Today in Crypto: Miami Startup Provides Crypto-Secured Mortgages; Gibraltar Cracks Down on Market Manipulation

Crypto mortgages have become a new example of the digital divide when it comes to how digital assets are used in the U.S. real estate market.

The mortgages come with property buyers and lenders embracing the digital currency.

For instance, developers of new buildings going up in Miami and other tech hotspots have been accepting digital coins for deposits on condos.

One Miami startup, Milo, is offering a new way of doing things, letting borrowers pledge their digital holdings as collateral, rather than paying for property with tokens.

This will help them avoid taxes on capital gains and, theoretically, benefit from rising values for both tokens and the real estate, but also heightening risk due to the use of a volatile asset.

Meanwhile, the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission is not going to look so kindly on crypto anymore, introducing rules addressing the distributed ledger technology (DLT) sector, a report from Coindesk said Wednesday (April 27).

The ruling by the regulator says that a DLT provider has to keep up the integrity of any market where they participate.

Crypto companies will have to follow this principle, which reportedly goes along with a longstanding concern that market manipulation has become more of a risk for DLT companies.

Gibraltar’s government has said market integrity is crucial to keep up a fair, orderly and efficient market, which includes monitoring for manipulative trading and various other kinds of market abuse.

According to the legislation, a DLT provider will have to implement ways to prevent or cut down on various price manipulations, liquidity or market information, and make sure employees don’t do insider trading.

With the focus on market integrity, the country’s financial regulator is adding to what companies are already supposed to follow, including principles of integrity, business management, governance, financial crime and contingency arrangements.