“Once Libra becomes well established in some countries, governments will lose control of their money supply and lose monetary policy as a tool of economic expansion or contraction... They will also lose the capacity, in times of severe uncertainty, to impose capital controls to prevent capital flight.”
FINMA Application From Facebook’s Libra Might Not Be Good Enough To Satisfy Regulators
Switzerland's FINMA has made it clear that a) all applicable AML/KYC regulations would have to be observed, and b) a payment system license from may not be enough.
Wells Fargo to Pilot Internal Settlement Service Using Distributed Ledger Technology
Wells Fargo is developing a USD-linked stablecoin that will run on the firm’s first blockchain platform. "Wells Fargo Digital Cash" will be used in a pilot initially for internal cross-border settlement across the company’s global network.
If the United States is smart, it will wake up and start competing for dominance in digital payments. The shortest cut to a system to rival Alibaba and Tencent is called Libra, the digital currency proposed by Facebook, which, with its 2.4 billion active users, is uniquely positioned to create something on a Chinese scale, and fas
Digital challenges to the international monetary and financial system (Benoit Coeure)
"Libra has undoubtedly been a wake-up call for central banks to strengthen their efforts to improve existing payment systems. This by itself is undoubtedly a win-win situation for the global community. Progress made by those central banks already operating at the technological frontier can be expected to increase the speed of technological diffusion across borders."
Stablecoins thus present as many conundrums as they do potential benefits—and policymakers would be wise to envision far-sighted regulatory regimes that will meet the challenge. The policies adopted today will mold the world of tomorrow. We explore one such avenue in our next blog.
No Chinese yuan in basket underpinning Facebook's Libra
In a letter responding to a question from German legislator Fabio De Masi, Facebook said the dollar would make up 50% of the basket, followed by the euro with 18%, the yen with 14%, the British pound with 11% and the Singapore dollar with 7%, according to German news magazine Der Spiegel.
Tibado - Digital currency for online micropayments and P2P payments
Tibado is a fiat-backed stablecoin micropayment system based on an Autonomous Finite State Machine (AFSM) which controls a live coin ledger. The transactions are not known to the cash box which means there are no transaction fees and the user’s privacy is preserved.
Important Aspects of Stablecoins: The Difference Between Pegging, Collateralization, and Redeemability
Stablecoins can be broken down into 3 categories: asset-backed, crypto-backed, and non-backed. To this we need to include 3 additional dimensions; pegged, collateralized and redeemable.
Half of all Tether trading volume happens on one obscure exchange
In August, BTC/USDT represented 71.23% of total volume traded into both fiat and stablecoin. Despite controversies, USDT continues to be the most popular stablecoin for Bitcoin trading, followed by USDC, PAX, and TUSD. Bitmax, a trans-fee mining exchange, constituted roughly half of all USDT trading volume across all exchanges. Unlike regular cryptocurrency exchanges, trans-fee mining exchanges refund the fees paid by traders in the form of the exchange’s native token. While popular with traders, these exchanges have faced criticism from industry experts and were often compared to Ponzi schemes. These exchanges also incentivize wash trading.
Maker will also possibly add KYC to its onboarding process, once again defeating the purpose of decentralized finance to offer low barriers to entry. This extends the troubles with Maker, including the very high participation fee, which is, in essence, its interest rate for lending.
Moneyness: A fifty-year history of Facebook's Libra
"If Libra has its heart set on choosing an artificial currency unit as the basis for its global currency, it should have probably just go with the IMF's SDR basket rather than brewing its own strange currency concoction."
Bitfinex And Tether Win Appeal From New York Supreme Court In $900 Million Case
Bitfinex has won an appeal in the New York Supreme Court, which means it won’t have to turn over documents pertaining to its use of the the cryptocurrency Tether.
The End of a Stablecoin — The Case of NuBits - Reserve Currency
NuBits, a stablecoin first introduced in 2014, provides an illuminating case study for how stablecoins work in practice. It has been functional for over 3 years, ever since the beginning of the stablecoin concept, and is currently the only live example of a stablecoin in the Seigniorage Shares category. Well, mostly functional. NuBits has suffered two big crashes, with extended peg breaking. Fortunately for us, there are valuable takeaways to be garnered from those crashes.
Introductory remarks to the Committee on the Digital Agenda of the Deutscher Bundestag
"All things considered, Libra has undoubtedly been a wakeup call for central banks and policymakers. Global "stablecoin" initiatives are the natural result of rapid technological progress, globalisation and shifting consumer preferences. The demand for fast, reliable and cheap cross-border payments is bound to grow further in coming years. Policymakers and central banks should respond to these challenges."
Why building a new protocol for money is the only way to truly change the game for people
"David Marcus: I'm often asked why we didn’t take a more traditional route of building a payment system on top of existing rails, instead of the more ambitious route we’ve chosen. I tried to find a good concise write-up about the advantages of a new core network to move money around, and couldn’t find one, so I thought it would be a good idea to take a stab at it.
Ether Price Drop Shakes DAI Stablecoin Peg, Two Collateral Contracts Closed
The recent Ether (ETH) price drop showed the reliability and weaknesses of the decentralized stablecoin built by MakerDAO, Dai (DAI), and the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem built on top of it.
At House hearing, Facebook’s Libra stablecoin faces existential threat
“[I]t seems that we have integrated the [Libra investment] token into the Libra coin in some way such as to produce a return, which would then deem it [the Libra coin] to be a security." (U.S. Rep. Al Green at a September 24 SEC oversight hearing)
The Celo price stability protocol can be thought of as a hybrid crypto-collateralization/seigniorage-style model, designed in a way that we believe offers the best of all three approaches. The protocol supports an ecosystem of stable currencies, the first of which, the Celo Dollar, will be pegged to the US Dollar.
Celo: A platform for fast, secure, stable digital payments
"Celo is an open blockchain-based platform for fast, stable, secure digital payments, Celo’s mission is to enable a monetary system that creates the conditions for prosperity for all."
"It's important to separate the genuine worries about Libra from the hyperbole. Facebook is a controversial company these days. But French monetary sovereignty is unlikely to fall at the hands of Libra. Let’s not forget that the existing payments networks — the MasterCard and Visa networks as well as the international correspondent banking system — don’t always provide consumers with low prices. Any new competition will help consumers get cheaper and better payments options."
Tether, Not Bitcoin, Likely the World’s Most Used Cryptocurrency
The token with the highest daily and monthly trading volume is Tether, whose market capitalization is more than 30 times smaller. Tether’s volume surpassed that of Bitcoin’s for the first time in April and has consistently exceeded it since early August at about $21 billion per day.
Will Libra Catalyze a Token Revolution in Finance?
TABB Group director of fintech research Monica Summerville looks at the developing regulatory framework for cryptoassets and the future of tokenization.
Switzerland's FINMA boss fears crypto's 'dark corners,' not Libra
Switzerland is more worried about cryptocurrency projects developing outside official scrutiny than about the Facebook-conceived Libra project, which is being handled with openness, the head of Swiss financial supervisor FINMA said on Tuesday.
Facebook Libra Payments Partners Waver on Cryptocurrency
Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc., PayPal Holdings Inc. and Stripe Inc. are undecided about formally signing onto Libra’s organizing charter because they’re concerned about maintaining positive relationships with regulators who have reservations about the project, the people said.
One of the key selling points of Facebook’s Libra project was that it would prove a boon the world’s 1.7 billion-strong unbanked community. Over in Africa, however, the humble mobile phone has been fulfilling such a role for the past 20 years.
Visa, Mastercard, Others Reconsider Involvement in Facebook's Libra Network
Policy executives from the Libra Association have been summoned to an October 3 meeting in Washington DC, and on the 14th representatives from the companies are slated to meet in Geneva to review a charter for the Libra Association and appoint a board of directors.
Like the European Union, Facebook's Libra Association has 28 members, and both organisations face defections in the coming weeks. Brexit could be accompanied by Vexit and Mexit, according to reports.
