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“Governments need to ensure that central banks’ monopoly over coins and notes is not replaced by private monopolies over digital money, and they should maintain banks’ obligation to keep customer information private, so that the plumbing remains anonymous. Digital firms that use this plumbing to offer services should be free to monetize transaction data, through, for example, advertising, so long as their business model is made explicit to users. The phase-out of cash should be gradual. For a period of ten years, banks should be obliged to accept and distribute cash in populated areas. This will buy governments time to help the poor open bank accounts, educate the elderly and beef up internet access in rural areas.”
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LedgerX admitted Thursday that it has not launched bitcoin futures, as the firm had previously claimed, after the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said it had not approved the exchange to do so.
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To be fair, there isn’t much legal precedence to build off of here–but when something goes wrong in the cryptosphere, who is legally liable? And what’s more–who can users turn to for help? Should they call the police? The FBI? A lawyer? Or should they be able to rely on the service’s operators or the coin’s creators?
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US Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo: “if the United States were to decide we don’t want cryptocurrency to happen in the United States and tried to ban it, I’m pretty confident we couldn’t succeed in doing that because this is a global innovation.”
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Elliptic collaborated with MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab researchers using machine learning software to analyze 203,769 bitcoin node transactions worth roughly $6 billion in total. They found that only 2% of the 200,000 bitcoin transactions in the data set were deemed illicit, although roughly 77 percent remained unclassified.
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Grayscale Investments has tapped Coinbase Custody to act as the custodian for Grayscale’s single-asset and diversified investment products. Coinbase qlrready holds $1b in assets, and Grayscale holds $2.7b in total assets under management.
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A recently published document reveals that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has plans to hire contractors to run specific cryptocurrency full nodes for the government agency. According to the SEC documentation, the regulator wants third-party contractors to run nodes for Bitcoin Core (BTC), Ripple (XRP) and Ethereum (ETH) in order to monitor compliance risks.
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The Federal Reserve is still weighing up the possibility of launching a round-the-clock real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system, but will reach a decision “soon”, chair Jerome Powell said.
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A new patent filing suggests that US retail giant Walmart may be developing a U.S. dollar-backed digital currency-based ecosystem similar to Facebook’s Libra’s.
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Pooling intelligence on cyber trespassing is the future of digital defence – at least, that’s what many in the op risk camp are saying. Platforms to disseminate that information are being set up by consortia of banks, sometimes even with government involvement. Yet despite their avowals, it’s not clear how much banks want to share. Beyond the most rudimentary details of a breach attempt, banks may hold back for fear of ending up in the crosshairs of regulators – or of actually helping cyber thieves.
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This sorry tale involves digital platforms, and the whizzy sounding innovative finance Isa (IF Isa). Yet the demise of Lendy is a new take on an old story – one of mispriced risk, misleading marketing and complacent regulation.
