DFC

MakerDAO’s emergency shutdown option – which was weighed by community members following the appearance of a $4 million debt bubble on the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform – will not pass at this time. If a shutdown was triggered by the Maker team, all dai stablecoins in circulation would convert to the underlying asset, ether (ETH).

"Even though this particular crisis could not have been foreseen, there are steps that the Maker team could have taken to prepare for these unknown unknowns. This situation, while still actively developing, highlights that those teams who design DeFi networks cannot treat economic and governance design as “optional future TBDs.” They must proactively consider all possible (covarying) risks, assuming that users will behave in their own best interests, and make it a priority to implement governance systems that are robust to these sorts of crises."

MakerDAO is now allowing the centralized USDC stablecoin to be used as collateral for loans after last week’s ethereum crash. The platform was left with under-collateralized debt worth millions of dollars after ether (ETH) fell by 30% in 24 hours on “Black Thursday.”

MakerDAO has added a third asset to its decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, USD Coin (USDC), in response to the system’s flagship stablecoin, dai, continuing to float above its dollar peg.

The MakerDAO (MKR) community has locked in a March 19 auction to cover a multi-million dollar hole in DAI collateral after the sudden Ethereum (ETH) price crash on March 12. The system will auction newly minted MKR in exchange for DAI. The proceeds from the sale will be used to recapitalize the system and compensate the losses suffered by the borrowers who saw their Ethereum collateral auctioned off for zero DAI. As the stablecoin powers many decentralized finance applications, the stability of Maker is paramount for the entire ecosystem.

Tether has created USD $180 million of its USDT stablecoin for a so-called “inventory replenishment” on March 17-18. Such a step could add further dynamics to an already extremely volatile Bitcoin market.

Sales at this auction take a reverse-auction format, with a fixed bidding amount of 50,000 DAI placed for an initial lot of 250 MKR tokens. Bidders can then lower the amount of MKR that they would be prepared to accept for the bid, but with a minimum decrease of 3%. Each lot will continue until one of two thresholds is crossed: either 6 hours passing since the last bid, or 72 hours passing since the first bid.

The supply for the USDC stablecoin has jumped significantly since the start of the month. The market capitalization for the dollar-backed stablecoin has climbed by approximately $200 million since March 1, now surpassing the $600 million benchmark. This figure represents a 42%.

Bidders have already committed to buying Maker (MKR) tokens for a total of $2 million in Dai (DAI) as the first phase of the MakerDAO debt auction reaches its final stages. The majority of the current winning bids were placed at around 1:25 a.m. EST, March 20, so unless further bids come in, most of the lots will be sold at around 7:25 a.m. EST."

To restore Dai's $1 peg, negative interest rates may be necessary. But apparently ‪@MakerDAO‬'s current code-base doesn't allow for negative numbers. Better get coding, quick!

Tether Treasury has been on a printing spree in the past two days, injecting some 180M USDT into the market in three separate batches of 60M USDT each.

MakerDAO is currently conducting an auction of MKR tokens in exchange for DAI to cover roughly $4.5 million undercollateralized debt. The Maker Foundation, the non-profit that supports the lending protocol, appears to have won 33 out of 33 auctions thus far. The Foundation said it has been providing some bidders with “technical assistance” to help facilitate their participation in the auctions, stressing that it is not “purchasing MKR in the auctions”"

Several members of the Facebook-backed Libra Project have announced their alliance with a rival stablecoin project known as Celo. Since the middle of March, members that have joined the Celo Alliance for Prosperity include, among many others, Coinbase Ventures, Anchorage Mercy Corps, Andreessen Horowitz and Bison Trails Co.

Open-source project Celo is calling on blockchain innovators to participate in CeloCamp, an entrepreneurial initiative that seeks to highlight the potential of global financial inclusion, mass adoption of digital money and the acceleration of blockchain startups.

Pioneering Swiss crypto bank Sygnum unveiled a stablecoin pegged to the Swiss franc on March 20. Sygnum's ‘DCHF’ “settlement token” is backed 1:1 by funds held with the Swiss National Bank.

Global stablecoin initiatives may, depending on their structure, present features that are typical of regulated securities or other regulated financial instruments or services. This paper identifies possible implications that global stablecoin proposals could have for securities market regulators.

A U.S. judge ordered messaging platform Telegram to refrain from issuing its gram cryptocurrency next month as planned, granting a request by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In a preliminary injunction dated March 24, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel, of the Southern District of New York, said the SEC had demonstrated a plausible case that Telegram had sold unregistered securities. The regulator sued Telegram in October 2019, alleging the company violated federal law when it raised nearly $2 billion in a 2018 token sale.

In a sentence that may deliver a blow to many issuers of tokens through the ICO model, the Court rejected Telegram's argument that the Gram would become a commodity once actualized and therefore fell outside the purview of the SEC.

A payments revolution has prompted a proliferation of shadow digital money. This money is unsound. It is not insured by the government, nor is it backed by safe assets. Federal regulation is needed to guarantee safety and soundness, to restore full monetary control to the Federal Reserve, and to prevent a race to the bottom between competing state and federal regulatory regimes. Congress should pass new legislation preempting state money service businesses (MSBs), offering federal MSB charters, and authorizing the OCC to establish a special regulatory regime for MSBs that restrict issuers to investing in cash and cash equivalents at banks or the Federal Reserve. With these changes, innovation in payments is just that — innovation in payments—and not also unauthorized and unsound money issuance.

Judge Castel found that the 175 initial investors, “expected to profit from Telegram’s continued support for Grams and the underlying TON Blockchain through the distribution of Grams by the Initial Purchasers to the public.” That fits the four-part Howey test that defines what is and is not a security, he said.

According to Coin Metrics data, stablecoins gained market share, spreads on spot and futures markets widened, and transfer fees spiked as people rushed to deposit coins. Crypto holders may have been turning to stablecoins in an attempt to preserve their capital while the market experienced a major downturn.

Telegram is seeking to appeal a United States federal court’s recent ruling in favor of the Securities and Exchange Commission to halt distribution of GRAM tokens.

Encrypted messaging app Telegram has appealed the court decision that effectively killed its attempt to distribute its GRAM tokens based on claims that the TON digital asset was an unregistered security.

It appears that the auction has helped MakerDAO to achieve its objective. Over 4.3 million DAI stablecoins have been raised to cover the bad debt across a total of 86 auctions. However, because it was formatted as a reverse auction in which all bids were a fixed 50,000 DAI, participants “bid” by lowering the number of MKR tokens they would accept.

The transfer of MKR token control from it to the Maker governance community is now complete. The MKR token contract is now 100% in control of MKR holders. With MKR holders now in full control of that contract, decentralized governance is the only avenue for changing MKR token authorizations.

The TON Community Foundation, a group of more than two dozen software developers and investors, who are now discussing possible ways to launch the Telegram Open Network (TON) without the messaging platform's participation.

The Maker Foundation has handed governance over the smart contract that underpins the MakerDAO (MKR) protocol to MKR token holders.

Some investors in the Telegram Open Network (TON) are reportedly ready to get their money back. In October, TON investors rejected the option to get around 77% of their money back and agreed to postpone the launch of TON to April 30, 2020.

Negative interest rates can potentially pose a challenge to the ability of USD-backed stablecoins to operate as-is," Garrick Hileman, head of research at Blockchain.com, told The Block. "Specifically, the types of backing assets held by a stablecoin operator may need to be adjusted in a negative rates environment, and such changes may introduce additional risk to maintaining the 1:1 redemption peg.

Dai is minted by users taking on collateralized debt positions, where collateral is deposited in an Ethereum smart-contract, with a percentage of the asset’s value being paid out in Dai. The collateral then gets released once the tokens are repaid, and the Dai are destroyed. Loans that can’t be supported by their collateral are placed into liquidation proceedings, in which the collateral is auctioned for Dai to repay the debt. But the price drop allowed bidders to win liquidation auctions for 0 DAI — further worsening Maker’s crisis.