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Here’s the updated master list of countries where *retail* central bank digital currencies are being actively explored, according to publicly-available information. I count 48 in total of which 11 have done or will soon do limited-scale pilots.
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Libra is actually a revamped version of a much older payments model. In 1996, Douglas Jackson, an oncologist and fan of the gold standard, founded a payments system called e-gold. Backed one-to-one by reserves of the yellow metal, the e-gold system allowed users all around the world to make instant private electronic payments. Unfortunately, e-gold ran into problems with regulators…
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A New York Supreme Court Appellate Division filing claims that Bitfinex and Tether (which share executives and shareholders) had gradually been depleting the reserves backing Tether’s USDT stablecoin, by first by going from actual cash in hand to $625 million in an inaccessible Crypto Capital account, and then by replacing that with a $625 million IOU from Bitfinex. That debt, said the NYAG, “seemed unlikely to be repaid,” as Bitfinex required the funds for withdrawals on its exchange.
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A letter sent by law firm Miller Thomson to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) asks for the authorities to dig up and examine the body of Gerald Cotten, who reportedly died of complications due to Crohn’s disease at the end of December 2018. Cotten was 30 at the time.