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Outside of tokenomics, there is a lot more power in the blockchain, especially in regards to smart contracts. Thus, a recent partnership between Google and Chainlink, a company that provides on ramps and off ramps for information necessary to run smart contracts, may hint at Google wanting a bigger slice of the pie.

Hedera Hashgraph chose Google Cloud Platform as its preferred cloud provider for deploying its public networks. Google commends Hedera for the choice, while revealing that it is taking an active stake in the project's governance.

The root cause of last Sunday's Google outage was a configuration change for a small group of servers in one region being wrongly applied to a larger number of servers across several neighboring regions.

Google will offer checking accounts next year, according to a source familiar with the company's plans, representing Big Tech's boldest move yet into the consumer banking business.

Non-Fungible Token (NFT) mania is now outpacing decentralized finance (DeFi). The search interest for NFT gained traction in the middle of January 2021, and last week more people were busy learning about digital collectibles more than DeFi in the US, as per Google Trends.

The Central Bank of Brazil launched its instant payments platform Pix on November 16. Pix allows consumers and companies to make money transfers 24/7 without requiring debit or credit cards through a Pix alias or a QR Code. It is also free of charge for individuals. Central bank president Roberto Campos Neto said the central bank is in talks with Bigtech players such as Google and Facebook about entering the Brazilian payments services market, and that WhatsApp will start doing P2P soon. https://www.bcb.gov.br/en/pressdetail/2361/nota

"I am not sure why there is such a discrepancy between the interest in Bitcoin (as measured by google searches in the U.S.) and the price. Until recently, there was a reasonably high degree of correlation between Bitcoin prices and interest in bitcoin."

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) may consider subpoenaing major tech companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft in search of taxpayers' unreported cryptocurrency holdings.

A three-judge bench of the court ruled on Wednesday in favor of petitions by crypto exchanges and startups that opposed the decision made by the Reserve Bank of India in April 2018, which banned domestic financial institutions from providing banking services to crypto exchanges.

These days, by far the fastest and most efficient way of delivering money is via smartphones and mobile devices. The U.S. government should simply provide a general portal to a wide range of payment delivery mechanisms. Visa and Mastercard are easily capable of handling these payments, especially as their normal transaction volumes have fallen significantly due to the shutdown. But the government should also work with platforms such as Venmo, Zelle, Square Cash, Paypal, Apple Pay and Google Pay [Chime, a San Francisco fintech startup, says it's piloted a way to distribute the $1200]. And it could also offer payment in cryptocurrency as an option.

Tether is now one of the biggest money market funds in the world, holding more commercial paper than companies like Amazon and Google. According to JP Morgan analysts, although Tether might prefer the simpler solution of holding their USDT reserves with US banks, they have been pushed into a corner because of their limited access to such banks caused by their reputation for shady behavior, including, in the past, misrepresenting the sufficiency and quality of those USDT reserves. The kind of big banks that could accommodate a material portion of these reserves, including JP Morgan themselves, would likely steer clear of Tether due to reputational risk concerns.

A report from BitMEX Research suggested that a "double-spend" had occurred in the Bitcoin blockchain. However, it was a false alarm. Double-spend *attempts* happen frequently, which is why transactions need to be confirmed via multiple blocks. In this case, a slowing of transaction confirmations opened up the potential for someone to try to double spend their coins. What likely happened is that two blocks had the same transaction from the same address but that one entire block was ultimately excluded. The need for transactions to be confirmed via multiple blocks are a design feature of Bitcoin, rather than a bug. Six confirmations (blocks) are often considered "secure." The need for multiple confirmations slows Bitcoin transactions and, at the margin, undermines the idea of it becoming a dominant currency of exchange.

The new MoCaFi Mobility Bank Account comes with the MoCaFi Mobility Debit Mastercard® which provides access no charge ATM withdrawals and options on how to load your funds. The MoCaFi Debit Card can be used at any of the 55,000 AllPoint Network ATMs to withdraw cash with no surcharge fee. The MoCaFi Debit Card is issued by Sunrise Banks N.A., Member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Mastercard International Incorporated. The card may be used everywhere Debit Mastercard is accepted. A MoCaFi Bank Account can be opened in minutes with the MoCaFi app, available in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. When a MoCaFi account is opened, the customer immediately receives their account number and routing number for direct depositing approved payroll and government benefits checks.

The third annual Forbes Blockchain 50 features companies that lead in employing distributed ledger technology and have revenue or a valuation of at least $1 billion. Twenty-one newcomers-including the world's largest bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and four others from Asia-make their debut. They take the spots of such U.S. companies as Facebook, Google, Amazon and Ripple, all of whom are still active in blockchain but kept lower profiles in the space over the past 12 months.

Google, Temasek and Bain & Company released the e-Conomy Southeast Asia report for 2019, highlighting the most significant industry trends observed in 2019 and analysing the current and future potential of the Southeast Asian Internet economy across its six largest markets (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam).

Google, Temasek and Bain & Company released their e-Conomy Southeast Asia report for 2019, highlighting the most significant industry trends observed in 2019 and analysing the current and future potential of the Southeast Asian Internet economy across its six largest markets (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam).

I run into some very interesting people on Twitter. For example, in a discussion on cash-like features of CBDC I came across a group that advocates money burning as a kind of religious/sacrifice thing. They think it's important that digital currency holders have the right to "burn" it. They even submitted an official response to this effect to the BoE CBDC consultation. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v7v3FQbCkDMGUKc8aZg1ylDwHz7v1HnOI0CvtJ9ndiM/edit

"Injective Protocol has partnered with Terra and Band Protocol to introduce stock trading on its platform. The decentralized derivatives exchange platform plans to introduce tokenized stock trading of major companies.

BitPay Mastercard holders can now add Apple Pay as an option to pay for goods and services, and the Bitcoin payments firm say they will be adding Google Pay and Samsung Pay later this quarter. BitPay cardholders will be able to make online and in-store purchases and spend BTC wherever Apple Pay is accepted.s Support For Apple Pay

Southeast Asia's digital economy has remained strong and, adding 40 million people into the online space this year, as usage of digital financial services has jumped significantly, according to the e-Conomy SEA 2020 report by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company. Usage of mobile banking apps rose across all Southeast Asian markets with Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia recording the strongest growth rates in monthly active users. Online remittances jumped by nearly 2x, and digital remittances app downloads players such as TransferWise surged 1.3x. https://economysea.withgoogle.com/