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"Bitcoin is a "Money Over Internet Protocol," as is Ethereum, potentially. Just as VOIP moves voice data around the internet natively, Bitcoin and Ethereum move value data around the internet natively. Most people disparage Bitcoin, Ethereum, et al. as protocols that can't scale and can't possibly threaten the incumbent financial industry, just as they denigrated VOIP. But the scaling technology is now here - it's called the Lightning Network, which is a Bitcoin layer 2 protocol. Its throughput capacity roughly equals that of Visa, and payments made over Lightning cost virtually zero. There are other scaling technologies, too. If I'm right and scaling technologies for internet-native money protocols have arrived, then many legacy systems operating in the financial system today will be obsolete within a handful of years." (Caitlin Long)

As blockchain adoption increases globally, scaling solutions will be necessary to keep pace with demand while layer-1 blockchains come up to speed. There are blockchain scaling solutions for every type of business. Permissioned blockchains like Hyperledger Fabric and Consensys Qorum can be ideal for enterprises; meanwhile, for smaller projects, layer-2 solutions are sufficient to perform the required tasks. For example, instead of developing dApps for a payment application on the Ethereum main chain, businesses can utilize the likes of SKALE, Polygon PoS, or Loom Network's side chain ecosystem to effortlessly process transactions. Meanwhile, if you need instant and free peer-to-peer Ethereum transactions, state channels like Perun or Connext could be your solution. If you want to use your digital assets on a different chain to conduct business, look for a platform that utilizes cross-chain bridges and see what its ecosystem offers.

Scaling Ethereum without breaking it is a monumental task. Development roadmaps have regularly been delayed. Founder and Ethereum developer Vitalik Buterin thinks that the next era of Ethereum is at least a year off, but in the meantime, Bitcoin Cash may have all the properties needed to scale.

Circle published a breakdown of the assets backing its USDC stablecoin in its latest attestation report. According to the report, on May 28 bout 61% of its tokens were backed by cash and money market funds. Yankee certificates of deposit (i.e., issued by non-US banks) comprise a further 13%, short-term U.S. Treasury securities account for 12%, unsecured commercial paper accounts for 9%, and the remaining tokens are backed by unsecured short-term municipal and corporate bonds. By "short-term" is meant a maximum term to maturity of three years, and the overall portfolio weighted average maturity is limited to 1.5 years. There are also credit rating limits based on S&P scales. The overall portfolio must main an average credit rating must of A or better, commercial paper holdings must be rated A1 on the short-term scale, and for bonds issued by corporations and financial institutions must be rated BBB+ or higher on the long-term scale.

"On the global stage when BTC and its asserted scaling solution had a chance to prove itself, it could not. This failure is due to fundamental technical, legal and centralization issues with the proposed 2nd layer scaling solution. If LN could not work for a single country with limited adoption, how can the LN scale to work for the entire world? The Lighting Network does not work."

"Taproot, the most significant improvement to Bitcoin's protocol in years, now has enough mining support to lock in activation... Whereas the main focus of SegWit was scaling the Bitcoin protocol, Taproot will outfit Bitcoin with Schnorr signatures, [which will] open up new possibilities for privacy, multisignature wallets and security, as well as scaling... These smaller and faster Schnorr signatures also have the added benefit of being linear, a combination that will boost Bitcoin's transaction privacy and allow for more lightweight and complex smart contracts."

As it grew and layered on more currency routes, the company couldn't always marshal sufficient liquidity among its customers to support matching. It was forced to take principal risk, acquiring currency in the market to meet customer demand. Kristo said later, "Our peer-to-peer model was an innovative solution at the time, but as we scaled, the original model wasn't scaling with us." By 2016, Transferwise found true peer-to-peer matches on only 60% of its transaction volume on 20 currency routes.

The PBOC is looking to combat money-related criminal activities with a new restriction. The restriction, which will first be piloted for two years, will restrict large-scale cash transactions for three specific regions within the country - the Hebei Province, Zhejiang Province, and Shenzhen City. One expert believes that this decision is meant to help with the launch of the Renminbi token (RMB), which has yet to be released.

"Much literature and media content has been wildly polarizing when it comes to discussion around the Lightning Network. It is either characterized as a perfect product ready to fix all of Bitcoin's scaling problems or as a terrible idea that would best be set aside for some other coin to act as peer-to-peer cash. Reality lies somewhere between, and our report covers a range of topics from Lightning metrics that can be analyzed to vulnerabilities that developers are working on."

"Visa's CBDC Payments Module is a proof-of-concept (POC) that envisions bringing web3 assets into a web2 user experience by providing an on-ramp for individuals, business owners, governments, and users of all kinds. The POC is designed to be a bridge connecting a CBDC system with existing forms of payment products and outlets. In linking CBDC with card payments-whether in the form of prepaid or debit cards-CBDC becomes a fast and nearly ubiquitous alternative payment choice users can easily adopt alongside existing forms of money, all while benefiting from economies of scale derived from today's mature payment networks. The illustration below captures the flow of a payment transaction that integrates Visa's scale and messaging protocols with a participating central bank's ledger technology. Importantly, all this is designed to happen at the backend without major disruption for users, businesses, and financial intermediaries."

DeFi faces technical and economic challenges. Technically, the ability of protocols to support large-scale adoption is very much in question, not only because of the costs associated with supporting the technology, but also because of its ability to handle large volumes of transactions. From an economics point of view, large-scale adoption would require a profound philosophical change in the way risk is evaluated. For example, DeFi lending markets are completely anonymous and, as such, do not support credit screening, a service traditional banks provide. Furthermore, smooth functioning of many DeFi applications requires arbitrageurs to step in and realign prices. However, arbitrage as an economic mechanism may face limitations as availability of capital becomes scarce, especially when markets are under stress. Another salient issue facing the acceleration of DeFi is inherent in its structure. Most DeFi applications adopt a widespread governance structure in which users and original developers share control of rights to the future of the application. For projects that become relatively large, dispersed governance might become a limiting factor. How much DeFi protocols can, or are allowed to, integrate with a noncrypto economic landscape will depend on whether, and how efficiently, these types of problems can be solved. [Dallas Fed]

"The long-awaited Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation has just scaled through the European Parliament as MPs voted massively in favor of the bill. the bill received a 28:1 vote to scale, completing the tripartite deal needed to push the bill into its next implementation phase."

"The 11-year solar cycle-characterized by a rise in sunspots, solar flares, and other mass-scale activity in the massive ball of fusion at the center of our solar system-could cause unprecedented chaos the next time around, according to scientists. Even though the next peak, forecast to arrive in the first half of 2024, is expected to be weak on an astronomical scale, it could still disrupt everyday life for millions of people."

Crunchfish in partnership with HDFC Bank and another Indian bank are piloting offline payments in a project monitored by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in their Regulatory Sandbox program. First phase of the pilot started during Christmas 2022, with a small-scale test during Christmas 2022. The pilot is scheduled to run for a period of four months, followed by a one-month evaluation by RBI.

Binance, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, said hackers withdrew 7,000 Bitcoins worth about $40 million via a single transaction in a "large scale security breach," the latest in a long line of thefts in the digital currency space.

Hackers have breached over 50,000 servers across the world to mine cryptocurrency using unusually sophisticated tools, according to Guardicore Labs. The large-scale "Nansh0u​ campaign" malware effort has been ongoing since February, mostly targeting firms in the healthcare, telecoms, media and IT sectors.

On May 15, 2019, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) implemented a system upgrade designed to support a number of scaling solutions. Shortly after the fork, there appeared to be a power struggle between miners looking to recuperate lost BCH, which became spendable after the upgrade. This has led to new debates over the centralization, security, and immutability of the BCH network.

Libra is nothing more than a brazen attempt to override national monetary sovereignty by creating a global-scale Fed equivalent - within which Facebook's dominance is veiled by the cunning use of buzzwords like blockchain, DLT, decentralisation and cryptocurrency.

Libra is the first private cryptocurrency with the potential to change the worldwide payment and monetary system landscape. Due to the scale and reach provided by its affiliation with Facebook, the question will be not whether, but how, to regulate it. This short paper introduces the Libra project and analyses the potential responses open to regulators worldwide.

The White Paper vows that the Libra Association will move to a permissionless system, but the commitment is weak-just an intent to begin the transition within five years. But Facebook Chief Economist Christian Catalini notes that for now, no one knows how to build such a thing at a global scale