Category: Digest

Kiffmeister’s #Fintech Daily Digest (08/23/2020)

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How to fix the Covid stimulus payment problem: Accounts, information, and infrastructure

To improve its ability to deliver economic impact payments to individuals, the federal government should:

  • Require all financial institutions to offer no/low-cost basic banking services, similar to the Bank On initiative and the FDIC’s Safe Account programs. 
  • Empower consumers and regulators to vet the “do not bank” list to enhance access (a list comprised of people who have had accounts flagged for money laundering or fraud violations). Offering universal accounts will not help those who are blackballed.  
  • Connect existing information between silos to effectuate payments, gathering and retaining information where it is lacking.
  • Require immediate funds availability for all Treasury payments. A real-time payment system is not essential to put such a requirement in place.

Bitcoin Whale Sold at $12,000 BTC Price After HODLing for 2 Years

A Bitcoin (BTC) whale took profit after two years. Data from Whalemap suggests the whale purchased nearly 9,000 BTC in the third quarter of 2018. The whale held on to the BTC for nearly 22 months, through two major capitulation phases. Bitcoin dropped to sub-$4,000 level twice, first in January 2019 and second in March 2020. The investor waited through both periods, ultimately selling at around $12,000. 

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Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 12/29/2019

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Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 12/28/2019

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  • This IMF paper concludes that the mere disappearance of physical cash would not imply that monetary policy’s bearing on economic dynamics be in any way reduced. Hence, the disappearance of cash cannot be the argument for calling for CBDCs from that perspective. More relevant arguments for digital instead of physical cash include instead the objective to be better able to counteract money laundering and combat the financing of terrorism and tax evasion.
  • This Article aims to highlight the factual interconnections linking ICOs, cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and CBDCs: although these entities belonging to different contexts (securities law and capital formation, payment systems, monetary policy), they are intertwined and are part of the same evolution.
  • Based on four stylized models of CBDC issuance, this Bank of Japan (BoJ) report discusses what legal issues would arise within the Japanese legal framework if the BoJ were to issue its own CBDC.
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Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 12/27/2019

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Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 12/26/2019

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  • The Central Bank of the Bahamas will introduce a digital version of the Bahamian dollar, starting with a pilot phase in Exuma in December 2019, and extending in the first half of 2020 to Abaco. This initiative has acquired the name Project Sand Dollar, with the sand dollar also being the name assigned to the proposed central bank digital currency (CBDC). This is a continuation of the Bahamian Payments System Modernization Initiative (PSMI), which began in the early 2000s.
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Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 12/25/2019

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Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 12/24/2019

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Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 12/23/2019

~ kiffmeister
  • According to the People’s Bank of China’s Mu Changchun, the top-level design, standard formulation, functional research and development, joint debugging and testing has been completed, and its CBDC is ready for pilot testing.
  • “The world’s growing appetite for physical assets such as paper dollars and gold, coupled with the continued interest in cryptocurrencies and other traditional currency alternatives, merely confirms that faith in artificially levitated markets is approaching a tipping point. Meanwhile the world’s “top 0.001%ers” continue to quietly cash out, literally, and put their Benjamins in secret vaults in the middle of somewhere, even as central banks do everything in their power to reduce the amount of physical currency in circulation and replace it with easily trackable digital alternatives.”
  • A Fed website dedicated to the central bank’s payment processing services put up a notice at 9:57 am. New York time on Thursday stating, “the FedACH Services application began experiencing disruption on December 18 at 3:30 p.m.
  • 2019 was an excellent year for fintechs in terms of exposure and raising awareness among the majority of the population about what fintechs are and what potential they hold for the regular citizens. In 2019 we saw a major spike in the number of fintech, in the funding of these fintechs and the collaborations between these startups and the larger, more traditional institutions.
    tags: Fintech
  • So, what happened in open banking 2019? In Australia, open banking is finally launched; Payments NZ in New Zealand launches open banking APIs and ther NZ banks follow; Mexico continues to be the hot spot for LATAM; Brazil launches open banking model; Additional API offerings launched in Malaysia to further enrich the open banking market there; US banks begin conversations on open banking and to develop open banking ‘like’ APIs; the Central Bank of Nigeria places open banking on its Payments Vision Statement (PSV) 2030 to become the next EMEA country to implement open banking; and Bahrian makes claim to implementing open banking.
  • As of the end of 2019, Congress has introduced 21 bills addressing cryptocurrency and blockchain policy that could be considered in 2020 by the second year of the 116th Congress. Indeed, U.S. legislators have been busy examining the landscape of how this new technology has been and could be impacting businesses, consumers, and society at large.
  • Kraken were hoping to use Wyoming’s somewhat indulgent “blockchain” laws — largely written by the crypto industry — to get a local banking charter. They hoped to use this as a back door into New York state — without getting the New York BitLicense they’d normally need.
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Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 12/22/2019

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Kiffmeister’s Fintech Daily Digest 12/21/2019

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Sorry, not much to report today, so here’s a few older stories that have interested me recently, but haven’t posted:
  • “CarbonUSD, or CUSD for short, is a compliant fiat-backed stablecoin where users can deposit and withdrawal real USD. To mint new CUSD tokens, users can make fiat deposits via ACH or Wire Transfer with our financial partner, Nevada-based Prime Trust. Frequent third-party attestations by leading auditor Cohen & Co. verify publicly that each token is backed 1-to-1 by escrowed funds in FDIC-insured accounts with Prime Trust’s banking partners.”
  • In recent years, Tether issuances have increased significantly, which correlated broadly with a significant rise in Bitcoin valuation. This paper examines the impact of cryptocurrency issuances on subsequent cryptocurrency returns. It is argued that as Tether is the undisputed ‘stable coin’, the minting of new Tether acts similarly to monetary expansion in cryptocurrency markets, inflating the prices of Bitcoin. We construct a VAR model and show contrary to investor expectations, Tether issuances do not impact subsequent Bitcoin returns, however, they do impact traded volumes. We also document an increase in Tether trading following a subsequent decrease in Bitcoin returns.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.