A new way to buy crypto on Coinbase using PayPal
Coinbase’s U.S. customers can now buy crypto on the exchange via debit cards and bank accounts linked to PayPal. Such purchases are limited to $25,000 per day. Customers will have to click on “add a payment method” and select PayPal, which whisks them off to a PayPal login screen, after which a debit card or bank account linked to the customer’s PayPal account is selected. It seems that the last steps are to block customers from funding crypto purchases with PayPal-linked credit cards.
Singapore and Thailand Launch World’s First Linkage of Real-time Payment Systems
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Bank of Thailand (BOT) launched the linkage of Singapore’s PayNow and Thailand’s PromptPay real-time retail payment systems. Customers of participating banks in Singapore and Thailand will be able to seamlessly and securely transfer funds of up to S$1,000 or THB25,000 daily across the two countries, using just a mobile number. The fees will be affordably priced and transparently displayed to senders prior to confirming their transfers.
EIB issues its first ever digital bond on a public blockchain
As reported a few days ago, the European Investment Bank (EIB) launched a €100 million digital bond issuance on an Ethereum-based public blockchain platform. The EIB has now confirmed that it paid the three underwriters (Goldman Sachs, Santander and Societe Generale) using Banque de France-issued wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC). Societe Generale – FORGE provided the end-to-end services to issue and manage the digital-native security tokens.
SEC pushes decision on VanEck Bitcoin ETF until June
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) extended the original 45-day window to approve (or disapprove) VanEck’s Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) from May 3 to June 17. “The Commission finds that it is appropriate to designate a longer period within which to take action on the proposed rule change so that it has sufficient time to consider the proposed rule change and the comments received.”
BaFin cracks down on crypto exchange Binance’s ‘stock tokens’
Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) warned investors that Binance has probably violated securities rules over its launch of trading in tokens that track the movement of shares in Tesla, Coinbase and MicroStrategy. The warning said that such tokens represent securities requiring a prospectus that has not yet been issued.
Tether Releases Most Recent Independent Assurance Opinion
Tether made available its (pretty much useless) Consolidated Reserves Report for March 31, 2021 and an accompanying assurance opinion by Moore Cayman attesting that the information is accurate. It is Tether’s plan to release these documents, intended to show that it USDT stablecoin is fully backed by U.S. dollar assets, on a quarterly basis. However, they provide no information on the composition of the reserves.
*For those interested in intra-day updates and news that didn’t make the Daily Digest cut, please check out my Diigo fintech bookmarks: https://www.diigo.com/user/kiffmeister/Fintech