Coin News

[…]

The post Setbacks And Naysayers Begone! Bitcoin Breaks $8,000 On Investor Confidence appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

[…]

The post Newsflash: Bitcoin Price Reaches $8,100, a New Record High appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Just as blockchain technology is shaking up the startup space, it's also revamping the way venture capital firms invest in emerging companies.

Over the last year and a half, startups have raised nearly $4 billion through initial coin offerings, or ICOs, which are a kind of unregulated fundraising technique involving the creation of new digtial tokens, or units of value.

Venture capitalists have been wanting a piece of the action. Enter the Simple Agreements for Future Tokens, otherwise known as a SAFT. 

In a SAFT deal, VCs invest a certain amount of money in a startup in exchange for its promise to one day give them a set amount of the tokens it sells in an ICO. The agreements are premised on the notion that once the company's service is up and running and consumers are using the tokens to pay for things on it, those tokens will become valuable.

A SAFT is like a mashup of buying a gift card for a store that hasn't yet opened and purchasing shares in a private company. 

As more and more blockchain startups look to raise funding, VCs are experimenting with SAFTs as a way to get involved early on. Among the pioneers is Matt Huang at Sequoia Capital.

Here's what you need to know about this emerging funding technique:

SEE ALSO: This partner at Sequoia Capital thinks cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups have big potential — and he's investing millions.

SAFTs are only possible because blockchain technology lets companies create their own cryptocurrencies and tokens.

Blockchains, which are widely distributed digital ledgers, are the technology behind bitcoin, ether, and other cryptocurrencies. The technology is really good for publicly documenting rules and changes, which is why some large enterprise technology companies including IBM and Oracle are designing blockchain products for shipping and contracts.

Blockchains also make it easy to create unique digital tokens, or units of value. Companies can sell those tokens to investors to raise money or allow customers to use them on their sites and services as a medium of exchange.

If Facebook had been built on top of a blockchain, for example, it could have issued tokens that could be exchanged for upgraded profile features or used to buy advertising.

In a SAFT, investors buy the rights to tokens that will be issued in the future, rather than equity in a company.

In traditional venture capital investing, investors give a startup money in exchange for an ownership stake in the company. But with SAFTs, venture capitalists receive the rights to future tokens instead.

Typically, in the agreement, the VCs get the rights to a certain portion of the tokens a company issues in an ICO.

SAFTs are related to ICOs, the superpopular new fundraising technique.

SAFTs are venture capital's way of adapting to the boom in ICOs.

ICOs are similar to initial public offerings, or IPOs, in that they are a way for companies to raise money from the public. In an IPO, a company sells stock, or ownership stakes, to the public; in an ICO, a company sells its tokens. After an ICO, the public can buy, sell, or hold the tokens in much the same way they can stock.

Ultimately, investors and VCs hope that the tokens gain enough value that they'll be able to cash out their tokens for a profit. 

The first ICO was held in 2013, but the technique has boomed in recent months. Startups have raised nearly $4 billion since mid-2016, and most of that has been raised since May.

There's growing concern about how well companies that are choosing to use ICOs for fundraising are being vetted and how well the public is being informed about the process. Controversy has swirled recently around Centra and Tezos, both of which raised money through an ICO this year.

[…]

The post Manhattan’s Real Estate Eyes Up Bitcoin for Property Payments appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

• New data from Emolument shows that bankers leaving London after Brexit can expect to see their salaries shrink.
• "If London banks were to move their workforce to other European cities, average compensation packages would decrease," Emolument said.
• The average analyst moving from London to Paris would take a pay cut of more than £10,000.
• Banks are making plans to shift staff out of the UK as a result of the expected loss of Britain's so-called financial passport.

LONDON — Bankers leaving London to work in EU financial centres like Frankfurt and Paris after Brexit can expect to see their pay packets shrink significantly, according to new data from salary benchmarking site Emolument.

Emolument's data shows that bankers at all levels of seniority and across disciplines moving out of London would see both their base salaries and end of year bonuses diminish in all three of Europe's other major financial centres — Paris, Frankfurt, and Milan.

"If London banks were to move their workforce to other European cities, average compensation packages would decrease. From Analyst to MD, London offers the highest salaries and bonuses in the market," Emolument said on Friday.

Emolument's data suggests that an average analyst — the lowest rung on the banking ladder — can expect to earn a basic salary of £57,000 and a bonus of £9,600 in London. By contrast, in Paris a banker of the same seniority generally earns a salary of £48,000, topped up by a bonus of £7,400.

At more senior levels of the banking world, the disparities are more stark, with London based managing directors getting total remuneration of more than £475,000, compared to MDs in Milan, who earn about £330,000 on average. MDs in Paris earn just over £300,000, while those in Frankfurt earn just under.

The chart below shows compensation levels across the four cities at different rungs of the banking ladder:

"As regards moving away from London to other EU capitals, while pay may be lower, pain points such as schooling and generally higher quality of life should compensate bankers transferring to the continent," Alice Leguay, Emolument's cofounder and CMO said in a statement.

Major banks are currently making plans to shift staff out of the UK as a result of the expected loss of Britain's so-called financial passport.

The passport is effectively a set of rules and regulations that allow UK based financial firms to access customers and carry out activities across Europe. Many non-EU lenders use the passport to operate a hub in the UK and then sell services across the 28-nation bloc.

Once Britain leaves the EU, however, it is almost certain to lose passporting rights, which are tied strongly to membership of the single market, a marketplace the UK intends to leave as part of Brexit. This means that to continue providing clients with comprehensive services across the EU after Brexit, many lenders will need new branches.

So far, Frankfurt is the chosen destination for banks, with Goldman Sachs, Citi, and Morgan Stanley all believed to be making plans to move staff to the German city.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: I spent a day trying to pay for things with bitcoin and a bar of gold