Kiffmeister’s #Fintech Daily Digest (12/12/2020)

XRP Price Crashes By 8% After Flare Network Airdrops Free Crypto

The price of XRP crashed following a huge airdrop that will credit all XRP holders who hold funds in participating exchanges and wallets with free Spark (FLR) tokens. On the morning of December 12, immediately after the airdrop all of the top ten coins by market capitalization were up 2-4% but XRP was down about 10%. The FLR, to be distributed by Flare Network on a yet-unreleased blockchain, is a smart contract utility fork of XRP. The pair will attempt to challenge Ethereum’s dominance in decentralized finance (defi) and decentralized applications (dapps). Flare integrates with Ethereum’s Virtual Machine, allowing existing Ethereum dapps to be ported over to Flare to serve the XRP ecosystem. 

MicroStrategy completes $650 million bond sale to finance next Bitcoin purchase

Business intelligence firm MicroStrategy ended up issuing $650 million of 0.750% five-year convertible senior notes to qualified institutional buyers. It intends to invest the net proceeds from the sale of the notes in bitcoin in accordance with its Treasury Reserve Policy pending identification of working capital needs and other general corporate purposes. The conversion rate will initially be 2.5126 shares of MicroStrategy class A common stock per $1,000 principal amount of notes, which is equivalent to an initial conversion price of approximately $397.99 per share, roughly a 37.5% premium over the current market price. 

Designing CBDC Using the Delphi-Analytic Network Process

The emergence of stablecoins is a growing concern for authorities worldwide including Indonesia as it could affect financial stability. Thus, if a central bank chooses to develop a central bank digital currency (CBDC) to tackle this problem, the design should conform to the country’s characteristics and consumer needs. This study draws on experts’ opinions from various economic agents and utilises an amalgamation of the analytic network process (ANP) and the Delphi method to show that the cash-like CBDC model is the most appropriate digital currency design for Indonesia, since it could enhance financial inclusion and reduce shadow banking in Indonesia. 

FinCEN Encourages Banks to Share Customer Information With Each Other

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Treasury Department, issued a fact sheet spelling out that the information that institutions are permitted to share under the 2001 Patriot Act. Overall, the sheet seemingly lowers the obstacles for further sharing of personal customer information among banks, the threshold of what qualifies as “suspicious” activity and whether the entities sharing customer information even need to be financial institutions.  

How to Sue A Decentralized Autonomous Organization

This article discusses decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and the potential legal liabilities that could be raised by this application of blockchain technology. A DAO is an organization that’s self-governing and that isn’t influenced by outside forces: its software operates on its own, with its bylaws immutably written on the blockchain, not controlled by its creators. DAOs are formed by groups of like-minded individuals with specific projects and goals in mind… A DAO purely manages funds: in itself it does not have the capabilities to build a product, write code or develop hardware. 

The Fiat Standard and Debt Slavery

This article examines how the fiat network’s native tokens come into existence, using fiat’s haphazard version of mining. As fiat money is credit, credit creation in a fiat currency results in the creation of new money, which means that lending is the fiat version of mining. Fiat miners are the financial institutions capable of generating fiat-based debt with guarantees from the government and/or central banks. Unlike with bitcoin’s difficulty adjustment, fiat has no mechanisms for controlling issuance. Credit money, instead, causes constant cycles of expansion and contraction in the money supply with eventual devastating consequences.