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"The recent proposal for reversible Ethereum transactions is one of the latest additions to this conversation. Stanford researchers proposed that there could be a reversible version of the common token standards ERC-20 and ERC-721, whereby a token creator could choose to configure their token to follow this standard. The idea put forward was that transfers of such a token should be reversible (if a group of arbitrators authorizes the reversal, and as long as it happens within a certain "grace period"). It seems the primary motivation of this proposal is to protect users from themselves. We all know that one wrong digit can send tokens and crypto into the abyss. If a novice user (or indeed, at times, a more au fait crypto enthusiast) mistakenly transfers their tokens to the wrong address, through this proposed update, they could appeal the error to arbitrators and potentially get their tokens back. "

This paper proposes reversible versions of ERC-20 and ERC-721, whereby a transaction is eligible for reversal for a short period of time after it has been posted on chain. After the dispute period has elapsed, the transaction can no longer be reversed. Within the short dispute period, a sender can request to reverse a transaction by convincing a decentralized set of judges to first freeze the disputed assets, and then later convincing them to reverse the transaction. The paper also provides a prototype implementation.

Singapore's OCBC bank executed an intraday reverse repurchase (repo) transaction on JP Morgan's Onyx Digital Assets platform, in which it lent money to JP Morgan, receiving tokenized securities in exchange. Less than four hours later, the transaction was unwound together with interest. JP Morgan said this was the first time an external counterparty had the ability to execute reverse repos. It's usually JP Morgan that does the cash lending to clients, taking tokenized securities in exchange. So far it has ten clients using the repo platform, which has conducted a cumulative $1.5 trillion in transactions since its launch in 2020."

"To ensure that stolen crypto gets returned to its rightful owner, a group of Stanford researchers recently raised the idea of introducing reversible transactions to Ethereum. If such a standard were to be adopted, your stolen 10 ETH could, in theory at least, boomerang back into your wallet, the frustrated thief being left out of pocket."

Binance this time decided not to make the deal with miners. And as time goes on, the attack becomes harder. But all it took was a private phone call. The majority hashpower lies under control of a handful of men. They can collude and reverse the chain.

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.

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.

@MMPrts proposes a unique CBDC that reverses the process by which money is created and put in circulation. The "MttP" would be issued by employers as wages. Banks would have to accept payments in MttP or exchange MttPs for dollar balances in bank accounts at face value. Banks would redeem MttPs at the central bank in exchange for reserves.

One of the main protagonists in the fateful crash on March 12 is BitMEX, which suffered a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the worst day imaginable. Ironically, that attack may have helped stop and even reverse part of bitcoin's price plunge. 

This Bank of Canada paper investigates how interest-bearing central bank digital currency (CBDC) would interact with traditional monetary policy tools, such as the interest on central bank reserves. The analysis is based on a model in which CBDC and bank deposits are perfect substitutes as electronic payment methods. It finds that CBDC tends to weaken the pass-through of the interest on reserves to deposit rates when banks have market power, but the reverse holds when the market is competitive. However, a high (low) interest rate on reserves may weaken (strengthen) the pass-through of the interest on CBDC.

JP Koning writes about USD Coin transparency, focusing on the nature of its "approved investments." "What are these investments? How many does it own? Circle, USDC's issuer, has never disclosed much information on them. Because Circle is regulated by 44 state licensing boards, and each board has its own permissible investment rules (some very lenient), it's very difficult to reverse-engineer what USDC's "approved investments" might be comprised of. Responding to an inquiry, Circle said that they own 'cash, cash equivalents and short-duration investment-grade assets.' This gives us a bit more of an idea about the nature of Circle's approved investments. But why not get even more transparent? It would be a big win for stablecoin consumers if Circle provided descriptions of its approved investments in subsequent attestation reports, and broke down what proportion of customers' funds are allocated to each bucket."

In March 2019 the U.S. Fed proposed amendments to its Regulation D (Reserve Requirements of Depository Institutions) to lower the rate of interest paid on excess balances ("IOER") maintained at Reserve Banks by "pass-through investment entities" (eligible institutions that hold a very large proportion of their assets in the form of balances at Reserve Banks). The Fed claims that PTIEs-could compromise its ability to conduct monetary policy by interrupting the transmission of IOER and Overnight Reverse Repurchase Agreement Facility rates to the federal funds rate. Also, a shift in deposits away from commercial banks could substantially reduce funding for loans, and that in times of financial stress, PTIEs could be procyclical in draining liquidity from the banking system.

Two bitcoin cash mining pools carried out a 51% attack on the blockchain in an effort to reverse another miner's transactions aimed at taking coins that they weren't supposed to have access to in the wake of the May 15 BCH network hard fork.

We believe Grayscale is not incentivized to offer a redemption option to shareholders. First, Grayscale collects 2% of NAV and so all else equal, the more shares in the fund, the greater the fees Grayscale collects. Second, the lack of a redemption feature also makes possible a scenario in which Grayscale could profit if the CEF ever trades at a discount. Grayscale could buy its own stock in the market at a discount. For example, Grayscale could accumulate shares at, say, a 30% discount to NAV, and then offer a redemption feature. The result would be an immediate 30% gain.

Brendan Blumer, CEO at Block.one, the company behind the development of EOS, one of the largest platforms for building decentralized applications (dApps) claims that Ethereum is controlled by a 3 pool cartel that refuses to upgrade the scalability of the protocol, while taking billions per year in mining fees as well as $90 per transaction, and selectively reversing transactions.

This Bank for International Settlements article finds that initiatives that central banks and other authorities are taking in a number of LAC countries to make payments more affordable, more convenient and more inclusive are proving very timely. The Covid-19 crisis has led to a sharp increase in the use of digital payments, prompting many new users to appreciate their convenience. For this reason, much of this increase may not be reversed after the pandemic ends. While this puts a premium on further improvements to payment systems, progress remains quite uneven in the region. Much progress is also needed to improve the efficiency of cross-border payments, which remain slow and expensive.

Elon Musk announced that Tesla will begin accepting Dogecoin as payment for "some" merchandise to "see how it goes." The Tesla CEO has a long and well-established relationship with meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin. In May of this year-around the same time he reversed course on Bitcoin-Musk said that Dogecoin could beat Bitcoin "hands down."

"What emerges is a picture of Silicon Valley executives who thought they could charge into finance and make billions, if only they could surmount technical and regulatory barriers. What they failed to realise was that the very fact Facebook had conceived the idea, doomed it. As one government official involved in the process puts it: "Diem spent years trying to reverse engineer their project to fix all of its faults. But they could never fix being linked to Facebook. It was their original sin.""

PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin, announced on August 7, 2023,  is fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term U.S. treasuries and similar cash equivalents, and can be redeemed 1:1 for U.S. dollars, which all sounds good. However, according to Sasha Hodder, the PTUSD terms of service there will be full know-your-customer (KYC) intrusion, and PayPal can reverse any transaction, so it would have all of the *potential* censorship capabilities of a CBDC. And according to Jamiel Sheikh's analysis of the underlying code, PayPal can freeze and unfreeze accounts, and wipe a frozen account and burn its tokens. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jamiel_pyusd-activity-7094414458965356544-XSwc/

"America is an odd place when it comes to payments. It seems incredible to me that there is a business case to be built around taking cash and converting into cards at a ball park, but there you go. Interestingly, one of the providers of reverse ATMs in America speculated that in the future there might be no need to dispense a physical card from the machines, instead offering customers "a virtual card on your smartphone", much as they did in Russia all those years ago!" [David Birch]