A Negative Interest Rate For German Retail Customers

One of Germany’s largest cooperative banks has begun charging its retail customers a negative interest rate. While the European Central Bank cut the deposit rate to a record low, other major banks could follow it up. Deutsche Bank recently said that it needs to be “much more robust about passing on negative rates.”

Berliner Volksbank

Describing itself as “the largest regional cooperative bank in Germany”. Berliner Volksbank is one of the largest German cooperative banks. Total assets are approximately 14 billion euros (~$15.4 billion). The bank started applying a minus 0.5% rate on deposits exceeding 100,000 euros (~$110,000) last week, effectively charging customers half a percent to hold their savings.

So far, most German banks have not passed on the negative interest rate burden to retail customers, opting to absorb the costs themselves to uphold their reputation and prevent mass withdrawals

Negative interest rates are crazy. That means money is not worth anything any more … As long as we have negative interest rates, the financial industry will continue to shrink.

a former Credit Suisse CEO and an ex-executive of UBS Group AG

Meanwhile, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said last month that he had told banks not to pass on the ECB’s negative interest rates to savers. He was quoted by Reuters as saying:

I told [the] bank chief very clearly that it would be a fairly bad idea to react by slapping negative rates on millions of savers.

Source: Bitcoin

Tags: #CentralBanks, #Germany, #Xeonbit, #XeonbitToken

Source: https://xeonbit.com/a-negative-interest-rate-for-german-retail-customers/

France More Than 5000 Shops Accept Crypto

France is apparently seeing a surge in cryptocurrency adoption. In late September, over 25,000 points-of-sale of 30 French retailers had been installed. Including sportswear giant Decathlon and cosmetics store Sephora will start accepting BTC payments by early 2020. As earlier in September, the French unit of Domino's Pizza launched an ordering competition with a prize of $110,000 in Bitcoin or cash.

On Sept 12, French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire claimed that French authorities do not plan to tax crypto-to-crypto trades. Rather will consider taxation when crypto is sold for fiat money.

The acceptance of cryptocurrencies is a real challenge for retailers. We are aware of the expectations of the public and the scope of the message we send to a whole community. We are happy to be able to make this ecosystem more concrete for consumers and to enter the crypto-economy in a legal framework.

Gregory Hervein one of the 30 retailers that will use crypto service said

Source: Cointelegraph

Tags: #Cryptocurrency, #France, #Privacy, #Xeonbit

Source: https://xeonbit.com/france-more-than-5000-shops-accept-crypto/

Cryptocurrencies Attempt to Break Resistance

 On Monday, a number of cryptocurrencies gained between 2-5% over the course of the day. Crypto prices have held steady into the next day and many digital assets will likely test key resistance levels in order to press forward.

Strong Resistance Lies Ahead

On October 6, the price of BTC fell below the $8K region to a low of $7,800 per coin. The following day saw some recovery as crypto bulls started to regain control. Since the big drop on Sunday, roughly $22 billion has been added to the combined market capitalisation of all 2,000+ digital assets. Tuesday, October 8, BTC is trading for $8,238 per coin and is up 0.51%. BTC has an overall market cap of around $148 billion and $16.6 billion in trade volume. These metrics have attributed to BTC dominance (the coin’s market capitalization in relation to the entire cryptoconomy’s valuation) dropping to a low of 66%.

Researcher Believes a Bitcoin ETF Is Imminent

“We’re closer than we’ve ever been before to getting a bitcoin ETF approved,” Hougan said during an interview on Monday on CNBC’s ETF Edge broadcast. “Sometime before Monday, the SEC has to give its decision: yes or no. They have no more ways to postpone it at this point,” Hougan insisted. “We will hear clearly between now and Monday what they think, and then, depending on what we hear, we’ll go forward from there. But it should be a very exciting week.” Many speculators think that the upcoming ETF decision is directly attributed to the rise in crypto prices. After rejecting countless bitcoin ETF attempts in the past, the SEC plans to make its decision on the Bitwise ETF on October 13, 2019.

Patterns Show Continued Downtrend

Cold Blooded Shiller believes BTC prices will continue following the downtrend which started after prices attempted to surpass the $14K mark and then consolidated around the $9,500 to $10,500 zone. While sharing a chart showing the BTC daily Renko, Shiller said the “downtrend is in full swing.”

Monetary Easing, Safe-Haven Assets, and 2019’s Market Performances

Despite all the scary headlines and central bankers like the Federal Reserve initiating a domino effect of monetary easing practices, some economists believe the economy is not that terrible. For instance, in the U.S. an investment strategist at BCA Research, Doug Peta, told the public that the labor market “remains vibrant enough to exert downward pressure on the unemployment rate, and services continue to expand despite the contraction in manufacturing, both here and abroad.” This was followed by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics disclosing that the unemployment rate is at its lowest since 1969.

Nevertheless, a few data points do not outweigh the massive number of speculators who believe the economy will falter very soon. This has put the spotlight on safe haven assets like gold, which remains above the $1,500 spot price per ounce. However, even with the year-long gold rally seeing prices spike by 20%, Goldman Sachs has calledBTC the best-performing asset class in 2019.

Source: Bitcoin

Tags: #Bullish, #Cryptocurrency, #Market

Source: https://xeonbit.com/cryptocurrencies-attempt-to-break-resistance/