Libra dominates Q2 news as BSV beats major cryptos: Circle Research

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The second quarter of 2019 was great for the cryptocurrency industry, with new funding models, increased liquidity and price surges being among the landmark events. Facebook’s Libra crypto project also dominated the crypto universe as Bitcoin SV (BSV) outperformed other major cryptos. This is according to the latest research by Boston-based crypto firm Circle.

The quarter was marked by the continued maturing of the crypto market, with new institutional investors coming on board and existing ones developing new products and services. In May, reports emerged that Fidelity Digital Assets would begin trading SegWitCoin (BTC) for select clients. ErisX received a license to launch regulated futures trading, with Ernst & Young (EY) releasing Nightfall zero knowledge proof technology to introduce privacy to public blockchains.

A report conducted by Fidelity further revealed that 47% of institutional investors viewed cryptos as having a place in their investment portfolio.

However, it was Facebook that caught the world by storm after announcing that it intended to launch its own crypto project. The Libra project sparked global debate, with lawmakers from the U.S. and many other countries globally questioning Facebook’s ability to ensure security and privacy. The Libra Association currently has 28 members including Visa and PayPal, but with each passing day, Facebook’s dream seems to be fading away.

The quarter also saw BSV outperform all the other major cryptocurrencies and finish only behind Chainlink as the best performing cryptos. BSV gained 136% in the second quarter, with its value surging after Dr. Craig Wright filed a copyright registration for the Bitcoin whitepaper and the original 2009 Bitcoin code back in May. Chainlink surged over 550% after a report revealed that it had partnered with Google Cloud to help share BigQuery data with Ethereum dapps. BTC, Ethereum, Binance Coin and Crypto.com were the other cryptos that had a good quarter.

Initial exchange offering (IEO) kept the pace from the first quarter of the year, with Bitfinex setting the record for the highest IEO yet. The exchange raised $1 billion for the private sale of its LEO tokens, more than all the other initial coin offerings (ICOs), IEOs and security token offerings (STOs) combined. The second quarter also saw the introduction of new funding models including the auction style offering used by Algorand and initial futures offerings.

Banks have also been taking notes and in the second quarter, they came ever closer to settling real-time transactions using digital currencies. While the JPM Coin was launched in February, JP Morgan revealed it would start trials with several corporate clients in that quarter. Reports have also emerged revealing that Goldman Sachs intends to follow in JP Morgan’s footsteps and launch its own digital currency. Fnality, which brings together 14 banks and tokenizes five fiat currencies, raised over $63 million in June so as to move value seamlessly between partner banks.