E-Yuan Trials Make Insurtech Debut
ZhongAn Online P&C Insurance and China Construction Bank have issued China’s first insurance policy paid in digital yuan. People in pilot cities for the new central bank digital currency (CBDC) can use e-yuan to purchase ZhongAn’s star Personal Clinic Policy on its app.
BitMEX Starts 2021 with a Fully Verified Active User Base
BitMEX has completed its User Verification Programme, claiming to start 2021 with “a fully verified active user base.” BitMEX ramped up the rollout of its know-your-customers (KYC) program on October 21, after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed money-laundering and other civil charges against it. The BitMEX Programme had some teeth behind it as, according to BitMEX’s initial announcement, all its customers who remained unverified by December 4 would have lost the ability to deposit, trade, and withdraw their funds.
ShapeShift’s Road to Redemption Has Regulatory Hurdles
Preston Byrne, a partner at law firm Anderson Kill: “Generally speaking, incorporating DeFi into a web application with the intent that the SaaS provider become a pass-through for the decentralized backend is fraught with legal and compliance issues. Because DeFi tries to replicate financial services, and financial services is regulated, providing services to interact with DeFi is likely to be captured by financial services regulation.” For example, decentralized exchange providers such as EtherDelta have run afoul of the Exchange Act “arising from the use of a DeFi platform to trade coins which in the SEC’s view were not coins but rather ‘digital asset securities.’”
BTW this is what the e-yuan looks like in real-world use:
