Tezos has had an unbelievable year and it didn’t come quick to get to the point where the protocol is today. From early problems with the foundation, disgruntled factions, and many more issues in the early days - we can essentially compare Tezos’ story to that of a “Phoneix rising from the ashes“.
Bank of France
Something especially interesting and seemingly not talked about much anymore in public channels is Tezos’ strong interest by the Bank of France - an interest quite compelling enough that they have actually successfully tested a Tezos node.
Thierry Bedoin, CDO of Bank of France:
Fork, then deploy on RaspberryPi a full private node of one #Blockchain of the Top 20, one month after the Mainnet launch, Check! #Formalproof#Tezos 😉
Done within le @labBdf on October 2018#Innovation
Thanks to the Team!
I don’t think this connection and strong interest from the Bank of France with Tezos gets enough attention, especially when we consider zk-SNARKs is expected to be voted on in the next upcoming proposed protocol amendment. Now, why is that relevant to the Bank of France, one may ask?
Taking a trip to earlier in April this year, at the TQ Quorum Privacy Panel, John-Baptiste from the Bank of France had some interesting statements about “fine-tuned privacy”.
“We can’t deploy protocols for use at the central or commercial banks without fine-tuned privacy! It seems obvious, but we need privacy that ~actually~ works“.
Hmm…
Now, to the intelligent observer, “fine-tuned privacy” sounds eerily similar to what’s expected to be voted on in the next proposed protocol amendment - zk-SNARKs. Furthermore, with over $1 trillion in deposits and over 11,000 employees, getting such interest from a bank of this nature is quite, overwhelmingly positive.
Coinbase Listing & Coinbase Custody
Something that has been highly anticipated and long sought for was the listing of Tezos (XTZ) on Coinbase. On August 8, 2019, that eagerly awaited listing finally came to fruition and has greatly increased the 24-hour trading volume for XTZ since.
However, what’s more interesting to look at is all the recent attention of Coinbase’s institutional-grade staking service for high net worth institutional clients.
“At just over 1-year old, Coinbase Custody has grown to over $7 billion in Assets Under Custody (AUC) from over 100 clients in 14 different countries”.
That’s some serious hockey stick like growth. If this number and growth level in institutional money is not impressive enough, Brian Armstrong commented on how much new money in institutional deposits is coming each week.
“Whether institutions were going to adopt crypto or not was an open question about 12 months ago. I think it’s safe to say we now know the answer. We’re seeing $200-400M a week in new crypto deposits come in from institutional customers”.
Now, that’s a lot of M’s.
Coinbase is Getting into the STO Space
With all this news around Tezos and their clear fondness from Coinbase, let’s engage in some valid speculation. A precursor to this is Coinbase has reportedly received regulatory approval from the SEC to list crypto securities (STO’s) and additionally, there are talks of launching an STO platform in Q4 2019.
Let’s look in retrospect why there may be more going on here than meets the eye.
- Elevated Returns and Securitize to host $1 billion in Real Estate property-backed STO’s on the Tezos blockchain.
- Tezos gets staking support from Coinbase Custody for institutional clients.
- BTG Pactual, the largest standalone investment bank in Latin America and Dalma Capital plan to host $1 billion in STO’s on the Tezos blockchain.
- Tezos gets added to Coinbase Pro.
- Tezos gets listed to Coinbase.com.
See the forming picture here? It’s no coincidence the timing of Tezos’ listing on Coinbase, institutional-grade staking service through Coinbase Custody, and recent $1 billion STO deal with the largest investment bank in Brazil have surmounted and been timed in such a way, there has to be an underlying connection.
Conclusion
Connecting all the dots together gives us a clear picture that Tezos has a lot coming in the near future. With $2 billion in future STO’s to be taken on the Tezos blockchain, Tezos’ interest from the Bank of France, and a potential Q4 STO platform from Coinbase… We can see Tezos as truly a “Phoenix rising from the ashes“.
Furthermore, with a war chest of over $650 M in assets from the Tezos Foundation, Tezos is not going to “fade away” anytime soon.