DFC

"The Libra Project represents a bold new proposition to create financial infrastructure in this new global ecosystem."

Undeterred by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against Telegram, developers and investors in the company’s blockchain project have formed a nonprofit for community governance.

The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) wants to sponsor a post-doctoral researcher to study what would happen if the U.S. dollar lost its status as the world’s reserve currency.

This paper presents a model where persistent trade shocks and search frictions create demand for a basket-backed stablecoin, such as Mark Carney’s “synthetic hegemonic currency” or Facebook’s recent proposal for Libra.

This paper analyzes remittance operations with and without cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies in general and present pros and cons of Libra for cross-border payments and money transfers. We also present a brief discussion on challenges posed by global cryptocurrencies to central bank governing bodies all over the world and policy implications arising out of potential conflicts between sovereign currencies and future of global cryptocurrencies such as Libra.

The Financial Stability Board published a letter from its Chair Randal K. Quarles to G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors ahead of their meetings in Riyadh later this week. The letter notes that the global financial system is constantly facing new challenges. Technology is changing the nature of traditional finance; the non-bank sector has grown and requires deeper understanding and coordination among the supervisory and regulatory community. Pressures that can lead to market fragmentation exist. Concurrently, important supervisory and regulatory issues require attention, including stablecoins, cross-border payments, and "Tech" (particularly BigTech, RegTech, and SupTech).

Castel reserved judgment on the preliminary injunction and assured Telegram’s lawyer Drylewski there would be a judgment in the case before April 30, when gram investors expect to see the TON blockchain launched. Telegram consented to prolonging the preliminary injunction after Castel explained that not consenting would mean the court would make a decision immediately.

The judge assured Telegram’s lawyer Alexander Drylewski that he is mindful of the looming April 30 deadline. A clause in the Gram purchase agreements specifies that ICO participants can claim a refund on their investment should Telegram fail to launch the TON before that date. However the date was originally set for October 2019.

The EU cannot work out exactly what Libra is according to a memo by European Commission executive vice-president, Valdis Dombrovskis. Dombrovskis refers to the "need to ensure clarity" about what Libra is, but that the information provided by Facebook is not sufficient. Libra is descibed as a "moving target" that does not easily within existing EU law.

A two-phase offering of this kind, whether styled as a SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens) or otherwise, does not inoculate an ICO or the issuer from the application of the federal securities laws. The SEC examines the facts and circumstances of a token offering at all relevant times, looking to the economic reality of the transaction or transactions, whatever they may be called.

Shopify has joined the Libra Association roughly a month after Vodafone pulled out to focus on its own digital payments system. This is the first new member of the Association since its formation four months ago.

"A Libra coin uses our Move language, which is agnostic like most mainstream languages. But beyond representing the Libra currency, we also represent things like what signature must be present on a transaction to authenticate it. When building Move, we focused on creating a safe, flexible language that allows us to express concepts that are easily tweakable and easy to analyze for financial use cases."

JP Morgan published its annual update on the latest developments in the adoption, evolution and performance of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. It expands on last year's report to include analysis of stablecoins and the rise of alternative noncash payments.

Utility Settlement Coin (USC), the blockchain-based payments system involving commercial and central banks, will be working with ConsenSys-backed startup Adhara, CoinDesk has learned. Adhara was behind Project Khokha, which used enterprise blockchain client Quorum to see how zero-knowledge proofs performed with the South African Reserve Bank (SARB).

According to TechCrunch, Tagomi is set to formally announce its intention to join the association later this week. It joins ecommerce platform Shopify, which announced it would join the group last week, joining a host of other crypto platforms, tech startups, non-profits and venture funds.

"Bitfinex is pleased to announce that on Friday, February 28, 2020, it repaid $100,000,000 of the outstanding loan facility to Tether. Bitfinex made this payment in fiat wired to Tether's bank account. This payment is all on account of principal. Interest on all amounts due under the facility agreement has been prepaid up to March 2020."

This paper presents a methodology to build a stablecoin pegged to a basket of major currencies ("librae") with stability maximizing weights. It shows that such a stablecoin is less volatile than any single-currency-pegged stablecoins.

Institutions can hedge against possible bank runs with a new wallet from euro-backed stablecoin issuer STASIS, which stores assets with financial intermediaries that have low-risk balance sheets.

According to the report, Facebook no longer intends to make the Libra token the centerpiece of its digital payments strategy. Instead, Facebook’s Libra project will reportedly transition to supporting both existing government-backed currencies, like the US dollar and the euro, and the Libra token when it is eventually completed and ready to launch.

Facebook really, really want the basket Libra — but the national-coin scheme is clearly a long-standing backup plan, as they beg regulators to let them do something like they originally wanted to.

FDIC-insured banks don't hold digital assets. They hold US dollars. So this should read "collateralized 1-to-1 with US dollars held at US-domiciled, FDIC-insured banks." But even when corrected, this statement is so misleading it amounts to mis-selling. It implies that anyone who invests in this altcoin benefits from FDIC insurance. This is not the first time I have seen this claim made about cryptocurrency investments. It wasn't true last time, and it isn't now.

"Fiduciary accounts are deposit accounts owned by one party but held in a fiduciary capacity by another party. Fiduciary relationships may include, but are not limited to, an agent, nominee, guardian, executor or custodian. "

An account that meets the definition of a fiduciary or agency account is entitled to “pass-through” deposit insurance coverage from the FDIC through the third party who establishes the account to the actual owner/principal, provided certain conditions are met.

Circle's business clients can now sign up for the Circle Business Account, a toolbox of APIs that allow developers to build on top of its USDC stablecoin.

With regard to their volatile prices, limited number, small total amount, and concentrated market, stablecoins have so far met with a mixed success. They rather represent a complement to the crypto-assets market. However, the arrival of very large issuers, securing a higher degree of confidence to users, and apt to reach a wide public, could give their projects a potentially systemic impact. These global stablecoins would create risks, in particular for financial stability and monetary policy, and in lesser-developed economies. This paper reviews these risks and the way the private sector, regulators and central banks can address them.

The Silicon Valley crypto startup cLabs, focused on mobile payments and the Celo blockchain project, is following another precedent from Facebook’s Libra playbook by launching an industry association through a separate Celo Foundation.

"The digital currency of the foundation – Celo Dollar – will be pegged to the U.S. dollar and backed by a reserve of other cryptocurrencies. Unlike other digital currencies, this can be transferred only by knowing the mobile numbers of the users."

MakerDAO, built on the ETH network, has hastily called for a community vote on March 13 ahead of the project's first-ever Debt Auction. According to Maker, the vote will decide on needed modifications that were identified during the fallout from the recent crypto market bloodbath. MakerDAO is the DeFi protocol that creates the DAI stablecoin.

MakerDAO has been holding crisis talks after dramatic falls in the price of Ether left debt worth about $4 million under-collateralized. At one point, the platform was considering an emergency shutdown as the full impact of “Black Thursday” became clear—with ETH falling by 30% in a 24-hour period.