain is not a valid source of truth, making the use of a transfer agent crucial Technology can be used to provide the necessary digital securities custody tools […]Continue Reading

By Dr. Andrew Le Gear, Chief Technology Officer of Globex I face a hostile room of academics and industry heads. I know what’s coming next — it always does. “But it doesn’t scale, does it?” How do you answer that? I googled “ethereum transactions per second” and the first article I get is “How will Ethereum Scale?” — not […]Continue Reading