-
Martin Wolf: “At worst, the world might have a Facebook-dominated mono-bank. The risks of that are huge: potential monetary and financial instability, concentrated economic and political power, lack of privacy and many other issues.”
-
The vast majority of money moving into bitcoin is coming from Tether, a stable coin used by traders to hold crypto at a stable value.
-
Over the past month, $600 million worth of “tethers,” a cryptocurrency supposedly pegged to the dollar, have been minted into existence. Seemingly in tandem, Bitcoin’s price has climbed up from $8,500 to $11,000. Are the two events connected?
-
TrueHKD is the first major expansion for TrustToken into the Asian market after launching TrueUSD, TrueGBP, TrueCAD, and TrueAUD with custody providers based in the US.
-
Square Cash App users will now be able to deposit bitcoins from external wallets into their app bitcoin address. According to Square’s announcement, deposits are limited to $10,000 worth of bitcoin in a seven day period.
-
Swiss-based fintech firm Amun AG has released plans to launch a new exchange-traded product (ETP) that will use the Bitwise 10 Select Large Cap Crypto Index as a benchmark. This is the fifth ETP the Swiss SIX Exchange has permitted.
-
The payment system remains one of the last true monopolies of a modern economy. Financial technology startups and cryptocurrencies have all sought to bust up that monopoly. With its new digital currency, Libra, Facebook may actually succeed by doing what none others have: by creating a de facto central bank to issue it.
-
Facebook’s Libra white paper includes a brief but potentially seismic nod to digital identity standards. With 2 billion users worldwide, Facebook may be able to succeed where others have failed in jump-starting a globally accepted digital ID. Some identity experts say this is even more important than the cryptocurrency, but others question how much control Libra would give users and find its approach overbearing.”
-
Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency has taken a lot of criticism from Western government officials and media commentators – but it’s not meant for them. A major target market for the Libra is users in developing countries.
-
Facebook published plans for the Libra cryptocurrency in seven languages, including Indonesia’s Bahasa – a move that offers perhaps the clearest glimpse of what Facebook’s fintech ascent might look like.
-
“This article is about: 1) Understanding the investors and people around this project, 2) Understanding the technology of Libra, and 3) Some possible future implications in Bank, Crypto and Financial industries.
-
“We expect that the evolution of payment infrastructure will accelerate. All actors are grappling with what is at stake. For governments and central banks, regulating this transformation will be a prerequisite to avoiding a possible privatization of monetary policy, and for banks and other financial services providers, keeping up with evolving customer preferences and further adjusting the pricing of payments and transfers appears unavoidable.”
-
“Facebook need not create a new bank. And it might avoid banking regulation. But its goal would still be achieved: the power of the state to manage the economy of a nation could be critically undermined in those places where it still exists by the existence of its currency. And, I would suggest this is precisely what the goal of this policy is.
-
For now, PwC can audit eight tokens, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. Each cryptographic requires its own audit tool given the different blockchains they use, Weinberger said, one reason it took so long to design the technology.
-
The ITW Global Leaders’ Forum (GLF), which is a network of leaders from the world’s largest wholesale carriers, announced Monday the launch of a blockchain-based platform. Known as the Communications Blockchain Network (CBN), this will revolutionize the ICT Service Provider industry’s commercial settlement infrastructure, representing an opportunity worth billions to the global industry.
