Today, I would like to cover important news in banking industry that may have implications
in blockchain space.
With Basel III bank capital rules going into effect in April, it will be interesting to see how these new rules will affect the price of the physical gold. Under new banking Basel 3 rules, gold in bank vaults will be treated as Tier 1 assets, meaning that gold is 100% valued for the purposes of banking viability. Under the previous rules, gold was rated as a Tier 3 asset, and had a 50% Risk Weighting Assessment (RWA). This meant that institutions and banks could apply only half of the gold in their vault toward the bank capital. In addition, under new rules, gold in allocated and not allocated accounts will be treated differently. This should result in reduction of leverage that in the system as the same gold bar will not be used in two different accounts which was possible under old rules. Quite possible that new rules will increase demand for physical gold and bring about higher prices in this market.
Important development in blockchain space comes from delisting bitcoin futures at CBOE exchange due to small trading volume. It should be noted that CME bitcoin futures are still traded at CME exchange.

(Dmitry Gene Zuckoff, an IT professional with interests in Fintech and distributed ledger technologies)