Facebook Seeks Reported $1 Billion for FB Coin Amid Talks With Visa, MasterCard
Facebook is looking to raise $1 billion for its rumored cryptocurrency stablecoin, the WSJ reports. Facebook was also said to be talking Visa and MasterCard about potential support, along with payment processor First Data Corp.
Enabling Deep Negative Rates to Fight Recessions: A Guide
The central message of this IMF paper is that with readily available tools a central bank can enable deep negative rates whenever needed—thus maintaining the power of monetary policy in the future to end recessions within a short time.
The Riksbank proposes a review of the concept of legal tender
The Riksbank proposes that a committee be tasked with reviewing the concept of legal tender and role of central bank money in a digitalised economy, and the role and responsibility of both the state and the private sector on the payment market.
Gemini Partners with Harbor to Fund Investments Leveraging Gemini Dollars
Gemini is partnering with Harbor, an all-in-one platform for tokenized securities offerings, to allow users to invest in deals using Gemini dollars (GUSD) and receive any future distributions or dividends of such deals in GUSD.
Tether Lawyer Admits Stablecoin Now 74% Backed by Cash and Equivalents
Tether has cash and cash equivalents (short term securities) on hand totaling approximately $2.1 billion, representing about 74 percent of the current outstanding tethers.
Chinese Central Bank Fines Five Businesses in Beijing for Refusal to Accept Cash Payments
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) is ensuring that Chinese businesses continue to accept cash despite the rapid spread of mobile payments throughout the country’s economy. On 23 April PBOC announced that it had fined five companies in Beijing for refusal to accept cash payments.
Central Banks Like Blockchain But Aren’t Decentralizing
The only takers to date for blockchain-based CBDC are minuscule island nations. This may indicate there is a case to be made for adopting a distributed ledger format in certain geographies. Or it may mean the product is dead on arrival.
Mutual Owners, Mutual Funds: What We Know About the Bitfinex/Tether Scandal
In what seems to be one of the greatest crypto scandals 2019 has seen so far, the United States Attorney General in New York accused Bitfinex of using Tether’s cash reserves to cover a rumored $850 million funding gap with reserves meant for backing the stablecoin. Both companies share the same owner.
DAI Has Been Struggling to Maintain Its $1 Peg, but the MakerDAO Community Believes It Will Soon Be Crypto’s ‘Default’ Stablecoin
Launched in December 2017 as an ERC-20 token, MakerDAO is pegged 1:1 with the United States dollar, with its peg being maintained via over-collateralization with ether (ETH). In other words, users receive the equivalent of $1 in DAI by depositing more than $1 in ETH, and they can later reclaim their collateral by repaying the DAI they've received plus a “stability fee” in MKR, MakerDAO's other (nonstablecoin) token. By charging users this additional fee, the MakerDAO system theoretically prevents the value of DAI from dropping below $1, since the fee makes it expensive to mint more DAI tokens.
Payments Firm Wirex Launching 26 Stablecoins on the Stellar Blockchain
Payments platform Wirex is launching 26 fiat-backed stablecoins on the Stellar blockchain network, including the U.S. dollar, euro, the British pound, Hong Kong dollar and the Singapore dollar.
MakerDAO Set to Increase DAI Fees Above 15% in Bid to Stabilize Stablecoin
A majority vote to increase fees on programmatic lending platform MakerDAO has passed an initial round of polling today. This time, the winning vote is to increase fees by 2%, which, in comparison to past weeks, is a comparatively small increase to the usual 3 or 4%.
Bitfinex Covered $850 Million Loss Using Tether Funds, NY Prosecutors Allege
"The New York Attorney General’s office has alleged that crypto exchange Bitfinex lost $850 million and subsequently used funds from affiliated stablecoin operator Tether to secretly cover the shortfall."
Motivations and prospects for central bank digital currency
So far, most central banks remain a long way from issuing CBDC of any kind. But given that technology has been progressing fast in the settlement and payment areas, as well as DLT, it is possible central banks may increase their interest in retail and wholesale CBDC proposals based on DLT and consider actual implementation seriously in the near future.
How the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank is digitizing its dollar
The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank plans to launch a pilot in 2020 of a blockchain-based digital version of the Eastern Caribbean dollar. This marks the first time that a central bank will have issued digital legal tender using the blockchain.
"The precursors of money, along with language, enabled early modern humans to solve problems of cooperation that other animals cannot – including problems of reciprocal altruism, kin altruism, and the mitigation of aggression. These precursors shared with non-fiat currencies very specific characteristics – they were not merely symbolic or decorative objects."
Stable Coins and the Mass Adoption of Cryptocurrency
The TRON — Tether partnership will add another stable coin to the cryptocurrency sector. This latest example in the proliferation of stable coins will add use cases for digital currency and help increase mainstream adoption.
All the stablecoin attempts that exist today (i) have enormous risks of breaking, (ii) are centralized or (iii) are extremely complex in relation to their monetary policy. That is, they are the exact opposite of the reason for Bitcoin to exist.
The Hidden Effects of Crypto Money Laundering Rules
A growth in the liquidity of crypto-assets will boost interest in and feasibility of using the underlying technology for tracking purposes. An effective use of blockchain technology would make it much harder to launder money using crypto than digital fiat currency.
Central Bank of Russia Says CBDCs Can Minimize Costs, but Privacy Is a Concern
The Central Bank of Russia is analyzing the impact of issuing a central bank digital currency in a paper published on April 18. The intention is to better understand possible use cases for CBDCs.
The Universal Euro (UPEUR) stablecoin is the latest digital asset product issued by the Universal Protocol alliance joining UPUSD and UPBTC launched earlier this year.
MakerDAO Voters Divided on How Much to Hike Fee for DAI Stablecoin - CoinDesk
"In an effort to restrict supply and raise the value of DAI, MKR token holders have steadily been increasing what is known as the Stability Fee in larger and larger increments. However, this week, MKR token holders have signaled their support for a smaller, more measured increase to the Stability Fee of 3 percent."
New E-shekel could ease cross-border payments says LSE report
"A new digital currency, which would facilitate cross-border payments between Israel and the West Bank, has been proposed in a new report from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)."
