Highlights of the week review | Libra white paper quietly updated, central bank digital currency fever continues

In the past week, bitcoin, the highest-valued cryptocurrency, has continued to weaken, while central bank digital currencies remain a hot topic for central bank discussions.

Central bank digital currency

The European Central Bank's new president, Lagarde, said on Thursday that the European Central Bank hopes to set the goals of its digital currency task force by mid-2020. Lagarde said that before proceeding with the technical analysis, the bank needs to decide what the project will achieve. She pointed out that the European Central Bank should "go ahead on this issue, because there is obviously a need that we need to address."

The Swedish Central Bank said on Friday it would sign an agreement with consulting firm Accenture to create a pilot platform for its digital currency e-krona. The Swedish central bank said that "the main objective of the e-Krona pilot project is to expand banks' understanding of the possibilities of e-Krona technology." In recent years, Sweden's cash usage has declined rapidly, and the Swedish central bank has been considering whether digital currency should be issued as a way to promote security One of the roles of efficient payment systems.

In a report on digital currencies this week, the Bank of Lithuania stated that the central bank should actively engage in the digital currency field to deepen its understanding of cryptocurrencies. The report argues that banks should participate in the digital asset space to gain experience in this rapidly growing asset class. Bank board member Marius Jurgilas said "the best way is to face risks and gain practical experience in a controlled environment." The bank also announced this week that it will issue blockchain-based digital commemorative coins in the spring of 2020. This digital commemorative coin is used to commemorate the Lithuanian Independence Act signed on February 16, 1918 and its 20 signatories.

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At its meeting on Friday, the Swiss Federal Council approved a report examining the opportunities and risks of issuing an e-franc. The commission concluded that the central bank's digital currency currently does not bring additional benefits to Switzerland. Instead, it could trigger new risks, especially with regard to financial stability. The report believes that the issuance of digital currency by the central bank will have a profound impact, but there are better solutions in most areas.

Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz said this week that the bank has not yet decided whether to issue digital currency in place of cash. Regarding digital currency, he said that the currency issued by the central bank has always been an important public good. No matter how widely digital currency is used, private digital currency cannot achieve this goal. Another benefit of cash is that it is still available even during power outages or cyber attacks. So taking all factors into consideration, the Bank of Canada has not yet decided whether to issue digital currency in lieu of cash.

Cryptocurrency

The cryptocurrency market continued to decline this week. Bitcoin, which has the highest market capitalization, lost $ 7,500 on Monday, and then continued to fluctuate around $ 7,200. By the weekend, it had approached the $ 7,000 support level. Although bitcoin-related cryptocurrency derivatives have been launched on multiple exchanges in the last two weeks, market sentiment is not optimistic.

Among other cryptocurrencies, the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken will support Tezos (XTZ) pledges. Users holding XTZ will receive a 6% return every year and pay rewards twice a week. Affected by the favorable market, Tezos this week rose strongly into the top ten in one fell swoop.

Cryptocurrency Matic fell sharply on Tuesday. The price dropped from a high of $ 0.42 to around $ 0.13, a drop of more than 70%, and its market value evaporated by $ 56 million. Matic Network co-founder and COO Sandeep Nailwal stated that "we are not behind the scenes", and he hinted at the AMA event that there may be large traders who have joined forces to short Matic, and they may have established a large number of short positions on multiple futures exchanges. , And then sold a lot of tokens.

In terms of macroeconomics, this week China and the United States reached an agreement on the first-phase trade agreement. The Fed decided to keep interest rates unchanged at 1.50-1.75% in line with market expectations, and the traditional investment markets such as the US stock market have surged.

Chris Brummer, a professor of law at Georgetown University, said in an article published this week that Facebook's white paper on the Libra cryptocurrency has been quietly updated. According to the article, with the exception of some routine revisions with members of the Libra Association, the biggest change is the elimination of dividends payable to those early investors. In the first white paper in June, it mentioned that interest on reserve assets will be used to pay system costs, keep transaction costs low, support development, and pay dividends to early investors. This sentence is now revised to read, "Interest on reserve assets will be used to pay for system costs, ensure low transaction costs, and support further development and applications."

The VeChain Foundation's repo wallet was hacked this week and lost $ 6.6 million in VET tokens. According to an announcement issued by the foundation on Friday, unknown hackers have transferred 1.1 billion VET tokens (worth about $ 6.6 million) from VeChain Foundation's repo wallet to their personal wallet address. According to the statement, VeChain's security breach may have been caused by the misconduct of an employee in the finance team, who did not fully create a repurchase account in accordance with the standard process approved by the foundation, and the audit team found no misconduct due to human error .

Exchange

Bitcoin options and cash-settled bitcoin futures of crypto trading platform Bakkt were officially launched on Monday. Cash-settled monthly Bitcoin futures contracts will be listed on ICE Futures Singapore and settled by ICE Clear Singapore. Bakkt's Bitcoin options product is based on its monthly Bitcoin futures. On Thursday, Bakkt announced that its bitcoin options product has completed its first block trade, with options trading on both sides by Galaxy Digital Trading and XBTO.

Cryptocurrency exchange OKEx announced that it will launch BTC / USD option transactions settled in cash on December 27. The exchange said that although other trading platforms only support call options, its products will have both buy and sell (sell) options. Options contracts provide traders with the opportunity to buy and sell underlying assets based on the type of contract they hold.

HBUS, a partner of Huobi Exchange that provides services to US customers, tweeted this week that it will stop providing trading services from December 15th, and customers must withdraw funds before January 31st. HBUS said that as part of its "strategic layout in progress", the exchange plans to "return in a more comprehensive manner", and it has not yet revealed any further details.

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has partnered with P2P Bitcoin exchange Paxful to support 167 fiat currency payment options. Paxful announced that its Virtual Bitcoin Kiosk service will be exclusively for Binance Services, allowing it to provide users with additional fiat currency entry. With this service, Paxful can pay in more than 167 fiat currencies, including Russian rubles, Vietnamese dong, Indonesian rupiah, Nigerian naira, Colombian peso, British pound, Mexican peso, Canadian dollar, Euro and Argentine peso.

The BitMEX exchange has been indicted for scamming early-stage investors worth about $ 50 million in stock. Angel investor Frank Amato said he had invested $ 30,000 in BitMEX in 2015 to be one of the company's first angel investors. But BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes failed to convert the investment into stock as promised.

Lawyers for QuadrigaCX, a user of the now bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, want investigators to perform an autopsy on the exchange's former CEO, Gerald Cotten. Miller Thomson said in a letter to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) that "this letter represents the affected users requesting the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to examine and examine Gerald Cotten's body to confirm his identity."

Supervision

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, the global banking standard-setting body, urged banks to adopt conservative regulatory measures for crypto assets. The commission hopes to establish minimum standards for the regulation of crypto assets internationally. The group said crypto assets pose fraud and cyber risks to banks, liquidity, credit and market concerns, and the danger of terrorist financing.

SEC Chairman Jay Clayton attended a hearing on the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday. "We shouldn't fight digital," Clayton said at the hearing. There can be a lot of friction in the digital market. Regarding blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT), Clayton mentioned that "the development of distributed ledger technology will help promote capital formation and provide potential investment opportunities for institutional and individual investors. Overall In fact, I believe we have adopted a cautious and proactive regulatory approach that can both promote innovation and capital formation while protecting our investors and markets. "

The New York State Financial Services Department (NYDFS) released a new proposal on Wednesday to standardize the process for crypto companies to list tokens. Linda Lacewell, the head of the organization, called this "the first step in NYDFS's review of BitLicense." The guide specifically includes two updates. After notifying NYDFS, any token approved by the regulator for listing in New York can be listed on any exchange operated by the state. In addition, the regulator will publish a model framework of the token list, and the exchange should build its own version based on this framework.

New York District Court Judge P. Kevin Castel signed an order requiring John Hyman, Telegram's chief investment officer, to testify in Britain. The request for international mutual legal assistance requested the High Court of England and Wales to allow Hyman to appear "in front of the appropriate judiciary in England and Wales". The order states that "the applicant has proved to the Court that without Hyman's testimony, the parties to the proceedings will not be able to conduct a fair trial. The Court requested British judicial personnel to assist Mr. Hyman in giving oral testimony and presenting the corresponding subject and date range Files inside. "

According to documents released Thursday by the Appeals Division of the New York Supreme Court, the New York Attorney General's Office (NYAG) claims that Bitfinex and Tether have gradually depleted the reserves supporting USDT tokens. The office said in the filing that the two companies "first turned cash in their hands into $ 625 million in an inaccessible Crypto Capital account, and then replaced suspicious sources of support by using Bitfinex's $ 625 million IOU." NYAG said The debt "seems unlikely to be repaid," so Bitfinex needs to withdraw funds from the exchange.

Danish tax authority Skatterstyrelsen is sending a letter to users suspected of tax avoidance through cryptocurrencies, asking them to provide information on crypto trading activities. In the letter, Skattestyrelsen further requested recipients to modify previously submitted tax returns based on their crypto activities and warned offenders that they would be punished.

application

Social media giant Twitter this week said it would develop an open, decentralized social media standard. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted that Twitter plans to fund a small, independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers and designers to develop open and decentralized standards for social media . The team's goal is to make Twitter the ultimate client of the standard. Dorsey said that the emergence of new technologies has made decentralized methods more feasible, and blockchain technology supports a series of decentralized solutions.

At present, more than 80 Japanese banks have indicated their intention to join JP Morgan Chase's internal blockchain platform Quorum-based interbank information network (IIN). JP Morgan Chase Executive Director Daizaburo Sanai stated that IIN is currently in 70 banks in Europe, Asia and the United States Operations. However, Japanese banks have not participated in the network so far, and they are expected to begin integrating with IIN in January 2020.

Santander Bank of Spain redeemed $ 20 million in bonds issued on the Ethereum blockchain in September. John Whelan, head of digital investment banking at Santander and chairman of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, called blockchain technology a realistic solution for securities issuance. "We just redeemed the blockchain bonds issued on September 10, 2019 in advance. This clearly demonstrates that debt securities can manage their entire life cycle on the blockchain. "

Ethereum blockchain development company ConsenSys has closed its main operations in India and the Philippines. ConsenSys CEO Joe Lubin notified the team via email. A member of the seven-member team in India confirmed the closure of local offices and operations in the Philippines.

Swiss-based cryptocurrency bank SEBA has expanded its business into nine new markets. SERA said on Thursday that corporate and institutional customers from Singapore, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France, Austria, Portugal and the Netherlands can now open accounts at the bank.

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