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Stablecoins can be broken down into 3 categories: asset-backed, crypto-backed, and non-backed. To this we need to include 3 additional dimensions; pegged, collateralized and redeemable.
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Tibado is a fiat-backed stablecoin micropayment system based on an Autonomous Finite State Machine (AFSM) which controls a live coin ledger. The transactions are not known to the cash box which means there are no transaction fees and the user’s privacy is preserved.
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The Algorand platform is explicitly designed with the idea of catering to large scale payment processing, enterprise uses, mainstream user adoption, and a vision of a “borderless economy” from scratch.
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Wells Fargo says its blockchain for internal cross-border money transfers is faster and more efficient than SWIFT, the global messaging system used by over 11,000 financial institutions.
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According to a calendar notice on the House of Representatives’ website, the committee will hold a one-panel hearing with SEC Chairman Jay Clayton, as well as Commissioners Robert Jackson, Elad Roisman, Allison Lee and “Crypto Mom” Hester Pierce on Sept. 24 in the Rayburn House Office Building.”
Month: September 2019
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 09/20/2019
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In a letter responding to a question from German legislator Fabio De Masi, Facebook said the dollar would make up 50% of the basket, followed by the euro with 18%, the yen with 14%, the British pound with 11% and the Singapore dollar with 7%, according to German news magazine Der Spiegel.
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Derivatives marketplace CME Group has announced that it will offer options on its bitcoin futures contracts starting in the first quarter of next year.
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Bank of America has joined Marco Polo, a consortium working to bring efficiencies to international trade using blockchain technology. Founded by R3 and TradeIX, Marco Polo is built on R3’s Corda blockchain platform. “
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 09/19/2019
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Stablecoins present as many conundrums as they do potential benefits and policymakers would be wise to envision far-sighted regulatory regimes that will meet the challenge. The policies adopted today will mold the world of tomorrow.
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America’s unbanked need payments services. How to serve them? New products like postal banking, CBDC, or FedAccounts are one option. But good ol’ fashioned prepaid debit cards (ie Walmart’s MoneyCard) are still the best bet.
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Chile’s central bank governor, Mario Marcel, says central bank digital currencies (CBDC) can provide additional flexibility at a time of unconventional monetary policies.
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Privacy coins such as Monero, Zcash and Dash are making it harder for exchanges and custodians to comply with new FATF guidelines. Some exchanges are finding it easier to delist the coins rather than figure out how to adhere to the additional risk management requirements.
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VanEck and SolidX have withdrawn their request to the SEC for a rule change that would have allowed the Cboe BZX Exchange to list retail shares issued by the VanEck SolidX Bitcoin Trust.
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North Korea is in the early stages of developing its own cryptocurrency. The goal is to avoid international sanctions and circumvent the U.S.-dominated global financial system.
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SpaceChain isn’t the first blockchain project seeking to go extra-terrestrial — far from it. There have been a whole host of projects competing to advance blockchain in space, like Nexus, BitSpace, Spacebit, to name but a few.tags: Fintech Blockchain
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“The sophistication that blockchain technology and smart contracts bring will lead to huge operational cost savings and the opening of new untapped markets.”
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 09/18/2019
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“Libra has undoubtedly been a wake-up call for central banks to strengthen their efforts to improve existing payment systems. This by itself is undoubtedly a win-win situation for the global community. Progress made by those central banks already operating at the technological frontier can be expected to increase the speed of technological diffusion across borders.”
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The second edition of the Global Enterprise Blockchain Benchmarking Study provides new insights into the current state of the enterprise blockchain ecosystem. The study gathers survey data from 160 start-ups, established companies, central banks, and other public-sector institutions from 49 different countries worldwide. The empirical analysis specifically focuses on enterprise blockchain networks that have entered in production.tags: Fintech Blockchain
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Binance is now explicitly positioning its Venus localized fiat-backed stablecoin project as a government-friendly alternative to Libra.
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Cboe BZX Exchange withdrew its VanEck/SolidX bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) proposal on September 17.
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The BIS and the HKMA have today signed an Operational Agreement on the BIS Innovation Hub Centre in Hong Kong. The Hub will identify and develop in-depth insights into critical trends in technology affecting central banking… Hub Centres will be set up in Hong Kong, Singapore and Basel, Switzerland, in the initial phase.
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Consumer watchdog Which? reported that one in 10 free cashpoints across the UK have closed or switched to charging a fee for withdrawals. Poorer communities, which tend to rely more heavily on cash for payments, had been hit the hardest.
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If the United States is smart, it will wake up and start competing for dominance in digital payments. The shortest cut to a system to rival Alibaba and Tencent is called Libra, the digital currency proposed by Facebook, which, with its 2.4 billion active users, is uniquely positioned to create something on a Chinese scale, and fas
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This Circle Research report identifies innovative work by the technical community on developing and experimenting with sustainable governance and funding models and the analytical community on creating innovative ways to evaluate crypto networks.tags: Fintech CryptoAssets
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Crypto payments service Alchemy launched its Hybrid Payment Solution, allowing merchants in Asian and Middle Eastern markets to easily accept bitcoin and crypto payments.
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People with less knowledge about cryptocurrency are the most likely to be positive on its future, according to ING, based on a survey of about 1,000 mostly Europeans.tags: Fintech CryptoAssets
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Modern money is crawling with nasty bacteria. It’s not a public hazard, but scientists find that some currencies are particularly gross.
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 09/17/2019
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Wells Fargo is developing a USD-linked stablecoin that will run on the firm’s first blockchain platform. “Wells Fargo Digital Cash” will be used in a pilot initially for internal cross-border settlement across the company’s global network.
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Switzerland’s FINMA has made it clear that a) all applicable AML/KYC regulations would have to be observed, and b) a payment system license from may not be enough.
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Hedera Hashgraph, a new public blockchain network that claims to be faster than Ethereum and Bitcoin networks, has launched its mainnet beta for the general public. Hedera also offers smart contract and file services, and both are currently throttled to 10 transactions per second.
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The Telegram Open Network, or TON, is Telegram’s upcoming Proof-of-Stake network that promises to integrate blockchain payments into its messaging app that serves some 365 million users. If it delivers on promises of high speeds and decentralization, it will be the largest blockchain launch in history.
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Blockchain real estate investment firm AssetBlock partnered with luxury hotel asset manager Lodging Capital Partners to tokenize $60 million of exclusive hotel properties.
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 09/16/2019
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“As a new technology, stablecoins are largely untested, especially on the scale required to run a global payment system,” said Mr Cœuré. “They give rise to a number of serious risks related to public policy priorities. The bar for regulatory approval will be high.”
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A series of PBoC rulings in 2017 and 2018 have stopped bigtech payment operators profiting from interest income earned by depositing customers’ surplus payment funds. Instead, surplus payment funds now need to be placed with the PBoC and secure no interest in return – it had previously mandated that only certain percentages needed to be held with the central bank. The PBoC asked payment companies to deposit 100% of customer funds with the central bank by January 2019.
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This BIS paper argues that asset tokenisation and underlying distributed ledger technology (DLT) open up new ways of supervising financial risks. It then puts the case for “embedded supervision”, ie a framework that allows compliance with regulatory goals to be automatically monitored by reading the market’s ledger, thus reducing the need for firms to actively collect, verify and deliver data.
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 09/15/2019
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There are at least 45 central banks looking into issuing digital currency (CBDC).
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The ECB’s Benoît Coeuré will chair a meeting on September 16 at the BIS headquarters in Basel between Libra and the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructure. The CPMI side will be represented by officials from 26 central banks, including the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England.
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ECB board member Benoit Coeure said Libra has revived efforts to widen the uptake of the ECB-backed TIPs fast cash project, and that the ECB needs to step up its thinking on a central bank digital currency.
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The Ethereum network has become congested with users complaining transactions are taking hours or in some rare instances, even days, and the culprit appears to be Tether.
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The JPMorgan Chase-led Interbank Information Network (IIN) will this week announce Deutsche as a new recruit to a network of 320 banks which have agreed to swap information on global payments over blockchain, the mutually distributed ledger technology behind cryptocurrencies.
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“The ICE/Bakkt initiative will prove to be a fascinating case study in inter-exchange competition. Crypto is sufficiently distinctive, and the double-barrel ICE initiative sufficiently innovative, that the traditional betting form (go with the incumbent) could well fail.”
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 09/14/2019
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Central Bank of Chile Governor Mario Marcel: “CBDC does not necessarily need blockchain… When a Central Bank issues its currency,either in physical or digital format, trust should be a given. Also is far from obvious that all market participants should have access to sensitive information such as all transactions in which the CBDC was used.
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The VERDAD Act (Senate Bill 1025) will ban US citizens, permanent residents and organizations from buying, holding, trading or spending the Venezualan Petro. The implications for this could be huge because any crypto-asset could be inserted into this language.
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Legal & General, a British multinational financial services company, recently announced what it claims is the first blockchain system for bulk pension deals. The company said in the report that it would be using Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) blockchain system to manage and record bulk annuities for its insurance business.
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With the right legal framework, Committed Settlement can give you the ability to create, record, notify and/or perfect security interests (depending on the jurisdiction) in a fraction of a millisecond – and with minimal cost. With these efficiencies, it may change the way we approach bankruptcy proceedings, collateral and risk management – if not all financial transactions in general
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 09/13/2019
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Libra is imperialism by stealth
“If Libra follows the route of many stablecoins — including the dominant market player, Tether — and backs itself with dollar assets (and, it is difficult to see what else it can do but go down that route), then it is nothing but dollarisation by proxy. “
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France urges EU rules on cryptocurrencies, warns of Libra risks
French Finance Minister Le Maire said “a common framework” on digital currencies was needed for the 28 EU countries and urged the creation of a European “public digital currency”, without giving more details.
tags: AltCoins Regulation CBDC Stablecoins Facebook Fintech CryptoAssets
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CME Seeks to Double Monthly Bitcoin Futures Open Position Limit to 10K BTC
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group is petitioning United States regulators to allow its clients to double their open Bitcoin futures positions.
tags: Derivatives Futures Bitcoin Fintech Regulation CryptoAssets
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France shuns Facebook’s Libra. How was Libra stupid enough to end up here?
“Did Libra hire an economist who’d worked at a central bank, or for a government, on serious macroeconomics — someone who could talk to regulators in their own language — at any point since Facebook started looking into cryptocurrencies in 2017? …You might think “someone who knows how economies tend to work” would have been a useful sort of person to have on the team before the big announcement.”
tags: Regulation Facebook Stablecoins Fintech AltCoins CryptoAssets
Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 09/12/2019
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France will halt the development of Facebook’s planned Libra cryptocurrency in Europe because it threatens the “monetary sovereignty” of governments.
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Switzerland’s guidance on stablecoins — what it means for Facebook’s Libra.
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“Instead of embracing Facebook’s Libra, we should be rallying for a public option for digital currency.”
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By taking the status quo option off the table, Libra or its next best replica will force monetary authorities and regulators to choose between central bank-managed digital currency and riskier private digital tokens.
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Via the Timed Release Monetary Issuance anyone (regardless of location) can register for the SOV pre-sale on the newly launched website of the SOV Development Foundation. The actual pre-sale for SOV – in which users buy TRMI units that can later be exchanged for SOV units – is not yet live and is still a work in progress.
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Santander says it has become the first institution to use a public blockchain to manage all aspects of a bond issue, not only using a token on ethereum to represent the $20 million debt issuance but settling it with another set of ERC-20 tokens representing cash held in a custody account.