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The Riksbank proposes a review of the concept of legal tender
The Riksbank proposes that a committee be tasked with reviewing the concept of legal tender and role of central bank money in a digitalised economy, and the role and responsibility of both the state and the private sector on the payment market.
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Bitcoin is a Demographic Mega-Trend: Data Analysis – Spencer Bogart – Medium
The survey results highlight that Bitcoin is a demographic mega-trend led by younger age groups. The only area where older demographics matched younger demographics was awareness: Regardless of age, the vast majority of the American population has heard of Bitcoin.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Bitcoin
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Gemini Partners with Harbor to Fund Investments Leveraging Gemini Dollars
Gemini is partnering with Harbor, an all-in-one platform for tokenized securities offerings, to allow users to invest in deals using Gemini dollars (GUSD) and receive any future distributions or dividends of such deals in GUSD.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets AltCoins Stablecoins Tokenization
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Tether Lawyer Admits Stablecoin Now 74% Backed by Cash and Equivalents
Tether has cash and cash equivalents (short term securities) on hand totaling approximately $2.1 billion, representing about 74 percent of the current outstanding tethers.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets AltCoins Tether Liquidity Stablecoins
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A platform for innovation – remarks by Mark Carney | Bank of England
BoE Governor Carney highlights the opportunities offered by Fintech, saying we’re moving to a new kind of economy, which needs new kinds of financial services. He explains what the BoE is doing to embrace and support this financial innovation.
tags: Fintech
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Bitfinex Is Planning to Issue an Exchange Token, Shareholder Says
Beleaguered Bitfinex may soon issue a proprietary exchange token. The issuance method could be similar to that of other exchange tokens, which were distributed through pre-paid trading fee packages.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Tether Liquidity
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China’s Tencent to Develop Blockchain Medical Tools With Waterdrop After Investment
Tencent will work with Waterdrop, which forms part of China’s rapidly-expanding crowdfunded health insurance industry, to leverage Tencent’s existing presence and experience in the field to create as yet undefined blockchain tools.
tags: Fintech Insurance Blockchain
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ICE’s Bakkt Announces Acquisition of Digital Asset Custody Company
Institutional crypto trading platform Bakkt has аcquired a crypto custodian service Digital Asset Custody Company, and filed an application with the New York Department of Financial Services to operate as a trust company.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Custody Regulation
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Chinese Central Bank Fines Five Businesses in Beijing for Refusal to Accept Cash Payments
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) is ensuring that Chinese businesses continue to accept cash despite the rapid spread of mobile payments throughout the country’s economy. On 23 April PBOC announced that it had fined five companies in Beijing for refusal to accept cash payments.
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Indian Government departments discuss draft bill to ban cryptocurrencies
The Indian government has kicked off inter-ministerial consultations on a draft bill to ban cryptocurrencies and regulate official digital currencies, according to informed sources.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Regulation
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Bond Rating Agency Moody’s Warns on Risks of Private Blockchains
Rating agency Moody’s has warned of several risks of private, centralized blockchains, inclusing that consensus mechanisms in private chains may not be as strong as those seen in public chains, or may be absent altogether.
tags: Blockchain Fintech
Month: April 2019
Protected: Kiffmeister’s CBDC Monitor, April 2019
FinTech Daily 04/29/2019
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Central Banks Like Blockchain But Aren’t Decentralizing
The only takers to date for blockchain-based CBDC are minuscule island nations. This may indicate there is a case to be made for adopting a distributed ledger format in certain geographies. Or it may mean the product is dead on arrival.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets CBDC
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DeFi Upstart Dharma Brokers $6.4 Million in Crypto Loans in First 3 Weeks
“Crypto loan platforms are booming as ether holders look to mitigate portfolio losses endured during 2018’s bear market.”
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The Blockchain Bandit – Ethercombing: Finding Secrets in Popular Places
Someone is stealing millions of dollars worth of Ethereum by guessing users’ private keys. Normally this should be impossible, but lots of keys seem to be very weak. Researchers are unsure how those weak keys are being generated and used.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Ethereum CyberRisk
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Virtual currency providers to be supervised by the Finnish FSA
Finland’s Act on Virtual Currency Service Providers clarifies that the FSA will henceforth be statutorily required to register all crypto exchanges, custodian crypto wallet providers and cryptocurrency issuers operating in the country.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Regulation
FinTech Daily 04/28/2019
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Mutual Owners, Mutual Funds: What We Know About the Bitfinex/Tether Scandal
In what seems to be one of the greatest crypto scandals 2019 has seen so far, the United States Attorney General in New York accused Bitfinex of using Tether’s cash reserves to cover a rumored $850 million funding gap with reserves meant for backing the stablecoin. Both companies share the same owner.
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The cost of cross-border payments needs to drop
In the long run the answer to the high cost of remittances is a shift away from expensive cash-based systems and a bypassing of banks and transfer firms altogether.
tags: CrossBorder Fintech Remittances
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Bitcoin and Ethereum Trading Coming to E*Trade
E*Trade Financial Corp. May be getting ready to let customers trade cryptocurrencies on its platform. The firm will start by adding Bitcoin and Ethereum, and will consider adding other currencies in the future.
tags: CryptoAssets Liquidity Fintech
FinTech Daily 04/27/2019
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Ontology to Launch Regulated USD Stablecoin PAX on Ontology
Ontology will launch Paxos Standard (PAX), a regulated USD stablecoin, on the Ontology blockchain, in May.
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Banks Can’t Snub Crypto Startups Thanks to France’s New Blockchain Law
France’s new crypto law grants blockchain-related projects the right to a bank account, provided they opt in to being regulated
tags: Fintech Regulation
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Big Tech’s Invasion of Banking
Rather than brashly setting out to replace banks altogether, big tech’s strategy is to quietly seize the customer relationship one product at a time by offering a seamless digital financial services experience tied to their core platforms. This presents bankers with a dilemma: should they try to beat back the invaders or join forces in order to gain access to their customers?
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Vitalik Proposal Could Turn Ethereum Staking Into $160 Million Industry
Rather than relying on a proof-of-work consensus protocol, ethereum 2.0 will rely on a proof-of-stake consensus protocol whereby validators stake their own funds and attest to blocks and transactions being created on the network.
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Launched in December 2017 as an ERC-20 token, MakerDAO is pegged 1:1 with the United States dollar, with its peg being maintained via over-collateralization with ether (ETH). In other words, users receive the equivalent of $1 in DAI by depositing more than $1 in ETH, and they can later reclaim their collateral by repaying the DAI they’ve received plus a “stability fee” in MKR, MakerDAO’s other (nonstablecoin) token. By charging users this additional fee, the MakerDAO system theoretically prevents the value of DAI from dropping below $1, since the fee makes it expensive to mint more DAI tokens.
tags: Fintech Ethereum MakerDAI AltCoins Stablecoins CryptoAssets
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TalkGold — the ponzi forum where Quadriga’s Patryn and Cotten first met
Quadriga cofounders Michael Patryn and the now-deceased Gerald Cotten worked together for a period at Midas Gold, a digital currency exchanger that ran from 2008 until May 2013, when it was pulled offline. Now it appears their connections stretch back even further.
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A look at Crypto Capital, the company serving both Bitfinex and QuadrigaCX
What does QuadrigaCX, the Canadian exchange that recently lost $190 million in users’ funds and Bitfinex, which lost $850 million in funds, have in common? They both relied on a shady Panama “bank,” Crypto Capital, to handle payment processing.
FinTech Daily 04/26/2019
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Bitfinex Will Vigorously Challenge $850M Lost Tether ‘False Assertions’
Following the NY AG’s accusations of a $850M cover-up, Bitfinex refutes the claims as ‘riddled with false assertions’ and that the funds are not lost.
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Bitfinex Covered $850 Million Loss Using Tether Funds, NY Prosecutors Allege
“The New York Attorney General’s office has alleged that crypto exchange Bitfinex lost $850 million and subsequently used funds from affiliated stablecoin operator Tether to secretly cover the shortfall.”
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Payments Firm Wirex Launching 26 Stablecoins on the Stellar Blockchain
Payments platform Wirex is launching 26 fiat-backed stablecoins on the Stellar blockchain network, including the U.S. dollar, euro, the British pound, Hong Kong dollar and the Singapore dollar.
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MakerDAO Set to Increase DAI Fees Above 15% in Bid to Stabilize Stablecoin
A majority vote to increase fees on programmatic lending platform MakerDAO has passed an initial round of polling today. This time, the winning vote is to increase fees by 2%, which, in comparison to past weeks, is a comparatively small increase to the usual 3 or 4%.
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Genesis Lends $425 Million of Crypto in Q1 – and Not Just to Short Sellers
Genesis Global Capital wrote $425 million of crypto loans in the first quarter, bringing its total originations since the business launched in March 2018 to $1.53 billion.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Collateral
FinTech Daily 04/25/2019
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Startup Arca Seeks SEC Approval for US Treasury Bond-Backed Stablecoin
Arca Investment Management is seeking US SEC approval for a US Treasury securities fund whose shares would be tokenized on the ethereum blockchain.
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XRP is the Worst-Performing Major Crypto of 2019
Ripple’s XRP is having a disastrous start to 2019. In a year when bitcoin is storming back towards bull territory, XRP has crashed 16 percent. The third-largest cryptocurrency is now the worst-performing digital asset in the top ten.
tags: Ripple Fintech AltCoins CryptoAssets
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TrustToken Announces Four New Stablecoins
TrustToken will expand into four new fiat-backed stablecoins; TrueAUD, TrueEUR, TrueCAD and TrueHKD (from its TrueUSD and TrueGBP coins).
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Blockchain Payments Firm Bitspark Releases Stablecoin Pegged to Philippine Peso
Bitspark, a blockchain-based bankless money transfer solution, will launch a Philippine Peso pegged cryptocurrency for money transfers dubbed “peg.PHP.”
tags: CryptoAssets Fintech Blockchain
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Top 3 Japanese Bank to Roll Out Services on Marco Polo Blockchain
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation will launch its R3 Corda-based Marco Polo trade finance platform later this year.
tags: Blockchain Corda Fintech
FinTech Daily 04/24/2019
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Report: Samsung Planning New Blockchain Mainnet Featuring Samsung Coin
Samsung may be developing a public-private blockchain based on Ethereum (ETH) along with a new asset dubbed Samsung Coin.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Blockchain
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French Lender Societe Generale Issues $112 Million Bond on Ethereum – CoinDesk
Societe Generale issued EUR100 million of covered bonds in the form of a security token on the ethereum blockchain. However the bank issued the securities to itself and no outside buyers were involved.
tags: Fintech Blockchain Ethereum
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IMF Spring Meetings: Digital Money Is Imminent, But No Decentralization in Sight
Nice summary of Fintech activities at the IMF/WB Spring Meetings.
tags: Blockchain CryptoAssets Fintech CBDC
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Researchers: DEXs plagued by malicious trading bots
“Flash Boys 2.0: Frontrunning, Transaction Reordering, and Consensus Instability in Decentralized Exchanges” uncovers a number of significant details surrounding the activity of malicious trading bots on decentralized exchanges.
tags: Fintech Liquidity CryptoAssets
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Life’s a breach: banks settle uncomfortably into GDPR
The EU’s GDPR requires reporting of data breaches to authorities within 72 hours. The maximum penalty for failing to do so is 4% of a year’s revenue. The number of breaches reported across Europe varies widely.
FinTech Daily 04/23/2019
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Can IBM’s World Wire Be The Answer To Cryptocurrency Payments?
The cross-border payment applications of Ripple, JPM Coin, and World Wire aim mainly at financial and enterprise institutions. None are designed for the other side of the market.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Blockchain Ripple
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Motivations and prospects for central bank digital currency
So far, most central banks remain a long way from issuing CBDC of any kind. But given that technology has been progressing fast in the settlement and payment areas, as well as DLT, it is possible central banks may increase their interest in retail and wholesale CBDC proposals based on DLT and consider actual implementation seriously in the near future.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets CBDC
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Binance DEX Launches on Native Mainnet Earlier Than Planned, Invites Community Input
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by adjusted volume, has launched its decentralized trading platform (DEX). A DEX enables users to trade P2P, using smart contracts to automate deal matching and asset liquidation.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Liquidity
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How Ambiguous Regulations Complicate Crypto Taxation
Crypto-asset taxation in major bitcoin strongholds is complicated. Contradictory or non-existent laws, excessive red tape, and maddeningly vague guidelines have conspired to make the tax-paying process more arduous than it need be.
tags: CryptoAssets Taxation Fintech
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How Tokenization Opens A New World Of Asset Management And Investment
The blockchain offers a way to remove intermediaries from the equation and make the tokenization and transfer of assets peer-to-peer and far more liquid and tradable and also help reach different assets not amenable to securitisation.
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You Can Now Shop With Bitcoin on Amazon Using Lightning
Bitcoin spenders can now use the lightning network to shop at e-commerce sites like Amazon. Crypto payment processing startup Moon has announced that any lightning-enabled wallet can now also be used through Moon’s browser extension.
tags: CryptoAssets Fintech Bitcoin
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Aa Traditional Remittance Rates Soar, Crypto-Baaed Transfers Can Cut Costs in Africa by 90%
On average, it costs 9.3% to send the equivalent of $200 to the Africa according to a new World Bank report. However, the cost drops by as much as 90% when money is sent through cryptocurrency-based fintech companies like Bitpesa.
tags: Fintech CrossBorder CryptoAssets
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IMF / World Bank shares CBDC learnings from educational blockchain
The International Monetary Fund and World Bank have been exploring blockchain together by creating a Learning Coin.
tags: Fintech Blockchain CryptoAssets
FinTech Daily 04/22/2019
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Why Goldman Sachs raised $22M for no code tech firm Unqork
Unqork is a platform that allows users to drag and drop prebuilt modules into a useful workflow to quickly create financial services applications without the need for developers to create any code, to radically accelerate client acquisition and onboarding.
tags: Fintech
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E-Commerce Giant Rakuten Opens Its New Crypto Exchange to Customers
Japan’s equivalent to Amazon, e-commerce giant Rakuten, has started accepting account registrations for its new cryptocurrency exchange, Rakuten Wallet.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets
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Anchor Cryptocurrency Stablecoin Holdings: How Does it Work?
Anchor Tokens mirror global economic growth by tracking a proprietary monetary measurement unit based on the value of fiat currencies, national GDP and bond yields from more than 190 countries.
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Tokenization
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You Can Now Own Tokenized Shares of SpaceX Stock
Ambisafe is launching a project which will purchase SpaceX shares and then tokenize them to be traded on a secondary market. (SpaceX shares are restricted securities and cannot be traded on public exchanges.)
tags: Fintech CryptoAssets Tokenization
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Chilean Government Introduces New Cryptocurrency and Fintech Regulation Bill to Congress
The Chilean government introduced a new crypto-asset and fintech regulation bill to Congress.
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Digital forex settlement volume tipped to rise tenfold
Nex Group and Baton Systems have built a real-time settlement system for foreign exchange trades, using distributed ledger technology (DLT) to cut the traditional two-day post-trade cycle down to as little as three minutes.
tags: Fintech Blockchain Settlement FX