Bitcoin fell about five percent yesterday to below $7,000 after Business Insider published a story saying that Goldman Sachs is dropping its plan to open a trading desk dedicated to cryptocurrencies. The Business Insider story made this claim anonymously, citing people familiar with matter.

Update: Goldman Sachs CFO Martin Chavez discounted the Business Insider report on Thursday, calling it “fake news” at the TechCrunch Disrupt Conference in San Francisco.

“I never thought I would hear myself use this term but I really have to describe that news as fake news,” Chavez said on stage at the conference.

Chavez said Goldman is working on a type of derivative for bitcoin because “clients want it,” according to CNBC.

“The next stage of the exploration is what we call non-deliverable forwards, these are over the counter derivatives, they’re settled in U.S. dollars and the reference price is the bitcoin-U.S. dollar price established by a set of exchanges,” Chavez said.

The value of Bitcoin has continued to drop today, losing $1,000 in a 24 hour period. It is now at $6,409.30, according to CoinDesk.

A May 2018 story in Fortune indicated that Goldman Sachs had plans to open a Bitcoin-trading business in June of this year. That was postponed and it now seems that these plans have been shelved indefinitely. The sources in the Business Insider story said that Goldman Sachs sees the regulatory environment as ambiguous regarding cryptocurrencies.

In a tweet from the bank’s CEO Lloyd Blankfein last October, he wrote, “still thinking about bitcoin.” And he later said, according to CNBC, “No conclusion – not endorsing/rejecting. Know that folks also were skeptical when paper money displaced gold.” It seems that there is still no conclusion.    

When asked if the assertions in the Business Insider story are true – that plans for a cryptocurrency desk have been scrapped – Goldman Sachs representative Michael DuVally responded with the following comment: “In response to client interest in various digital products, we are exploring how best to serve them in the space. At this point, we have not reached a conclusion on the scope of our digital asset offering.”

Stephen Horan, Managing Director for General Education and Curriculum at the CFA Institute

The CFA Institute, which creates the curriculum for the annual Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) exams, has recently added cryptocurrencies and blockchain as topics for to its tests that are known for their difficulty. The tests are administered in over 170 countries, typically the first weekend in June, with an additional test for certain test takers in December.

Passing these exams provides a significant advantage to financial professionals like research analysts and portfolio managers who want to advance in their careers. There are three levels of exams. Over the past several years, Stephen Horan, Managing Director for General Education and Curriculum at the CFA Institute said that only 43 percent of test takers pass level 1. The level 1 exam weeds out the bulk of test takers and the pass rates for level 2 and level 3 tests are slightly higher. Ultimately, though, Horan said that less than 20 percent of those who start the CFA program pass all three exams.

Horan told deBanked that the institute decided to add cryptocurrencies and blockchain to the curriculum for level 1 and 3 curriculums because they got feedback from people working in the industry that it was relevant.  

“We started to hear that this is now mainstream, it’s not fringe,” Horan said.

As for the nature of what will be put in the curriculum, Horan said they are not making judgments whether cryptocurrencies are good or bad, but rather posing questions like “What are the functions of a currency?”

The new material for the 2019 exam will not be released until August. The six hour long exams have been given since 1963 and test takers generally study 300 hours for each exam.

This development is surely a sign that cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology have  entered the mainstream. While suspicion about both of these technologies remains, it seems that they are here to stay.

Horan said that 279,000 people took one of the three exams last year, and these numbers have been steadily rising. More than 40 percent of test takers are in the Asia Pacific; within this region, one-third of these people are in China. Currently, about 150,000 have passed all three tests and they can call themselves “charter holders.”

Horan said that some companies require that their employees have passed all or of some of the CFA exams, such as the investment management firm Eaton Vance. He also said that Fidelity is a big adopter of the CFA exams.

In addition to creating the exams, the CFA Institute also has a membership of finance professionals that supports continued education and networking. The company has 600 employees worldwide and is headquartered in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Ripple’s digital token XRP is a security, a class action lawsuit filed in the Superior Court of California contends. The 32-page complaint brought by XRP investor Ryan Coffey, says the defendants, who include Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, engaged in the sale of unregistered securities, highlighting that they earned over $342.8 million through XRP sales in the last year alone, securities that were created out of thin air.

“Defendants have since earned massive profits by quietly selling off this XRP to the general public, in what is essentially a never-ending initial coin offering (“ICO”). Like the better known initial public offering (“IPO”), in an ICO, digital assets are sold to consumers in exchange for legal tender or cryptocurrencies (most often Bitcoin and Ethereum). These tokens generally give the purchaser various rights on the blockchain network and resemble the shares of a company sold to investors in an IPO. Unfortunately, these ICOs have become a magnet for unscrupulous practices and fraud.”

The complaint alleges that Ripple executives have engaged in pumping schemes meant to increase the price of XRP through attempted bribes, rumors they’ve started, and hype on social media.

The attorney representing the lead plaintiff, James Taylor-Copeland, is no stranger to cryptocurrency. His twitter username is @TCryptoLaw and he runs the website cryptolaw.net.

At LendIt Fintech last month, Ripple co-founder & chairman Chris Larsen said that the company was anti-ICO. “I think it’s a bad thing to get involved with from the founder’s perspective,” he said on stage during an interview with Jo Ann Barefoot, “because, you know, if you’re a founder and you can raise money many ways today, do you really want to do something where you’re going to have the SEC, you know, kind of threat hanging over your head for 10 years with strict liability? You just don’t want that. You know, that’s a problem.”

View the full class action complaint here

HBO Talk Show host John Oliver showed restraint while taking down cryptocurrencies Sunday night. Although he criticized alleged ponzi schemes like Bitconnect and poked fun at the absurdity of EOS’s valuation, his overall message was to approach the technology with caution.

Bitconnect was an easy target now that the company has shut down and a judge has issued an order for their assets to be frozen.

Oliver appeared to be talking to the masses who could fall victim to an otherwise obvious scam simply due to their own fear of missing out.

What do you think?