What Is and Isn’t a *Wholesale* Central Bank Digital Currency?
In previous posts I’ve discussed what is and isn’t a retail #CBDC and in this post I extend the discussion to wholesale CBDC and launch a new tabulation of wCBDC experiments. Basically I conclude that when people say “wholesale CBDC” they really mean “distributed ledger technology (DLT) based wholesale CBDC, because wholesale CBDC itself is no novelty. And here’s the link to the “live” version of my tabulation of wholesale CBDC experiments. Please let me know if I’m missing or misrepresenting any. https://kiffmeister.blogspot.com/2021/08/dlt-based-wholesale-cbdc-experiments.html
Bank of Jamaica Mints First Batch of Central Bank Digital Currency
The Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) minted Jamaica’s first batch of central bank digital currency (CBDC). A total of J$230 million in CBDC will be issued to deposit-taking institutions and authorized payment service providers during the CBDC pilot exercise which ends in December. Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Nigel Clarke, said that legislative amendments to accompany CBDC will be in place before March 31, 2022, the end of the current fiscal year.
Crypto compromise dies in the Senate due to last-minute defense spending proposal
“A late-game attempt to make changes to controversial cryptocurrency tax reporting requirements included in the Senate’s infrastructure bill died [when it didn’t get the required unanimous consent]… Alabama Senator Richard Shelby motioned to add his own amendment to the broader infrastructure bill: a $50 billion earmark for defense. The combined package was subsequently shot down by an objection from Bernie Sanders… The Senate is expected to vote today on a final bill, which will then need to go through the House.”
The bill that will go the House will include the contentious tax reporting provision that will expand the definition of “brokers” to include those dealing in digital assets, such as miners, validators, wallet providers, and DeFi protocol developers. Senators Ron Wyden, Cynthia Lummis, and Pat Toomey had offered an amendment that would exempt non-custodial actors. That was followed by a competing amendment from Senators Mark Warner and Rob Portman that would only explicitly exempt proof-of-work miners and wallet providers from the requirement. That was followed yesterday by the compromise amendment that was ultimately shot down.
Hackers stole at least $600M in Poly exploit across three chains
Hackers allegedly breached blockchain-based platform Poly Network and extracted more than $600 million in cryptocurrencies, marking the biggest hack ever in the decentralized finance space. The network said it would be pursuing legal action against the hackers and urged them to return the pilfered funds. It also requested that miners on the aforementioned chains and crypto exchanges blacklist tokens coming from the affected addresses.
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