Bitcoin Daily: Hublot Unveils Bitcoin Watches; Swiss Regulator Throttles Bank Crypto Trading

Blockchain, the crypto wallet provider, plans to have an airdrop worth $125 million, Fortune reported. Through the cryptocurrency giveaway, each recipient would receive around the equivalent of around $25 in Stellar. The company said in a statement, “Accessible to anyone with a Blockchain Wallet, the first batch of recipients will receive their lumens, Stellar’s native digital currency, this week — for free.” Blockchain CEO Peter Smith said, according to the outlet, that the value of cryptocurrency recipients take in will depend on where they are geographically, and that the airdrop distribution will take multiple months. Stellar has an approximate $5 billion market cap and No. 6 biggest digital currency.

In other news, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) is placing new digital currency restrictions on banks, Crytovest reported. With the rules, regulators are requiring Swiss banks to “[assign] a flat risk weight of 800 percent to cover market and credit risks, regardless of whether the positions are held in the banking or trading book.” In essence, the outlet reported that “banks must reserve significantly more capital to cover crypto losses compared to other asset classes.” The regulator also said that when banks calculate liquid ratios, they can’t look at cryptocurrencies as highly liquid assets when they do so.

On another note, Hublot has unveiled a watch that has a bitcoin theme amid the cryptocurrency’s 10th birthday, The Next Web reported. To buy the watches, customers must use bitcoin and, in a unique crypto twist, each watch will be engraved with a number that ties to the bitcoin purchase transaction. In addition, only 210 of the watches will be made, as only 21 million bitcoins will come to fruition. The watch has a power reserve of 10 days. “[That] number … was not chosen at random: 10 to mark the number of years the bitcoin has existed,” according to the luxury watchmaker’s website.